Dom Casmurro 12.47 · 12.47

The verb 'comecei a recordar' names the whole book in passing. Dom Casmurro is a machine of recollection, an old man reassembling a life from gestures and words; here the process shows itself openly, the memory beginning to run on its own momentum. 'Esses e outros' — these and others — signals the flood: one remembered thing pulls the next.

Machado is precise about the materials of memory: not events, not facts, but 'gestos e palavras,' gestures and words, the fleeting signs a jealous mind will later reread endlessly for hidden meaning. This is the archive Casmurro spends his old age interpreting. What begins as tender reminiscence in this chapter becomes, by the novel's end, evidence combed for betrayal. The same faculty that fondly recalls Capitú's compliments will, decades on, convict her — and both the tenderness and the ruin start with a man who cannot stop recalling.

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