Fire and Hemlock
Nov. 12th, 2007 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksSo I was rereading Diana Wynne Jones' Fire and Hemlock, which I have done about once a year since I was maybe eleven, and I was thinking about the ending.
Which is a famously obscure ending, in the sense that I have spoken with several people who aren't clear on what actually happens, and if what, then not why. And I have always had a clear sense-- well, not of being *certain* about the ending, not enough to theorize about it or explain it to anybody, but that it had an emotional logic to it that was sufficiently compelling to me that I rested satisfied on that.
Only, this last read-through I'd been noticing that the emotional logic felt strangely familiar, and not in the I-have-read-this-book-a-zillion-times way, but in the I-have-been-spending-a-great-deal-of-time-thinking-about-something-identical-to-this-which-wasn't-this way (which is of course a much rarer sensation), and I had that metaphorical sense of having a word on the tip of my tongue, what was it, I had it a moment ago, any second now...
And then it clicked, and now I feel confident in saying not only that the ending of Fire and Hemlock makes perfect sense, but that I can explain it; and I have independent corroboration, for I found an excerpt from an article Jones wrote which confirmed my reading, and here is the relevant sentence: "Starting with what I felt about heroes and the heroic, I went on to describe my passion for cello music and how a rereading of Eliot's Four Quartets sparked the actual book and gave rise to the presence of a quartet of musicians in it."*
And I said, ha! Now I can do an explicatory write-up!
And then I thought, wait, no, this is probably one of those things everybody who reads DWJ eventually finds out-- the article is dated 2004, other people must have been paying attention when she started talking about it, more than I was as I am bad at these things-- and I just missed it, so there wouldn't be any point.
Should I?
* And if anyone has access to either the rest of this article or to the paper on Fire and Hemlock that DWJ mentions having given at the end of the paragraph I quoted, I would be most grateful to be able to read that.
Which is a famously obscure ending, in the sense that I have spoken with several people who aren't clear on what actually happens, and if what, then not why. And I have always had a clear sense-- well, not of being *certain* about the ending, not enough to theorize about it or explain it to anybody, but that it had an emotional logic to it that was sufficiently compelling to me that I rested satisfied on that.
Only, this last read-through I'd been noticing that the emotional logic felt strangely familiar, and not in the I-have-read-this-book-a-zillion-times way, but in the I-have-been-spending-a-great-deal-of-time-thinking-about-something-identical-to-this-which-wasn't-this way (which is of course a much rarer sensation), and I had that metaphorical sense of having a word on the tip of my tongue, what was it, I had it a moment ago, any second now...
And then it clicked, and now I feel confident in saying not only that the ending of Fire and Hemlock makes perfect sense, but that I can explain it; and I have independent corroboration, for I found an excerpt from an article Jones wrote which confirmed my reading, and here is the relevant sentence: "Starting with what I felt about heroes and the heroic, I went on to describe my passion for cello music and how a rereading of Eliot's Four Quartets sparked the actual book and gave rise to the presence of a quartet of musicians in it."*
And I said, ha! Now I can do an explicatory write-up!
And then I thought, wait, no, this is probably one of those things everybody who reads DWJ eventually finds out-- the article is dated 2004, other people must have been paying attention when she started talking about it, more than I was as I am bad at these things-- and I just missed it, so there wouldn't be any point.
Should I?
* And if anyone has access to either the rest of this article or to the paper on Fire and Hemlock that DWJ mentions having given at the end of the paragraph I quoted, I would be most grateful to be able to read that.
