{"id":384826,"date":"2021-02-25T16:22:18","date_gmt":"2021-02-25T19:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=384826"},"modified":"2021-02-25T16:22:18","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T19:22:18","slug":"a-world-of-possibilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/a-world-of-possibilities\/","title":{"rendered":"A world of possibilities"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than 100 years after his death, the name Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839\u20131908) remains very much alive on the Brazilian literary scene, judging from the excitement created by the recent article \u201cM\u00b4achado bi\u00f3grafo: Da investiga\u00e7\u00e3o de uma revista a um texto in\u00e9dito\u201d (M\u00b4achado as biographer: An investigation of a magazine reveals new findings), published by Cristiane Garcia Teixeira in ArtCultura<\/em>, an academic journal of the Federal University of Uberl\u00e2ndia. In the article, the historian suggests that a biographical sketch about Dom Pedro II (1825\u20131891), published anonymously on November 6, 1859 in the magazine O espelho: Revista Semanal de Literatura, Modas, Ind\u00fastria e Artes<\/em>, may have been written by Machado de Assis at the age of 20.<\/p>\n

Teixeira found the text when doing research for the master’s dissertation she defended at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) in 2016. \u201cThe first thing that caught my eye was the biography\u2019s first-page placement in the magazine,\u201d says the researcher, now a doctoral student in the Graduate Program in History at the same institution. \u201cThe five-column text not only was on the first page, but used the same format as used for other novels and articles by Machado, the periodical\u2019s main contributor.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were also other elements suggesting to Teixeira that the text may have been written by the future author of classics such as Dom Casmurro<\/em> and The posthumous memoirs of Br\u00e1s Cubas<\/em>. In issue 6 of the same magazine, dated October 9, an anonymous notice announced: \u201cWe will soon begin publishing a gallery with biographies and corresponding portraits. The photographer is Mr. Gaspar Guimar\u00e3es, and the biographer is Mr. Machado de Assis.\u201d Garcia also identified distinguishing attributes of Machado\u2019s work, such as the use of the first person as was common in other contemporaneous texts by the now-celebrated author. \u201cContradiction, which was very characteristic of Machado, is another element that appears in the text. In the opening sentence, the author warns that he will not talk about politics, but then proceeds to do the very opposite,\u201d she notes. \u201cBut we can\u2019t know for sure, as the text is unsigned.\u201d<\/p>\n

H\u00e9lio de Seixas Guimar\u00e3es, a professor of Brazilian literature at the School of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Humanities at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (FFLCH-USP), sees fewer similarities. \u201cIt is not implausible that Machado wrote about the emperor\u2014he admired him and in the 1860s dedicated poems to both Dom Pedro II and the wider imperial family,\u201d says the expert. \u201cIn my opinion, the most compelling evidence of Machado\u2019s authorship is found at the beginning of the biographical sketch, in the separation that the anonymous author makes between the role of a cronista<\/em> from that of a historian, and between the subjects that are in the domain of each. This is a topic that Machado did in fact explore elsewhere in his writing career.\u201d However, Guimar\u00e3es finds it difficult to identify any resemblance of Machado\u2019s style in the biographical sketch. \u201cThe text ends abruptly with no closure, whereas Machado was known to end his texts with some food for thought for the reader. I also don\u2019t see the use of contradiction in the biographical text,\u201d observes Guimar\u00e3es. \u201cIn my view, the text is report-like, laudatory, and perhaps written to win the emperor\u2019s favor and financial patronage for the magazine, as was common at the time. But I also wouldn\u2019t rule out the possibility that the text was indeed written by Machado.\u201d<\/p>\n

