THE RECORD OF MACHADO DE ASSIS'S WORKS PUBLISHED IN ENGLISH (1950-1960)

Abstract

This article explores the first translations of novels by Machado de Assis into English, published in the 1950s and 1960s, understanding them as a complex process that, beyond the drive and dedication of translators and editors, involved political and geopolitical issues associated with the relations between the United States and Latin American countries during and after World War II.

Keywords:
Machado de Assis; translation; publishing; transnational studies

Resumo

Este artigo trata das primeiras traduções dos romances de Machado de Assis para o inglês, publicadas nas décadas de 1950 e 1960, procurando compreendê-las como um processo complexo que, além da voluntariedade e dedicação de tradutores e editores, envolveu questões políticas e geopolíticas associadas às relações dos Estados Unidos com os países da América Latina durante e após a Segunda Guerra Mundial.

Palavras-chave:
Machado de Assis; tradução; edição; estudos transnacionais

The aim of this paper is to outline answers to three questions related to the translations of Machado de Assis's works into English:

1. How is it that only three of Machado's short stories had been translated into English by 1950 yet in the short span of three years three of his novels were translated by three different translators, located in three US states-New York, Los Angeles and Seattle?

2. How did a small publishing house in New York-Noonday Press-become interested in Machado de Assis's work and start a campaign of publishing translations of his writings into English?

3. Why would the University of California Press become the main champion of Machado de Assis's work in the United States of the 1960s?

In short, this paper seeks to understand what factors, besides the dedication of the translators, who at some point in their lives were captivated by Machado de Assis's work and devoted themselves to translating and disseminating it to the English-speaking public, made the first translations of his books into English possible.

Reasonable answers to these questions began to be discerned after locating and examining documentation from the two publishing houses that were primarily responsible for the first translations of Machado's novels into English: Noonday Press, whose archives are held at the New York Public Library, and the University of California Press, whose documents are in part located at the Bancroft Library in Berkeley.¹

Noonday was founded in New York City in 1951 by Cecil Hemley, an editor, writer and a man with a cosmopolitan mindset plugged into international literary production, and by his colleague from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Arthur Cohen, also a writer, theologian and one of the prominent figures of the so-called "paperback revolution," a movement seeking to popularize books in the United States.² In 1960, Noonday was acquired by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, later Farrar, Straus and Giroux, one of the major North American publishing groups, still active today.

In merely nine years, Noonday had published works by the Russian Boris Pasternak, Frenchman Jean-Paul Sartre, Indian R. K. Narayan, Italian Cesare Pavese, Nobel Prize winners Knut Hamsun (Norway) and Herman Hesse (Germany), and Pole Isaac Bashevis Singer, the latter many years before he was awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize in Literature. Machado de Assis was one of the few nineteenth-century authors included in the Noonday catalog-the only Brazilian-and, together with Eça de Queiroz, the only other Portuguese-language author. Incidentally, Queiroz's novels Cousin Bazilio and The Relic were published in 1953 and 1954, respectively, the same years as Machado's Dom Casmurro and Philosopher or Dog? (Quincas Borba).

The paratexts of Machado's works reiterate the deliberate positioning of Machado de Assis as a writer of international status in the cosmopolitan Noonday catalogue. A phrase by critic Dudley Fitts, which appears on the back cover of the first edition of Epitaph of a Small Winner, effectively summarizes the context in which this novel was presented to North American readers: "Machado de Assis was a literary force, transcending nationality and language." This was precisely the spirit that inspired William Grossman to translate and present Epitaph of a Small Winner as akin to Nietzsche, an author cited in his "Translator's Introduction", Helen Caldwell to translate and interpret Dom Casmurro as the likeness of Shakespeare, and Clotilde Wilson to translate Philosopher or Dog? (Quincas Borba) and identify it with In Praise of Folly by Erasmus in her brief introduction of the novel.

As editor, Cecil Hemley managed the publications and was in direct contact with each of the translators. He was first introduced to the work of Machado de Assis in the early 1950s,³ possibly when William Grossman, translator of Epitaph of a Small Winner, proposed in 1951 that Noonday publish the novel's translation. Grossman had translated the book during the years he spent in Brazil, in the late 1940's and early 1950's, when he served as a consultant to the Ministry of Aeronautics on issues related to transportation and headed the economics department at the Aeronautics Technical Center in São José dos Campos (today known as the Aeronautics Institute of Technology, ITA). In 1951, he published the novel with the workshops of São Paulo Editora S/A under the title of The Posthumous Memoirs of Braz Cubas, but the volume was barely noticed and did not circulate much. In 1952, Noonday published the novel in 1952 under the title of Epitaph of a Small Winner.

