Eça de Queirós (1845–1900)
Author of The Maias
About the Author
Image credit: Eça de Queirós (CarlAnFoto)
Series
Works by Eça de Queirós
EL PRIMO BASILIO (TOMO II) 8 copies
EL PRIMO BASILIO (TOMO I) 7 copies
Uma campanha alegre - Volume I 7 copies
A Relíquia (Portuguese Edition) 6 copies
A emigração como força civilizadora 5 copies
CRÓNICAS E CARTAS 4 copies
Philidor 3 copies
Perfection 3 copies
Uma campanha alegre - Volume II 3 copies
A Catástrofe e Outros Contos 2 copies
Obras completas I 2 copies
Contos do Diabo 2 copies
Revista De Portugal 2 copies
El crimen del padre Amaro; El primo Basilio; La reliquia; Los Maias; El mandarín (1991) — Author — 2 copies
Eça de Queiroz entre os seus 2 copies
Contos Seleccionados 2 copies
Il colle degli impiccati 2 copies
literatura comentada: eça de queiroz 2 copies
Irecê 1 copy
Uma campanha feliz 1 copy
O Miantonomah 1 copy
Philidor 1 copy
Revista de Portugal 1 copy
Fradique Mendes 1 copy
Los Maia 1 copy
Amaro atya bűne 1 copy
Saudade — Author — 1 copy
A RELÍQUIA/ LER É APRENDER 1 copy
Il cugino Basilio 1 copy
A Cidade e as serras 1 copy
Zbrodnia księdza Amaro 1 copy
A cidade e as serras 1 copy
Der Mandarin. Der Gehenkte. 1 copy
Relic (European Classics) 1 copy
Cartas 1 copy
Cronicas de Londres 1 copy
S. Frei Gil 1 copy
As Cidades e As Serras 1 copy
Zločin oca Amara 1 copy
O conde D'Abranhos III 1 copy
No moinho o tesouro a aia 1 copy
Obras Completas Vol.I 1 copy
Obras Completas Vol.II 1 copy
Os Imortais 1 copy
O primo Brasílio 1 copy
O prima Babsílio 1 copy
O PRIMO BABASÍLIO 1 copy
Obras selectas: [La correspondencia de Fradique Mendes, La ilustre casa Ramires, La ciudad y las sierras] (2001) 1 copy
Últimos ensayos 1 copy
A CIDADE DA e as serras 1 copy
O tesouro 1 copy
A Cidade e as Serras 1 copy
Obra Completa : Volume II 1 copy
Obras de Eça de Queiroz IV 1 copy
Primeiro de Maio 1 copy
Novas cartas ineditas 1 copy
Las más bellas páginas 1 copy
Sweet miracle; a drama 1 copy
A Camponesa da Casa de Pedra 1 copy
Obras Completas - II 1 copy
O Elogio do Almanaque 1 copy
A Aia 1 copy
Obra Completa : Volume I 1 copy
De Alexandria ao Cairo 1 copy
a relíquia núcleo 1 copy
alves & c.a e outras ficções 1 copy
A illustre casa de Ramires 1 copy
Orasul si muntele 1 copy
Eça's English Letters 1 copy
As Brasileiras 1 copy
La colpa del prete amaro 1 copy
A Cidade e as Terras 1 copy
The City and the Mountain 1 copy
Revista de Portugal Vol.IV 1 copy
Livro do Centenário 1 copy
Contos do nascer da terra 1 copy
La dida 1 copy
Associated Works
The Dedalus Book of Portuguese Fantasy (European Literary Fantasy Anthologies) (1994) — Contributor — 53 copies, 1 review
The Masterpiece Library of Short Stories Vol. XVIII: Spanish & Portuguese (1900) — Contributor — 5 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Queirós, Eça de
- Legal name
- Eça de Queirós, José Maria de
- Other names
- Eça de Queiroz, José M.
