Esau and Jacob / a novel by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis ; translated from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Lowe ; edited with a foreword by Dain Borges ; and an afterword by Carlos Felipe Moisés.

Cover image for Esau and Jacob / a novel by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis ; translated from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Lowe ; edited with a foreword by Dain Borges ; and an afterword by Carlos Felipe Moisés.

Title :

Esau and Jacob

Author:

Machado de Assis, 1839-1908.

Format:

Books

Language:

English

Audience:

990 Lexile.

ISBN - ISSN:

0195108116

0195108108

Physical Description:

xxvi, 276 pages ; 21 cm.

Subject:

Fiction.

Series:

Library of Latin America.

First Title value, for Searching:

Esau and Jacob / a novel by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis ; translated from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Lowe ; edited with a foreword by Dain Borges ; and an afterword by Carlos Felipe Moisés.

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Esau and Jacob is the last of Machado de Assis's four great novels. At one level it is the story of twin brothers in love with the same woman and her inability to choose between them. At another level, it is the story of Brazil itself, caught between the traditional and the modern, and between the monarchical and republican ideals. Instead of a heroic biblical fable, Machado de Assis gives us a story of the petty squabbles, conflicting ambitions, doubts, and insecurities that are part of the human condition.

Author Notes

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), the descendent of African slaves, is considered one of the greatest Latin American authors of the last century. His novels include The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, and Dom Casmurro. Dain Borges is a Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego and is author of The Family in Bahia. Carlos Felipe Moisés is a Brazilian poet and literary critic. Elizabeth Lowe is the author of The City in Brazilian Literature. She lives in Gainesville, FL.

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Like Balzac's Human Comedy, Machado de Assis's major novels provide readers with a social physiognomyÄa map of surface phenomena that indicate deeper cultural meaning. This novel, written in 1904, harks back to the waning years of Brazil's monarchy, in the 1880s. Natividade and Augostinho Santos are upper-class Brazilians living in Rio de Janeiro. When Natividade gives birth to twins, she succumbs to "plebian" superstition by anonymously visiting an Indian fortune-teller who hints that her twins fought in the womb. Even after birth, the brothers are continually in conflict. Pedro is a legitimist, who hangs a portrait of Louis XVI over his bed; Paulo is a radical, hanging a picture of Robespierre over his. Their status as adversaries is cemented by their dueling courtship of one girl: Flora Batista. While Flora's parents try to anticipate the events that will transform Brazil from a kingdom to a republic, Flora puzzles over her choice of lovers. Her indecision leads her first into hallucination and finally into death. In Machado's novels, the characters' observations of the plot are as important as the plot itself. The observers here are Natividade, who notices the hostility between her sons, and Counselor Aires, a retired diplomat who records his thoughts in a series of notebooks. Disguising his contrarian viewpoints in baroque compliments, Aires positions himself as a detached psychologist, searching for the truths of temperament beneath ephemeral conflicts of opinion. Machado is both a first-rate humorist and a prescient experimenter with narrative convention. This fresh translation, sponsored by the Library of Latin America, will hopefully attract new readers to one of the great 19th-century novelists. (Oct.) FYI: Esau and Jacob is edited, with a foreword and notes, by Dain Borges, and includes an afterword by Carlos Felipe Moiss. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

Originally published in 1904, this novel by Brazil's greatest writer appears as part of Oxford's Library of Latin Writers. Presented as the final notebook by urbane diplomat Aires, the novel spans the last three decades of the nineteenth century, a tumultuous period in the history of Brazil, and focuses on a pair of twins and their enchantment with the same woman. A fortuneteller in Rio de Janeiro predicts great things for one-year-old Pedro and Paulo, and their mother expects no less, despite their differing philosophies and recurring conflicts. When lovely Flora is unable to choose between the two of them, she seeks the counsel of Aires but eventually departs the scene in a manner typical of a fictional Victorian maiden. This mannered, leisurely view of the human condition as seen through members of a particular privileged class has been analyzed by critics for decades for its layers of allegory, allusion, and symbolism and its narrative form. Now students have a renewed opportunity to study this novel and readers to enjoy it, on whatever level. --Michele Leber

Choice Review

This satirical novel by Brazil's master craftsman tells the story of the quarreling twin brothers Paulo and Pedro, rivals in politics and in love, who symbolize Brazil's trivial social and political elite during the transition from empire to republic at the close of the 19th century. The story is told by the urbane Aires, whose wry observations are recorded in a series of diaries. Aries functions as omniscient narrator--omniscient, that is, until Machado's skillful use of point of view causes the reader to question Aries's competence and, by extension, the reader's own notions of truth and reality. Machado, through Aires, remains detached, preferring that the reader observe from a distance. Thus, the reader remains outside the characters' superficial, mannered world, but draws closer to an appreciation of deeper truths otherwise obscured by everyday events. Machado's Paulo and Pedro contrast sharply to the biblical twins, for in a world of ephemeral values and frivolous pursuits one can expect little from brothers who compete for everything but commit to nothing. English-speaking readers at the upper-division undergraduate level and above will welcome this fine new translation of Machado's famous novel, published here in Oxford's "Library of Latin America" series. D. L. Heyck; Loyola University Chicago

Kirkus Review

A fascinating 1904 novel, the last of the Brazilian masters (18391908) four acknowledged masterpieces (the greatest of which is probably his Dom Casmurro). Its an overtly allegorical tale, set in Rio de Janeiro and environs near the end of the 19th century and at the time when Brazils monarchy is being displaced by a republican government. The major characters are feuding twin brothers, (conservative royalist) Pedro and (liberal revolutionary) Paulo Santos. Machado encapsulates his countrys conflicted momentum toward modernity in the twins contention for beautiful Flora Batista (a Beatrice, as several Dantean allusions suggest): the prize who is destroyed by the ordeal of choosing between them. Oxfords Library series now has all of Machados major fiction available in authoritative new translations. All hail this bounty, and grateful thanks for it.

