 Title page of the first edition ofDom Casmurro, 1900. | |
| Author | Machado de Assis |
|---|---|
| Language | Portuguese |
| Genre | Psychological realism,impressionism |
| Published | 1899 (1st Brazilian edition),Livraria Garnier, Rio de Janeiro |
| Publication place | Brazil |
Dom Casmurro is an 1899 novel written by Brazilian authorJoaquim Maria Machado de Assis. LikeThe Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas andQuincas Borba, both by Machado de Assis, it is widely regarded as a masterpiece ofrealist literature. It is written as a fictional memoir by a distrusting, jealous husband. The narrator, however, is not areliable conveyor of the story as it is a dark comedy. Dom Casmurro is considered by criticAfrânio Coutinho "a true Brazilian masterpiece, and perhaps Brazil's greatest representative piece of writing" and "one of the best books ever written in thePortuguese language, if not the best one to date." The author is considered a master of Brazilian literature with a unique style of realism.[1]
Its protagonist is Bento Santiago, the narrator of the story which, told in the first person, aims to "tie together the two ends of life",[2]: 7 in other words, to bring together stories from his youth to the days when he is writing the book. Between these two moments, Bento writes about his youthful reminiscences, his life at theseminary, his affair with Capitu and the jealousy that arises from this relationship, which becomes the main plot of the story.[3] Set inRio de Janeiro during theSecond Reign, the novel begins with a recent episode in which the narrator is nicknamed "Dom Casmurro", hence the title of the novel. Machado de Assis wrote it using literary devices such asirony andintertextuality, making references toSchopenhauer and, above all, to Shakespeare'sOthello.
Over the years,Dom Casmurro has been the subject of numerous studies, adaptations to other media and interpretations throughout the world, from psychological and psychoanalytical inliterary criticism in the 1930s and 1940s, throughfeminist literary criticism in the 1970s, to sociological in the 1980s and beyond, with its themes of jealousy, Capitu's ambiguity, the moral portrait of the time and the character of the narrator. Credited as a forerunner ofModernism[3] and of ideas later written by the father of psychoanalysisSigmund Freud,[4]: 144 the book influenced writers such asJohn Barth,Graciliano Ramos andDalton Trevisan, and is considered by some to be Machado'smasterpiece, on a par withThe Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas.[5]: 6 Dom Casmurro has been translated into several languages and remains one of his most famous books and is considered one of the most fundamental works in all ofBrazilian literature.[6]: 7
The story is told in the first person and the main character is 54-year-old Bento de Albuquerque Santiago, a solitary, well-established lawyer from Rio de Janeiro who, after having rebuilt his childhood house "in the old Rua de Matacavalos" (nowRua do Riachuelo [pt]) inEngenho Novo, wants to "tie together the two ends of life and restore his adolescence in old age", in other words, recount his youthful moments in middle age. In the first chapter, the author explains the title: it's a tribute to a "train poet" who once pestered him with his verses and called him "Dom Casmurro" because, according to Bento, he "closed his eyes three or four times" during the recitation.[2]: 5–6 His neighbours, who found his "taciturn, recluse-like habits" strange, and also his close friends, popularised the nickname. He was inspired to write the book by medallions ofCaesar,Augustus,Nero andMasinissa: Roman emperors who killed their adulterous wives.[7]
In the following chapters Bento begins his recollections. He recounts the experiences he had when his mother, the widowed D. Glória, sent him to the seminary. Glória sent him to the seminary to fulfil a promise she had made: if she were to conceive a second child after her first, who died in childbirth, she would send it to the seminary. The idea was revived by the dependent José Dias, who tells Uncle Cosme and D. Glória about Bentinho's flirtation with Capitolina, the poor neighbour with whom Bentinho was in love. At the seminary, Bentinho meets his best friend, Ezequiel de Sousa Escobar, the son of a lawyer fromCuritiba. Bentinho left the seminary and studied law in São Paulo, while Escobar became a successful businessman and married Sancha, Capitu's friend. In 1865 Capitu and Bentinho get married; Sancha and Ezequiel have a daughter they name Capitolina, while the protagonist and his wife conceive a son named Ezequiel. Bento's companion Escobar, who was an excellent swimmer, paradoxically drowns in 1871, and at the funeral both Sancha and Capitu stare at the deceased: "There was a moment when Capitu's eyes gazed down at the dead man as the widow's had, [...] like the swollen wave of the sea beyond, as if she too wished to swallow up the swimmer of that morning."[2]: 210 according to him.
