by Machado de Assis and others · 1921
Contemporary · Classics
Four short stories by Brazilian writers including Machado de Assis, the country's great novelist, in English translation.
Content note: Written long ago, this book reflects the views and language of its time.
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Brazilian Tales, Translated by Isaac Goldberg
BRAZILIAN TALES
TRANSLATED FROM THE PORTUGUESE WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
ISAAC GOLDBERG
Author of "Studies in Spanish-American Literature," etc.
Boston
The Four Seas Company
1921
Copyright, 1921, by
The Four Seas Company
Boston, Mass., U. S. A.
The Four Seas Press
CONTENTS
Page
TO
J. D. M. FORD
SMITH PROFESSOR OF THE FRENCH AND SPANISH LANGUAGES,
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
SOME INFORMAL PRELIMINARY REMARKS
The noted Brazilian critic, José Verissimo, in a short but important essay on the deficiencies of his country's letters, has expressed serious doubt as to whether there exists a genuinely Brazilian literature. "I do not know," he writes, "whether the existence of an entirely independent literature is possible without an entirely independent language." In this sense Verissimo would deny the existence of a Swiss, or a Belgian, literature. In this sense, too, it was no doubt once possible, with no small measure of justification, to deny the existence of an American, as distinguished from an English, literature. Yet, despite the subtle psychic bonds that link identity of speech to similarity of thought, the environment (which helps to shape pronunciation as well as vocabulary and the language itself) is, from the standpoint of literature, little removed from language as a determining factor.
