Dom Casmurro 25.86 · 25.86

The portrait finishes on sound: 'em voz um pouco surda e tímida' — in a voice a little muffled and timid. 'Surda' — literally deaf, here dull and stifled — and 'tímida' together drain the speech of every heroic tone. This was no ringing declaration of independence but a low, faltering murmur from a boy afraid of his own daring.

Machado has spent four sentences dismantling the very eloquence he wrote, and the labor pays off here in tenderness. The reader now hears the true thing: a child's stifled voice carrying a decision too large for it. It is characteristic of the novel that its one act of Bentinho's courage should be rendered, finally, as something small, quiet, and half-choked.

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