SUB ROSA DICTUM: A ROSE FOR EMILY, SOMETHING SPECIAL, WILD SWANS. THE TACIT INTERTEXUALITY OF LOVE DISCOURSE

Abstract

[...]it all started with a man's stomach cut with a knife "as if it was a watermelon"; snow melting and Flo receding; the bank of Cela McKinney's house and the train filling up at Brantford; or maybe even with sour chocolate milk, ginger ale, and vomit on the previous trip-through the swan pond; the minister's waves of grey hair and his dark blue suit; ferns rustling and streams flowing; the pulsating pipes of oil refineries-up to the Niagara of orgasm, the shores of Lake Ontario, Toronto - from the Iroquois word for "place where trees stand in the water" - and "the cold wave of greed" (with the verbs diddle and dawdle describing the way of moving (see below)).) [...]there is no air in the story: a prospective White Slave's sickness is allegedly caused by a lack of fresh air; a child, its face "black as ink", dies of a fit-cf. the ironically "pink and shiny" face (earlier it was "square ruddy") of the short minister who gets even shorter at the end of the aborted "squaring the circle"; the police, according to Flo, would be "the first ones to diddle" Rose, diddle probably originating from the name of Jeremy Diddler in the farce Raising the Wind (1803), who is in constant need of money (Online Etymology Dictionary); the undertaker finds Rose pale and says "young girls need fresh air" - on her previous trip to Toronto, she was also "lacking color" to match the pale bark of the trees and bushes in the south; the vendor on the train has "the tray hanging around his neck"; the minister wears a tie, which will be removed by Emily; in her orgasm, Rose "was careful of her breathing"; Mavis's cigarette holder was "black and mother-of-pearl" (Rose wanted her complexion to turn pearl). [...]the scene is drenched with "water" diction (before that the poet is "frozen"; Yvonne "stiff', "rigid", and "stony"- and, later, upon seeing the fallen tree, crying): the poet "keeled over," "plunged" his fingers into the basket; rose petals "rain down" on Yvonne; geraniums together with earth engulf Yvonne's shoes (due to which the stroll by the sea, beyond the Baths, was aborted) - that prompts swaying and shaking on her part - and, finally, giving in. According to the druggist, arsenic "can kill anything up to an elephant", which is also an attribute of HermesMercury, whereas lime does away with the smell of a killed rat, the mount of Ganesha (or that of a killed snake, which is wrapped round Ganesha's neck).

Headnote

Abstract: Wild Swans by Alice Munro, Something Special by Iris Murdoch, and A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, share a metaphorical system built around the rose. Its conceptual area includes supportive imagery that falls squarely into the scheme of the basic Indo-European myth about the fight between the Thunder god and the Devil, aimed at completing the task of "squaring the circle a human effort to become divine. Each of the female protagonists - Emily, Yvonne, and Rose - is identified with the rose as the principle of life, their epiphany both triumph and defeat. The method employed to iconically capture the Thunder god's victory is reverse chronology.

Key words: basic Indo-European myth, chronology, epiphany, short story, rose, "squaring the circle. "

1. Introduction

There are three roses in this bunch: Emily, Yvonne, and Rose. Subject to critical evaluation, they provide a methodological tool: what is sub rosa is beyond mere morphology. Moreover, taken chronologically, these stories show the rose grow, bud, and flourish into what transcends time itself.

Put through a love ordeal, the three protagonists are initiated into the adult world, an experience that proves both disastrous and eye-opening (e.g., the Sumerian goddess Inanna's rosette can be identified with an eye, the third eye, as it were). Analyzing the metaphorical systems that evolve around the rose, the controlling image of the three narratives, I am looking for patterns that could help interpret similar stories and even single out the "flower" discourse as a special type of coming-of-age narratives.

A prominent stratum in the stories' subtext is the basic Indo-European myth, which features the fight between the Thunder god and the Devil, a binary that appears to be formed as a result of the "cosmic" rosette's swirl (cf. the conceptual metaphor LOVE IS WAR).

In this paper, I make use of linguoand mythopoetic methods of analysis with elements of conceptual analysis.

