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Moonwise: HC 18-20, PB 11-13
Oct. 28th, 2012 02:20 am"One page was all a maze of umber sketches--hands, leaves, stones, strange leering faces--all in Sylvie's nervous line, at its heart, no right way in: a weird luminous painting. Night: an endless branching passage, wood carved with moongrey faces, woods turning hall, with queer worm-eaten faces in the bark. A child walked, her hand outstretched on nothing, far beyond, her clew of cobweb glinted in the moonlight."
Here we have mazes, woods, and spiderweb... but it's Sylvie's drawing, not Ariane's.
"'Are you doing the Curdie books?'" This is a reference to The Princess and Curdie and probably also to The Princess and the Goblin.
"Nan's great ebony and silver teapot, black but comely...." Song of Solomon 1:5-6.
Ariane joking about what else might be in the teapot. "Valentines," said Ariane. "Soldiers' buttons. Small change in faery gold. The odd ring of power." Faery gold turns to dried leaves or something else worthless at midnight. And a LOTR reference, though it would surprise me if this ring wasn't in the count of Rings at the beginning of the book.
"There, no bigger than a hazelnut, O there, green-blue, unearthly, sailed the Ship, its mast a tree, great--rooted, and its leaves far-drifting stars. It sailed in the winter sky, a constellation in Cloud, of the Nine Worlds: one of theirs."
This is probably a reference to a verse of The Lass of Loch Royal (mentioned in the previous entry):
I'm also seeing a little echo of Tolkien reading MacBeth, "Tolkien the boy thought it was a total cheat that the witches' prophecy about Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane was fulfilled by boring old men carrying branches: "I wanted to devise a setting by which the trees might really march to war." " Quoted from Dave Langford.
"A dry red leaf, like an old mitten." Just a nice phrase. Any ideas about what sort of tree it might be from?
"...the cat came and crouched on the book. Stone, said his gaze, I am stone. A cromlech. One of Maire's Long Meg's, she remembered: Timour the Tartar." And it turned out that Tim[o]ur the Tartar is Tamerlane, and also a fiddle tune-- playing at speed starts at 1:30. You have no idea how grateful I am for google.
Sylvie looks at Ariane, who's happily eating bread with jam: "There's Ariane gone full moon, she thought, looking shrewdly at her face: all crazy and bright, but she never stays. She sickles. Eats herself up."
This is the moon symbolism again, but now it's in the mind of a character. And it's a reference to Ariane cycling in and out of depression-- her moods shift very quickly. I wonder if this will lead me to a non-theraputic way of thinking about Ariane's emotions.
"...her long-remembered Arden. She'd arrived, as always, somewhere else, (On a boardwalk in Bohemia?)" As You Like It is set in Arden, A Winter's Tale is set partly in Bohemia. Would someone who knows Shakespeare care to help out with what the references might mean?
"It was always farther in." "Farther in" is a phrase which has been used a number of times, and I keep hearing it as an echo of "farther up and farther in" from Lewis' The Last Battle.
Sylvie thinks about Ariane: "Air comes and goes. Watching and wanting. Not the moon, exactly--ghostly." Well, here's another angle on the symbolism-- Ariane isn't just the moon, apparently.
And I made a mistake in an earlier post-- Sylvie is the artist, Ariane is the writer.
"Deea. You kept that?" 'Deea' has appeared at least once before. I assume it's dialect.
A photograph: "Sylvie, slouching barefoot in the cold early spring, farouche and flighted, with her elsewhere gaze; Ariance, scowling in a cloud of hair--quadrocento severity--in a draggled flouncing skirt, and rose-wreathed broad straw hat. The Silly Sisters. The sisters Grimm."
Farouche: Fierce, wild. Also, of withdrawn and shy temperament coupled with a cranky and even sullen fey charm.
French, from Old French faroche, alteration of forasche, from Late Latin forsticus, belonging outside, from Latin fors, out of doors, from the free dictionary.
Quattrocento: the cultural and artistic creations of 15th century Italy. Quattrocentro images don't strike me as especially severe-- perhaps Gilman had a particular artist or painting in mind.
Ariane: "There. See, it's really me, I didn't fall at Waterloo. Or Flodden. Take your pick." I don't know what this is a reference to-- perhaps legends about ghosts coming back from battles, but I'm guessing.
