Machado de Assis: Let the reader decide between the soldier and the priest

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Latin American writers on war and peace

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Machado de Assis
From The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas
Translated by William L. Grossman

As uncle of mine, a canon receiving a full prebend, used to say that the love of temporal glory was the perdition of the soul, which should covet only eternal glory. To which to my other uncle, an officer in one of the old infantry regiments, would reply that the love of glory was the most truly human thing about a man and, consequently, his most genuine characteristic.

Let the reader decide between the soldier and the canon….