The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas Read Free Page A

great Roman writers. Horace and Juvenal, in their different ways, had a serious common goal: they used satire to moralize. Unlike them, Brás Cubas is not a serious moralist, but a seriocomic persona; writing from beyond the grave, he places himself beyond morality. To some readers he may seem immoral. Many others, however, will see him as simply amoral, or rather as a questioner of established morality; these readers will accept the challenging reflections called forth by his constant questioning. To these readers, the strange form of this novel—the unusual form of this kind of satire—will be an invitation to a serious reexaminationof the role played by chance in his and our own lives, of his and our hidden motives, of his and our own irrationality.
    So my first warning to the potential readers of this book is that its form will be surprising, and may even seem offensive to a “sensitive soul” ( Chapter XXXIV ), if you do not accept its amusing yet oftentimes dangerous challenges.
    The content will also come as a surprise. If we disregard the “extraordinary method” that allowed Brás Cubas to write his memoirs from beyond the grave, we note that the book is the story of an ordinary life.
    His great-great-grandfather was an honest worker who made his fortune as a farmer. His great-grandfather inherited everything, took a law degree in Portugal and became a politician. His father was a rich, ambitious, mediocre but imaginative man: he made up an aristocratic origin for the family. Brás Cubas was born at the beginning of the nineteenth century and grew up in a protected environment, pampered by his father. While still a teenager, he becomes involved with a courtesan who takes all she can from him. His father discovers the affair and sends him to study in Europe, from which he returns when his mother is on her deathbed. Through this last experience, he is introduced to the problem of life and death and becomes deeply depressed. He isolates himself from the world on a mountain top near Rio de Janeiro, where he discovers the voluptuousness of hypochondria and melancholy.
    Brás Cubas’ father pays him a visit, bringing an offer: a marriage of convenience, an arranged alliance that would bring him a successful political career. After some hesitation, he accepts the deal and leaves his retreat to meet his unknown fiancée. She soon dumps him for a more ambitious and assertive rival. Years later, they become lovers. Their long-lasting liaison is almost uneventful. They are finally forced to end their relationship when her husband is appointed to a high office in a faraway province. With no great effort or emotional strain, Brás Cubas attains worldly success and old age.
    At sixty-four, he has an idea that strikes him as brilliant and becomes an obsession: the invention of an antimelancholy poultice, a cure-all designed to relieve the despondency of mankind, a panacea that would bring him wealth and fame. In his obsessive dedication to his fixed idea, he neglects his health, catches pneumonia, and dies, and with him his idea. After his death, he decides to write his memoirs, exposing and emphasizing his mediocrity, with the frankness which, in his opinion, is “the prime virtue of a dead man.”
    This is a straightforward summary of the main events in this book. Brás Cubas’ narration of these same events, however, is anything but straightforward. As he has warned the reader, his book and his style, like drunkards, ramble incessantly. Moreover, he brings in an enormous number of references to other books, not always identifiable.
    The reader will easily identify some of his literary allusions, such as, for example, to the New Testament (Matthew, 7:3), when he describes the impact his obsession has had on his life: “God deliver you, dear reader, from a fixed idea; better a mote in your eye, better even a beam.” Most frequently, however, Brás’ allusions are encyclopedic, absorbing and incorporating many great