Figure 1
Front covers of the Brazilian and North American editions.

The publication of Epitaph paved the way for the translations of the other two novels, undertaken independently by two university professors working on the West Coast of the United States.

Helen Caldwell, the California-based translator of Dom Casmurro, learned Portuguese and came into contact with the writings of Machado de Assis in the early 1940s at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She had long cherished the idea of translating Dom Casmurro, and started to work on it in 1950. Located 1,800 kilometers north of Los Angeles, Clotilde Wilson, the translator of Quincas Borba, learned Portuguese at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she lived and taught.

Following the publication of Epitaph of a Small Winner, widely publicized by US press agencies, the two West Coast translators sought out Noonday to offer their own translations to the press for publication. As their translations were both almost complete, Noonday was able to release them rather quickly: Epitaph of a Small Winner was published on July 14, 1952, Dom Casmurro on April 14, 1953, and Philosopher or Dog? in June 1954.⁴ In the case of Dom Casmurro, the launch date was chosen deliberately: April 14^th is Pan-American Day in the United States, so the date framed the publication as part of the broader effort to form closer cultural ties between the countries of the Americas.⁵

There is no record of any prior contact between the three translators, nor any indication that they knew each other before seeking out Noonday. What Grossman, Caldwell and Wilson had in common was an interest they developed in the Portuguese language and in Machado de Assis based on their professional and academic paths, in different subjects-William Grossman majored in Literature and Law at Harvard, and received a PhD in Law from New York University, where he was a professor; Helen Caldwell majored in Classics at UCLA, where she worked as a lecturer in Latin and Greek; Clotilde Wilson majored in French at the University of Washington, where she eventually taught and gradually shifted from French to Portuguese, and was a pioneer in teaching Brazilian literature and culture at that university.

Beyond their genuine passion for Machado de Assis, which prompted them to devote years and even decades of their lives to this author, the paths of these three translators suggest that such convergence is related to efforts of the war and post-war periods that resulted in the growing interest of the United States in Latin America, which became a strategic region and sphere of North American influence.

In the case of William Grossman, who had become an expert in air transport, his contact with Brazil related to the creation of a military institute (ITA). Caldwell and Wilson, in turn, came into contact with the Portuguese language and Brazilian literature in the 1940s, a period during which the US government invested heavily in foreign language teaching, also due to military and geopolitical interests in Latin America. In the early 1940s, there was concern in the United States about the new geopolitical configuration being designed for the post-war period, which involved, amongst other actions, recruiting personnel with Spanish and Portuguese skills from universities.

A War Department document is poignant in this regard: "War Department wants you direct preparation Brazilian teaching materials for Armed Forces Institute. If you can accept report immediately. Details according to our phone conversation. J M Cowa Director ACLS Language Program."⁶

This telegram sent by the director of the American Council of Learned Societies Language Program was addressed to Professor Marion A. Zeitlin, with whom Helen Caldwell began learning Portuguese in 1942. Although officially head of the Spanish and Italian Department at UCLA, Zeitlin also taught Portuguese. Among his first students was Helen Caldwell, who in a letter to Zeitlin writes:

I might as well get my full money's worth out of this stamp in telling you that I have enjoyed studying Portuguese in your class more than anything I have done in a long time and that, no matter what you think, I have learned a lot too.⁷

The learning curve was indeed quick and fruitful: by the second semester of the course, Caldwell participated and won a translation contest promoted by a trade magazine and supported by official bodies. As reported by Cecil Hemley, the translation contest of Latin American authors was promoted by Mademoiselle in conjunction with the Committee on Cultural Relations with Latin America and the Pan-American Union. Caldwell won the first prize of one hundred dollars for her translation of "Pecado" (Sin), a short story by Dinah Silveira de Queiroz, which was published in the August 1943 issue of Mademoiselle.⁸

Caldwell and Wilson, who had never been to Brazil, thus learned Portuguese at a time when university courses on Brazilian Portuguese and Brazilian culture started to be established and advanced in the United States.

