A Escrava Isaura 9.46 · 9.46

He catches himself — 'mas que estou a dizer!,' but what am I saying! — pulling back from the threat he was about to complete. The self-interruption is calculated as much as spontaneous: it lets him utter the menace and then disown it, keeping the seducer's tender mask while the threat hangs in the air. The rhetorical retreat is itself a tactic, softening the very intimidation it pretends to regret.

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