Dom Casmurro 19.7 · 19.7

The rehearsal escalates from silent to spoken: 'depois em voz alta.' Only by hearing the words in his own mouth can Bento judge them, because tone lives in sound, not on the page of his mind. The test has two criteria — whether the words are 'adequadas,' fit for their purpose, and, in the next breath, whether they obey Capitú. The engineering of the sentence continues, now with the ear as the instrument.

There is something quietly moving in a boy talking to himself in a dark garden, submitting his own speech to inspection. He is his own director and his own critic. And the phrase 'para ver se eram adequadas' concedes that they might not be — the doubt is built in. Machado lets us watch confidence and anxiety alternate within a single act of preparation, the boy needing the words to be right and fearing they are not.

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