Although the Noonday Press did not receive any direct government subsidies for its publications, the commercial viability of its books was also secured by the maneuvering of the publishing house's executives, especially its managing editor, Arthur Cohen, with official bodies. Regarding Noonday's translations of Machado de Assis's works, their publication involved the Committee on Inter-American Cooperation, the American Brazilian Association, the Pan-American Union (whose Department of Cultural Affairs was headed by Brazilians Alceu Amoroso Lima [1951 to 1953] and Érico Veríssimo [1953 to 1956]) and the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

Particularly notable are the efforts undertaken by Noonday's directors with the Brazilian diplomatic service, both in New York and Rio de Janeiro. Several letters promote the publications and ask for contributions toward the purchase of a reduced-price lot of the print run to reduce the publishing costs. These efforts resulted in the State Secretary of Foreign Affairs purchasing 600 of the 3,000 copies of the first edition of Epitaph and 500 of the 5,000 copies of the first edition of Dom Casmurro. We could not locate the exact number of copies purchased for Quincas Borba, but the letters from the publisher indicate figures similar to those of the previous titles.⁹

Among the correspondence between Noonday and officials of the Brazilian diplomatic service, which totals at least a dozen letters, we highlight two. The first is from Walther Moreira Salles, then Ambassador of Brazil to the United States, addressed to Cecil Hemley, in which he thanks the editor for sending Epitaph of a Small Winner and states, "I congratulate you on this event of so great an importance for my country, also on the justly favorable reviews which it won."¹⁰ The second document, created following the publication of the translation of Quincas Borba, was written by Arthur Cohen and sent to the State Secretary of Foreign Affairs in Rio de Janeiro. In it, Cohen draws attention to the task undertaken by the publisher of permanently introducing Machado into the "literary heritage of the English-speaking Americas," which he qualifies as a "program":

It seems that almost at regular intervals of nine months THE NOONDAY PRESS reapproaches you as the representative of the cultural division of the Brazilian Government, to inform you of our new publications of the works of Machado de Assis. The response in the United States of Memórias Póstumas and Dom Casmurro has been so overwhelming that we are continuing this cultural service by publishing this Spring the last of the three great novels of Machado, QUINCAS BORBA. This will accomplish the task of introducing Machado permanently into the literary heritage of the English-speaking Americas.

We would appreciate it if the Brazilian Government would once again give its invaluable assistance to this program by considering the purchase of a quantity of this title. As in the past, we would allow the Brazilian Government a considerable discount from the established price. QUINCAS BORBA will be printed in a volume of 288 pages, 5 ½ × 9, and the retail price will be $ 3.50. I am forwarding today to Mme. Dora Vascousellos [sic] at the Brazilian Consulate in New York City a file of the superb reviews which we received of DOM CASMURRO, and I will inform him [sic] that I have once again placed myself in contact with you.¹¹

This is one of five letters written by Cohen to Guimarães between 1952 and 1954 with requests for contributions, successful in the cases of the two previous novels. In May 1954, Jayme Sloan Chermont, head of the Cultural Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rio de Janeiro, wrote to Arthur Cohen showing interest in buying a batch of Philosopher or Dog? equivalent to that of previous publications.¹²

The correspondence from Noonday Press shows the intense mobilization of many agents in various spheres to introduce Machado de Assis into the North American environment in the first decade of his work's circulation in English. Cecil Hemley, Arthur Cohen and Sidney Furst-the latter most personally responsible for promoting Noonday's books-dedicated themselves to sending promotional material and copies of the books to major bookstores, book and reading clubs, academic journals and major media outlets. The efforts of Noonday Press had the desired outcome. Epitaph of a Small Winner, for example, received a lot of media attention, with rave reviews in major newspapers and magazines such as the New York Times and the New Yorker. In the letters sent to promote the book, Noonday executives invariably quote excerpts from these reviews as a way of persuading their addressees to order copies or to publicize them.¹³

The first translations published in the United States opened new frontiers for Machado de Assis in other countries as well. Agents from English publishers negotiated with Noonday for the United Kingdom publication rights of the three US-produced translations. Epitaph and Dom Casmurro were released in 1953 by W. H. Allen. Philosopher or Dog?, retitled as The Heritage of Quincas Borba, was published in 1954 by W. H. Allen, as well. Machado de Assis thus arrived in the United Kingdom via United States, and it was not until 1976 that a first translation of Iaiá Garcia, by R. L. Scott-Buccleuch, was published by Peter Owen Publishers in 1951.

Noonday's publications of Machado de Assis also drew the attention of European literary agents, who wrote to the New York publisher requesting copies of the translated books and showing interest in brokering the sale of the translation rights to publishers in the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden.¹⁴ In 1955, a translation of Dom Casmurro was released in Sweden. The first Danish and Dutch translations of Machado de Assis's writings appeared in 1956, with the publication of Posthumous Memoirs in Denmark and the Netherlands.

