Que horas eram?

Abstract

The work compares the interpretations made in the essay “Machado Maxixe” by José Miguel Wisnik and in the article “Entre o violoncelo e o cavaquinho” by Idelber Avelar about the short stories “O machete” (1878) and “Um homem célebre” (1888), both by Machado de Assis. The article summarizes the main theses of each critic and confronts their divergences. Then, the paper return to the informations provided by Luiz Felipe de Alencastro in “Vida privada e ordem privada no Império”, one of Wisnik's main sources, to discuss some contestable premises that appear in the two critical readings. In the end, this text analyzes the way, reversing Roberto Schwarz's formulation ideias fora do lugar, Wisnik postulates the formulation lugar fora das ideias. The work defends that it would be more appropriate to use the formulation lugar à revelia das ideias in order to describe with greater precision what happens in the specific case of “Um homem célebre”.