Simão Bacamarte entendeu desde logo reformar tão ruim costume; pediu licença à câmara para agasalhar e tratar no edifício que ia construir todos os loucos de Itaguaí e das demais vilas e cidades, mediante um estipêndio, que a câmara lhe daria quando a família do enfermo o não pudesse fazer.
Machado de Assis- A Casa Verde é um cárcere privado – disse um médico sem clínica.
Machado de AssisDestruamos o cárcere de vossos filhos e pais, de vossas mães e irmãos, de vossos parentes e amigos e de vós mesmos. Ou morrereis a pão e água, talvez a chicote, na masmorra daquele indigno.
Machado de AssisO desfecho deste episódio da crônica itaguaiense é de tal ordem, e tão inesperado, que merecia nada menos de dez capítulo de exposição; mas contento-me com um que será o remate da narrativa, e um dos mais belos exemplos de convicção científica e abnegação humana.
Machado de AssisMas deveras estariam eles doido, e foram curados por mim, ou o que pareceu cura não foi mais do que a descoberta do perfeito desequilíbrio do cérebro?
Machado de AssisThe reader, like his fellows, doubtless prefers action to reflection, and doubtless he is wholly in the right. So we shall get to it. However, I must advise that this book is written leisurely, with the leisureliness of a man no longer troubled by the flight of time; that is a work supinely philosophical, but of a philosophy wanting in uniformity, now austere, now playful, a thing that neither edifies nor destroys, neither inflames nor chills, and that is at once more of a pastime and less than a preachment.
Machado de Assis…like the horse in the old ballads, which Romanticism found in the medieval castle and left in the streets of our own century. The Romanticists rode the poor best until he was so nearly dead that he finally lay down in the gutter, where the realists found him, his flesh eaten away by sores and worms, and, out of pity, carried him away to their books.
Machado de AssisObserve now with what skill, with what art, I make the biggest transition in this book. Observe: my delirium began in the presence of Virgilia; Virigilia was the great sin of my youth; there is no youth without childhood; childhood presupposes birth; and so we arrive, effortlessly, at October 20, 1805, the date of my birth.
Machado de AssisThe next day, he read to me a freshly composed dirge in which the circumstances of his wife’s death and burial were commemorated. He read it in a voice quavering with emotion, and the hand that held the paper was trembling. When he had finished, he asked me whether the verses were worthy of the treasure that he had lost.
“They are,” I said.
“They may lack poetic inspiration,” he remarked, after a moment’s hesitation, “but no one can deny them sentiment—although possibly the sentiment itself prejudices the merits…”
“Not in my opinion. I find the poem perfect.”
“Yes, I suppose, when you consider…Well, after all, it’s just a few lines written by a sailor.”
“By a sailor who happens to be also a poet.”
He shrugged his shoulders, looked at the paper, and recited his composition again, but this time without quavering or trembling, emphasizing the literary qualities and bringing out the imagery and music in the verses. When he had finished, he expressed the opinion that it was the most finished of his works, and I agreed. He shook my hand and predicted a great future for me.
Why the devil couldn’t it have been blue?” I said to myself.
And this thought—one of the most profound ever made since the discovery of butterflies—consoled me for my misdeed and reconciled me with myself. I stood there, looking at the corpse with, I confess, a certain sympathy. The butterfly had probably come out of the woods, well-fed and happy, into the sunlight of a beautiful morning. Modest in its demands on life, it had been content to fly about and exhibit its special beauty under the vast cupola of a blue sky, al sky that is always blue for those that have wings. It flew through my open window, entered by room, and found me there. I suppose it had never seen a man; therefore it did not know what a man was. It described an infinite number of circles about my body and saw that I moved, that I had eyes, arms, legs, a divine aspect, and colossal stature. Then it said to itself, “This is probably the maker of butterflies.” The idea overwhelmed it, terrified it; but fear, which is sometimes stimulating, suggested the best way for it to please its creator was to kiss him on the forehead, and so it kissed me on the forehead. When I brushed it away, it rested on the windowpane, saw from there the portrait of my father, and quite possibly perceived a half-truth, i.e., that the man in the picture was the father of the creator of butterflies, and it flew to beg his mercy.
Then a blow from a towel ended the adventure. Neither the blue sky’s immensity, nor the flowers’ joy, nor the green leaves’ splendor could protect the creature against a face towel, a few square inches fo cheap linin. Note how excellent it is to be superior to butterflies! For, even if it had been blue, its life would not have been safe; I might have pierced it with a pin and kept it to delight my eyes. It was not blue. This last thought consoled me again. I placed the nail of my middle finger against my thumb, gave the cadaver a flip, and it fell into the garden. It was high time; the provident ants were already gathering around…Yes, I stand by my first idea: I think that it would have been better for the butterfly if it had been born blue.
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