Soon the narrator starts to suspect that his best friend and Capitu were secretly cheating on him. Dom Casmurro also begins to doubt his own paternity. He says in the last lines: "[...] were destined to join together and deceive me..."[2]: 240 The book ends with the ironic invitation "Let's go to theHistory of the Suburbs",[2]: 240 a book he would have thought of writing at the beginning of the novel, before the idea ofDom Casmurro occurred to him. The novel takes place from approximately 1857 to 1875, and the narrative, although set inpsychological time, allows us to perceive certain units: Bento's childhood in Matacavalos; Dona Glória's house and the Pádua family, with relatives and dependents; his acquaintance with Capitu; the seminary; married life; the intensification of jealousy; the psychotic outbursts of jealousy and aggression; the break-up.[4]: 163
AfterThe Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (1881), Machado de Assis wrote books with different themes and styles from his earlier novels, such asResurrection andThe Hand and the Glove. These new novels – which include, in addition tothe Posthumous Memoirs,Quincas Borba (1891) andDom Casmurro – are labeled asrealist because of their critical attitude,objectivity and contemporaneity.[4]: 134 Some critics prefer to call this genre "psychological realism",[8]: 1098 because it presents the interior, the thought, the absence of action combined with psychological and philosophical density.[9]: 87 However, there are also romantic residues inDom Casmurro, such as theerotic metaphor in relation to Capitu, described with "gipsy's eyes, oblique and sly."[4]: 134 Ian Watt has stated that realism refers to theempirical experiences of men,[10]: 12 but the recreation of the past through Bentinho's memory, his "stains" of recollections, brings the book closer to animpressionist novel.[9]: 84
ForJohn Gledson [pt],Dom Casmurro "is not a realist novel in the sense that it presents us with facts in an open and easily assimilated form. It presents them to us, but we have to read against the narrative to discover and connect them for ourselves. In doing so, we will learn more not only about the characters and the events described in the story, but also about the protagonist, Bento, the narrator himself."[11]: 14 We can therefore conclude thatDom Casmurro is a realist novel that focuses on psychological analysis (or exposition) and ironically criticises society, in this case the elite of Rio de Janeiro, through the behaviour of certain characters.[12]: 419 Critics have also noted certain elements of modernism inDom Casmurro. Some, such asRoberto Schwarz [pt], even go so far as to call it "the first Brazilian modernist novel",[3] mainly because of its short chapters, its fragmentary, non-linear structure, its penchant for the elliptical and the allusive, themetalinguistic attitude of those who write and those who see themselves as writers, the interruption of the narrative and the possibility of multiple readings or interpretations; "anti-literary" elements that would only be popularised by modernism decades later.[4]: 134
Others see it as a detective novel, where the reader would have to investigate the details of the actions, distrusting the narrator's point of view to reach a conclusion about the authenticity of the adultery.[13] because "from the beginning there are inconsistencies, obscure steps, disconcerting emphases, which form an enigma."[14]: 9 Among these clues are the metaphor of the "eyes like the tide" and the "gipsy's eyes, oblique and sly", the parallel with the Shakespearean drama ofOthello andDesdemona, the closeness to the opera oftenor Marcolini (the duet, thetrio and thequartet), the "strange resemblances", the relationship with Escobar at the seminary, Capitu's lucidity and Bentinho's obscurantism, the ex-seminarian's delirious and perverse imagination, the biblical precept fromEcclesiastes at the end of the book.[4]: 129
The main theme of the novel is jealousy and Bentinho's marital tragedy. From quoting the emperorsCaesar,Augustus,Nero andMasinissa, who killed their wives accused of adultery, to quoting Shakespeare'sOthello, the Moor who killed his wife for the same reason. His first hint of jealousy appears in chapter 62, when he asks José Dias, a dependent at his mother's house, when the latter goes to visit him at the seminary, "She's gay and happy as ever. What a giddy creature! Just waiting to hook some young buck of the neighbourhood and marry him."[2]: 115 For Bentinho, the answer was a shock, as he writes: "[..] and it was accompanied by such a violent beating of my heart that even now I seem to hear it."[2]: 116 According to Roberto Schwarz, inDom Casmurro "the most dramatic instance lies in jealousy, which had been one of the boy's many imaginative outbursts, and now, associated with the authority of being the landowner and husband, it becomes a force for devastation".[14]: 29 InDom Casmurro, however, the theme of jealousy is presented from the point of view of a husband who suspects that he has been betrayed, with no room for the other characters' versions.[15]: 127
