Il vampirismo nella Fosca di Ugo Tarchetti e in A Causa Secreta di Machado de Assis

Abstract

The Italian Igino Ugo Tarchetti and the Brazilian Machado de Assis were born in the same month and year: June 1839. The former has died when he was thirty, in 1869, while the latter would live until 1908. Being poets, writers, and journalists both have in common the reading of major Western authors such as Poe and Hoffmann, even though they were probably not acquainted with the productions of one another. For this study the following texts have been chosen: the novel Fosca, which is deemed Tarchetti’s masterpiece (first published in serial installments in the magazine “Il pungolo”, and later as a single volume in 1869), and Machado de Assis’ short story Causa Secreta (published in “Gazeta de Notícias” in 1885 and, sequentially, in 1869 within the collected writings compiled in the book Várias Histórias). Among the thematic elements which these texts have in common it is worth mentioning: prolonged disease, death, the presence of a character close to the diseased, and the feeling of distress shared by the diseased female and the male beside her. Furthermore, in both narratives there is also the surfacing of a third character who gives shape to a sort of love triangle. This work aims thus at establishing a comparative analysis of these plots and characters, projecting the story of the vampire lady in Fosca within the surface of Machado de Assis’ short story, endeavouring to assess the classic components which shall bring vampirism and sadism into dialogue.