Dom Casmurro 6.13 · 6.13

The performance travels. Back at the house José Dias 'referia os debates,' replaying the courtroom clashes for the family — turning himself from spectator into narrator, the sole channel through which Cosme's small triumphs reach Dona Glória's parlor. To report is to shape, and the reporter gathers a quiet power.

Machado is sketching, in miniature, the very role José Dias will play at the novel's hinge: the man who carries news between people and colors it in the carrying. His courtroom bulletins are a rehearsal for the fateful denunciation of Bentinho and Capitú, where his gift for 'referring' what he has seen will set the whole plot moving. Here the tale-bearing is harmless theatre; later the same instinct changes a life.

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