Dom Casmurro 25.109 · 25.109

José Dias stages a tiny catechism, asking his own question and answering it: 'porque? porque são illustres e virtuosas.' The self-interrogation is pure rhetorical theatre, a preacher's device that lets him deliver the superlatives 'illustres e virtuosas' as if they were a reasoned conclusion rather than mere gush.

Here is the man the whole novel has taught us to recognize — the lover of the outsized word, promoting the modest Santiago household to the ranks of the illustrious and the virtuous. The inflation is habitual; he cannot praise without magnifying. And the magnification serves him: the grander he makes the family, the grander the dependent who serves and is esteemed by them. Every superlative he lays on the Santiagos reflects a little glow back onto himself. Machado's comedy is that the flattery, aimed at the family, is finally self-regarding — the agregado polishing his own position by gilding the house he lives in.

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