The translations of Machado de Assis's works that radiated from the US publications aligns with the argument Johan Heilbron makes in Towards a Sociology of Translation - Book Translations as a Cultural World-System, that the international translation system is characterized by concentration and unequal flows. In his study, Heilbron (1999, p. 436) shows that the arrival of books from "peripheral" languages, such as Portuguese, to editions in other peripheral or semi-peripheral languages is almost always preceded by translations into languages that occupy central positions in the world system: "the decision to publish a translation from a peripheral language still depends on the existence of their translation in a central language".

It is a small wonder, therefore, that the broader international circulation of Machado de Assis' writings, after a timid circulation in the twentieth century, is associated with the consolidation of US hegemony in the post-war era, when English became the lingua franca, with great advantage of diffusion over rival languages such as French, German and Russian:

Once a book is translated into a central language by an authoritative publisher, it immediately catches the attention of publishers in other parts of the globe. The simple fact that an American or English publisher will publish an author from a semi-peripheral language is used extensively by the original publisher, because it is the best recommendation for publishers elsewhere to acquire the translations rights. (HEILBRON, 1999, p. 436)

This is exactly what happened with Noonday Press' translations, which turned the United States into the main center for international diffusion of Machado de Assis's work. Following the geopolitical transformations of the 1950s and 1960s and the heightened tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union for zones of influence, Machado de Assis began to be published in Soviet bloc countries. Dom Casmurro was translated and published in Serbo-Croatian in 1957, in Polish in 1959, in Czech in 1960, and in Russian in 1961.

A New Landscape

The circulation of Machado de Assis's works in translation underwent significant changes in the early 1960s not only in the broader international arena, but also in the United States.

Noonday Press was sold to Farrar, Straus and Cudahy in July 1960. Although Noonday was kept as a subsidiary and a label reserved for quality paperback books, the books by Machado de Assis no longer received the more intensive treatment that Noonday had given them and which had been fundamental to their success.

In Farrar's business plan, Noonday became a division mainly focused on producing textbooks, mainly in courses on World Literature and the modern novel. Noonday's focus on readership at universities was a strategic decision made by Farrar, proposed in a memorandum which presented a diagnosis? of the publishing house and defined strategies for marketing its highly prestigious titles.¹⁵ However, the Reader's Guides devoted to authors such as James Joyce, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, John Donne, and John Keats, and literary themes such as Dante's Beatrice and the Bloomsbury Group, became the publisher's flagship publications in the 1960s and 1970s.

The memorandum makes no reference to Machado de Assis or any other fiction author, but it is in this niche of academic publishing that he is included, and prominently so.

The 1963 Noonday Press title list, for example, mentions Epitaph of a Small Winner as its first title (see Figure 3), and describes it as "The novel by the great Brazilian writer, which was a great critical success when first published in America, the author called by Dudley Fitts in The New York Times Book Review 'a literary force, transcending nationality and language, comparable certainly to Flaubert, Hardy or James'".¹⁶

There is an unequal circulation of Machado's first three novels translated into English (see table).

PRINT-RUNS OF MACHADO DE ASSIS'S TRANSLATIONS INTO ENGLISH (1951-1964)

Title	Year	Copies	Publisher
Epitaph of Small Winner	1952	4,185	Noonday
	1953	1,855	Noonday
		4,000	W. H. Allen
	1955	3,000	Noonday
	1956	3,000	Noonday
	1959	3,000	Noonday
	1962	2,000	Noonday
	1964	2,000	Noonday
Total		23,040
Sources: Letters from The Haddon Craftsmen to Book Find Club dated Oct. 10, 1952, Dec. 8, 1952, and Sept. 25, 1953, FSG Box 219; from Book Find Club to Noonday Press, Nov. 11, 1954, FSG Box 219; from Laurence Pollinger to Martin Secker & Warburg, Nov. 22, 1961, FSG Box 218; from Noonday Press to the Brazilian Embassy in Washington, March 2, 1964, FSG Box 218.
Dom Casmurro	1953	5,000	Noonday
		3,000	W. H. Allen
	1960	3,000	Noonday
	1961	3,000	Noonday
Total		14,000
Sources: Letters from Noonday Press to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jan. 13, 1953, FSG, Box 218; from Noonday Press to Martin Secker & Warburg, Nov. 22, 1960, FSG Box 218; from Noonday Press to Laurence Pollinger, Aug. 21, 1961, FSG Box 218; from Noonday Press to the Brazilian Embassy in Washington, March 2, 1964, FSG Box 218.
Philosopher or Dog? / The Heritage of Quincas Borba	1954	5,000	Noonday Press
		3,294	W. H. Allen
Total		8,294
Source: Letter from Laurence Pollinger to Martin Secker & Warburg Frederic Warburg, Nov. 22, 1961.

