Dom Casmurro 1.12 · 1.12

Machado catches the exact flicker of tempted vanity. The narrator's hollow compliment almost works: 'vi-lhe fazer um gesto para tiral-os outra vez do bolso' — I saw him start to reach for the verses again. For an instant hope beats pride — perhaps the praise was real, perhaps he'll get to finish after all — and the hand moves toward the pocket. But 'não passou do gesto', it went no further than the motion: pride reasserts itself, the hand stops, the poem stays hidden. And then the verdict, one word: 'estava amuado', he was sulking. The whole psychology of the wounded ego is in that arrested gesture — the reflex to display oneself again, checked by the memory of the slight. Machado, who could dissect a soul in a clause, gives the amateur poet a complete inner life in half a sentence: desire to be admired, warring with the need to punish the one who failed to admire.

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