Abstract
Collecting his poetry books in one single volume, Machado wrote that"[...] it would be better to connect the new book[...]" – Ocidentais – "to the last three books published, Crisálidas,Falenas, Americanas". This observation can be found in the preface of Complete poetry, and it paves the way to our hypothesis: the checkmate of the last Machadian poetic persona. Perceiving it, however, requires that the reader have read the books leading up to this change. This paper aims at showing that this checkmate is related to Brás Cubas' edition theory considering that Ocidentais, the last chapter book of Complete poetry questions the previous tone of the poet and requests another read.
Machado de Assis; prose of fiction; edition theory; poetry