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Dom Casmurro · Chapters LIV to LXV

The Seminary, Escobar, and a Touch of Iago

Appearance and RealityLanguage and NarrationJealousyMemory and the Past

Chapter LIV: Panegyric of Saint Monica

Memory and the Past

Section summary

Bento Santiago, the old narrator, says he will not tell about the seminary and instead tells about two classmates. One composed verses in the manner of Junqueira Freire, was ordained, and years later, in the choir of São Pedro, treated those verses as the itches of youth. The other left the seminary and kept only the Panegyric of Saint Monica he had written; in 1882, a section chief in the Navy, he asks Bento whether he has kept it. Bento lies that he has, receives the next day a copy from twenty-six years earlier, pretends to recognize passages, and the author withdraws content to see that the Panegyric "has pleased a great many people."

Analysis

The contrast between the two classmates is that of the poet who forgot his verses and the author who lived on a single work, and Bento observes the two without contempt. He lies to the second out of courtesy, which shows that the narrator knows how to tell each interlocutor what suits them. The chapter also works as a pretext: the pamphlet sets off the memory of the seminary, which he says he does not want to tell and then does tell.

it was courtesy, it was almost charity to recall some page
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Chapter LV: A Sonnet

Section summary

With the Panegyric in his hands, Bentinho recalls the sonnet he never wrote. In the seminary, lying in bed, he heard a loose line rise in his head, "Oh! flower of heaven! oh! pure and candid flower!", and lost an hour or two of sleep trying to complete it. The flower would be Capitu, then justice, liberty, charity. He composed first the last line, "Life is lost, the battle is won!", found it sublime, and even swapped the words around. The twelve middle lines never came. The old narrator gives the two lines to anyone who wants to finish them.

Analysis

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Chapter LVI: A Seminarian

Section summary

The Panegyric brings out other seminarian profiles, among them the Albuquerque brothers, Bastos, and Luís Borges, who ended up a senator. Bento then introduces Escobar: Escobar, three years older, son of a lawyer from Curitiba, with eyes, hands, and feet that slip away, who meditates with his eyes turned inward and keeps even words in memory. He has a sister who calls herself an angel and writes him affectionate letters; she dies shortly afterward. Escobar opens his soul to Bentinho, and Bentinho, who is not yet a casmurro, lets him in, because the doors of his soul have no keys.

Analysis

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Chapter LVII: Preparations

Language and Narration

Section summary

The Panegyric also carries past sensations. Bento would like to tell one of them in Latin, but assures the very chaste reader that she may read the next chapter without fright, and this serves as preparation: the heart, when it examines beforehand what is to come, grows sturdy, and the blow is smaller. On reading what is coming, the reader will find it less raw than expected.

Analysis

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Chapter LVIII: The Treatise

Section summary

Returning to the seminary on a Monday, Bentinho sees a lady fall in the street; her stockings are clean and her garters are silk. José Dias remarks that her Frenchified walk is a mistake, and Bentinho thinks only of the stockings and garters, begins to wish that women would fall, sees the cassocks as skirts, and dreams at night of feet and legs. He prays with interruptions, and settles a treaty between conscience and imagination: the feminine visions will be regarded as embodiments of vices and therefore may be contemplated, as a way of tempering character.

Analysis

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Chapter LIX: Guests with Good Memories

Language and NarrationMemory and the Past

Section summary

An old saying holds that one should abhor a guest with a good memory, and Bento counts himself among them, although he says his own memory is weak, like that of someone who lived in inns without retaining names. He prefers books that omit to books that are confused, because in the omitted parts one can put in everything: on closing a flawed book, he evokes what he did not find and fills the gaps. Thus, he says, the reader will be able to fill his own.

Analysis

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Chapter LX: Dear Little Opus

Memory and the Past

Section summary

Bento says he did to the Panegyric what he described: he put into it what the saint lacked, and also the sonnet, the stockings, the garters, and Escobar. He addresses the pamphlet like old slippers, which keep the aroma and warmth of two feet, and recalls the cry of the coconut sellers from chapter XVIII, which he thought of having set to music. He gave up when another musician felt no longing at all on seeing the score. He concludes that it is not enough for things to contain cases and people: one must have known them and suffered them.

