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The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas · Chapters XVII to XXIV

Coimbra and His Mother's Death

AmbitionAppearance and RealityLanguage and NarrationDeath

Chapter XVII: Of the Trapeze and Other Things

Section summary

Brás Cubas's father, upon seeing the debt securities he had redeemed and learning of the eleven contos spent, decides to send him to Europe, to a university, probably Coimbra, to make him a serious man and not a "thief." Brás listens in silence, for he is already thinking of taking Marcela; she refuses, invoking her father killed by Napoleon, he insults her and then humbles himself, and she dismisses him. Two hours of wandering later, he returns with an ivory comb and three diamonds, bought with a last loan, and Marcela, who looks at the jewel, agrees to leave.

Analysis

Brás tells of the scene in which he humbles himself most, sparing no gesture (the glass knocked over, the maid sent away, the feet kissed), and it is the dead man who records it, with nothing left to lose. Marcela gives in only when the comb appears, and the text supports two readings: she is moved by the sacrifice, or she calculates, as the look that goes from him to the wall and from the wall to the jewel suggests. Brás sees the look, notes the discomfort, and erases it in the same sentence.

Marcela loved me for fifteen months and eleven contos de réis; nothing less.
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Chapter XVIII: Vision in the Corridor

Section summary

At the foot of the stairs, Brás Cubas feels happy and trusts Marcela, although the diamonds slightly corrupt his happiness. In the dark corridor, he sees her look at a nose that is at once that of Bakbarah, the lover of the Arabian Nights, and his own; the vision merges with the street, where his father, his uncle the canon, and a man in livery put him into a chaise and take him to the chief of police, and from there to a ship bound for Lisbon. Three days later he boards, dejected and mute, with the fixed idea of plunging into the ocean repeating Marcela's name.

Analysis

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Chapter XIX: On Board

Death

Section summary

On board, where his father had recommended him to everyone, Brás Cubas thinks only of Marcela and one night finds the chance to kill himself; but he meets the captain by the rail, who reads him an ode and sonnets of his own authorship, and the conversation of a poet sweeps his evil thoughts away. Only the mad passenger, who had gone mad at the death of a daughter, is not frightened by a storm; once it passes, the captain's consumptive wife dies and is cast into the sea, and the captain reads Brás an epicedium and asks whether it is worthy of the lost one. Brás replies that the verses are perfect and, when the captain belittles them as sailor's verse, he corrects it: a poet-sailor's verse.

Analysis

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Chapter XX: I Graduate

AmbitionSlavery

Section summary

When the captain predicts a great future for him, Brás Cubas trades Marcela for ambition: he imagines himself a naturalist, a man of letters, an archaeologist, a banker, a politician, or even a bishop, provided it is an office, a preeminence, a reputation. He disembarks in Lisbon, goes to Coimbra, studies mediocrely, and receives his bachelor's degree, with a reputation as a reveler; on the day of the diploma he feels cheated and proud, because the paper gives him freedom and responsibility, and he leaves Coimbra wanting to influence, enjoy, and live.

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Chapter XXI: The Muleteer

Section summary

On the way, Brás Cubas's donkey balks and throws him, with his foot caught in the stirrup, until a muleteer seizes the rein and stops the beast. Brás decides to reward his rescuer with three of the five gold coins, then with one, and ends by giving a silver cruzado, while the muleteer speaks to the donkey and kisses its forehead. Already trotting, he finds some copper coins in his waistcoat and concludes that a few vinténs would have been enough, since the man acted out of impulse and habit; he calls himself a spendthrift and feels remorse.

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Chapter XXII: Back to Rio

Language and Narration

Section summary

Brás Cubas refuses to narrate Europe: his memoirs carry only the substance of life, and a travel diary would be another book. After some years he answers his father, who writes that his mother will be dead if he does not come quickly, and the phrase resonates with his mother's last blessing aboard ship. In Venice, where he asks the innkeeper whether the doge goes out for a walk, he drops everything and heads for Rio. He cuts the chapter, because his public is in duodecimo, not in folio.

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Chapter XXIII: Sad, but Short

DeathThe Meaning of Life

Section summary

On sighting his hometown, Brás Cubas feels the place of his childhood as a rebirth; at home, his father embraces him with tears, his sister Sabina, already married to Cotrim, collapses from exhaustion, Uncle João is downcast, and Dona Eusébia and other ladies help. His mother, whom he had not seen for eight or nine years, is nearly a skeleton, devoured not by rheumatism but by a cancer of the stomach; she knows she is going to die and says so, and Brás, mute and dry-eyed, witnesses the long agony, the first death he sees up close.

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Chapter XXIV: Short, but Happy

Appearance and Reality

Section summary

Brás Cubas is prostrate, but confesses that he was then a faithful compendium of triviality and presumption. The problem of life and death had never weighed on him; he reflected the opinions of a barber in Modena, who had none, and from the University he learned only formulas and vocabulary, treating it as he treated Latin, history, and jurisprudence. He exposes his own mediocrity to the reader because frankness is a virtue of the dead: alive, opinion obliges one to keep quiet about old rags, and dead, with no audience, he unburdens himself.

Analysis

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