The authorship of anonymous literary texts has long intrigued researchers. \u201cThere is a lot of uncertainty surrounding some of Machado de Assis\u2019s writings, and even today we don\u2019t know exactly how many short stories he wrote, in addition to the 200 for which his authorship is well established,\u201d says Guimar\u00e3es. \u201cThe dubious ones are largely from his early career, published anonymously or with initials or pseudonyms now attributed to Machado, some without positive evidence. Even Brazilian poet and writer Carlos Drummond de Andrade [1902\u20131987] ventured to identify the pseudonyms Camillo da Anuncia\u00e7\u00e3o, used in the short story \u2018A vida eterna\u2019 (Eternal life), and Marco Aur\u00e9lio, from the short story \u2018Poss\u00edvel e imposs\u00edvel\u2019 (Possible and impossible), as belonging to Machado de Assis.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his master\u2019s research under Guimar\u00e3es, Fernando Borsato dos Santos is investigating the wide range of pseudonyms and initials that Machado de Assis used in his writings, and how they varied throughout his career and across different genres. \u201cHe is analyzing a total of 83 signatures, of which 53 are pseudonyms and the rest are different initials that Machado is thought to have used in his texts, such as M. A., M-as, and J. M.,\u201d says Guimar\u00e3es. Uncertainty over authorship is a source of controversy among Machadian scholars. A case in point, says Guimar\u00e3es, is the short story \u201cFelicidade pelo casamento\u201d (Happiness through marriage), published in Jornal das Fam\u00edlias<\/em>, in 1866. Authorship was first attributed to Machado de Assis by biographer Raimundo Magalh\u00e3es J\u00fanior (1907\u20131981), then contested by another biographer of Machado, Jean-Michel Massa (1930\u20132012), only to be reasserted more recently, in 2015, by researcher Mauro Rosso.<\/p>\n

\"\"L\u00e9o Ramos Chaves<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

A profusion of pseudonyms, initials, and anonymous texts was customary in nineteenth-century periodicals, explains Tania Regina de Luca, a professor in the History Department at S\u00e3o Paulo State University (UNESP). \u201cThese publications typically only had a handful of contributors, and many used pseudonyms or variant initials to suggest to readers they had a larger writing staff. In addition, many contributors\u2014who could either be established authors or aspiring literary writers\u2014wrote for multiple publications and saw journalistic work as a means to supplement their income at a time when writing as a profession was in its infancy,\u201d says de Luca, who authored the book A ilustra\u00e7\u00e3o (1884\u20131892) \u2013 Circula\u00e7\u00e3o de textos e imagens entre Paris, Lisboa e Rio de Janeiro<\/em> (The Illustration (1884\u20131892) \u2013 The interchange of texts and images between Paris, Lisbon, and Rio de Janeiro; Editora Unesp, 2018). \u201cLegal protection of copyright was also non-existent, and was only established internationally at the end of the nineteenth century with the Berne Convention, in 1886. So many texts were then published unsigned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joaquim Mar\u00e7al Ferreira de Andrade, head of Brazil\u2019s National Digital Library, concurs. \u201cIf even as late as the 1980s major Brazilian newspapers didn\u2019t feel the need to credit photographers for images, imagine what things were like in the nineteenth century. The upshot is that today, researchers are often unsure as to the authorship of texts and images in old publications,\u201d says Andrade, author of the book Hist\u00f3ria da fotorreportagem no Brasil: A fotografia na imprensa do Rio de Janeiro de 1839 a 1900 <\/em>(The history of photojournalism in Brazil: Photography in Rio\u2019s press from 1839 to 1900; Editora Campus\/Elsevier, 2004). \u201cEstablishing authorship is an enterprise that requires extensive knowledge, research, insight, and perseverance. It\u2019s detective work.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was while doing research on nineteenth-century periodicals at the National Library that independent researcher Felipe Pereira Rissato discovered the first pseudonym used by writer and journalist Euclides da Cunha (1866-1909). \u201cCunha\u2019s debut in the press was thought to have been in 1884, in the newspaper O democrata<\/em>, but he had previously written for the newspapers Evolucionista <\/em>and Espectador<\/em> in 1883, at the age of 17, under the pseudonym \u00cdcaro,\u201d says Rissato, who shares credit for the discovery with his colleague, Leopoldo Bernucci, a professor at the University of California at Davis. Another of Rissato\u2019s discoveries is an anonymous text published in the second edition of Revista Luso-Brasileira<\/em>, in 1860, under the title \u201c<\/em>Lembran\u00e7as de minha m\u00e3e\u201d <\/em>(Memories of my mother), which he credits to Machado de Assis. \u201cI have recently discovered texts signed with the initials M. A., but I\u2019m still investigating whether they belong to Machado de Assis or perhaps to Moreira de Azevedo, a co-contributor to many of the same periodicals.\u201d<\/p>\n

