Dom Casmurro 21.41 · 21.41

The periphrastic 'vá esquecendo' — goes on forgetting — pictures forgetting as a gradual process rather than an event, the promise dissolving little by little rather than being renounced. It is the mildest imaginable escape for Bento: no confrontation, no broken vow, only a slow fading.

Machado chooses the softest possible verb of release, and the softness is the point. Nobody has to defy God or disappoint the dead; the vow would simply lapse of its own accord. That such a painless exit exists, and is being described aloud, sharpens the injustice of its being blocked. The whole seminary crisis of the novel turns on this: a promise that might have quietly expired is held forcibly alive, and a boy's freedom dies in the gap.

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