Eça de Queirós’ Mephistopheles

Abstract

The chronicle named “Mephistopheles” was written by Eça de Queirós in 1867 and published in the same year at the Gazeta de Portugal newspaper. This text is part of the Prosas bárbaras volume posthumously published in 1903 with some of Eça´s first works. All the narrative from the chronicle is cen­tered in the analysis of the opera Fausto, composed by Charles Gounod in 1859 (which was based in Goethe homonymous work). By the main cha­racter of the opera, Mephistopheles, the chronicler places the devil figure with positive characteristics that overcome the bad ones presented. It is noticed, in this discourse, the exaltation of the human characteristics in the devil, and at the same time, the lowering of the ones that are from the celestial level and from the moral and ethical discourse of the religious tradition. We intend to demonstrate that in this chronicle, Eça de Queirós already expo­ses some particularities from the demonic figure that will remain in many of his demonic characters.