Queirós, José Maria Eça de
Eça de Queirós, José Maria
Mendes, Carlos Fradique - Birthdate
- 1845-11-25
- Date of death
- 1900-08-16
- Gender
- male
- Education
- University of Coimbra (Law)
- Occupations
- novelist
politician
consul
diplomat - Relationships
- Eça de Queirós, Maria Emília (wife)
- Cause of death
- tuberculosis
- Nationality
- Portugal
- Birthplace
- Póvoa de Varzim, Portugal
- Places of residence
- Póvoa de Varzim, Portugal
Coimbra, Portugal
Évora, Portugal
Lisbon, Portugal
Egypt
Leiria, Portugal (show all 11)
Havana, Cuba
Newcastle upon Tyne, England, UK
Bristol, Gloucestershire, England, UK
Paris, France
Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France - Place of death
- Paris, France
- Burial location
- Santa Cruz do Douro Cemetery, Baião, Porto, Portugal
- Associated Place (for map)
- Portugal
Members
Reviews
When her husband travels for work, the charming but vapid Luiza falls into the arms of her cousin Bazilio and heads for her own destruction. Eça de Queirós is one of my favorite writers and Cousin Bazilio is another of his wonderful satires of bourgeois life in 19th-century Lisbon. It is somewhat reminiscent of Madame Bovary, but this story is peopled by a plethora of characters that are both sympathetic and amusing. There are no real villains or heroes - all characters get to take their show more turn at being pitied, admired, or despised. It is also quite amusing to think that this was considered quite outrageous when it was first published due to some naughty aspects, whereas by today's standards, it's borderline chaste. I particularly enjoy how the social realist style of Queirós' can't help but display the hypocritical rules of society, especially when it comes to female sexuality and morality. show less
“Hearing her there, he turned, peeped in...And what he saw - good God! - left him petrified, breathless. The blood rushed to his head and so sharp was the pain at his heart that it almost threw him to the ground. On yellow damask sofa, fronting a little table on which there stood a bottle of port, Lulu in a white negligee, was leaning in abandon on the shoulder of a man whose arm was around her waist, and smiling as she gazed languorously at him. The man was Machado!”
(Entrou. (...) e o show more que viu santo Deus, deixou-o petrificado, sem respiração, todo sangue na cabeça, e uma dor viva no coração, que quase o deitou por terra... No canapé de damasco amarelo, diante de duma mesinha, com uma garrafa de vinho, Lulu, de robe de chambre branco, encostava-se, abandonada, sobre o ombro dum homem, que lhe passava o braço pela cintura, e sorria, contemplando-lhe o perfil, com um olhar afagado em languidez. Tinha o colete desabotoado. E o homem era Machado.”)
In “The Yellow Sofa” and in the original Portuguese edition “Alves & Cia” by Eça de Queiroz
It's always struck me that the epigraph to Anna Karenina was an injunction to suspend judgment. "Vengeance is MINE, saith the Lord, [not yours]. I [not you] will repay."
That is, it's not not our job or responsibility or privilege to judge or carry out vengeance. That injunction should ring throughout the reading, as a reminder to approach these characters and their actions open-mindedly and open-heartedly, and as a brief encapsulation of what I see as the suggestion that these characters--and by extension people in general--are far too complex for our profane and limited comprehension that can only deal with the binaries of damned/not-damned, guilty/non-, etc. I know Tolstoy turned into quite the judgmental curmudgeon later in life, but his main works of fiction strike me as saying, in essence, "Here is humanity. Look. Judge not.
Books written about cheating almost always get it wrong. We all know tab (a) goes into slot (b). Even Eça cannot escape this dictum...What most authors leave out are all the lies but not my favourite Portuguese novelist. In real life lies bring down governments, get people fired, see children tossed out of school and make families fall apart. You can only describe sex acts so many times but lies are the damaging details.
I’ve read Madame Bovary. I hate books about stupid women. I think the misogyny that underscores so many of these books is what makes me dislike them so. Bill Clinton was not a bad president but he shook his finger at us and lied and that is now his legacy.
A lot has changed since Madame B. and the Scarlet Letter - in literature as in life - the adulterous woman may no longer have to kill herself or be killed, at least in western society, but what remains unchanged thru the centuries is the gulf between attitudes to a woman's adultery and a man's. In Louise Doughty's Apple Tree Yard the adulterous woman is shamed and nearly destroyed not just because she is a wife and mother, and about to be a grandmother, but because it is revealed that she went out in public without any knickers and had sex against a wall in a back alley. Could there be a situation - or a plot - where a man is similarly shamed for going out without any underpants (we'll allow him trousers, just as she wore a skirt) and having sex in a public place? I don't think so. There might be a few sniggers in court, perhaps, but I doubt it would destroy him - and it is unlikely to form the basis for a literary plot. Challenging though.
