Dom Casmurro 9.63 · 9.63

The devil makes one last pitch, and it is the pitch of every anxious artist: 'Ouvi agora alguns ensaios!' — at least come hear the rehearsals. Having lost the argument over principle, Satan retreats to the sample, the preview, the try-out. He no longer asks God to approve the opera, only to sit through a run-through.

There is real pathos in the imperative. The creator of the work wants an audience for it more than he wants a verdict. It is the vanity and loneliness of authorship, transferred onto the fallen angel — and it sets up God's final, sharper refusal, which will draw the one distinction that matters in the chapter: between having written the thing and having to watch it.

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