Sibyl
Madam was explaining non-conjunctive compound sentences. She used the text from the story
for examples. I realised this as soon as I read the first sentence, which demonstrated the use of
colons to connect complements. The courtiers examined each of the three dolls: they saw no
difference between them.Golden walls grew in my mind: illuminated but darkening behind the
backs of the human figures. Of course, I understood that the courtiers need not be three. But I saw the exact trinity typical of fairy tales. The courtiers were of varying heights, with rococo wigs held on their heads in oblong figures. Each was dressed in a tailcoat of a different colour.
The dolls are the image of a riddle in a fairy tale and they were to arrive with a raging element, a
rage. I couldn't imagine anything less than a Sibyl. Towering above them: the hem of her robe spilled a lake at her feet. She arrived at the palace and brought these dolls just as she had brought
her books to Rome. The ridiculous figures surrounded her, and she regarded their ignorance with unflappable condescension.
The Sibylline dolls were carved from bone. The heads were smooth crooked, curved ovals. Their eyes were painted with Anatolian paint: a pack of discs. Rattling legs and arms. The busts;
hilts are masterfully blunted. Hecate's rejected. Even then I felt a tapping anxiety behind me, but
shoved it away. I had to find out how they would treat her.
I couldn't help but ask Madam to tell me the tale. But instead of trustingly and briefly handing
me the name, she ceremoniously and indifferently murmured it all. It was only the moment she
lowered her eyes to the text to begin reading that I suddenly felt fear. The golden walls were
ready to collapse. Sibyl, frantic, raised her hands above her head in an attempt to protect herself from the collapsing vault. She foresaw, and I was too late to heed her.
An oasis spilled over in place of dust and ash. Shady palm trees dotted around it in a slender
mess. A blooming oleander buzzed. The dolls were presented by a man tightly wrapped in
batiste. His stomach bulged heavily, a beard spread across his face. He did not bow in reverence,
but sent a string of swarthy mewls with the gift. The stout sultan received them, sending courtiers
to greet the donors; he sent them to bring him a heroic young man who would stick stalks in their
ears. The dolls were also men. They turned out to be golden figurines. Such that one would look
at them and feel as if they had piled quartz in their mouths. In the heat, by the oasis, in the
canopy of shady palms, by the buzzing oleanders - men and red batiste.
Amphisbaenia: A lyrical essay-review of Charlotte Brontë's novel The Villette.
I love the way Charlotte Brontë made the chaste secular and the sexual Sisyphean.
Lucy Snow, not cold but white and pure as snow, says exactly what she wants to say. In doing so, she is almost explicit about her love for John Bretton. John, even before Lucy recognises an old acquaintance in him, will begin to instil warm feelings in her. His character under the sun of her observation blossoms in the palms of her hands. But the real feeling of love comes to her when the images of Dr John and Graham Bretton join before her eyes and she finds an old new friend. This secular dragon she respects and approves of - most of his actions evoke a tacit sense of favour in her. She is almost explicit about her love for John to the reader, further emphasising John Bretton's secularism. Her love for Dr John shone through in a pink dress and was hidden by a black cape because Lucy Snow could never make herself look like the young Ginevra and Pauline did.
Her Prometheus was not pretty. She is sanctimoniously silent about her fierce attraction to him. Of Sisyphus, who has taken on a debt to his dead bride, her family and his cousin: his strength is thrown into service and his energy is wasted in the pulpit. The eloquent Jesuit! He hurls vulgar pretentious insults - as flowery as the vault of the Catholic Church. She glares at him furtively at the rod. She swings and he swords like Typhon. She is tempestuous, she rebels: 'Oui, j'ai la flamme a l'âme, et je dois l'avoir! Is he humbled? But he is not humble. Can he accept ascesis in humility? Servant but not meek, always murmuring, he leaves in struggle. Ruth, driven to the raging sea by duty.
After all, Lucy Snow is not a sunken barque at all, but a rusty ship left on the sepia-coloured sand. The beached boat is unable to set sail and make use of her God-given gifts. She is forced to stand painfully idle in her prison. And when the coveted wave catches up with her, it washes her body away, shattering her rusted parts to pieces.
Lucy Snow seems to be a widow, greedily weaning herself off the pleasures of others. Only if Arachne, punished by the second head of her own body. A lonely life cultivates in her an observation that keeps her moving in the direction of the story. She is perceptive, and the feelings of other characters find shelter, if not in her heart, then in her thoughts. Lucy Snow's cold detachment towards little Pauline is her prudent response to her acute affection for Graham Bretton. She dislikes Pauline, remaining visibly indifferess. Polly says goodbye to Graham and then leaves, and behind her, not expecting her departure, Lucy disappears forever from the Bretton house.
The image of the virgin as a guide between the Christian and pagan worlds in the short story "The judgement of the sea"
Gertrude von Lefort is a writer and a major theological scholar. Her work is defined by an eternal struggle between the human and the divine. This struggle is expressed in the desire or resistance of her characters to self-transcendence. The self-transcendence of the characters is always a transformation. The heroes of Lefort's short stories are allegorical: they are images performing metamorphoses. Their metamorphoses are the second fable of the work, completely defining the conflict. The conflicts of Gertrude von Lefort's characters lie in their relationship with God: in harmony and disharmony with the Creator, in the juxtaposition and opposition of the two eternal worlds.
The novel Judgment of the Sea, written in 1947, tells the story of the captive Breton woman Anne de Vitré. The Gentile, captured by the British, suffers a tragedy and finds solace in union with the Sea-God: she loses her home and her purpose in life in the rescue of a young, almost childlike, Breton duc. But the Duke is killed by the King and his son, in the name of divine vengeance, suffers a painful sleeplessness. He can only be saved by a Breton lullaby, which, if sung to the end, will kill him. By killing the prince, Anne would exact her revenge on Britain's royal family with her own hands, spilling one child's blood in return for another. But instead of avenging the child at the behest of the
pagan God of the sea, she saves him with her unsung lullaby, obeying the will of another God - not just a righteous God, but a merciful one. She dies at sea at the hands of her cowardly compatriot and as she diesshe hears her mother's lullaby. she hears her mother's lullaby.
The maiden, the bringer of death, sings to all those perished at sea the song of their mother, overheard at their cradle. Having sung the lullaby, Anna should have killed the infant prince. But instead she breaks off her song to save him. She takes him in her arms, as she was once foretold as a child "one day you understand in your arms the child to whom you you yourself give life".
Thus we see Anna's connection with the image of the Virgin bearing death and the Virgin Mary. The former is opposed to the latter, opposes her and denies her whole essence. The first - pagan - identifies Death herself, the second - Christian - the gift of life. By giving the prince life, rather than taking it away from him, Anna goes towards the Christian merciful God, not recognising the sea of justice in righteousness.
So, like most of Lefort's work, this novella centres around man's inner struggle against conscience on the road to religion. Throughout the novella we observe three levels of justice: human (secular), and Christian. The first, blind human pagan judgement is carried out by the hands of the murderous king who put the young Brettonian duke to death. The second, pagan, is carried out by the sea, avenging the blood spilt by the sleepless infant prince. The third, divine, is committed by Anne de Vitré, who gives life to the prince.
