Inside and outside: Machado de Assis’ 'Mundo Interior' and phenomenological theory

Abstract

Mundo interior (1880, Machado de Assis) shows how the author anticipated concepts of space that would be expounded many years later by the phenomenological philosopher, Gaston Bachelard. In the poem, the vast outdoor landscape, both geographic and human, has a corresponding and inverse relationship with a profundity of contemplation. Examples from the novel Quincas Borba, where characters are drawn to look outside through windows when they are engaged in their innermost thoughts, show how the pattern of “immense intimacy” extends beyond the poem in question into the imagery of Machado’s fictional works.