Of the purest workmanship
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O collo donoso e do mais puro lavor sustenta com graça ineffavel o busto maravilhoso.
The graceful throat, and of the purest workmanship, holds up with ineffable grace the marvellous bust.
The graceful throat, of the purest workmanship, holds up the marvellous bust with ineffable grace. He praises her as a sculptor praises a carving — in a book about a woman held to be property.
'Lavor' is workmanship — the chasing on silver, the carving in wood. Guimarães has been building a statue for several sentences now: profile drawn in line, brow of polished marble, throat of the purest craftsmanship. It is the highest register of romantic praise, and in this particular book it carries a charge he cannot have missed. To be admired as a made object is a hair's breadth from being held as one, and the law of her country says she is exactly that: a thing, of great value, beautifully wrought. The novel will spend itself proving the difference.
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