Dom Casmurro 12.34 · 12.34

The single tree swells into a chorus. Birds, butterflies, a cicada — Machado widens the frame so that all of animate creation seems to ratify the palm's ruling, and the widening is itself the point: the boy's desire recruits the whole garden as jury. The lovely detail is the cicada 'que ensaiava o estio,' rehearsing the summer, tuning up for the heat to come.

'Ensaiar' — to rehearse, to practise before the performance — quietly rhymes with Bento himself. He too is in rehearsal: fifteen, in a corner, practising a love not yet fully arrived, tuning toward a season of feeling still ahead. The cicada's summer is coming; so is Bento's. Machado's natural imagery is rarely mere scenery; here the insect's preparatory song mirrors the boy's, and the warmth it heralds is the same warmth stirring in the corner. The garden does not merely approve — it keeps time with him.

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