1 Dead Souls is discussed at length in one of Machado’s newspaper columns, and it is almost certain that the ‘Diary of a Madman’ provided vital elements for the plot of Philosopher or Dog? This is less surprising than one might think – Mérimée admired Gogol, and wrote about him in terms which would have attracted Machado, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, which was widely read in Brazil as elsewhere.
2 In my comments on this story, I am indebted to José Miguel Wisnik’s wonderful article, ‘Machado maxixe’, in Sem receita (São Paulo: Publifolha, 2004), pp. 15–105.
1 Luís de Camões (c. 1524–80), the great Portuguese poet and author of the national epic, The Lusiads, is said to have uttered these words on his deathbed. In 1580, the Spanish king, Philip II, ascended the Portuguese throne, and Portugal ceased to be independent until 1640.
2 This institution, originally founded in 1831 as an instrument of social control by the landed oligarchy, had by 1880 become a largely decorative affair.
3 King João of Portugal fled to Brazil, escorted by the British fleet, in 1808, and Rio de Janeiro became the temporary capital of the Portuguese Empire. The transformation involved eventually led to the colony’s becoming an independent empire, with King João’s son Pedro as the first emperor.
4 From ‘The Old Clock on the Stairs’ (1845).
5 A phrase from ‘Bluebeard’, one of the stories collected by Charles Perrault in Mother Goose Stories (1697). Imprisoned by Bluebeard, the heroine anxiously asks her sister if her brothers are coming to save her.
6 Tomás Antônio Gonzaga (1744–1810), the most famous lyric poet to have written in Brazil in the colonial period.
1 Herophilus (c. 335 BC–c. 280 BC) is a historical figure, reputed to have been the first to carry out autopsies. The activities attributed to him here have a basis in historical accounts.
1 A now forgotten one-act play, Je dîne chez ma mère (1855), by Lambert Thiboust and Adrien Lacourcelle.
2 A phrase (‘la nostalgie de la boue’) from a play by Emile Augier, Le mariage d’Olympe (1855), written to counter the view of the reformed prostitute in The Lady of the Camellias.
1 Literally, The Dark-Skinned Girl, by Joaquim Manuel de Macedo (1844). A slight, sentimental romance, it remained popular well into the twentieth century.
2 A Catholic novelist, born Pauline de La Ferronays, and married to an English diplomat, the Hon. Augustus Craven. Le mot de I’énigme (1874) describes a virtuous woman who, though given every justification and incentive to commit adultery, refuses to do so. Madame Craven’s novels were popular at this time, and were among Queen Victoria’s favourite reading.
3 The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Action of Worms (1881).
4 By Giacomo Meyerbeer (1836). It was one of the most spectacular operas of the nineteenth century, and one of the most popular.
5 The Cassino was an upper-class ballroom.
1 ‘One misfortune leads to another.’
2 An annually published guide of commercial establishments, official institutions, etc., in Rio de Janeiro.
1 The Regency began with the abdication of Emperor Pedro I in 1831. It was a period of political unrest, which the premature majority of Pedro II (he was only fifteen) in 1840 largely succeeded in putting an end to.
2 After the Portuguese court’s flight to Rio in 1808, King João stayed in Brazil until 1821.
3 An unidentified popular tune: the literal translation is ‘A rat in a frock-coat’.
1 Then a semi-rural retreat in the steep hills surrounding the city of Rio.
2 The 1850s, a boom period in Rio. Stoltz was the most famous opera singer of the time; the Marquis of Paranà was the leader of the so-called ‘Conciliation’ ministry, which included members of both political parties.
1 Emperor Pedro II’s birthday.
2 A public garden on Guanabara bay, near the centre of the city.
3 In 1865.
1 Capoeira is a kind of fighting without weapons, originally developed by the slaves as a means of defence and attack, in which all depends on skilful use of arms and legs. In the nineteenth century gangs of practitioners, but these ones often armed, roamed the streets of Rio and constituted a serious public nuisance. They were finally stamped out at the beginning of the 1890s as part of the drive to ‘civilise’ the city and make it attractive to foreign immigrants. In more recent times, capoeira has become a popular form of martial art, in Brazil and abroad.
1 Vincenzo Bellini’s last opera (1835).
1 Sinhazinha was a familiar appellation used by slaves to refer to the young women in their owner’s family.
2 Emperor from 1822 to 1831.
3 The date, in 1871, of the Law of the Free Womb, which declared that all slaves born after the law was passed would be free at the age of twenty-one.
4 The Duke of Caxias was the leader of the outgoing conservative government.
1 See note 1 to p. 66, ‘A Chapter of Hats’.
1 In Sophocles’ Orestes, Pylades is present on stage, but never says anything.
1 The Valongo was the main slave market in Rio, where new slaves from Africa were sold. They were ‘contraband’ after 1831, when the transatlantic trade had been officially abolished, under pressure from Great Britain. It really ended in 1850.
2 All the names refer to whiteness in one way or another – neves means snow.
3 This partitioned wooden turntable was set in the convent wall, so that neither the giver nor the receiver could see each other. The baby would then be taken to a foundling hospital.