S\u00edlvia Maria Azevedo, a professor at the School of Sciences and Languages and Literature at UNESP, has no doubt as to Machado de Assis\u2019s authorship of the roughly 300 cr\u00f4nicas<\/em> written under the pseudonym Dr. Semana in Semana Ilustrada<\/em>, a magazine featuring political cartoons, caricatures, and political satire.\u00a0 \u201cHe took over the column in 1869, when it was renamed Badaladas<\/em>, remaining there until the magazine closed its doors in 1876,\u201d says Azevedo, who last year launched the book Badaladas \u2013 Dr. Semana<\/em> (Nankin Editorial), a two-volume compilation of footnotes, onomastic indexes, and tables with textual evidence of Machado\u2019s authorship.<\/p>\n

This has long been the subject of controversy among scholars. \u201cJos\u00e9 Galante de Sousa, in a 1950s book about Machado\u2019s bibliography, wrote that the pseudonym had been used by several of the magazine\u2019s contributors, and authorship of the cr\u00f4nicas<\/em> could only be established after a careful examination of these materials,\u201d says Azevedo. At that\u2019s precisely what she undertook to do. \u201cI think that we, as scholars, need to question sources and embrace challenges. This enriches the debate. But I only ventured to assert these claims because I\u2019ve been studying Machado since the 1980s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her book is the result of research she started in 2012. Azevedo analyzed each of the 300 cr\u00f4nicas<\/em> over a period of three years. \u201cI looked for internal evidence\u2014aspects of the text itself and writing style\u2014as well as external marks, such as references in other works by Machado in different genres, including theater criticism and fiction,\u201d she explains. Finally, Azevedo\u2019s study was critiqued by Machadian scholar Valentim Facioli, a retired professor of Brazilian literature at USP, and owner of the book\u2019s publisher, Nankin Editorial. \u201cAssigning authorship is a laborious and painstaking task,\u201d says Azevedo.<\/p>\n

For historian Denise de Almeida Silva, manager of the Archive Service at the Brazilian Studies Institute (IEB) at USP, authorship attribution is a multidisciplinary effort. \u201cTo determine the authorship of a document, I would need to consult specialists in fields such as philology, paleography, and diplomacy, and possibly scholars of a particular subject matter or person,\u201d she says. \u201cI would also consider any relationship between the relevant document and other documents in the archive.\u201d<\/p>\n

IEB houses the collections of Brazilians writers, artists, and intellectuals such as Jo\u00e3o Guimar\u00e3es Rosa (1908\u20131967), author of The Devil to Pay in the Backlands<\/em>. During research on Guimar\u00e3es for a doctoral thesis she defended in 2013 at FFLCH-USP, M\u00f4nica Gama came across \u201csmall enigmatic manuscripts, resembling poems in prose\u201d that turned out to be the dust jacket flaps of the third edition of the novella series Corpo de baile<\/em> (Backland nights; Livraria Jos\u00e9 Olympio Editora, 1956). \u201cImmediately after Guimar\u00e3es\u2019s death in the late 1960s, his publishers, Jos\u00e9 Olympio Editora, released a book in tribute to the author [Em mem\u00f3ria de Guimar\u00e3es Rosa<\/em> (In memory of Guimar\u00e3es Rosa; 1968)], in which they revealed that Guimar\u00e3es himself had written the flap texts for his books. But there was no evidence that this was indeed the case,\u201d recalls Gama, now a professor of letters at the Federal University of Ouro Preto (UFOP).<\/p>\n

