Velhice e crimes sem castigo : Machado de Assis e Lygia Fagundes Telles

Abstract

The arrival of old age is often a pretext for a reflection on past life, in a kind of reckoning of the subject with him or herself and with the world in which he or she has lived. It is two such cases which the article analyses: Machado de Assis' «O enfermeiro» (The Nurse) and the one narrated in «Helga», by Lygia Fagundes Telles. According to the analysis presented, both protagonists are old and at peace with themselves and for whom the confession is not a form of repentance, but rather an opportunity to transmit a vision of life according to which crime is acceptable. This vision is touched by the cynicism which characterises the work of both authors and contains a wisdom which, to refer to another tale by Lygia Fagundes Telles, sharpens itself «on the stone of death».