Another very clear theme of the book is its setting –Rio de Janeiro during theSecond Reign, in the house of a member of the elite. Critics have written that, at the time of its publication, it was the book that "made the most intense psychological exploration of the character of Rio de Janeiro's society".[17]: 231 Bento is a landowner who went to university and became a lawyer, and represents a different class from Capitu, who is intelligent but from a lower-class family.[17]: 231 The narrator uses French and English quotations throughout the book, a common practice among 19th-century aristocrats in Brazil.[18]: 181 The contrast between the two characters has given rise to interpretations that Bentinho destroyed his wife'spersona because he was a member of the elite and she was poor (seeInterpretations). InDom Casmurro, the man is the result of his own duality and is incoherent within himself, while the woman is sly and charming.[3] Thus, it is a book that represents the politics, ideology and religion of the Second Reign.[11]: 13
According to Eduardo de Assis Duarte, "the universe of the white, noble elite is the setting through which thenarrator character distils his resentment and distrust of the allegedadultery".[19]: 215 Schwarz states that the novel represents the social relations and behaviour of the Brazilian elite of the time:progressive andliberal on the one hand,patriarchal and authoritarian on the other.[14]: 29 Another point that has been studied is that Dom Casmurro is almost non-communicative with Capitu – hence the fact that only the girl's gestures and glances (and not her words) indicate that she may have cheated on him.[20]: 1081 Bento is a quiet man who keeps to himself. One of his friends once sent him a letter that said: "I am going to my old place atPetrópolis, Dom Casmurro. See if you can't tear yourself away from the cave inEngenho Novo and come spend a couple of weeks with me."[2]: 5 This isolation, which becomes a reason for him to "tie together the two ends of his life", is also one of the themes of the novel.[20]: 1081 The critic Barreto Filho, for example, noted that it was "the tragic spirit that would shape Machado's entire work, leading destinies towards madness, absurdity and, in the best of cases, solitary old age."[21]: 12
One of the central problems in all of Machado's work, and also in this book, is the question of "to what extent do I exist only through others?", since Bento Santiago becomes Dom Casmurro, influenced by the events and actions of those close to him.[4]: 135 Eugênio Gomes observes that the theme of the son's physical resemblance, resulting from the mother's "impregnation" by the characteristics of a beloved man, without the latter having conceived the son (as happens between Capitu, her son Ezequiel and his possible father Escobar), was a hot topic inDom Casmurro's time.[22]: 181 Antonio Candido has also written that one of the main themes ofDom Casmurro is the assumption that an imagined fact is real, an element that is also present in Machado's short stories:[23]: 190–192 the narrator, through himself, would tell the facts through a certainmadness that would make hisfantasies, expressed in exaggerations and deceptions, cometrue.[23]: 190–192
WithDom Casmurro, Machado maintains the style he had been developing sinceThe Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas. The language is highly cultured, full of references, but informal, in a conversational tone with the reader, almostproto-modernist, filled withintertextuality,metalanguage and irony. It is considered to be the last novel in his "realist trilogy".[4]: 3 However, inDom Casmurro the author also uses features reminiscent ofromanticism (or "conventionalism", as some modern critics prefer).[4]: 79 Bentinho's relationship with Capitu, his jealousy and possible adultery are examples of this. Moreover, there is always a romantic streak, withResurrection, where he describes the "graceful bust" of the character Lívia, and in his realist phase, where there is a fixation on Capitu's dubious "gipsy's eyes, oblique and sly".[24]: 166 Capitu is able to drive the action, even though the dominance of the Romanesque plot has not diminished.[25]
| "The restrained, 'lean', sober style and the short chapters, arranged in harmonious blocks, blend perfectly into the plot's inverted, fragmented setting. Nothing escapes the narrator's reflection, not even his own account, which is also plagued by the demon of analysis, by the "underground man", who relativises any sentimental outpouring with irony and scepticism." |
| —Fernando Teixeira Andrade.[4]: 154 |
However, as in the previous novel, inDom Casmurro there is the same break with the realists who followedFlaubert, whose narrators disappeared behind narrative objectivity, and also with thenaturalists who, likeZola, narrated every detail of the plot; the author chooses to abstain from both methods to cultivate fragmentation and to create a narrator who intervenes in the narrative to communicate with the reader, commenting on his own novel with philosophy,intertextuality andmetalanguage.[9]: 81 An example of this is found in the one-paragraph chapter 133, in which the narrator writes "You must already understand. Now read another chapter".[2]: 221 As a lawyer, Bento also makes use ofrhetoric to present his version of the facts;[23]: 192 his narrative, in psychological time, follows the shifts of his memory in a less random way than inThe Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, but just as fragmentarily.[4]: 163 However, some themes are noticeable: his childhood in Matacavalos; Dona Glória's house and the Pádua family, relatives and households; his acquaintance with Capitu; the seminary; married life; the intensification and outbursts of jealousy; the separation, etc.[4]: 163
