“Light and shadow: my fruit tree”

between the sacred and the profane, the true philosopher’s stone of the human in Machado de Assis

Abstract

This article proposes a reading of the short stories “Adão e Eva” and “The nurse”, by Machado de Assis, discussing the inherent paradoxical condition of the human, particularly learned to his double identity (good versus evil) and, furthermore, starting from the biblical history of the ritual of the origin and creation of things with man as a participant, an integral part of it and, at the same time, being the one who breaks and deconstructs the divine world, given that sacred attitudes and values ​​have been corrupted and the idea of ​​the profane is accentuated and articulates everyday human life. Furthermore, the profane rite experienced by the characters Adam, Eve and Procópio is evident in another rite that is the margin, an intermediate stage between the past and what will emerge later and, above all, the result of this ritual event builds identity in transition of each character and, consequently, of the narrative itself. The alchemy of the characters happens through experiences lived in a social context, as well as this situation favors the formation of the self in relation to the other and this transformation arises from the inside out, which synthesizes the desire and death drive of an old life with the emergence of a new, more vigorous and promising one. To this end, authors such as: Arnold Van Gennep (2011), Carl Gustav Jung (1988),