'One more star'
Read the full text in our reader
E’ mais uma estrella, que vem brilhar nos salões do Recife, dizia Alvaro, e dar lustre a nossos saráos. Não ha ainda tres mezes, que chegou a esta cidade, e haverá pouco mais de um, que a conheço.
She is one more star come to shine in the salons of Recife, said Álvaro, and lend lustre to our soirees. It is not yet three months since she came to this city, and hardly more than one that I have known her.
We meet Álvaro through his enthusiasm, and it defines him at once: he speaks of the newcomer as 'mais uma estrella', one more star, in the astronomical idiom of Romantic infatuation. He is the ardent idealist, quick to worship, and his rhapsody is the exact opposite of Leôncio's cold appraising eye — where the master sized Isaura as a jewel to own, Álvaro sees a light to admire. The careful chronology he offers — three months in the city, one of acquaintance — is the eager lover counting his days. Dramatic irony hums beneath every word: the reader knows this 'star fallen on Recife' is a fugitive slave, and that Álvaro, the future abolitionist, is falling in love with the very person the law he studies would return in chains.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open A Escrava Isaura 10.10 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the A Escrava Isaura — 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:
A Escrava Isaura 10.10 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/escravaisaura/10.10/