In fact, the book's style is very close to that ofassociative impressionism, with a break in thelinear narrative, so that the actions do not follow a logical orchronological thread, but are told as they emerge from Bento Santiago's memory and will.[9]: 84 José Guilherme Merquior noted that the style of the book "remains in line with the two previous novels, with short chapters, marked by appeals to the reader in a more or less humorous tone and by digressions between seriousness and humour".[26]: 7 Digressions are "intrusions" of elements that seem to deviate from the central theme of the book and which Machado uses as interpolations of episodes, memories or thoughts, often quoting other authors or works or commenting on chapters, sentences or the organisation of the whole book itself.[27]: 10–12
Out of all Machado's novelsDom Casmurro is probably the work with the mosttheological influence. There are references toSt James andSt Peter, mainly because the narrator Bentinho studied at aseminary. In addition, in chapter 17[2]: 34–35 the author alludes to apaganoracle from the myth ofAchilles and to Jewish beliefs.[17]: 232–233 At the end of the novel, he also uses the biblical precept of Jesus, son ofSirach, as anepigraph: "Be not jealous of thy wife lest she set herself to deceive thee with the malice that she learnt from thee".[2]: 240
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The theological influence is not limited to the facts, it is also found in the names of the characters: Ezequiel –biblical name; Bento Santiago – Bento (saint), Bentinho (diminutive for saint), Santo + Iago (mix of good and evil, from "saint" andIago, the evil character inShakespeare'sOthello); Capitu – suggests numerous derivations: fromcaput,capitis which in Latin means "head", in an allusion to intelligence or cleverness (phonetically, it's similar tocapeta (devil), an image of vivacity, or of the malice and treachery with which the jealous narrator infuses it); "Capitolina" is also reminiscent of the verb "capitulate" (to renounce), the resigned attitude of the wife who has been insulted by her husband, and who capitulates and renounces any reaction.[4]: 161
To evoke his memories, Bento quotesFaust, byJohann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), transcribing: "Ah there, are you come again, restless shades?".[2]: 8 Faust is the main character in the play who sells his soul to the demonMephistopheles so he can be givenimmortality, eternal youth and wealth.[4]: 163 The "restless shades" are, in this case, the memories of people and incidents from the past, dormant but still disturbing.[28]: 236 For American criticHelen Caldwell, this quote is the one that sets Bento's memory in motion: "closely followed by the allegory of the 'opera', with its colloquies in heaven between God and Satan, gives the impression that Santiago perhaps identified himself with Faust and felt he had sold his soul to the devil".[29]: 131 Critics note that the ancient and modern classics and the biblical quotations are never mere erudition in Machado; on the contrary, they enlighten the narratives and properly inscribe them in the great archetypes of universal literature.[4]: 163
This is also the case with Shakespeare'sOthello. Othello is the archetype of jealousy. Bento interacts with the play three times in addition to chapter 62, in chapter 72 and chapter 135: his first remark is on the relationship between Desdemona and her Moorish husband, while in the second mention he watches the play and says that, although he "had never seen or readOthello", he realised the similarity to his own relationship with Capitu when he arrived at the theatre.[4]: 165 Helen Caldwell strongly supported the thesis thatDom Casmurro was influenced byOthello not only in the theme of jealousy but also in the characters; for her, Bento is the "Iago of himself" and José Dias (who loved superlatives) a typical Shakespearean character who devotes his energies to counselling (likeHamlet'sPolonius, who gives advice to his son and exaggerates the facts when he talks to the king).[29]: 3–4
Other sources refer to the physical resemblance of the son (in this case, Ezequiel) as a result of the mother being "impregnated" with the features of a beloved man, without the latter having conceived him, a theme already used earlier byZola in hisMadeleine Férat (1868) and also inGoethe's earlierThe Elective Affinities (1809), where Eduard and Charlotte's son has the eyes of Ottilie, with whom Eduard is in love, and the features of the captain, loved by Charlotte;[22]: 181 Bento's pessimistic philosophy, where critics have noted the direct influence ofSchopenhauer, for whom "the pleasure of existence does not rest in living, but is only achieved in contemplating what has been lived" (hence Bento's aim to portray his past),[22]: 182 [11]: 148 and Pascal, as Bentinho's Christianity is analogous to theJesuit casuistry attacked by him and theJansenists.[30]: 160
Dom Casmurro, just asThePosthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, has its own style and "anti-literary" elements that would only be popularised bymodernism decades later – short chapters, a fragmentary, non-linear structure, a tendency towards the elliptical and allusive, ametalinguistic stance of the writer and of those who see themselves as writers, interferences in the narrative and the possibility of multiple readings and interpretations.[4]: 134
Oswald de Andrade, a leading figure in the important 1922Modern Art Week, whose literary style, similar toMário de Andrade's, was part of the experimental, metalinguistic and city-based tradition that was somewhat comparable to the work of Machado de Assis and hadDom Casmurro as one of his favourite books and saw the writer as a master of the Brazilian novel.[31] The book's most direct influence, however, is foreign;John Barth wroteThe Floating Opera (1956) which, inDavid Morrell's comparison, has similar traits to the plot ofDom Casmurro, such as the fact that the main characters in both books are lawyers, even consider suicide and compare life to an opera, and live in alove triangle.[32]: 127 In fact, all of Barth's early works were strongly influenced by Machado de Assis's book, especially his technique for writing the novel and the plot ofDom Casmurro.[33]Dom Casmurro is also linked toThe Devil to Pay in the Backlands (1956), in whichGuimarães Rosa takes up the "journey of memory" found in Machado's book.[34]: 82
