Dom Casmurro 2.75 · 2.75

The chapter — and the whole long preamble of the book — closes on a quiet handing-over: 'É o que vaes entender, lendo' — it is what you will understand, reading. Six words, and every one of them a gentle imposition. The understanding is deferred to the reading — you will grasp it as you read on — and reading, here, means reading him, following his narration, taking the afternoon and everything after in the shape and sense he gives it. He does not say 'it is what happened'; he says it is what you will understand by reading, which is to say, what my telling will make you understand. After a chapter that has confessed at every turn how partial and enchanted and unverifiable his account must be — the missing self, the bewitching memory, the illusion narration gives, the reminiscences that merely come, the commentaries modelled on Caesar's — he closes by inviting us, warmly, to read on and understand. And we will. That is the book's spell and its snare, laid bare in its last line and instantly forgotten as the story begins: everything we are about to 'understand' about Bento's life, his love, his betrayal, we will understand only by reading him, on his word, in his sense, with every outside authority — the documents, the dates, the dictionaries, the other accounts — waved gently away. He picks up the pen, calls the restless shades, and turns to the famous November afternoon. Read, he says, and you will understand. Read, the whole chapter has been quietly teaching us, and remember who is doing the telling.

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Also on our shelves:

• Plato's Phaedrus — complete, ancient Greek
• Heraclitus, the Fragments — complete
• Dante's Inferno — Italian, canto I