Ludovina only rivals Mme Marneffe in Balzac's "Cousin Bette in which a “femme fatale” whose husband keeps a low profile while she juggles her four lovers, playing them off against each other (at one point they are actually bidding against each other for the right to call her their mistress) and making all of them believe that he is the father of her future child. No English novelist of the period would have touched a plot like that with a barge-pole. Eça comes a close second by delving instead into the lies being the salt that rubs the wound raw. And they turn even the good memories sour...The master role of the duels' godparents, who act as deterrents and dissipators of the tragedy, stands out. They are largely responsible for the comical and burlesque side of the novel, by masterfully using the art of sophistry to lead to the forgiveness of the “transgressor” pair, the reconciliation of partners, and the return home of the adulterous wife. Mainly because, while comforting Godofredo, they comment on the piquant details of their own adventures with married women. What Eça wants to denounce here is precisely the overlapping of less noble motives to stifle a scandal that would be condemned by the morals of the day. Eça unlike Flaubert is much more interested in transcending the microcosm of the family to the worldview of Portuguese society as a whole, demonstrating the failure of ideals in the face of an increasingly fast and arduous world. It was in this world that a Portugal of the end of the sec. XIX, based on the great Portuguese Sea Expeditions and colonialism. Eça de Queirós and the Generation of 1870, intended, through its art and its policy, to promote the updating of the Portuguese mentality.
NB: Anyone who has ever been cuckolded will have a field day reading "The Yellow Sofa", I'd say...or maybe not... show less
(Entrou. (...) e o show more que viu santo Deus, deixou-o petrificado, sem respiração, todo sangue na cabeça, e uma dor viva no coração, que quase o deitou por terra... No canapé de damasco amarelo, diante de duma mesinha, com uma garrafa de vinho, Lulu, de robe de chambre branco, encostava-se, abandonada, sobre o ombro dum homem, que lhe passava o braço pela cintura, e sorria, contemplando-lhe o perfil, com um olhar afagado em languidez. Tinha o colete desabotoado. E o homem era Machado.”)
In “The Yellow Sofa” and in the original Portuguese edition “Alves & Cia” by Eça de Queiroz
It's always struck me that the epigraph to Anna Karenina was an injunction to suspend judgment. "Vengeance is MINE, saith the Lord, [not yours]. I [not you] will repay."
That is, it's not not our job or responsibility or privilege to judge or carry out vengeance. That injunction should ring throughout the reading, as a reminder to approach these characters and their actions open-mindedly and open-heartedly, and as a brief encapsulation of what I see as the suggestion that these characters--and by extension people in general--are far too complex for our profane and limited comprehension that can only deal with the binaries of damned/not-damned, guilty/non-, etc. I know Tolstoy turned into quite the judgmental curmudgeon later in life, but his main works of fiction strike me as saying, in essence, "Here is humanity. Look. Judge not.
Books written about cheating almost always get it wrong. We all know tab (a) goes into slot (b). Even Eça cannot escape this dictum...What most authors leave out are all the lies but not my favourite Portuguese novelist. In real life lies bring down governments, get people fired, see children tossed out of school and make families fall apart. You can only describe sex acts so many times but lies are the damaging details.
I’ve read Madame Bovary. I hate books about stupid women. I think the misogyny that underscores so many of these books is what makes me dislike them so. Bill Clinton was not a bad president but he shook his finger at us and lied and that is now his legacy.
A lot has changed since Madame B. and the Scarlet Letter - in literature as in life - the adulterous woman may no longer have to kill herself or be killed, at least in western society, but what remains unchanged thru the centuries is the gulf between attitudes to a woman's adultery and a man's. In Louise Doughty's Apple Tree Yard the adulterous woman is shamed and nearly destroyed not just because she is a wife and mother, and about to be a grandmother, but because it is revealed that she went out in public without any knickers and had sex against a wall in a back alley. Could there be a situation - or a plot - where a man is similarly shamed for going out without any underpants (we'll allow him trousers, just as she wore a skirt) and having sex in a public place? I don't think so. There might be a few sniggers in court, perhaps, but I doubt it would destroy him - and it is unlikely to form the basis for a literary plot. Challenging though.
