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Abstract:

The article considers the novel by J.M. Machado de Assis “Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas” (1881) as an example of posthumous narration, i. e. the narration of a character who, in the conventional reality of the inner world of the work, is represented as a dead character who tells his story “from beyond the grave”. Machado de Assis, in whose novel the “mimetic” is violated in two respects at once — metafiction and posthumous narration — is represented both as a “belated” Sternian and as an unconditional innovator, who overtook the development of posthumous narration in the European cultural area and, in a manner of speaking, “torn it off ” from the previous tradition, where it developed in close connection with the genres of “dialogue of the dead” and satirical pamphlet. As a result, the Latin American author “reinterprets” two narrative models of European literature at once — both the metafictional novel (before Machado de Assis, the narration in such a novel was not conducted on behalf of a writer — and Brás Cubas is presented as a writer — who would also be dead, and the novel that we read was not “created” in some space between “this” world and “that”), and the posthumous narrative. The latter in this novel is distinguished by the fact that Machado de Assis says nothing about the afterlife and about the process of transition from “this” world to “that”: in a break with tradition, “Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas” focus exclusively on how the narrator lived his earthly life.