Bentinho's challenge to attract and win Capitu over to achieve his goal of being interested in his girlfriend's gifts – an attitude identified as a "lordly and possessive model that dispenses with greater subtleties" – indirectly influencedGraciliano Ramos when he wrote one of his most famous modernist novels of the 20th century,São Bernardo [pt] (1934), portraying Paulo Honório's direct action in capturing Madalena.[34]: 11 Dom Casmurro also influenced, only this time explicitly,Dalton Trevisan's short story "Capitu Sou Eu", published in a book of short stories of the same name in 2003, in which a teacher and a rebellious student have a sordid affair and discuss the personality of the character.[35]
Modern critics also attribute toDom Casmurro ideas and concepts that would later be developed bySigmund Freud and hispsychoanalysis projects. Machado's book was published in the same year as Freud'sThe Interpretation of Dreams, and Dom Casmurro had already written sentences such as "I think that I learned the taste of her felicity in the milk with which she gave me suck",[2]: 143 an allusion to what Freud later called theoral phase inpsychoanalysis, in relation to the mouth–breast, in what some call a "Freudian premonition".[4]: 144 The boy Bentinho was introspective and his daydreams replaced part of reality: "Daydreams are like other dreams, they weave themselves on the pattern of our inclinations and memories"[2]: 55 wrote Dom Casmurro when he was older, in an anticipation of the Freudian concept of the unity of psychological life in dreams and waking life.[4]: 144
The subsequent adaptations ofDom Casmurro, in countless media and forms, also prove the dialogue and influence that the novel still has in many different areas, whether in cinema, theatre, popular and classical music, television, comics, literature itself, etc.
| "Dom Casmurro is a work open to so many interpretations, some of which have already been made and published, especially in the last fifty years, and many others which are undoubtedly yet to be made. I don't think any Brazilian novel has been reinterpreted in such a comprehensive way." |
| —David Haberly[6]: 43 |
In short, one could say that criticism ofDom Casmurro is relatively recent. It was endorsed by Machado's contemporaries and the criticism that followed his death tried to analyse the character Bento and his psychological situation.Dom Casmurro has also been analysed in studies ofsexuality and thehuman psyche, andexistentialism, so that in recent times Machado's work has been commonly attributed an open range of interpretations.[9]: 82
However, the first study that reinvigorated the role of the novel, written byHelen Caldwell in the 1960s, didn't make an impact in Brazil.[6]: 128 It was only recently, throughSilviano Santiago in 1969 and especially Roberto Schwarz in 1991, that Caldwell's book was discovered and opened up new possibilities for Machado's work.[6]: 128 This was also the decade when Machado de Assis received the most critical attention in France, and the novel received important commentary from French translators; Dom Casmurro's book was of interest mainly to literary journals of psychology andpsychiatry, which also recommended readingL'Aliéniste, "The Psychiatrist", to their readers.[36]: 129
Modern critics, strongly influenced by the history of interpretations of the novel, which will be discussed below, identify three successive readings ofDom Casmurro, namely:
The history of interpretations in the next section, focusing on criticism from the 1930s and 40s to the 1980s, shows the turn that has been taken in the different interpretations ofDom Casmurro, supported not only by Brazilian critics, but also, and considerably, by international ones.[14]: 228 The majority of interpretations of the novel are influenced by sociology,feminism andpsychoanalysis,[6]: 7 and most also refer to the theme of the narrator's jealousy, Dom Casmurro; some arguing that there was noadultery and others that the author left the question open to the reader.[29]: vi
Among the themes interpreted over the years by critics and essayists were Capitu's possibleadultery, a socio-psychological analysis of the characters and the character of the narrator-character. Critics in the 1930s and 40s wrote that Bento Santiago suffered fromdysthymia and linked his quiet and solitary personality to the author himself, who supposedly suffered fromepilepsy.[37]: 386–387, 390 His friend Escobar is said to suffer fromobsessive-compulsive disorder andmotor tics, with possible control over them.[37]: 390 These considerations played some of apsychologism role regardingDom Casmurro and Machado de Assis. Modern critics see this interpretation as the fruit of the psychologism of the time, which exaggerated his sufferings and gave no importance to his career rise (as a journalist andpublic employee).[9]: 76 Psychiatrists such as José Leme Lopes noted Bentinho's developmental inhibitions and his "delay in affective development andneurosis".[4]: 145 The Bentinho that Dom Casmurro evokes would have "latesexuality" and "a predominance offantasy over reality, withanguish".[4]: 146