In 1963, Epitaph and Dom Casmurro continued to be sold. A memorandum with the sales report, completed on August 31, 1963, indicated 282 copies of Epitaph of a Small Winner and 164 copies of Dom Casmurro; Philosopher or Dog?, whose first edition had sold out and was not reprinted, was not included in the report (see Figure 2).

Figure 2

Figure 3

For comparison, a book on Dostoevsky, Freedom and the Tragic Life: a Study in Dostoyevsky, by Vyacheslav Ivanov, sold 489 copies in the same period. A brief 1964 inventory lists several titles with sales records ranging from 60 to 3,500 copies, the latter referring to a Reader's Guide to Shakespeare.¹⁷

Reading the correspondence of Farrar, Straus and Giroux suggests that upon entering the catalog of a fast-expanding large publishing house, the books by Machado de Assis were suddenly out of place. They were undeniably critical successes, but sales were quite modest for a large publisher. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Farrar employees and literary agents hired by the publishing house, not knowing what to do with the books, tried to convince other publishers in England and the United States to buy the publishing rights for the novels. Many of these efforts were fruitless, but the publisher did succeed on two occasions. In 1968, when Penguin Books published Epitaph of a Small Winner in England, and in the late 1970s, when the translations by Grossman, Caldwell and Wilson were published in paperback editions by Bard Book/Avon Books as part of the "Distinguished Latin American Fiction" collection: Epitaph of a Small Winner was published in 1978, Dom Casmurro in 1980, and Philosopher or Dog? in 1982.

Although FSG strove to sell the subsidiary rights to the books, the company did not invest in the translation of any new titles by Machado de Assis. Of the three novels published in the early 1950s, only Epitaph of a Small Winner had the longest career, with several reprints between 1952 and 1964, totaling 23,040 copies, of which 19,040 were printed in the United States and 4,000 in the United Kingdom.¹⁸

After the publication of its first North American edition, Clotilde Wilson's translation of Quincas Borba did not get reprinted by Farrar until 1992-38 years later. In the meantime, the book had its subsidiary rights bought by W. H. Allen, which released the book in 1954 in England, and by Bard/Avon, in the aforementioned paperback edition. A new edition of the same translation was published in England by Bloomsbury in 1997, more than fifty years after it was first issued.

Helen Caldwell's translation of Dom Casmurro forged a different path, opening a new front for Machado de Assis's work in the United States. His books would go on to be published primarily by university presses, led by the University of California Press (UC Press), an institution with which Caldwell had ties. For three decades, UC Press served as the main publisher of works by and about Machado de Assis outside of Brazil.

Machado de Assis in California

The first title on Machado de Assis released by UC Press was The Brazilian Othello of Machado de Assis (1960). The Psychiatrist and Other Stories by Machado de Assis, the first volume dedicated to his short stories published in the United States, with translations by William Grossman and Helen Caldwell, was released in 1963. Translations of Esau and Jacob, Counselor Ayre's Memorial and Helena were published in 1965, 1972 and 1984, respectively. All the new titles bore the mark of Helen Caldwell, who in 1966 brought her translation of Dom Casmurro to the UC Press catalog. In 1970, Caldwell published a new book on Machado's work, Machado de Assis-The Brazilian Master and His Novels.

Displacing the hub of Machado de Assis's publications from a commercial publishing house in New York to a university publishing house in California is partly due to the translator's efforts, and it also coincides with a moment of profound change in the relations of the United States and Latin America in the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution and the escalation of the Cold War.

Deborah Cohn (2012), in The Latin American Literary Boom and U.S. Nationalism during the Cold War, paints a detailed and revealing picture of the entire infrastructure the US created in this period to approach Latin American countries. This included direct investment not only in promoting the teaching of university courses on Latin American languages and cultures, as had been happening since the 1940s, but also in supporting the publication of Latin American authors in translation. Such support funded most of the initiatives from university publishing houses, whose Association in those years was headed by August Frugé, editor of the University of California Press.

