A Escrava Isaura 10.40 · 10.40

The recognition scene is joyful for Álvaro and quietly ominous for the reader. 'Reconhecer' — to recognize — is the verb the whole plot dreads: for a fugitive, to be recognized is the beginning of ruin. Here it is only the happy shock of a smitten young man finding fortune has stranded his beloved at his feet. But the word tolls ahead to the graver recognition to come, when someone will recognize not 'the mysterious lady of the chácara' but the escaped slave Isaura. Guimarães plants the theme lightly, in a moment of delight, so that its later, darker return will land with full weight. For now the surprise is 'deliciosa'; the reader knows that recognition, in this story, is rarely a gift.

Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear 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:

• Plato's Phaedrus — complete, ancient Greek
• Heraclitus, the Fragments — complete
• Dante's Inferno — Italian, canto I
• Dom Casmurro — Brazilian Portuguese