Friendly collaboration would have avoided
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e a collaboração amiga teriam evitado.
and the friendly collaboration would have avoided.
Had poet and composer worked as friends, the flaws would have vanished.
'Collaboração amiga' completes the fantasy: had poet and composer worked as friends, the flaws would have vanished. It is a tidy theodicy, evil recast as a coordination failure between two well-meaning artists rather than malice. Marcolini's parable lets God and Satan off as mere colleagues who did not confer in time.
For Bento the appeal is obvious. If his life's discords are only a missed collaboration, then no one truly willed the betrayal he believes in; it is a production error. The word 'amiga' is wistful. The narrator wants a universe run by friends, where harm is an accident of scheduling, even as he spends the entire book convinced that someone, somewhere, conspired against his happiness.
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