Eça de Queirós (1845–1900)

This is not, so far as I know, one of Eça’s major works but it is a straightforward, easily enjoyed novel. Jacinto is rich and is active in Paris’s high society. He lives well, has everything money can buy, including all the latest technological gadgets but Jacinto is—you guessed it—unhappy. Zé Fernandes, his old friend and narrator of our story, visits him just as Jacinto is becoming bored with everything: society, his house, his life…. He decides to visit his ancestral country estate in Portugal because the chapel housing the bones of his ancestors was destroyed and must be rebuilt and rededicated. An accident causes him to arrive with no possessions only to have Jacinto discover—surprise!—that he enjoys rural living enormously. There’s more, but this is the essence of the book. Eça’s wisdom is not to overdo the story. It’s not a deep book, but it is an enjoyable read and is typical of Eça’s gentle satire. He has fun with his characters and their foibles and I found it to be amusing, pleasing, and well worth the relatively short investment of time.… (more)

Luiza sente o vazio e o tédio, no casamento e na vida. O seu amor da juventude, Basílio, retorna a Lisboa, aquando da ausência do seu marido. Um amor do passado, vivido agora na clandestinidade, é o remédio que encontra para superar o que a ociosidade a faz sentir:

“E Luiza tinha suspirado, tinha beijado o papel devotamente! Era a primeira vez que lhe escreviam aquelas sentimentalidades, e o seu orgulho dilatava-se ao calor amoroso que saía delas, como um corpo ressequido que estira num banho tépido: sentia um acréscimo de estima por si mesma, e parecia-lhe que entrava numa existência superiormente interessante, onde cada hora tinha o seu encanto diferente, cada passo conduzia a um êxtase, e a alma se cobria de um luxo radioso de sensações!” (tantas vezes ouvi Arnaldo Antunes a dizê-lo antes de o ter lido pela primeira vez)

Depois, Juliana (esta grande personagem de Eça) abre o caminho para a tragédia de Luiza:

“- Olhe que nem todos os papéis foram prò lixo.”

Até ao fim, vai ser o caminhar para a tragédia.

Um poema de William Blake poderia fechar a leitura deste “episódio doméstico”, em que Eça de Queirós faz com mestria uma profunda crítica à burguesia lisboeta da época:

Ó rosa, estás doente:
O verme invisível,
Que voa de noite
No vento terrível,

Encontrou teu leito
De rubro prazer.
Amor oculto e sombrio
A vida te vai comer

… (more)

The single great work in Portuguese literature…at least according to Jose Saramago: “The greatest book by Portugal’s greatest novelist”! That’s a pretty heavy burden to place on any piece of literature. In fact, I have mingled feelings. Though I can appreciate the achievement, in the end I can’t avoid saying that I was a trifle disappointed. The story follows the rich aristocratic Maia family, primarily told through the lives of grandfather and grandson. The grandson’s (and, indeed, the society’s) dilettantish predilections are a wonderfully executed metaphor for the decline of Portugal in the second half of the 19th century, but the plot reminds me mostly of Sir Walter Scott: the book is just a little too “romantic”—the ups, the downs, the amazing coincidences, the incidents (especially the large cast falling into and out of love) that repeat over and over and over to characters who seem to spend their entire lives learning nothing. And de Queirós’s preoccupation with opera, clothing, and interior decoration (not to mention interminably long sentences) eventually becomes tedious. (I understand that this is how he chooses to invoke "society" and that he is skewering them but less is usually more and too often de Queirós beats his topics to death.) I was also disappointed that the end seemed rushed. All the loose ends are tied together in the last chapter or so, telling us what happened to every character and how their lives played out. The same explanations could—and should, I think—have been told over as many chapters as needed, not crammed into one tidy package. And this after 600+ pages. And so I’m left thinking that the book is either too short or too long.
(My other very sad comment: I read the translation by Margaret Jull Costa. Her work, as always, is impeccable. But her publisher—New Directions—did her and the readers a grave disservice by publishing the book with no supporting information. In some books, I would not need a glossary, but when an author describes his characters’ methods of transportation in excruciating detail (at least six different terms—I stopped counting—for their carriages: calèche, phaeton, dog-cart, four-in-hand…), when amounts of money are important and often used to make a point but the reader has no sense of relative value, the publisher owes it to readers to explain these things. This book had nothing: no notes, no glossary, no introduction (though a brief “appreciation” at the end by Jull Costa), nothing. De Queirós made these distinctions and wrote as he did with a purpose. But when the reader cannot decipher them, I think a publisher actually harms the work by not helping with notes or explanations. Too often I spent time hunting for information on the internet because it seemed too important to just ignore. And like War and Peace, a list of characters wouldn’t hurt.)… (more)

Three stories which, on balance, I thought enjoyable but not much more. The title piece, which is really a novella, has a simple premise: would you (should you) wish for someone else’s death in order to inherit his wealth? The story plays out more or less as one might expect: there are high points, low points, and Eca’s travelogue of China. Our hero tries to right his wrong and much of the story is spent in his efforts to do so. I thought it well-written but a bit light, notwithstanding some good moments and occasional thoughtful writing. All in all, a disappointment. The next story, “Jose Matias,” is about a man who fell in love with a married woman and spent the rest of his life obsessed with her. It is one thing to regret a missed opportunity; it is something else to be as ridiculously obsessed as here, spying on her over the course of decades. She loved him all along but—given a new opportunity—he actually turns her down. I found it very difficult to like anyone in this story and didn’t much care for it. Story number three was apparently a section of his novel The Relic, although whether it was published before the novel was completed or merely excerpted, I don’t know. In any event, the section presented is confusing and involves contemporary people (contemporary to Eca, anyway) being inexplicably back in the Roman-ruled Middle East. Wikipedia’s explanation helps: “A long, sudden and unexplained section in the middle of the novel is in the form of an apparent dream in which Teodorico is transported back to the time of Jesus’s arrest, trial and execution, where he and Topsius become witnesses to history. This section has been criticised by some reviewers as fantastic rather than realistic, as very flat with a different tone from the rest of the book, as not really fitting in with or contributing to the rest of the story and as being written in the language of the author rather than that displayed by Teodorico in the rest of the novel.” Amen to all that. Maybe the novel is good but this excerpt had so little context that I found it a waste of time. All in all, I’m glad this wasn’t my introduction to Eca; I will certainly continue to read his novels but this was pretty much lost time.… (more)