一般注記The literary world of Machado de Assis -- The wizard of Cosme Velho -- The formative period -- Novels of the 1870s -- The literary modernism of Machado de Assis -- Reading Machado de Assis -- Reading Machado de Assis -- Machado's pendulum -- Breaking the frame: the rhetoric of substitution -- Machado's world library -- Time's invisible fabric: telling what cannot be said, saying what cannot be told -- Three exemplary modes. Theater and opera: Machado's operatic theater of the world -- Delirium, hallucination, and dream: flying through time on a delirious trapeze -- Humanitas and satire: Machado's mad philosopher -- The actor-authors -- Brás Cubas, Basso Buffo -- Bento Santiago's grand dissimulation -- The love-death theme of Counselor Ayres -- Conclusion -- Machado and the supectacle of the world.