Dom Casmurro 3.71 · 3.71

Tio Cosme can't let the praise stand and fires back with a piece of pure vernacular scorn: 'Governou como a cara d'elle!' — literally 'he governed like his face!', an idiom that means the flat opposite of what it says, roughly 'governed, my eye!' or 'the devil he governed!'. It is comedy and character in six words: the fat uncle, no respecter of reputations, deflating a national hero with a snort. Machado catches the exact music of a family argument, where a grand historical claim is met not with counter-argument but with a scornful, untranslatable gust of contempt.

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