Dom Casmurro 18.83 · 18.83

Capitú wants the wording itself, not a paraphrase — 'as próprias palavras.' She knows that in the household of Matacavallos, meaning lives in exact phrasing: who said 'padre,' who softened it, who let a superlative slip. To plan a counter-move she must reconstruct the original speech.

The demand is quietly Machadian, for the entire novel is a machine of reported words that may or may not be trustworthy. Bento the narrator claims to give us everyone's exact speech, yet we only ever have his version. Capitú, inside the scene, insists on precision that the reader, outside it, can never verify. Her rigor throws the narrator's unreliability into relief: she wants the truth of what was said, and he is the only, doubtful, channel to it.

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