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the presence of Victor Hugo in the chronicles of Machado de Assis

Abstract

Victor Hugo was the author most cited by Machado de Assis in his chronicles and was of great importance in the construction of his cultural heritage, leaving deep marks in his work. The author of Dom Casmurro read the work of Victor Hugo, admired it, memorized it, and, as a young man, tried to follow the ideals of the French poet. This admiration, however, was never blind, as he condemned the excesses of the Hugoist school led by Sílvio Romero, as well as some texts in bad taste published by the creator of Quasimodo. Likewise, he knew how to look at Victor Hugo with a critical eye, removing from his work only those aspects that could benefit his maturity as a writer. In the case of Machado de Assis, the vision of the Other was always permeated with a critical eye; the foreign presence started to be used for the benefit of its own text, thanks to the establishment of a renewing intertextual practice. It is curious to observe that the massive presence of Victor Hugo in Machado’s chronicles contrasts with a shy or almost non-existent presence in his short stories, poems, plays, and novels. This article intends to establish a hypothesis for such a contrast through the analysis of journalistic texts published by Machado de Assis.