Dom Casmurro 29.36 · 29.36

'Hombrear' is a vivid, physical verb — literally to put shoulder to shoulder, to stand level with. The Emperor uses it to lift Brazilian medicine to the height of Europe's, and the word's bodily image suits a man who imagines nations squaring up like equals.

The phrase completes the little patriotic aria that began with 'já temos.' It is exactly the kind of talk a boy would put in an Emperor's mouth — confident, expansive, a touch grandiose — because grandiosity is what the daydream is for. Bentinho cannot argue his mother out of her vow with reasons of his own, so he stages a scene in which the argument comes wrapped in imperial pride and international comparison. The bigger the frame, the more his private wish to escape the seminary can pass as a matter of national importance.

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