Dom Casmurro 9.37 · 9.37

The phrase names the heart of the tenor's Satan: 'genio essencialmente tragico' — a genius tragic by nature, not by choice. His rebellion follows from his gift the way a composer's style follows from his ear. He could no more write sweet mystical anthems than a tragedian could write farce; the discord in him is temperament, not wickedness.

This is the fable's most sympathetic stroke and its deepest one. If the world's music is tragic because its composer was tragic by essence, then suffering is woven into creation not as punishment but as artistic necessity. Machado, a great ironist who nonetheless knew grief, lets the theatre-man articulate a theodicy fit for an opera house: existence hurts because it was scored by a genius who understood that beauty and pain are the same note held. The chapter's charm is how lightly it carries so bleak a claim.

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