[In the following excerpt, Severino considers the short fictional writings of Machado de Assis and Afonso Arinos de Melo Franco, highlighting developments in the Brazilian short story from the late nineteenth century to the early Modernist period.]

In spite of story telling's being so much a part of Brazilian culture, the short story, as an art form, was slow to develop as an acceptable literary mode of expression. The Brazilian writer, until recently, regarded the short story as being more apt for children's ears than for the serious pursuit of imaginative literature. Machado de Assis (1839-1908), Brazil's first important short story writer—to some the best the country has ever known—commented in 1873 on the short story writer and the public's attitude toward the genre: “It's a difficult form, in spite of its apparent facility; I think this illusion of ease is harmful to the short story, for it tends to turn the writer away; the reading public, in turn, fails to give it the attention it deserves.”

Machado de Assis did give the short story the attention it deserved, and in his hands it became a most vital part of the Brazilian literary tradition. The setting of his stories is the capital city of Rio de Janeiro—the seat of the imperial court at the end of the last century. The characters are urbane and their conflicts domestic, for the most part. The author's use of language, although brilliant in its dexterity, follows the Portuguese literary tradition rather closely. What is important in Machado de Assis' short stories—beyond mere considerations of technical and linguistic accomplishment—in his constant use of irony—the slow unravelling of a well-defined plot, laying bare the multifaceted, paradoxical reality with which he engulfs the reader.

“Missa do Galo” (“Midnight Mass,” 1899), Machado de Assis' best known short story, unravels a purposely simple, understated plot. Shortly before midnight on Christmas Eve, an urban housewife carries on what appears to be an innocent conversation with her seventeen year old boarder. There is no evident climax. The conversation being over, the characters depart. The story is told years later from the young man's point of view. The incident, its full meaning unresolved, had persisted in the protagonist's mind as it will in the reader's. For beneath the apparently banal exchange of words, the author imperceptibly creates a mood of anxious expectancy that accounts for the young man's continuous bafflement. Yet, neither he nor the reader ever knows for certain whether the housewife's scantily dressed appearance, her scarcely betrayed frustrations, the revealing half-gestures or indirect sexual allusions were really a preamble for a more decisive accommodation. It's possible that she didn't even know it herself.

The plot in “A Cartomante” (“The Fortune Teller,” 1896), another justly famous short story written by Machado de Assis, is much more defined than in the previous story. The author weaves a web around the characters, hopelessly caught in a triangular love affair. Rita is married to Vilela, but loves Camilo. A fortune teller tells Rita and later Camilo, who consults her after receiving an urgent call from the husband, that they won't be discovered. However, as Camilo enters Vilela's house, he sees Rita's dead body stretched on the floor. Vilela kills him instantly. Machado narrates his story from the third person point of view. Using his omniscience to advantage, he disarmingly mocks his characters by pointing to a single flaw in their nature as the principal cause for their involvement in the ill-fated love affair. Throughout the narrative, he addresses the reader directly, inviting him to partake of the merciless fun. Camilo has met his fate because he, contrary to his own affirmations, retains a childhood-embedded, superstitious belief in fortune tellers. A feeling common to us all, suggests the narrator, addressing the reader directly. True enough, the reader as well believes the fortune teller. We are goaded into believing, along with Camilo, that he has nothing to fear. Then comes the unexpected dénouement. Throughout his short fiction, Machado de Assis appears to imply that we are all prey to hopeless circumstances—our intelligence, experience, self-assurance, contentment in love and noble feelings notwithstanding.

Machado de Assis' contribution to the Brazilian literary tradition has not been fully acknowledged by the critics. In spite of the extensive bibliography connected with his works—he is acclaimed by university professors and by those who consider him a master of the European-based nineteenth-century novel—Machado's legacy has been repudiated by those who view Brazilian literature as a progressive recognition of the indigenous experience. For these, he fails to reflect the Brazilian habitat as well as the particular kind of Portuguese spoken in Brazil. However, as we consider the Brazilian short story, we must bear in mind that Brazil's most important literary manifestation to date has been the short story as engendered by Machado de Assis.

After Machado de Assis, the literary current that emphasized the national character began to take hold within the Brazilian literary tradition. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, when the country was seeking its independence from Portugal, Brazilian writers had been calling for a new literature, set in the new land, with the Indian as its “noble savage” protagonist. They even advocated the adoption of the Tupi language as a befitting vehicle for the new literary experiment. Being too closely identified with romantic ideals, however, these elements were readily discarded once realism came into view. Under this latter guise, the nationalistic strain manifested itself through the portrayal of social conditions in Brazil's hinterland. The inhabitants of the area, the backlanders, were eulogized—their fortitude and moral stamina contrasted with the inhospitability of their environment. Brazilian literature became regional, that is—it drew away from the cultural hegemony formerly held by the city of Rio de Janeiro to accept the distinctive peculiarities of each of the four major regional areas. In the process, it became a composite of several regional literary manifestations.

The regionalistic writers' contribution to the short story was two-fold. By choosing the short story as the preferred form for their artistic effort, they helped to consolidate the genre within the Brazilian literary tradition. By assimilating the backlanders' speech in their work—a modified version of continental Portuguese containing many archaisms—they established an oral tradition that would henceforth become the most important factor toward the attainment of a really autonomous Brazilian literature. Technically, however, these stories were still crude, for the regionalistic short story writers were more concerned with subject matter than form. They described the human conflicts sentimentally, they portrayed the characters romantically.

