Cuidar que a obra é sua: paternidade e autoria em Machado de Assis

Abstract

The figure of the plagiarized author, to use the title stolen from chapter IX of Dom Casmurro by a major collection of essays, runs through Machado’s entire oeuvre, with an impressive catalog of variations. But Machado’s fiction also seems to have a particular attraction for characters I will call wasters: the great Machadian creators, erratic and inconsistent, prone to squandering their creations as one squanders a fortune: characters, in the context I’m sketching here, unable to set up or write the work they could sign, or unable to sign the work they inexorably produce. In this essay, I will attempt to articulate the figures of the plagiarist and the waster in Machado as two sides of the same condition: that of not claiming or recognizing oneself as the author of one's own ideas, and that of considering oneself, or wanting to be, the author of others’ ideas.

Keywords

• Machado de Assis
• authorship
• plagiarist
• waster