Machado de Assis's work, which had initially been published in the internationalist and cosmopolitan environment of the Noonday Press in New York of the 1950s, thus started to be published in the university setting of the University of California Press with incentives for translation of Latin American literature, which was then gaining international prominence.

Earl Fitz (2009), in an essay about the reception of Machado de Assis's work in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, states that the so-called Latin American Boom, by valuing contemporary Latin American literary production, ended up overshadowing the work of a nineteenth-century writer who wrote in Portuguese and was starting to gain some reputation in the United States. However, it was under the Latin American umbrella that August Frugé published new translations of Machado de Assis's works. It was in this very context that new translations of Machado de Assis's writings were published, the already mentioned The Psychiatrist and Other Stories (1963), translated by William Grossman and Helen Caldwell, and Esau and Jacob (1965), translated by Caldwell.

Thus, the same translators who had begun the publication of Machado de Assis in English on the East Coast were continuing what was now a project, quietly marshalled by Helen Caldwell, led by editor August Frugé and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation under the Latin American Translation Program (LATP).

The program was established in 1960 by the Association of American University Presses, with grants from the Rockefeller Foundation. August Frugé, John (Jack) P. Harrison, of the Rockefeller Foundation, and Frank Wardlaw, then director of the University of Texas Press, who outlined the idea for the program in 1958.¹⁹ The Foundation granted the Association a $225,000 fund, to be spent over a period of six years, beginning April 1, 1960. From then until March 31, 1967, 20 publishers belonging to the Association had projects approved by the program's National Committee, funding the translation and preparation of 82 manuscripts in English.

A total of 19 titles by Brazilian authors were translated and published through the Latin American Translation Program-eight fiction and eleven nonfiction. They were released by five university presses: the University of California Press, Columbia University Press, Harvard University Press, Stanford University Press, and the University of Texas Press. The UC Press published the greatest number of works originally written in Portuguese, totaling ten titles. The eight Brazilian books of fiction published were released by the presses most heavily involved in the program: UC Press and the University of Texas Press (UT Press).²⁰

UT Press published: Who, If I Cry Out (1967), by Gustavo Corção; Memórias de Lázaro (1968), by Adonias Filho; The Three Marias (1963), by Rachel de Queiroz; and Barren Lives (1965), by Graciliano Ramos. UC Press published: The Rogues' Trial (1963), by Ariano Suassuna; The Psychiatrist and Other Stories (1963) and Esau and Jacob (1965), by Machado de Assis.²¹ The program also supported William Grossman's translation of a collection of Brazilian short stories, Modern Brazilian Short Stories (1967).

As can be noted, Machado de Assis was among the few Brazilian writers whose fictional works were selected by the program's National Committee, and the only one to have two titles subsidized by the Program. Such prominence is also notable because the general thrust of the program was to translate works by contemporary twentieth-century authors.

What enabled Machado de Assis to enjoy such prominence?

August Frugé, on more than one occasion, publicly singled Machado de Assis out in the Latin American context, identifying him as an exception in the North American public's widespread ignorance of Latin American literature. In an article where he reconstructs the origin and purposes of the Latin American Translation Program, the editor provocatively asks: "Is any Latin American writer, with the possible exception of Machado de Assis, really accepted in this country as the equal of North Americans and Europeans?" (FRUGÉ, 1964, p. 8).

In 1978, recalling the Program's history, August Frugé cites the case of Machado de Assis:

Fiction in translation is feasible but tricky. We never had or wanted a program. It seemed best to stick to well-known works, particularly those that might be used in courses. So the Verga, the Machado de Assis, the Grossman, the Azuela were reasonably successful. And they added distinguished literary names to the list. So Italo Svevo, although we did not sell so well.²²

Thus, for Frugé, Machado would be among the few authors who combined literary importance and some commercial success in the context of university publishing.

As we can see, the lynchpin in the trajectory of the translation, publication and circulation of Machado de Assis's work in English, which involved two publishing houses with very distinct profiles located in New York and Berkeley, was Helen Caldwell. In her more than 30 years of dedication to the author, Caldwell acted behind the scenes, staunchly advocating for Machado to persuade editors and acting as a kind of guardian over the quality of translations. When the English publisher W. H. Allen was negotiating with Farrar for a reissue of her translation of Dom Casmurro, Caldwell set the condition that the text of the new edition had to be completely reviewed, as she said that the earlier British edition had problems. She also demanded that the final proofs be submitted for her approval. Meanwhile, she was preparing the translation of the short story volume The Psychiatrist and Other Stories, of Esau and Jacob, and the publication of "her" Dom Casmurro for UC Press.