Afonso Arinos de Melo Franco (1868-1916), generally acknowledged as the father of the regionalistic movement in Brazilian literature, published in 1896 a collection of short stories entitled Pelo Sertão. Like those of many regionalistic writers, the author's backland memories are coloured by feelings of nostalgia, since he contemplated childhood scenes from a city perspective. As a result, most of the short stories included in this volume distort reality. The characters are too good, too courageous, too noble. The conflict is generally not justified either by their actions or by the actions of those with whom they come in contact. In “Manuel Lúcio,” for example, there is nothing in the character's actions to warrant the love conflict, except the protagonist's moral superiority. It's very unlikely that the girl-proprietess would ever love the courageous farm-hand for his qualities alone. The writer's preconceived attitude toward the characters tries the credibility of the reader. “A Esteireira” is jeopardized by the stereotype protagonist—a young Negro woman to whom the author attributes all the sensuousness, violence, and sorcery normally associated with her race. When she cuts her rival's throat and jumps on her, avidly sucking the flowing blood, the reader justly feels such action to be dictated by the author's notions regarding the Negro race and not by the development of the story.

The most memorable of the stories in the volume is, however, “Joaquim Mironga.” Maintaining some of the author's set patterns, such as the protagonist's nobility and his unremitting loyalty to boss and family, the story introduces, nevertheless, the necessary techniques to merge them harmoniously into the action. Joaquim tells the story in the first person point of view to a group of fellow cowboys many years later. Joaquim having taken part in the action and elicited great respect through his uprightness, his point of view enhances the credibility of the story. Furthermore, the narrative begins shortly before the climax, the preceding events being told later in flashback.

A greater dramatic quality is accomplished through the flashback technique. A suspense steadily builds up that will heighten the unusual effect of the finale. The climax comes when the farmer's young son, who had inadvertently accompanied Joaquim Mironga on a night mission to the soldiers' camp, is shot while trying to escape. The narrator interrupts the story at this point. When the cowboys ask what happened to the boy, he answers: “There in the sky herding the little calves.” Besides the shock produced by the anticlimax, toward which the narrator had ingeniously impelled the narrative, there is further the allusion to a well-known tale taken from the Brazilian folklore, “Negrinho do Pastoreio” (“Little Negro from the Pasture”). Thus the boy's death attains archetypal connotations; it is ingrained within the Brazilian collective spiritual consciousness.

One recalls that the Brazilian regionalistic movement in literature drew on local color, being founded on the basis of regional separateness. Afonso Arinos concentrated on the hinterland of Minas Gerais. His contemporary Valdomiro Silveria (1873-1941) depicted the caboclo, the São Paulo backlandman, attaining a greater degree of realism through stressing the harshness of the environment rather than the protagonist's superior qualities. The southern-most state of Rio Grande do Sul found its spokesman in Simões Lopes Neto (1865-1916); Peregrino Júnior (1898-) portrayed life in the Amazon region. All chose the short story as their principal means of literary expression.

When the Modernist writers began calling for the adoption of true Brazilian themes in their prose fiction, based on the folklore and linguistic distinctiveness of the country, they were unwittingly drawing on the literary experiences of their regional predecessors. By the time the Modernist writers were launching their literary manifesto in São Paulo through the Week of Modern Art (1922), industrialization had given rise to a new society where social injustices were as detrimental to the factory worker as the adverse backland environment. These writers thought of São Paulo as the “new backland”—a befitting microcosm for the envisioned future Brazilian society.

Two of the most important short story writers connected with the Modernist Movement are Mário de Andrade (1893-1945), and Alcântara Machado (1901-1935). Both of these authors focus the problems brought on by the new industrialized social order with a greater degree of realism and objectivity than before. The Italian immigrant, as the greatest component of the new labor force, is assimilated into the Brazilian social milieu. Living in squalid slum conditions in the outskirts of São Paulo—for example in Andrade's “Piá, Não Sofre? Sofre?” and Alcântara Machado's “Gaetaninho”—the Italian family begins to disintegrate; love degenerates into sex and further into prostitution. Children are the pitiful victims, and both of these writers deal with childhood tragedy with a great degree of pathos. These short stories are technically more accomplished: Andrade's by virtue of his excessively objective realism; Alcântara Machado's through a cinematographic technique—the juxtaposing of several short sketches loosely tied together with no evident transition. They both assimilate the Italian peculiarities of speech into the narrative. Mário de Andrade goes back to the Tupi language of the Brazilian Indian as the source for some of his language innovations.

The early modernists failed in their attempt to unify Brazilian literature. The country was still too heterogeneous to withstand generalization. For the next quarter of a century, the section of Brazil known as the Northeast provided the background for the further entrenchment, within the realm of the Brazilian literary tradition, of the nationalistically inspired literary current. A group of writers born in this region purported to describe its afflicting social conditions. The novel, by virtue of its wider breadth and greater scope, was the literary type best suited for their intentions; as a result, the short story, with few exceptions, gave way to the novel as the preferred art form.