Dom Casmurro 9.20 · 9.20

The theory fills out its stage: the central rivalry plays 'em presença do baixo e dos comprimarios'—before the bass and the comprimarios, the lower voice and the supporting singers. Even the minor roles are accounted for. The tenor's vision is comically complete, a full company where every human type has its vocal station.

The 'comprimarios'—the secondary parts—are a nice touch, because most lives are lived in exactly those roles, witnessing the great passions of others rather than starring in their own. Machado's tenor, without meaning to, sketches a hierarchy of significance: a few principals contend at the center while a crowd looks on and fills out the sound. It is a democratic and a merciless idea at once, and it prepares the fuller cosmology the chapter will build from here.

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