According to the psychiatric interpretation, this is one of the reasons for his insane jealousy.[23]: 190 Psychoanalytic critics believe that Bento was "born without the power to have his own desires".[23]: 190 The character was born to "take the place of a stillborn brother", to which psychoanalystArminda Aberastury writes that "he always drew attention to the difficulties that children who are predestined, who come in place of another, will have in their psychological development".[38]: 130 Dom Casmurro was a boy who obeyed his mother's every wish: he entered the seminary, became a priest, and so some see him as an insecure and spoiled man.[23]: 190 Bentinho is seen as a typical 19th century Brazilian man from Rio's high society, with no historical perspective (hence his desire to writeHistory of the Surburbs but then choosing to first recount the memories of his youth),pessimistic and elusive.[5]: 7 Others, such asMillôr Fernandes, also believe that Bentinho had a tendency towards homosexuality and that he was somewhat fond of Escobar.[39]
Over the years,Dom Casmurro has been perceived from two main points of view: one, the oldest, of trusting the words written by Bento Santiago, without further questioning (José Veríssimo, Lúcia Miguel Pereira,Afrânio Coutinho,Érico Veríssimo and especiallyMachado's contemporaries are part of this group);[40]: 76–81 and the other, latest, that Machado de Assis leaves it up to the reader to come to their own conclusions about the characters and the plot, which is one of the most frequent characteristics of his literature.[5]: 7 Advocates of this approach often shy away from the issues of the novel and seeDom Casmurro as an open-ended work.[41]
| "The conclusion to which Santiago gradually leads the reader is that the deceit perpetraded against him by his dearly loved wife and dearly loved friend wrought upon him and changed him from the kind, loving, ingenuous Bento into the hard, cruel and cynical Dom Casmurro." |
| —Helen Caldwell,[29]: 10 one of the key authors in changing the common interpretation and judging the narrator instead of Capitu. |
The interpretative criticism negatively directed at the narrator and Capitu's salvation, arguing that she didn't betray him, has only recently been made, since thefeminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s and above all by the American essayistHelen Caldwell. InThe Brazilian Othello of Machado de Assis (1960), she argues that the character Capitu did not betray Bentinho, thus changing the prevailing perception of the novel,[11]: 7 and that she is the victim of a cynical Dom Casmurro who actually misleads the reader with words that are not true.[42]: 30–31 Caldwell's main evidence is the author's clear and frequentintertextuality with Shakespeare'sOthello, whose protagonist kills his wife mistakenly thinking that she has betrayed him. The author writes her thesis from the main perspective that Machado's narrator is autonomous enough to give his own unique version of the facts.[42]: 30–31 For the critic, Bentinho doesn't do it on purpose, but out of madness, since he is, in her words, the "Iago of himself".[29]: 3–4 Caldwell also revalidated the role of Capitu, who was supposed to be prettier and have better dreams than her husband.[29]: 94 Other foreign critics, such as John Gledson, from the 1980s onwards hypothesised social interests related to the organisation and crisis of thepatriarchal order during theSecond Reign. For Dona Glória's carrion, mouldy and repressed universe, with its widowers, servants and slaves, the energy and freedom of opinion of the modern, poor girl, daring and irreverent, lucid and active, would become intolerable.[4]: 130 One of the evidences of Gledson's argument can be found in chapter 3, which he considers to be the "foundation of the novel", in José Dias' motivation when talking about Capitu's family and reminding Mrs Glória of the promise she made to put Bentinho in the seminary, in other words, treating the "Pádua people" as inferior and their daughter as a dissimulated and poor girl who could corrupt the boy.[11]: 26, 165
Thus, the jealousy of Bentinho, a rich boy from a decaying family, of the typical bachelor of the Second Reign, would condense a broad social problem behind this "new Othello who slanders and destroys his beloved".[4]: 130 This sociological interpretation is still preserved today, as we read in the words of the Portuguese essayistHélder Macedo who made a statement regarding the theme of jealousy:
From this perspective, the narrator, astereotypical tool used by the author to criticise a certain social class of his time,[4]: 130 is able to use theprejudices of Brazilians to induce them in his argument against Capitu.[43]: 66 These prejudices include the physical resemblance and mannerisms that a son inherits from his real father, a prejudice that would be common to Brazilian culture, and which Bento uses when talking about how Ezequiel was like Escobar.[43]: 66
Aware of the discomfort that the critical debate on the theme of jealousy has caused since then, authors such asJosé Aderaldo Castello [pt] have claimed thatDom Casmurro is not a novel about jealousy, but about doubt: "it is par excellence the novel that expresses the atrocious and insoluble conflict between subjective truth and insinuations of high infiltration power, generated by coincidences, appearances and misunderstandings, immediately or belatedly fuelled by intuitions".[44] The previously mentioned hypotheses that Bento Santiago was really telling the truth and that Capitu had cheated on him and that Machado wanted to leave the truth up to the reader are not disregarded.
