Dom Casmurro 14.37 · 14.37

The fused being is crowned as 'seraphica,' seraphic — belonging to the highest order of angels, the seraphim who burn nearest God. Machado lifts the union one final rung, from human oneness to angelic, so the two children briefly become a single creature of fire and light. The word completes the chapter's ascent through the sacred, from priest and altar to chalice to Mass to, now, the angels themselves.

The seraphim are traditionally the angels of love, ablaze with it, and the epithet fits the moment's ardour exactly. Yet Machado plants it with his usual double edge. To call the union seraphic is to make it perfect and to make it unreal, a thing of pure spirit that no earthly marriage can sustain. The love recorded here is angelic; the life that follows will be all too human. The higher Bento raises this instant, the farther it stands from everything that comes after, and the more it aches as a paradise designed to be lost.

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