However, the dedication of editors and translators, extreme in Caldwell's case, is intertwined with political and geopolitical issues that created-during the presidencies of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945), Harry S. Truman (1945-1953), and Dwight D. Einsenhower (1953-1961), and as part of the war efforts and the US postwar policies of restoring friendly ties with Latin America-the conditions that enabled the translations and also allowed the US public to become familiar with the work of Machado de Assis.

Referências

• COHEN, Arthur A. An Arthur A. Cohen Reader: Selected Fiction and Writing in Judaism, Theology, Literature, and Culture. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988.
• COHN, Deborah. The Latin American Literary Boom and U.S. Nationalism During the Cold War. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012.
• FITZ, Earl. The Reception of Machado de Assis in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. Luso-Brazilian Review, v. 46, n. 1, p. 16-35, 2009.
• FRANK, Zephyr L. The strange case of Machado de Assis and the Noonday Press: Rights and Publicity in English Translation. Machado de Assis em Linha - Revista Eletrônica de Estudos Machadianos, v. 15, p. 1-14, 2022.
• FRUGÉ, August. A Latin American Translation Program. Scholarly Books in America, University of Chicago, p. 8-10, April, 1964.
• HEILBRON, Johan. Towards a Sociology of Translation - Book Translations as a Cultural World-System. European Journal of Social Theory, v. 2, n. 4, p. 429-444, 1999.
• HEMLEY, Cecil. Influência de Machado de Assis. Revista da Sociedade dos Amigos de Machado de Assis, n. 4, p. 20-21, 21 jun. 1960.