Ludovina only rivals Mme Marneffe in Balzac's "Cousin Bette in which a “femme fatale” whose husband keeps a low profile while she juggles her four lovers, playing them off against each other (at one point they are actually bidding against each other for the right to call her their mistress) and making all of them believe that he is the father of her future child. No English novelist of the period would have touched a plot like that with a barge-pole. Eça comes a close second by delving instead into the lies being the salt that rubs the wound raw. And they turn even the good memories sour...The master role of the duels' godparents, who act as deterrents and dissipators of the tragedy, stands out. They are largely responsible for the comical and burlesque side of the novel, by masterfully using the art of sophistry to lead to the forgiveness of the “transgressor” pair, the reconciliation of partners, and the return home of the adulterous wife. Mainly because, while comforting Godofredo, they comment on the piquant details of their own adventures with married women. What Eça wants to denounce here is precisely the overlapping of less noble motives to stifle a scandal that would be condemned by the morals of the day. Eça unlike Flaubert is much more interested in transcending the microcosm of the family to the worldview of Portuguese society as a whole, demonstrating the failure of ideals in the face of an increasingly fast and arduous world. It was in this world that a Portugal of the end of the sec. XIX, based on the great Portuguese Sea Expeditions and colonialism. Eça de Queirós and the Generation of 1870, intended, through its art and its policy, to promote the updating of the Portuguese mentality.
NB: Anyone who has ever been cuckolded will have a field day reading "The Yellow Sofa", I'd say...or maybe not... show less
Luiza sente o vazio e o tédio, no casamento e na vida. O seu amor da juventude, Basílio, retorna a Lisboa, aquando da ausência do seu marido. Um amor do passado, vivido agora na clandestinidade, é o remédio que encontra para superar o que a ociosidade a faz sentir:
Depois, Juliana (esta grande personagem de Eça) abre o caminho para a tragédia de Luiza:
Até ao fim, vai ser o caminhar para a tragédia.
Um poema de William Blake poderia fechar a leitura deste “episódio doméstico”, em que Eça de Queirós faz com mestria uma profunda crítica à burguesia lisboeta da época:
“E Luiza tinha suspirado, tinha beijado o papel devotamente! Era a primeira vez que lhe escreviam aquelas sentimentalidades, e o seu orgulho dilatava-se ao calor amoroso que saía delas, como um corpo ressequido que estirashow more
num banho tépido: sentia um acréscimo de estima por si mesma, e parecia-lhe que entrava numa existência superiormente interessante, onde cada hora tinha o seu encanto diferente, cada passo conduzia a um êxtase, e a alma se cobria de um luxo radioso de sensações!” (tantas vezes ouvi Arnaldo Antunes a dizê-lo antes de o ter lido pela primeira vez)
Depois, Juliana (esta grande personagem de Eça) abre o caminho para a tragédia de Luiza:
“- Olhe que nem todos os papéis foram prò lixo.”
Até ao fim, vai ser o caminhar para a tragédia.
Um poema de William Blake poderia fechar a leitura deste “episódio doméstico”, em que Eça de Queirós faz com mestria uma profunda crítica à burguesia lisboeta da época:
Ó rosa, estás doente:show less
O verme invisível,
Que voa de noite
No vento terrível,
Encontrou teu leito
De rubro prazer.
Amor oculto e sombrio
A vida te vai comer
First published in Portuguese in 1897 but just recently translated into English, Eça de Queiros’s book does what I think should be done with fables and Bible stories. He reinterprets the story and retells it, using the accepted version as his launchpad.
The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis is a story of the blessings of Paradise for humanity and our fall from grace. God has created a Paradise for humanity and it’s up to us to preserve and keep it.
By contrast, Eça de Queiros tells a show more story of Adam descending (or “falling”) from a more nature-bound state of grace and having to earn his way to humanity.