Analysis

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Chapter LXI: Homer's Cow

Section summary

In the first days of the separation, José Dias visits Bentinho at the seminary with messages from his mother and Uncle Cosme, and tells him that the greatest longing is in the greatest heart, that of Dona Glória. Bentinho asks about leaving, and José Dias speaks of a trip to Europe in 1859 or 1860 and the usefulness of the "holy oils of theology." His eyes flash and wander into the courtyard; two professors pass and José Dias repeats the expression. Bentinho insists on leaving in three months, and he reveals the plan: Bentinho will cough little by little, so his mother thinks he needs a change of air. Bentinho understands that he is to feign illness, and José Dias says he already suspects his chest. Bentinho proposes leaving the seminary first and embarking afterward, and asks about Capitu point-blank.

Analysis

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Chapter LXII: A Touch of Iago

Language and NarrationJealousy

Section summary

Bentinho realizes that the question about Capitu was imprudent, because it revealed that she was the main reason for his repulsion toward the seminary. José Dias replies that she is lively, "a flighty little thing," and will stay that way until some rascal from the neighborhood takes her as his wife. Bentinho feels a chill run through his body and his heart pound: the news that Capitu lives cheerfully, while he cries every night, seems to him proof. For the first time he feels jealousy, imagines the rascals looking at her and the flowers exchanged, has an impulse to run to Pádua's house, and does nothing. José Dias ends with "the account it will yield," and Bentinho only asks that his mother send for him on Saturday.

Analysis

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Chapter LXIII: Halves of a Dream

Section summary

Bentinho waits anxiously for Saturday, pursued by dreams, and recounts two that form halves of one. In the first he sees a rascal talking with Capitu at the window; he runs off when Bentinho gives chase. Pádua, beside his daughter, gazes at a blank lottery ticket, number 4004, and explains that the rascal had come to bring the list. Capitu gives Bentinho with her eyes all the lots, and the greatest of them should have been given with her mouth. In the second, the street is deserted, Capitu leans out, he takes her hands, and he wakes alone in the dormitory. He spends the night trying to return to the dream, cannot, and does poorly in his lessons.

Analysis

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Chapter LXIV: An Idea and a Scruple

Memory and the Past

Section summary

Rereading the previous chapter, Bento has an idea and a scruple about writing it, because it is commonplace: the house in Engenho Novo reproduces the one in Matacavalos, to link the two ends of life, and that did not work; so too the seminary dream, which he tried to continue without success. He concludes that one of man's offices is to narrow his eyes and try to continue, in the old night, the dream cut short in the young night. He goes to the window and asks the night why dreams tear apart; she replies that she is no longer their mistress, that modern dreams live in the brain, and that the island of dreams, like that of loves, is the object of the ambition of Europe and the United States. He closes the window and goes to sleep.

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Chapter LXV: Dissimulation

Appearance and RealityLoyalty and Betrayal

Section summary

Saturdays arrive, and Bentinho grows fond of the new life; Escobar is his closest friend. When he is about to tell him his troubles and hopes, Capitu stops him: the secret is not his alone. She also advises him not to stay too long at her house and to go soon to see Dona Glória. At home, Dona Glória asks José Dias and Capitu whether Bentinho will make a good priest, and Capitu replies that he will, with conviction. Bentinho reproaches her for her cheerfulness since he entered the seminary. Capitu explains that they distrust them, that she too had sleepless nights, that her mother had asked her to forget him, and that, so as not to confirm José Dias's accusation, she shows herself cheerful before Dona Glória and Dona Justina. The next day, Dona Glória reports that Capitu said whoever would marry her would be Father Bentinho. Bentinho hurries to praise her cleverness: "let us fool all these people."

Analysis

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