\"\"L\u00e9o Ramos Chaves<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Following this clue, Gama searched the archives at IEB as well as collections at Funda\u00e7\u00e3o Casa de Rui Barbosa and the National Library in Rio de Janeiro. \u201cThrough these manuscripts, I confirmed that the anonymous flap texts of all of Guimar\u00e3es\u2019s books had in fact been written by the author himself,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s interesting to note how he first created an image of himself as an author who told stories inspired by his own memories\u2014perhaps his rural background might attract readers who enjoyed the regionalist prose that was in vogue at the time\u2014but gradually he waxed more poetic in introducing his works.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saulo Cunha de Serpa Brand\u00e3o, a retired professor in the Graduate Program in Letters at the Federal University of Piau\u00ed (UFPI), believes Brazil is lagging when it comes to authorship attribution methodologies. \u201cComputer-aided stylometry, for example, can be used to detect an author\u2019s writing patterns using software. We can determine how many times a given word is repeated, or whether an author uses the word \u201cbigger\u201d more often than \u201cgreater\u201d, for example,\u201d explains Brand\u00e3o, who has applied these methods since 2003. The software output, however, is not easy to use and interpret, and requires a command of advanced mathematics and statistics that researchers in the humanities do not always possess. Ideally, researchers should work in multidisciplinary teams.\u201d<\/p>\n

And software has other limitations, as Brand\u00e3o learned in his research. In 2003 he began a study on the poem series Cartas chilenas<\/em> (Chilean letters), whose authorship is attributed to the poet Tom\u00e1s Ant\u00f4nio Gonzaga (1744\u20131810). \u201cIt has a relatively small amount of text, less than 30,000 words. But these software systems are designed to analyze larger volumes, such as the 900,000 words in the complete works of William Shakespeare [1564\u20131616]. A large corpus is needed to find patterns,\u201d he notes. \u201cBut a computer can\u2019t operate on its own: behind the screen is a researcher devising strategies to capture the author and discover the characteristic traits of their writing. In the poem series in question, we wanted to determine whether other contemporary poets who lived in or around Vila Rica may have participated in writing the text.\u201d<\/p>\n

On whether a software system of this kind could have aided her doctoral research, M\u00f4nica Gama says: \u201cIn my case there would have been little use in looking for style patterns as the texts on Guimar\u00e3es Rosa\u2019s dust jacket flaps differed completely from is known writing style.\u201d In her analysis Gama used genetic criticism, a method that emerged in France in the 1960s and was introduced in Brazil in the 1980s, which attempts to describe the meanders of an author\u2019s creative process based on written traces or marks left by the artist in the process. \u201cIt is not the goal of genetic criticism to prove the authorship of a document, but because we analyze collections in-depth, we are able to evaluate the probability of authorship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Technology was recently used in the production of a Brazilian edition of the writings of Antonio Gramsci (1891\u20131937), in a project started in 2007 and sponsored by the Gramsci Institute Foundation, in Italy. The goal of the project is to establish a definitive and comprehensive Portuguese version of the Marxist thinker\u2019s body of work. One of the major challenges in the project is establishing the authorship of journalistic texts attributed to the Italian from the 1910s and 1920s, most of which were published anonymously. \u201cThis is a very important part of Gramsci\u2019s work, and questions of authorship have fueled a decades-long debate among scholars around the world,\u201d says political scientist Alvaro Bianchi, director at the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences at the University of Campinas (IFCH-UNICAMP). The republishing of his works is being aided by philological methods, including the use of software. \u201cPhilology provides important tools for authorship attribution, but unfortunately these methods are little known in Brazil,\u201d notes Bianchi, who previously managed the Edgard Leuenroth Archive at the same university between 2009 and 2017.<\/p>\n

Marcelo M\u00f3dolo, a professor of philology and the Portuguese language at FFLCH-USP, concurs: \u201cIn Brazil, even among academics, philology is often mistakenly associated with linguistic and literary studies of the classical and medieval periods,\u201d he says. But part of the philologist\u2019s task is establishing the authorship of texts, whether they are handwritten or printed, contemporary or old. \u201cThis task involves, among other procedures, a careful comparison of the vocabulary and syntax used in texts of unproven authorship with other works for which authorship is well established. This methodology could be particularly useful in analyzing the recently discovered text by Machado, for example, but it\u2019s important to remember that authorship attribution is a world of possibilities, not of certainties,\u201d says M\u00f3dolo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Establishing literary authorship poses a complex challenge to researchers","protected":false},"author":689,"featured_media":362938,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[244,245],"coauthors":[3453],"class_list":["post-384826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humanities","tag-linguistics","tag-literature"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/689"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384826"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":385605,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384826\/revisions\/385605"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384826"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=384826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}