Dom Casmurro 15.37 · 15.37

'E melhor é naturalmente cedo que artificialmente tarde.' The narrator rounds his thought into a neat chiasmus: the natural-early beats the artificial-late. It is Machado's characteristic move, a bit of proverb polished to a shine.

But the epigram cuts at its author. Bento is the 'artificialmente tarde' one — always straining to acquire what others possess by nature, always a beat behind. The aphorism's tidy symmetry hides a lifelong grievance: that Capitú's grace was free and his own composure never was.

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