Dom Casmurro 2.49 · 2.49

A remarkable admission for a nostalgic man: 'aquella vida antiga apparece-me despida de muitos encantos que lhe achei' — that old life appears to me stripped of many charms I once found in it. Looked at again, across the distance, the golden past turns out to be less golden than memory had gilded it. The word 'despida', undressed, stripped bare, is exact and a little startling: the cherished old life stands before him disrobed of its enchantments, plainer than he had dressed it in recollection. And notice the honesty of 'que lhe achei', the charms I found in it — not the charms it had, but the charms he found, as if half-conceding that the enchantment was partly his own projection all along. This is memory examined with real scruple, and it matters enormously for the book. Here is Bento, in a calm hour, telling us plainly that memory embellishes, that the past he recalls is dressed by his own longing, that 'encantos' are found as much as given. He knows his remembering is unreliable. He says so. And then he spends the rest of the novel asking us to convict a wife on the strength of exactly that faculty — the memory, the finding, the projection — trusting it absolutely where here he distrusts it wisely.

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