• 1
  This paper is the result of research funded by a Tinker Foundation grant and initiated in the United States in January 2018, when I located the Noonday Press archives at the New York Public Library. It is also based on the research project "Machado de Assis em inglês: tradução, edição e circulação transnacional" [Machado de Assis in English: Translation, publishing and transnational circulation], developed between 2020 and 2023 with support from a FAPESP Research Grant (Proc. n. 2020/02389-6). I thank Francisca Caroline Pires da Silva, who collaborated by organizing the documentation under the project, "Organização e indexação de documentos manuscritos, datiloscritos e impressos referentes às traduções para o inglês de obras de Machado de Assis" [Organization and indexing of manuscripts, typescripts, and printed documents related to the English translations of Machado de Assis' works], funded by a FAPESP Technical Training grant (Proc. n. 21/0357906).
• 2
  On Cohen's varied production in his several fields of activity, see An Arthur A. Cohen Reader: Selected Fiction and Writing in Judaism, Theology, Literature, and Culture (COHEN, 1988).
• 3
  In a statement to Revista da Sociedade dos Amigos de Machado de Assis, and regarding his novel The Experience (1960), Cecil Hemley stated: "I must confess my debt to the great Brazilian writer Machado de Assis, whose works I have admired since they caught my attention eight years ago" (HEMLEY, 1960, p. 21).
• 4
  On copyright and publicity regarding the first books by Machado de Assis translated into English, see "The strange case of Machado de Assis and the Noonday Press: Rights and Publicity in English Translation" (FRANK, 2002).
• 5
  This is confirmed by the subdued yet important role the Pan American Union played in the publicity for these publications. The motivation behind the release date is explained in Arthur A. Cohen's letter to Mário Guimarães, dated January 13, 1953 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. records. Manuscripts and Archives Division. The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. FSG Box 218 Machado de Assis General Dom Casmurro 1952-3). From here on, we will indicate only the box and folder numbers relating to the Farrar, Straus & Giroux fund held at the New York Public Library.
• 6
  Telegram with the Western Union letterhead, dated February 21, 1943. M. A. Zeitlin Files. Special Collections Section at UCLA. The American Council of Learned Societies Language Program was directly or indirectly responsible for encouraging, supporting, and advising foreign language teaching projects in the U.S. through the early war year.
• 7
  Letter from Helen Caldwell to M. A. Zeitlin, dated June 9, 1943 (UCLA Library Special Collections). The emphasis on "you" is Caldwell's.
• 7
  Letter from Helen Caldwell to Cecil Hemley, dated December 9, 1952 (FSG Box 218 Machado de Assis General Dom Casmurro 1952-3).
• 9
  Cf. Letter from Mário Guimarães, Head of the Cultural Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to Arthur Cohen, dated Rio de Janeiro July 14, 1952 (Box 219 Machado de Assis General Epitaph of a Small Winner 1951-2); Letter from Sérgio Corrêa da Costa, Department of Foreign Affairs, to Helen Caldwell, dated Rio de Janeiro February 23, 1953 (FSG Box 218 Machado de Assis General Dom Casmurro 1952-3); Letter from Jayme Sloan Chermont, Head of the Cultural Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to Arthur A. Cohen, dated May 17, 1954 (FSG Box 219 Machado de Assis General Epitaph of a Small Winner 1953-4).
• 10
  Letter from Walther Moreira Salles to Cecil Hemley, dated Washington, D.C., July 30, 1952 (FSG Box 219 Machado de Assis General Epitaph of a Small Winner 1951-2).
• 11
  Letter from Arthur A. Cohen to Mário Guimarães, dated February 10, 1954 (FSG Box 219 Machado de Assis General Epitaph of a Small Winner 1953-4).
• 12
  Letter from Jayme Sloan Chermont to Arthur A. Cohen, dated May 17, 1954 (FSG Box 219 Machado de Assis General Epitaph of a Small Winner 1953-4).
• 13
  A good example of such an appeal can be seen in the letter from Arthur A. Cohen to Jayme Chermont, State Secretary of Foreign Affairs, dated July 7, 1954 (FSG Box 219 Machado de Assis General Epitaph of a Small Winner 1953-4).
• 14
  Letter from Robert Harben to Noonday Press, dated Amsterdam August 21, 1952; letter from Kurt E. Michaels to Noonday Press, dated Charlottenlund November 6, 1952; letter from Lars Hökerbergs Bokförlag to Noonday Press, dated Stockholm November 25, 1952 (FSG Box 219 Machado de Assis General Epitaph of a Small Winner 1951-2).
• 15
  FSG Box 410 Noonday Books Sales and Marketing 1963-4.
• 16
  Idem.
• 17
  Box 410 Noonday Books Sales and Marketing 1963-4.
• 18
  Data on the print runs and sales of Epitaph of a Small Winner are detailed in the following documents: letter from Herman Figatner, Book Find Club accountant, to Arthur A. Cohen, of Noonday Press, dated November 11, 1954 (FSG Box 219 Machado de Assis General Epitaph of a Small Winner 1953-4); letter from Barbara Holler, Assistant at Noonday Press, to Luiz Fernando Nazareth, Cultural Affairs Officer at the Brazilian Embassy in Washington, dated March 2, 1964 (FSG Box 218 Machado de Assis General Correspondence 1960-5); letter from Gerald J. Pollinger, from Laurence Pollinger, to Frederic Warburg, from Martin Secker & Warburg, dated November 22, 1961 (FSG Box 218 Machado de Assis General Correspondence 1960-5).
• 19
  Draft letter from August Frugé, dated November 7, 1958 (Folder Translation Program History - Latin America, The Bancroft Library).
• 20
  The nonfiction books translated under the Program were: Africa and Brazil (1965) and Brazilians: Their Character and Aspirations (1967), by José Honório Rodrigues (1913-1987); The Economic Growth of Brazil: A Survey from Colonial to Modern Times (1963), Development and Underdevelopment (1964) and Diagnosis of the Brazilian Crisis (1965), by Celso Furtado (1920-2004); A History of Ideas in Brazil: The Development of Philosophy in Brazil and the Evolution of National History (1964), by João Cruz Costa (1904-1978); Formação do Brasil Contemporâneo (1967), by Caio Prado Júnior (1907-1990); Introduction to the Literature of Brazil (1968), by Afrânio Coutinho (1911-2000); Negro Integration in Brazil (1968), by Florestan Fernandes (1920-1995); Desenvolvimento econômico e desenvolvimento político (1968), by Hélio Jaguaribe (1923-2018); and A History of Modern Brazil, 1889-1964 (19..), by José Maria de Albuquerque Belo (1885-1959). The Portuguese-language titles were thus listed in the report consulted.
• 21
  According to the Program's financial records, The Psychiatrist and Other Stories, approved on March 19, 1962, received funding of $1,500 and Esau and Jacob, approved May 31, 1963, received $2,200.
• 22
  Memorandum by August Frugé, May 17, 1978, addressed to Doris Kretschmer. The Bancroft Library CU-9.81 Box 4.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  21 Aug 2023
• Date of issue
  2023

History

• Received
  21 Mar 2023
• Accepted
  05 June 2023