Those Words
Those Eyes

Arguably the most celebrated Brazilian novel, as well as the most intriguing female character of the nation's literature, are celebrating their 100th anniversary. She is Capitu, the wife and object of desire and suspicion of Dom Casmurro, the male character who gives name to the Machado de Assis's book. Brazil is also celebrating the 160^th anniversary of the writer's birth. Machado de Assis, considered Brazil's greatest writer ever, was born on June 21, 1839.

Dom Casmurro was published in 1899 by H. Garnier, Livreiro-Editor and printed in Paris as all other books from that publishing house at the time. Only in the following year, however, did the book appear in Brazil. Few people were impressed by it and it would take many years before the critics and the public would go back to its pages and find there what today almost every critic considers to be Assis's masterpiece.

The book opens reporting facts that happened in an afternoon of 1857 when Capitu was 14 and Bentinho (Dom Casmurro), 15. The narrator is Bentinho (Bento Santiago) who tells the story late in life. He is a seminarian, who against the wishes of his mother who had vowed to make him a priest, abandons a religious career to become a lawyer and marry his childhood sweetheart, Capitu (Capitolina Pádua). For many years it seems like an uneventful tale and similar to many other families who are happy or seem to be. Capitu and Bentinho have a boy, Ezequiel, and the three of them lead a petit-bourgeois and peaceful life with family and friends.

One day, Escobar, a family friend, drowns and Dom Casmurro notices a tear for the dead man in Capitu's eyes. From that day on, suspicion and jealousy start corroding his soul and little by little he puts together—always without proof—a puzzle that shows him how Capitu has betrayed him with his best friend. All of this is aggravated by the fact that there is some physical similarity between Escobar and Bentinho's son.

A tortured life leads to the separation of the couple while suspicions of having been betrayed make Dom Casmurro obsessed and taciturn. Capitu never has a chance to expose her own viewpoint in the book. This ambiguity that permeates the book seems to be one of the biggest attractions of the story even to today.

Capitu has been portrayed as a woman with "a gypsy's eyes, oblique and sly". In one of the most memorable lines of the novel, the author ponders in length about the eyes of the protagonist: "Lovers' language, give me an exact and poetic comparison to say what those eyes of Capitu were like. No image comes to mind that doesn't offend against the rules of good style, to say what they were and what they did to me. Undertow eyes? Why not? Undertow. That's the notion that the new expression put in my head. They held some kind of mysterious, active fluid, a force that dragged one in, like the undertow of a wave retreating from the shore on stormy days. So as not to be dragged in, I held on to anything around them, her ears, her arms, her hair, spread about her shoulders; but as soon as I returned to the pupils of her eyes again, the wave emerging from them grew towards me, deep and dark, threatening to envelop me, draw me in and swallow me up."

Dom Casmurro graduated from law school in Europe and the narrative seems like a long accusatory piece by a prosecutor asking for the condemnation of a voiceless and lawyerless defendant.

Has Capitu betrayed Bentinho or not? This burning question has tormented generation upon generation of critics and readers. Books have been written about the subject, seminaries and conferences have discussed it, but no one believes that an answer will ever be found . According to one of the top experts in Machado de Assis, Brazilian writer Antônio Carlos Villaça, the novelist "took this secret to his tomb." In his 1967 book O Enigma de Capitu (Capitu's Enigma), Eugênio Gomes concluded he couldn't reach a verdict.

Some scholars believe that Dom Casmurro is a veiled self-portrait of the author himself who is believed to have fallen in love with Georgina, the wife of his good friend and renowned writer José de Alencar. The publication in 1897 by Sílvio Romero of Machado de Assis, a very critical book, would have encouraged the author to write what he thought was his most intense and vivid story that he kept under wraps until then. The death of Alencar in 1877 had profoundly shaken Assis.

The ABL (Academia Brasileira de Letras—Brazilian Academy of Letters), which was created and first presided over by Machado de Assis, has planned a series of conferences and debates to celebrate the Dom Casmurro's centennial. The so-called Ciclo Machado de Assis (Machado de Assis Cycle) will have several of the 40 Academy members addressing different topics on the author.

On April 21, there will also be a ceremony when the remains of Assis and his wife Carolina will be transferred to the ABL mausoleum at the São João Batista cemetery in Rio. Arnaldo Niskier, ABL's president, emphasized that the Academy is intent on celebrating the life and work of its founder. Said Niskier, "We are absolutely committed to these celebrations to the greatest Brazilian writer ever."

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