Allusion

A brief reference, without explanation, to a person, a text, a myth, or a fact known outside the work, which carries with it the meaning of that other story.

In The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas

Call me Nature or Pandora; I am your mother and your enemy

The name "Pandora" carries with it the woman of Greek mythology who keeps evils and hope, and the figure immediately confirms this by saying she carries "the goods and the evils" in her purse.

Chapters I to IX: Death, plaster, and delirium, Pandora (in Brás's delirium)

Blessed are those who do not come down, for theirs is the first kiss of the young ladies.

Chapters XXV to XXXVII: Tijuca, The Black Butterfly, and Eugênia, the narrator

It was Hamlet's case: either to bow to fortune, or to struggle with it and subdue it. In other words: to embark or not to embark. That was the question

Chapters LXXVII to LXXXVII: The Presidency and the Peak of the Mountain, the narrator

The truth is that he was in dialogue with the embryo; it was the old colloquy of Adam and Cain, a conversation without words between life and life, mystery and mystery.

Chapters LXXXVIII to C: Viegas, Quincas Borba, and the Anonymous Letter, the narrator

The tax on pain is like Vespasian's coin; it does not smell of its origin, and one collects it as much from evil as from good

Chapters CXXXVII to CLX: The Cap, the Ministry, and the Denials, the narrator