Dom Casmurro 29.2 · 29.2

The whole street obeys at once. 'O omnibus... parou, como todos os vehiculos' registers the reflex of a monarchy: traffic freezes, without order given, because the emperor is near. Machado records the machinery of deference in a single clause, and the collective 'todos os vehiculos' makes the gesture impersonal and total.

The detail matters for Bento's coming fantasy. He is about to imagine himself petitioning this very power, and the chapter first shows him what that power is — something before which an entire city halts. The omnibus, the ordinary public conveyance, is the humble platform from which the boy watches; the gulf between his little vehicle and the coach that stops it is the same gulf his daydream will pretend to leap. The narrator sets the scale before the wish.

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