Dom Casmurro 25.9 · 25.9

The correction arrives wrapped in courtesy. 'Perdôe-me' — forgive me — is the perfect José Dias touch, the apology that clears the way for a contradiction. He never simply disagrees; he begs pardon and then overrules, so that the act of correcting the boy looks like an act of deference toward him. It is the same silk-gloved manner that lets him denounce and flatter in the same breath.

The verb 'atalhou', he cut in, is sharper than the apology admits. Beneath the polite formula is a man quick to interrupt, alert, unwilling to let an inaccuracy stand when the accuracy serves his purpose. Machado catches the whole character in the seam between word and act: 'forgive me' on the surface, an interruption underneath. The reader learns to distrust José Dias precisely at moments when he sounds most humble.

Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.

You are reading a page of the Dom Casmurro — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.

The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.

Also on our shelves:

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