Dom Casmurro 25.41 · 25.41

'Não digo isto por odio' — the classic disclaimer, and like all such disclaimers it plants the very idea it denies. By insisting he speaks without hatred, José Dias introduces hatred into the conversation and invites Bentinho to wonder whether there is any. The denial is a confession wearing a mask.

Machado is precise about the psychology of the interested witness. A truly disinterested man would have no cause to swear his disinterest; the vow itself betrays a stake. And the sentence is unfinished — 'nor because…' is coming — so that the disavowal is immediately qualified, the speaker already circling back toward the personal grievance he claims not to hold. It is the tic of a man who protests too much. Under the whole measured performance of concern for Bentinho and Dona Glória runs José Dias's own wounded vanity, which the next lines will let slip. He is not, it turns out, quite as impartial as he needs the boy to believe.

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