The writerLygia Fagundes Telles, who studied the novel to write the screenplay for the filmCapitu (1968), said in a recent interview that she was the reader who judged Capitu and then Bentinho: "I don't know anymore. My last version is this one, I don't know. I think I've finally stopped judging. In the beginning she was a saint, in the second she was a monster. Now, in my old age, I don't know. I thinkDom Casmurro is more important thanMadame Bovary. InDom Casmurro there is doubt, whereas Bovary has it written on her forehead that she's an adulteress".[45]
| "Dom Casmurro came out in 1900. Machado died in 1908. No critic in those eight years ever dared to deny Capitu's adultery." |
| —Otto Lara Resende[46] |
At the time of its publication,Dom Casmurro was praised by the author's close friends.Medeiros e Albuquerque, for example, said it was "ourOthello".[47]: 29 His friendGraça Aranha commented on Capitu: "While married, she had her husband's closest friend for a lover".[48]: 254 The first critics seem to have believed the narrator's words, comparing the book toEça de Queiroz'sCousin Bazilio (1878) andFlaubert'sMadame Bovary, novels about adultery.[49]
José Veríssimo wrote that "Dom Casmurro is about an undoubtedly intelligent man, but a simple one, who from an early age let himself be deceived by the girl he had loved as a child, who had bewitched him with her calculated cheekiness, with her deep innate science of dissimulation, to whom he had given himself with all the fervour compatible with his quiet temperament".[50]: 286 Veríssimo also drew an analogy betweenDom Casmurro and the narrator ofThePosthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas: "Dom Casmurro is the twin brother, albeit with great differences in features if not in character, of Brás Cubas".[51]
Silvio Romero had not accepted Machado's break with narrative linearity and the nature of the traditional plot for some time, and he belittled his prose.[3] As we know, however, Livraria Garnier published Machado's volumes both in Brazil and in Paris, and with the new book, international critics were already questioning whether Eça de Queiroz was still the best Portuguese language novelist.[3]Artur de Azevedo praised the work twice, in one of which he wrote: "Dom Casmurro is one of those books that is impossible to summarise, because it is in the inner life of Bento Santiago that all its charm, all its strength lies",[52]: 152 and concluded that "What is everything, however, in this dark and sad book, where there are pages written with tears and blood, is the fine psychology of the two main characters and the noble and superb style of the narrative".[52]: 152
Machado de Assis sent letters to his friends expressing his satisfaction with the comments published about his book.[53]: 237 Dom Casmurro has received countless other criticisms and interpretations over the years; it is now considered one of the greatest contributions to theimpressionist novel and is considered by some to be one of the greatest exponents ofBrazilian realism.[5]: 7
Published by Livraria Garnier in 1900, although the imprint on the title page shows the previous year,Dom Casmurro was written to be published directly as a book, unlikeThe Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (1881) andQuincas Borba (1891), which were published as pamphlets prior to publication in book format.Quincas Borba appeared in chapters in the magazineA Estação from 1886 to 1891 before finally being published in 1892, andThe Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas was inRevista Brasileira from March to December 1880 until it was published by Tipografia Nacional in 1881.[54][55]: 56
Garnier, which published Machado's works both in Brazil and in Paris (under the name Hippolyte Garnier), received a letter in French from the author on 19 December 1899, complaining about the delay in publication: "We expectDom Casmurro on the date you announced. I ask you, with all our interests, that the first batch of copies be large enough, because it could run out quickly, and the delay of the second batch will affect sales", to which the publisher replied on 12 January 1900: "Dom Casmurro did not leave this week, it is a delay of one month due to causes beyond our control [...]".[56]: 104
The first edition was limited, but the novel was kept in stock to be reprinted as soon as the initial 2,000 copies were sold out.[56]: 105
