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Quincas Borba · Chapters I to XII

Humanitas and the Philosopher's Death

Money and WealthMadness

Prologue

Section summary

Machado declines the request for a trilogy with Sofia in the third part: she is complete in this book, and continuing her would be repeating her.

Analysis

Machado answers a friend who asks him for a trilogy with Sofia in the third part, and declines on compositional grounds: rereading the pages, he sees that she is complete there, and continuing her would be repeating her. The refusal shows how the book wants to be read, as a closed work, with Sofia at the center even though the title names the philosopher.

Chapter I: Rubião at the Botafogo Window

Money and Wealth

Section summary

Rubião looks at the bay from the window of the Botafogo house and compares the past, when he was a professor a year ago, with the present of a capitalist. From the slippers given by Cristiano Palha to the sky, everything gives him the same sense of ownership. He thinks God writes straight with crooked lines: with his sister Piedade and Quincas Borba (philosopher) dead, the inheritance is all his.

Analysis

Rubião does not admire the bay: he takes stock of what he was and what he is. That is why the death of his sister and his friend appears to him as God's crooked lines, and the thought is cut off before it reaches its end ("what seemed a misfortune..."). Had Piedade married Quincas Borba, he would have had only a collateral hope; with both dead, he has everything.

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Chapter II: Spirit and Heart

Section summary

Rubião's spirit flees from the vexing thought into a canoe, but his heart follows cheerfully: it was good that his sister Piedade died without marrying, for a son and heir might have come.

Analysis

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Chapter III: Coffee, Silver, and Memories of Sofia

Section summary

Taking coffee on a silver tray, Rubião recalls that he gave in to Cristiano Palha and accepted a Spanish servant in place of the Black servants from Minas, and that his page, who could not even stay in the kitchen because the Frenchman Jean reigns there, was demoted to other duties. Before releasing Quincas Borba (dog), he thinks of Sofia, seen at the ball and on the train to Vassouras, and judges himself loved by her.

Analysis

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Chapter IV: The Nurse and the Philosopher

Section summary

In 1867, in Barbacena, Quincas Borba (philosopher), with a grain of madness, falls ill. He had fallen in love with the widow Piedade, who resisted and died of pleurisy, and her brother, Rubião, had tried to marry them. Now the philosopher's only friend, Rubião closes his boys' school and looks after him for almost six months, while the doctor tells him the patient is lost.

Analysis

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Chapter V: The Dog and the Philosopher's Name

Section summary

Quincas Borba (philosopher) gives his own name to his Quincas Borba (dog), which sleeps in his room, for two reasons: Humanitas, the universal principle of his doctrine, lives everywhere, including in the dog, and whoever does not know how to read his book will call the animal by that name, so that he survives in the name. He tells Rubião, who brushes it off with "some philosophies," that he is going to die.

Analysis

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Chapter VI: The Grandmother's Death and the Potatoes

Section summary

Quincas Borba (philosopher) explains Humanitas by telling how his grandmother died in Rio, crushed by a carriage: the owner of the carriage, hungry, signaled to the coachman, who rushed to fetch him and ran over her. For him Humanitas is a single principle, present in everything; therefore there is no death, only the suppression of one form that gives life to another, and war preserves, like the tribe that exterminates the other to keep the potatoes. Rubião, understanding little, accepts being his disciple.

Analysis

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Chapter VII: The Question About Friendship

Section summary

Quincas Borba (philosopher), exhausted by the discourse on Humanitas, still gives a brilliant description of the world and its excellences, which astonishes Rubião, since the sick man will die in a few days. Then he puts his hands on the other's shoulders, asks whether he is his friend, and hears that he is as much as, or more than, the dog.

Analysis

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Chapter VIII: The Will and the Departure

Section summary

The next day, Quincas Borba (philosopher) decides to go to Rio de Janeiro, on personal business and on a plan too sublime for Rubião to understand. A week later he records the will with the notary and entrusts the Quincas Borba (dog) to Rubião, who swears to care for him. He leaves weeping for the dog.

Analysis

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Chapter IX: Remorse, the Sad Dog, and Mockery

Section summary

Rubião fears being blamed if his friend dies on the journey. The Quincas Borba (dog) suffers its owner's absence, the doctor says death is certain, and in town they mock the professor as a dog sentry.

Analysis

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Chapter X: The Letter from Saint Augustine

Money and WealthMadness

Section summary

A letter arrives from Rio in which Quincas Borba (philosopher) says he is Saint Augustine. Rubião takes his friend for mad, hides the letter from the doctor for fear of annulling the will, and calculates the legacy.

Analysis

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Chapter XI: The News in the Newspapers

Madness

Section summary

In the week following the letter in which the philosopher says he is Saint Augustine, on receiving the Court newspapers, Rubião reads the death of Joaquim Borba dos Santos, Quincas Borba (philosopher): a man of great learning, who bore his illness with philosophy, said in his last words that pain was an illusion, was delirious at the end, and leaves a great deal of property, with the will in Barbacena.

Analysis

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Chapter XII: Relief and the Dog's Fate

Madness

Section summary

Since the news does not allude to dementia and says the deceased was delirious only at the last hour, Rubião rereads the letter in which the philosopher said he was Saint Augustine and takes it again as the jest of a friend who must be sane. He sighs for him and, seeing the Quincas Borba (dog), decides to give it to godmother Angélica, since the obligation to care for it is over.

Analysis

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Reading of the block of chapters

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