Adam begins the tale with his descent from the trees. He’s leaving a life of peace and relative security to strike out on his own, and on an evolutionary journey away from the other animals of the forest and trees. By the latter half of the nineteenth century, Darwinian evolution was well-known and some fossils suggesting human evolution had begun to be discovered. Eça de Queiros entwines an evolutionary story with the Biblical story, so that Adam must earn his way to humanity.
He is not born into Eden, he must find his way there after leaving the trees. Neither the journey to Eden nor his arrival there are blessed with peace and plenty. Surrounded by new predators and needing to find new sources of food and shelter, he is “always trembling, always whimpering, always fleeing!”
With his descent from the trees, he is estranged from the life of other animals, with no obvious place, and separated by his exceptionality, his “intelligence.” Being human is being an “other” to the animals of Eden.
It is Eve, once she arrives in Eden, who takes the steps that begin to establish the place of humanity, even its supremacy over nature. It was Eve who tamed fire, and with it, changed their lives, giving them safety, warmth, a home, and igniting the possibilities of technology. Eça de Queiros writes, “It was Eve who laid the foundation stones on which Humanity is built.”
I won’t go on to tell the whole tale here. But I think, from what I’ve said, you’ll get the idea. Humanity is a struggle, not a gift. And the struggle will not end — our place in the world is never guaranteed, it must be continuously earned. We have in a strong sense left nature, left a state of grace.
You can’t help but wonder, as Adam himself does, about the wisdom of leaving the trees. The Orangutan (in Eça de Queiros’s time, believed to be our closest relative in nature), left behind in the trees, is untroubled by plans and needs, fears and hopes, and the challenge of making its own place in the world. Was the true Eden left behind back in the trees?
This is more than Genesis plus Darwin. Eça de Queiros’s retelling of the story opens up all sorts of questions about how we think about our relationship to nature and to other animals, our estrangement and our “dominion” over nature, how nature (and the voice we give it) sees us and maybe judges us. show less
The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis is a story of the blessings of Paradise for humanity and our fall from grace. God has created a Paradise for humanity and it’s up to us to preserve and keep it.
By contrast, Eça de Queiros tells a show more story of Adam descending (or “falling”) from a more nature-bound state of grace and having to earn his way to humanity.
Adam begins the tale with his descent from the trees. He’s leaving a life of peace and relative security to strike out on his own, and on an evolutionary journey away from the other animals of the forest and trees. By the latter half of the nineteenth century, Darwinian evolution was well-known and some fossils suggesting human evolution had begun to be discovered. Eça de Queiros entwines an evolutionary story with the Biblical story, so that Adam must earn his way to humanity.
He is not born into Eden, he must find his way there after leaving the trees. Neither the journey to Eden nor his arrival there are blessed with peace and plenty. Surrounded by new predators and needing to find new sources of food and shelter, he is “always trembling, always whimpering, always fleeing!”
With his descent from the trees, he is estranged from the life of other animals, with no obvious place, and separated by his exceptionality, his “intelligence.” Being human is being an “other” to the animals of Eden.
It is Eve, once she arrives in Eden, who takes the steps that begin to establish the place of humanity, even its supremacy over nature. It was Eve who tamed fire, and with it, changed their lives, giving them safety, warmth, a home, and igniting the possibilities of technology. Eça de Queiros writes, “It was Eve who laid the foundation stones on which Humanity is built.”
I won’t go on to tell the whole tale here. But I think, from what I’ve said, you’ll get the idea. Humanity is a struggle, not a gift. And the struggle will not end — our place in the world is never guaranteed, it must be continuously earned. We have in a strong sense left nature, left a state of grace.
You can’t help but wonder, as Adam himself does, about the wisdom of leaving the trees. The Orangutan (in Eça de Queiros’s time, believed to be our closest relative in nature), left behind in the trees, is untroubled by plans and needs, fears and hopes, and the challenge of making its own place in the world. Was the true Eden left behind back in the trees?
This is more than Genesis plus Darwin. Eça de Queiros’s retelling of the story opens up all sorts of questions about how we think about our relationship to nature and to other animals, our estrangement and our “dominion” over nature, how nature (and the voice we give it) sees us and maybe judges us. show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 320
- Also by
- 3
- Members
- 6,796
- Popularity
- #3,595
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 155
- ISBNs
- 879
- Languages
- 19
- Favorited
- 27
