Iago’s Ghosts. Jelousy and Literary Creation in Machado by Silviano Santiago

Abstract

In this essay, I analyze the conflict presented by the novel Machado (2016), by Silviano Santiago, based on what I call “Iago’s ghosts”, that is, the lurking presences of the artistic jealousy of Carlos de Laet and Mário de Alencar during the last years of Machado de Assis’s literary creation. These presences allow the author, narrator and character “Silviano” to approach the closing period of the artistic work of the Bruxo do Cosme Velho. I investigate the certainly Machadian strategies and aesthetics of a fiction, as I point out paraphrasing John Gledson, created by someone who also writes literary criticism, in order to distinguish those who win the batatas at stake in this novel and comment on the characteristics of the convulsive muse highlighted by the narrator.