'I will freeze that scalded brain'
Read the full text in our reader
Ainda bem que me preveniste; eu saberei gelar a ebullição desse cerebro escaldado.
Just as well you warned me; I shall know how to freeze the boiling of that scalded brain.
The metaphor is a threat dressed as physiology. Isaura's spirit is a 'cerebro escaldado' — a scalded, over-heated brain — and Leôncio promises to 'gelar', to freeze it, to chill her defiance back into compliance. The imagery of temperature runs through his speech: her passion is fever, his mastery is ice. It is the language of a man who thinks of a soul as a fluid to be managed, brought off the boil by the right application of cold. What he actually means is the tronco and the shackles he is about to send for — cruelty renamed as cooling.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open A Escrava Isaura 9.83 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 9.83 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/escravaisaura/9.83/