What It Is
The anti-hypochondriac plaster is the invention to which Brás Cubas attributes his own death: a grand and useful idea, presented to the government as a Christian work and meant to relieve the melancholy of humanity. The motive he confesses after death is another: seeing his own name printed in the newspapers, on street corners, and on little boxes. The plaster never comes to exist as a remedy. The book shows it as a fixed idea that kills and, later, as the first of several ambitions of Brás that do not come true.
Where It Appears
In chapter I, telling of his own death, Brás says that a grand and useful idea, more than pneumonia, killed him. The following chapter gives it a name.
In chapter II, the idea acquires a name and a justification. Hanging in Brás's brain, it becomes the plaster project, and he separates the face he showed the public from the one he kept for himself: on one side the relief of humanity, on the other the pleasure of seeing his name on a sign. The two uncles diverge on the love of glory, a ruin for the canon, a more humane trait for the military man, and Brás lets the reader decide.
um emplastro anti-hipocondríaco, destinado a aliviar a nossa melancólica humanidade, an anti-hypochondriac plaster, meant to relieve our melancholy humanity
o que me influiu principalmente foi o gosto de ver impressas nos jornais, mostradores, folhetos, esquinas [...] estas três palavras: Emplasto Brás Cubas, what most influenced me was the pleasure of seeing printed in newspapers, shop signs, leaflets, street corners [...] these three words: Brás Cubas Plaster
In chapter III, we see where the desire for the name comes from. Brás's father, thinking the surname smelled of cooperage, invented that the Cubas came from three hundred taken from the Moors, and the son wants the same surname on the remedy's boxes.
Meu pai era homem de imaginação; escapou à tanoaria nas asas de um calembour, My father was a man of imagination; he escaped the cooperage on the wings of a pun
In chapter IV, the plaster idea is already fixed, and Brás warns the reader with Cavour, and with Claudius and Lucrezia Borgia he reminds us that history is changeable: the fixed idea makes strong men and madmen, and the mobile idea, vague or iridescent, is what makes the Claudiuses.
é ela a que faz os varões fortes e os doidos; a idéia móbil, vaga ou furta-cor é a que faz os Cláudios, it is the fixed idea that makes strong men and madmen; the mobile, vague, or iridescent idea is what makes the Claudiuses
In chapter V, occupied with the plaster, Brás catches a gust of air, mistreats himself, and concludes that the invention killed him. He admits that he treated the illness without method or persistence, and the proof is fragile and adopted all the same.
Há demonstrações menos lúcidas e não menos triunfantes, There are demonstrations less lucid and no less triumphant
In chapter XXVIII, the plaster reappears under the name of fame. The father tells Brás that the surest thing is to be worth the opinion of other men, and the hypochondria of mourning gives way to the love of fame, which the narrator links to the Brás Cubas plaster.
Olha que os homens valem por diferentes modos, e que o mais seguro de todos é valer pela opinião dos outros homens., Look, men are worth different things, and the surest of all is to be worth the opinion of other men.
a flor da hipocondria recolheu-se ao botão para deixar a outra flor menos amarela, e nada mórbida, the flower of hypochondria withdrew into the bud to let the other flower be less yellow, and not morbid at all
In chapter LXXXII, happy with Virgília's love, the husband's trust, and the secretaryship, Brás opens the chapter with a sentence addressed to hypochondriacs.
Digam o que quiserem dizer os hipocondríacos: a vida é uma coisa doce, Let the hypochondriacs say what they will: life is a sweet thing
In chapter CXVIII, Brás names the third force that called him to the bustle, the taste of shining, and the inability to live alone, and says that the plaster did not come, and that the desire to stir himself came instead.
Veio o desejo de agitar-me em alguma coisa, com alguma coisa e por alguma coisa, The desire came to stir myself in something, with something, and for something
In chapter CLX, the final reckoning of what Brás did not become or have, the plaster stands among the ambitions that did not come true, next to the cabinet post and the marriage.
não fui ministro, não fui califa, não conheci o casamento, I was not a minister, I was not a caliph, I did not know marriage
What It Means
In chapter II, the plaster brings together two things that Brás separates: the remedy for everyone's sadness and the name on display. The one who conceives it is a rich, unmarried man who has just described himself as bored, and the book shows in him the hypochondria that the invention promised to cure in others. In chapter XXV it blooms as an intoxicatingly fragrant flower, that is, as pleasure, and the voluptuousness of boredom is a sensation he commands the reader to memorize.
After chapter V, nothing in the book shows Brás working on the plaster, and what it represented passes into other forms: the fame that his father teaches him to want (chapter XXVIII), the public glory that Lobo Neves lacks (chapter LVIII) and that spreads to Brás, who begins to ask himself why he will not be a minister (chapter LIX), and the desire to stir himself (chapter CXVIII). Chapter CLX closes the list.
The remedy that was meant to cure everyone's melancholy ends up being the name of one man, and the book collects the bill at the end, among the ambitions he did not fulfill, told without complaint. The promise to console men has a counterpart in the delirium of chapter VII, in which Nature carries in her bag the goods and the evils and hope, the consolation of men, in Pandora and the Delirium. Two readings fit: the plaster is the vanity of an idle man with a veneer of philanthropy, or it is the melancholy Brás knows, treated by the only route he knows, that of making himself noticed.
Relationships
- Work: The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas.
- Standard themes: Ambition, Appearance and reality, Death.
- Characters: Brás Cubas, who conceives it, Lobo Neves, in whom the lack of public glory reappears, and Virgília.
- Neighboring symbols: Pandora and the Delirium, where hope is the consolation of men.