Friday 20 May 2016

Prose Packed With Meaning

As Dahut runs naked into Ys (see here), several things happen, each packed with meaning and significance.

(i) Dahut hears her father cry out and weep. Surely she should now feel compassion for him?

(ii) She also weeps - but only because her deceit has failed.

(iii) The clouds swallow the moon. The Goddess withdrawing?

(iv) Dahut can creep back into the city - and is now launched on a course of secretive plotting and manipulation.

(v) That wind that I mentioned whips her with cold.

(vi) Dead leaves rattle underfoot. The reference to death prefigures the death of Ys and the rattling gives us a third sense along her route, after the moonlight and the cold.

(vii) An eagle owl passes and vanishes with the moon. We know that this is a Sending. Queen Forsquilis spies clairvoyantly.

I have summarized just three short paragraphs.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I'll respond to your points one by one, if only briefly.

(i) No, Dahut had no compassion or remorse for the pain and grief she caused her father.

(ii) I agree.

(iii) Or perhaps it was Belisama showing her displeasure at Gratillonious' defiance of her and the other Ysan gods.

(iv) I agree.

(v) Yet another example of the Andersons use of the pathetic fallacy.

(vi) I agree.

(vii) And Queen Forsquilis was loyal to Gratillonius and did all she could to support him. And to thwart Dahut's intrigues?

Sean