Wuthering Expectations: The pure aesthetic sensation of cruelty - the humane and inhumane Machado de Assis

Wuthering Expectations: The pure aesthetic sensation of cruelty - the humane and inhumane Machado de Assis
Excerpt:
I want to look at one more Machado de Assis story before setting him aside for a while, another of his at least sixty masterpieces of world literature. It is Machado’s clearest statement about human cruelty. No one is in favor of cruelty – no, perhaps Céline and similar authors are in favor of cruelty – but many are indifferent. The narrator of The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (1881) is indifferent, and not just because he is deceased. Machado can seem indifferent, or even cruel; “The Hidden Cause” is a cruel story...