Dom Casmurro 18.21 · 18.21

The verb releases everything Machado has dammed up: 'rompeu.' To burst, to rupture — the wooden figure, the half-open mouth, the livid face all give way at once, and the pressure that the long stillness has built discharges in a single breaking. The colon at the line's end holds the reader an instant on the threshold of what she will say.

'Palavras furiosas' names the register before we hear it. After so much silence, Capitú's first speech in the scene will not be counsel or comfort but fury — and, crucially, fury aimed not at Bento but past him, at the pious world conspiring to take him. The plan she formed in her trance begins, characteristically, with an outburst of contempt for the enemy. Then, in the chapters ahead, the cooler strategy follows.

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