Abstract
In "A causa secreta", Machado de Assis narrates the friendship between two men, Fortunato and Garcia, which is marked by random encounters and a scenery of adultery and violence. The literature about this short-story defies the revelation presented by the narrator and showcases horizons not contemplated by the analyst’s mind: Paul Dixon highlights the function of the gaze that falls upon the events; Abel Barros Baptista debates issues regarding the role of the analyst; Silviano Santiago is skeptical about the true motivations of the random encounters; Baptista, again, compares the randomness of the tale’s solution and the randomness of the construction of the short-story itself; and Eliane Robert Moraes investigates the connections between Machado’s prose and that of the Marquis de Sade. This skepticism mimics the narrator’s crisis in general and that of the Machadian narrator in particular, while also pointing to the secret of alterity.
Machado de Assis; Brazilian literature; sadism; secret