"On her hand lay a silver ring, bent and blackened; she had found it writhen in an oak root. Its stone was elsewhere, was the star of the Nine worlds." I believe this is a plot point.
Here we have mazes, woods, and spiderweb... but it's Sylvie's drawing, not Ariane's.
"'Are you doing the Curdie books?'" This is a reference to The Princess and Curdie and probably also to The Princess and the Goblin.
"Nan's great ebony and silver teapot, black but comely...." Song of Solomon 1:5-6.
Ariane joking about what else might be in the teapot. "Valentines," said Ariane. "Soldiers' buttons. Small change in faery gold. The odd ring of power." Faery gold turns to dried leaves or something else worthless at midnight. And a LOTR reference, though it would surprise me if this ring wasn't in the count of Rings at the beginning of the book.
"There, no bigger than a hazelnut, O there, green-blue, unearthly, sailed the Ship, its mast a tree, great--rooted, and its leaves far-drifting stars. It sailed in the winter sky, a constellation in Cloud, of the Nine Worlds: one of theirs."
This is probably a reference to a verse of The Lass of Loch Royal (mentioned in the previous entry):
But I'll take down that mast of goldThere's a shift of tone, though-- in the song the mast of tree (probably mere wood) is acknowledgement of lower status or perhaps a bit of passive aggression, but it's not something wonderful.
and set up a mast of tree
For it does not suit a forsaken maid to sail so royally
I'm also seeing a little echo of Tolkien reading MacBeth, "Tolkien the boy thought it was a total cheat that the witches' prophecy about Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane was fulfilled by boring old men carrying branches: "I wanted to devise a setting by which the trees might really march to war." " Quoted from Dave Langford.
"A dry red leaf, like an old mitten." Just a nice phrase. Any ideas about what sort of tree it might be from?
"...the cat came and crouched on the book. Stone, said his gaze, I am stone. A cromlech. One of Maire's Long Meg's, she remembered: Timour the Tartar." And it turned out that Tim[o]ur the Tartar is Tamerlane, and also a fiddle tune-- playing at speed starts at 1:30. You have no idea how grateful I am for google.
Sylvie looks at Ariane, who's happily eating bread with jam: "There's Ariane gone full moon, she thought, looking shrewdly at her face: all crazy and bright, but she never stays. She sickles. Eats herself up."
This is the moon symbolism again, but now it's in the mind of a character. And it's a reference to Ariane cycling in and out of depression-- her moods shift very quickly. I wonder if this will lead me to a non-theraputic way of thinking about Ariane's emotions.
"...her long-remembered Arden. She'd arrived, as always, somewhere else, (On a boardwalk in Bohemia?)" As You Like It is set in Arden, A Winter's Tale is set partly in Bohemia. Would someone who knows Shakespeare care to help out with what the references might mean?
"It was always farther in." "Farther in" is a phrase which has been used a number of times, and I keep hearing it as an echo of "farther up and farther in" from Lewis' The Last Battle.
Sylvie thinks about Ariane: "Air comes and goes. Watching and wanting. Not the moon, exactly--ghostly." Well, here's another angle on the symbolism-- Ariane isn't just the moon, apparently.
And I made a mistake in an earlier post-- Sylvie is the artist, Ariane is the writer.
"Deea. You kept that?" 'Deea' has appeared at least once before. I assume it's dialect.
A photograph: "Sylvie, slouching barefoot in the cold early spring, farouche and flighted, with her elsewhere gaze; Ariance, scowling in a cloud of hair--quadrocento severity--in a draggled flouncing skirt, and rose-wreathed broad straw hat. The Silly Sisters. The sisters Grimm."
Farouche: Fierce, wild. Also, of withdrawn and shy temperament coupled with a cranky and even sullen fey charm.
French, from Old French faroche, alteration of forasche, from Late Latin forsticus, belonging outside, from Latin fors, out of doors, from the free dictionary.
Quattrocento: the cultural and artistic creations of 15th century Italy. Quattrocentro images don't strike me as especially severe-- perhaps Gilman had a particular artist or painting in mind.
Ariane: "There. See, it's really me, I didn't fall at Waterloo. Or Flodden. Take your pick." I don't know what this is a reference to-- perhaps legends about ghosts coming back from battles, but I'm guessing.
"On her hand lay a silver ring, bent and blackened; she had found it writhen in an oak root. Its stone was elsewhere, was the star of the Nine worlds." I believe this is a plot point.
