Clavis Libri

Theme

Memory and the Past

Memory and the weight of the past: what is remembered, what is forgotten, nostalgia, the inheritance one did not choose, regret.

Dom Casmurro

Machado de Assis

the house copied in order to tie the two ends of life (chapter II), the cocada vendor's cry (chapter LX), the past reread after the sentence (chapter CXL), the Matacavalos house that no longer recognizes him (chapter CXLIV).

White Nights

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

the request to return to the embankment to remember (First Night), the anniversaries of sensations that never happened and the question of whether he has lived (Second Night), the grandmother's old days, when she played Rosina in a home theater (Nastenka's story, Second Night), the night written on the rainy day (Third Night), the railing where she waits as she did the first time (Fourth Night), and the sweet memory the letter promises (Morning).