Dom Casmurro 12.9 · 12.9

The second fragment: 'Em segredinhos' — in little secrets. The diminutive is José Dias's, and it carries all his insinuating tone, making childish innocence sound like conspiracy.

The refrain works by isolation. Stripped to two words, the phrase forces Bento — and the reader — to weigh it. A child's small confidences become, in the agregado's mouth, the first evidence of a courtship. Machado lets the affectionate '-inho' do the damage: the very smallness the word pretends to note is what turns the secrets into something worth denouncing, and the boy cannot unhear the suggestion.

Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.

You are reading a page of the Dom Casmurro — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.

The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.

Also on our shelves:

• Plato's Phaedrus — complete, ancient Greek
• Heraclitus, the Fragments — complete
• Dante's Inferno — Italian, canto I