Orgies of Latin
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tinha orgias de latim e era virgem de mulheres.
I had orgies of Latin and was a virgin of women.
A scholar's excess in Latin, an innocent in women.
'Orgias de latim' set against 'virgem de mulheres' — a scholar's debauchery in dead grammar, chastity in the living kind. Machado detonates a small scandal of diction, yoking the word 'orgies' to Latin declensions and the word 'virgin' to a boy's untouched life. The joke is exact and a little wicked, and it perfectly seals the student-adolescent antithesis with a wink.
Beneath the wit lies the shape of Bento's whole youth: bound for the seminary, marinated in classical and sacred texts, walled off from women even as one particular girl scratches his name into the plaster next door. The very Latin he glutted himself on is about to be turned, in the next lines, into the language of the Mass he imagines celebrating over Capitú. His two hungers, sacred learning and forbidden love, are set side by side here so Machado can fuse them, blasphemously and tenderly, on the following page.
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Dom Casmurro 14.21 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/domcasmurro/14.21/