Since its first publication in Portuguese, the novel has been translated into many other languages. Below are some of the most significant translations:
| Year | Language | Title | Translator(s) | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1930 19541958 | Italian | Dom Casmurro | Giuseppe Alpi Liliana BorlaLaura Marchiori | Rome: Instituto Cristoforo Colonbo Milan: Fratelli BoccaMilan: Rizzoli |
| 1936 19562002 | French | Dom Casmurro Dom CasmurroDom Casmurro et les Yeux de ressac | Francis de Miomandre Francis de MiomandreAnne-Marie Quint | Paris: Institut international de Coopération intellectuelle Paris: MétailiéParis: Albin Michel |
| 1943 19541995 | Spanish | Don Casmurro Don CasmurroDon Casmurro | Luís M. Baudizzone e Newton Freitas J.Natalicio GonzalezRamón de Garciasol | Buenos Aires: Editorial Nova Buenos Aires: W.M.JacksonBuenos Aires: Espasa-Calpe |
| 1951 19802005 | German | Dom Casmurro | E. G. Meyenburg Harry KaufmannHarry Kaufmann | Zurich: Manesse Verlag |
| 1953 195319921997 | English | Dom Casmurro | Helen Caldwell Helen CaldwellScott BuccleuchJohn Gledson | London: W.H.Allen New York City: The Nooday PressEngland: Penguin ClassicsNew York City/Oxford: Oxford University Press |
| 1954 | Swedish | Dom Casmurro | Göran Heden | Stockholm: Sven-Erik berghs Bokförlag |
| 1959 | Polish | Dom Casmurro | Janina Wrzoskowa | Warsaw: Panstwowy Wydawnicz |
| 1960 | Czech | Don Morous | Eugen Spálený | Prague: SNKLHU |
| 1961 | Russian | Дон Касмурро | Т. Ивановой | Moscow: Рыбинский Дом печати (new edition 2015) |
| 1965 | Romanian | Dom Casmurro | Paul Teodorescu | Bucharest: Univers |
| 1965 | Serbo-Croatian | Dom Casmurro | Ante Gettineo | Zagreb: Zora |
| 1973 | Estonian | Dom Casmurro | Aita Kurfeldt | Tallinn: Eesti Raamat |
| 1985 1984 | Portuguese | Dom Casmurro | – | Lisbon: Inquérito Porto: Lello & Irmão |
| 1985 | Dutch | Dom Casmurro | August Willemsen | Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers |
| 1998 | Catalan | El Senyor Casmurro | Xavier Pàmies | Barcelona: Quaderns Crema |
The twofilm adaptations of the novel are different. The first,Capitu (1968), directed byPaulo César Saraceni, with a screenplay by Paulo Emílio Sales Gomes andLygia Fagundes Telles, and performances by Isabella,Othon Bastos andRaul Cortez, is a faithful reading of the book,[5]: 13 while the latest,Dom (2003), directed byMoacyr Góes, withMarcos Palmeira andMaria Fernanda Cândido, shows a contemporary approach to jealousy in relationships.[5]: 13
The novel also received relevant theatre adaptations, such as the playCapitu (1999), directed by Marcus Vinícius Faustini, awarded and praised by theBrazilian Academy of Letters,[5]: 13 andCriador e Criatura: o Encontro de Machado e Capitu (2002), a free adaptation byFlávio Aguiar andAriclê Perez, directed byBibi Ferreira.[5]: 13 Before these two productions,Dom Casmurro was adapted into an opera, with alibretto by Orlando Codá and music byRonaldo Miranda, which premiered at theTheatro Municipal de São Paulo in 1992.[57]
Luiz Tatit composed "Capitu", a song performed by singerNá Ozzetti.[58]: 176 ComposerRonaldo Miranda wrote an opera with a libretto by Orlando Codá, which premiered in May 1992 at theTheatro Municipal de São Paulo.[59]
In 1998, Fernando Sabino published the novelAmor de Capitu. In this version, the narrative was rewritten inthird person.[60]
In 2008, to celebrate 100 years since the death of Machado de Assis,Rede Globo produced amicro-series calledCapitu, directed byLuiz Fernando Carvalho, written by Euclydes Marinho, starringEliane Giardini,Maria Fernanda Cândido and Michel Melamed; combining period elements such ascostumes with modern elements ranging from the soundtrack, with songs by the bandBeirut, to scenes in whichMP3s were shown.[61]
A comic book adaptation was made in 2012 byMario Cau and Felipe Greco. This comic won the 2013Prêmio Jabuti (the most traditional Brazilian literary award) in "best illustration" and "best school related book" categories, and the HQ Mix Trophy in 2014 (in the "Comic book adaptation" category).[62][63][64]
Other comic book adaptations ofDom Casmurro have also been published by Ática (authors: Ivan Jaf and Rodrigo Rosa) and Nemo (authors: Wellington Srbek and José Aguiar).[65]
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