Series Editors' General Introduction	p. vii
Foreword	p. xi
A Note to the Reader	p. 1
I Things of the Future!	p. 3
Ii Better Going Down Than Going Up	p. 8
Iii the Alms of Happiness	p. 10
Iv the Carriage Mass	p. 12
Iv the Carriage Mass	p. 15
Iv the Carriage Mass	p. 16
Iv the Carriage Mass	p. 19
Viii Neither Boy and Girl, nor a General	p. 22
Ix View of the Palace	p. 26
X the Vow	p. 27
X the Vow	p. 30
Xii That Man Aires	p. 32
Xiii the Epigraph	p. 35
Xiv the Lesson of the Pupil	p. 36
Xv """"Teste David Cum Sybilla""""	p. 37
Xvi Paternalism	p. 41
Vxii Everything That I Leave Out	p. 41
Vxii Everything That I Leave Out	p. 43
Xix Just Two--Forty Years--Third Reason	p. 46
Xx the Jewel	p. 48
Xxi an Obscure Point	p. 51
Xxii Now a Leap	p. 52
Xxiii When You Have a Beard	p. 52
Xxiii When You Have a Beard	p. 55
Xxiii When You Have a Beard	p. 58
Xxvi the Battle of the Portraits	p. 60
Xxvii About an Inopportune Thought	p. 62
Xxvii About an Inopportune Thought	p. 63
Xxvii About an Inopportune Thought	p. 64
Xxvii About an Inopportune Thought	p. 65
Xxxi Flora	p. 69
Xxxii the Retiree	p. 71
Xxxiii Solitude is Also Tedious	p. 74
Xxxiv Inexplicable	p. 75
Xxxvi Discord is Not as Ugly as is Said	p. 78
Xxxvii Discord in Accord	p. 80
Xxxviii a Timely Arrival	p. 81
Xxxix a Thief	p. 86
Xl Memories	p. 88
Xli the Incident of the Donkey	p. 89
Xliii the Speech	p. 91
Xlii an Hypothesis	p. 91
Xliv the Salmon	p. 94
Xlv Muse, Sing . .	p. 96
Xlvi Between Acts	p. 98
Xlvii Matthew 4: 1-10	p. 99
Xlviii Terpsichore	p. 103
Xlviii Terpsichore	p. 108
L Evaristo's Inkwell	p. 111
Li Here Present	p. 113
Lii a Secret	p. 115
Liii Confidences	p. 118
Liv Alone at Last!	p. 123
Lv """"Woman is the Undoing of Man""""	p. 123
Lvi the Blow	p. 125
Lvii the Shopping Trip	p. 126
Lix the Night of the 14th	p. 131
Lx the Morning of the 15th	p. 134
Lx the Morning of the 15th	p. 136
Lxii """"Stop on 'D'""""	p. 138
Lxiii New Sign	p. 140
Lxiii New Sign	p. 144
Lxv Between the Sons	p. 147
Lxvi the Club and the Spade	p. 149
Lxvi the Club and the Spade	p. 150
Lxvi the Club and the Spade	p. 153
Lxix at the Piano	p. 154
Lxx a Mistaken Conclusion	p. 156
Lxxi the Commission	p. 159
Lxxii the """"Regress""""	p. 160
Lxxiii an Eldorado	p. 163
Lxxiv Textual Reference	p. 165
Lxxv a Mistaken Proverb	p. 169
Lxxvi Perhaps It Was the Same One!	p. 169
Lxxvii Lodging	p. 171
Lxxviii a Visit to the Marshal	p. 173
Lxxix Fusion, Diffusion, Confusion	p. 175
Lxxx Transfusion, Finally	p. 176
Lxxxi Oh, Two Souls . .	p. 178
Lxxxii in São Clemente	p. 179
Lxxxiii the Long Night	p. 181
Lxxxiv the Old Secret	p. 185
Lxxxv Three Constitutions	p. 187
Lxxxvi Lest I Forget	p. 188
Lxxxvii Between Aires and Flora	p. 189
Lxxxviii No, No, No	p. 191
Lxxxviii No, No, No	p. 192
Xc the Agreement	p. 194
Xci Not Just the Truth Should Be Told to a Mother	p. 197
Xcii a Secret Awakens	p. 200
Xcii a Secret Awakens	p. 202
Xcii a Secret Awakens	p. 204
Xcv the Third	p. 206
Xcvii a Private Christ	p. 209
Xcvi Withdrawal	p. 209
Xcviii the Doctor Aires	p. 211
Xcix in the Name of Fresh Air	p. 213
C Two Heads	p. 215
Ci the Knotty Case	p. 217
Cii Visions Require Half-Light	p. 218
Ciii the Room	p. 219
Cviv the Answer	p. 222
Cv Reality	p. 224
Cvi Both Who?	p. 226
Cvii State of Siege	p. 229
Cviii Old Ceremonies	p. 229
Cix at the Foot of the Grave	p. 231
Cx Let It Fly	p. 232
Cxi a Summary of Hopes	p. 234
Cxii the First Month	p. 235
Cxiv Practice and Bench	p. 238
Cxiii One Beatrice for Two	p. 238
Cxv Exchange of Opinions	p. 240
Cxvi the Return Home	p. 242
Cxvii Two Inaugurations	p. 243
Cxviii Things of the Past, Things of the Future	p. 246
Cxx Penultimate	p. 248
Cxx Penultimate	p. 248
Cxxi Last	p. 251
Notes	p. 269

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Author Notes

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Booklist Review

Choice Review

Kirkus Review

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