THE DUSK OF WRITING: MACHADO DE ASSIS’S LAST PAGES A ND THE UNFULFILLED PROMISE OF BRAZIL

In Machado de Assis’s last novel, Counselor Aires’s Memorial (1908), the main characters see themselves stuck between, on the one hand, an “abolished past”, which is related to the vanishing Empire and the end of slavery, and, on the other hand, the absence of any future. The sense of hopelessness is conveyed by a powerful poetic depiction of a world that cannot be changed. Therefore, this article aims to show how slowness and the lack ofdefinition in Machado’s late production is a cryptic, but profound critique of the unfulfi lled promises of the Brazilian Republic.