ABSTRACT
The article considers aspects of “A derradeira injúria”, poem by Machado de Assis published in a Portuguese-Brazilian (1885) collection commemorating the hundred years of the death of Pombal. Relating the text (an imaginative narrative of a posthumous episode) to the celebrations of the marquis’ first funeral centenary in Rio de Janeiro (1882), it pays attention to its peculiarities and to how the poem and other publications that address both the celebrations and the widespread historical discourse about Pombal mobilize the Pombaline past. The article underlines the way Machado sets himself apart from the commemorative effort that characterizes the publication his text integrates.
Keywords:
memory; commemoration; uses of the past; Machado de Assis; Pombal