Instead of the eternal wall
Read the full text in our reader
em vez da grossa parede espiritual e eterna.
instead of the thick spiritual and eternal wall.
The seminary named as the true, immovable barrier.
Against the paper screen stands the 'grossa parede espiritual e eterna' — the priesthood. The seminary would not put miles between the lovers but a vow, and a vow is a wall of a different order: thick, made of spirit, and lasting past any 'one day.' Distance ends; ordination does not.
The adjectives do the work. 'Espiritual' tells us why the barrier cannot be shifted like furniture — it is not in the world of streets and screens at all — and 'eterna' closes the door on the very hope the last line opened. Machado sets the two futures side by side as architecture, a screen versus a wall, and lets the reader feel the whole stake of the chapter in the contrast between what can be moved and what cannot.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Dom Casmurro 18.180 in the full reader
Always open passages in the 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:
Dom Casmurro 18.180 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/domcasmurro/18.180/