The fantastic allegory of the Brazilian Second Empire in the short story “O califa de Platina” by Machado de Assis

Abstract

In 1878, Machado de Assis collaborated with the production of a fantastic and humoristic series on the newspaper O Cruzeiro, in which published nine fictional texts with a decidedly experimental inflection. Despite the fantastical feature of the stories, most of them assumed a clearly allegorical dimension, with the purpose of presenting controversial issues of his time. In this respect, it is worth mentioning the story "O califa de Platina: um conto árabe", which evokes the fabulous imagination of the Middle East and its Inclination to magic arts, tricks, spells and divination, in order to represent allegorically the cunning maneuvers of the Argentine Republic against to Brazil in contention for European immigration flow. Therefore, this paper intends to show that the Arabian tale engendered by Machado de Assis, through its artistic procedures, formulates an ironic and satirical representation of the Argentina's shady foreign policy in relation to Brazil.