A presença do mar em Dom Casmurro: fligranas machadianas

This article is a critical study of water symbolism and more specifically the presence of the sea in Dom Casmurro (1899), a novel written by Machado de Assis during his mature phase. Time, memory, and change flow in the confrontation between the jealous Bento Santiago, a man of the land and of eroding power, and the personal merit of women with the astute intelligence of Capitu or with the pragmatism of an emerging merchant class to which Escobar belongs. The latter drowns in a stormy sea that engulfs once and for all Bento Santiago’s marriage to Capitolina. Machado’s filigrees form a kind of narrative palimpsest, with traces of readings that must be put together to fully construct the meaning system that nature provides, beginning with the psychological and social incorporation of the characters. Capitu’s “undertow eyes”, an obsessive image of the waves and the sea in Dom Casmurro, are the product of work patiently developed over many years and in many other texts by the author from Rio de Janeiro.