2. Wild Swans by Alice Munro (Munro 1995:1049-1055).

A common experience: viewed from outside the cathedral, the rose window is material, "a handle stuck to a pot"; viewed from inside, "what is tom up by drunken men," in Flo's words, turns spiritual. What is seen through a glass, darkly, or through a "filthy window," as the minister points out, is almost a sacrament, an intimate affair between priest and penitent in the confessional of a train compartment, newspaper palaver (or lace dress, for that matter) as the grid. Transforming into a regular Roman Catholic symbol of silence, Rose, instead of being defiled, is, on the face of it, purified (the swan as the symbol of purity) and given spiritual guidance. Cela McKinney's husband, a hotel manager, also chooses to keep to his room - or his "mother"-wife - Cela (of Greek and Latin origin, 'blind; the moon'), cf. "Old English *cella (attested in inflected forms), from Latin celia 'chamber, small room, compartment' (Online Etymology Dictionary)); McKinney is connected with the Celtic god of fire. Flo(rence) the shop assistant, with her varicose veins, is the one who is truly reduced, nipped in the bud, as it were: "She never saw sunlight...." These are the white slaves whereas the White Slavers, or the souls' guides through the underworld, are the vendor on the train, who sold Rose sour chocolate milk; the conductor, who wakes her up at the end of the trip; the undertaker, who drives a hearse; the driver-salesman, who brought bread to Flo's store; the French teacher; and the minister.

Not unlike Eliza from the fairy-tale and her brothers - dumb and bird-like - Rose lives through her initiation story. The Canadian Leda meets the devil, "father of lies" (in alchemy the swan symbolizes M/mercury) to see "the rosy sky" under her eyelids. Mavis the shop girl, who forms the other part of the story's frame, has her eyelid (also known as filiform) warts removed-papilloma (from Latin, literally "nipple"), through Frances Farmer (under whose name she booked herself in at a resort), is connected with papillon, the French for butterfly (from Latin papilio(n)). Although over one of Mavis's eyes "dips" a hat (note the informal dated meaning "baptize (someone) by immersion in water" (OED)), she only imitates Florence Farmer, instead of flourishing. (Actually, it all started with a man's stomach cut with a knife "as if it was a watermelon"; snow melting and Flo receding; the bank of Cela McKinney's house and the train filling up at Brantford; or maybe even with sour chocolate milk, ginger ale, and vomit on the previous trip-through the swan pond; the minister's waves of grey hair and his dark blue suit; ferns rustling and streams flowing; the pulsating pipes of oil refineries-up to the Niagara of orgasm, the shores of Lake Ontario, Toronto - from the Iroquois word for "place where trees stand in the water" - and "the cold wave of greed" (with the verbs diddle and dawdle describing the way of moving (see below)).) As a result, Mavis leams to "sing," her name meaning "song thrush." Thrush (placed by H. Ch. Andersen (1997:132-148) "beside the bars of the window" of Eliza's cell) is also "infection of the mouth and throat by a yeast-like fungus, causing whitish patches" and "infection of the genitals with the same fungus" (OED). Loss of teeth (cf. the myth of the vagina dentata)-and hair-is connected with the sun's loss of heat in winter and thus the Thunder god's inability to conquer the Devil. It is mentioned repeatedly, namely, in reference to the prisoners "in the White Slave place"; two "bad women", fighting with "their fists full of each other's hair"; the undertaker, who is "a little bald man" driving a hearse that is plush inside (cf. Vulgar Latin *piluccare 'remove hair', Online Etymology Dictionary); and the vendor on the train, an old man in a red jacket, "with no teeth." (No wonder Rose wants to buy a hair-remover - Emily's hair, too, gets short after her father's death.)

The black sun, which stands for impure gold (tainted by original sin) in alchemy, is manifested through money (or Mammon) both overtly and implicitly: the verb hustle was used to refer to shaking money in a cap in the game of hustlecap (cf. LOVE IS A GAME); Flo sewed the little bag with money to the strap (cf. "a now-obsolete sense of 'financial credit') of Rose's slip (later Rose sets her purse on the floor to give room to the minister); pot (n. 1) has the slang meaning "large sum of money staked on a bet" (Online Etymology Dictionary); Cela Me Kinney's house "was dark and narrow and smelled like a bank"; it is cool outside-cool can be referred to a large sum of money, and cooler has the slang meaning "jail"; all the men in the story are somehow connected with money (the French teacher through "rubbing"); Rose could not reject the minister's hand, "take charge of it [emphasis added]"; her legs are "pinched together" - cf. the meaning "to be stingy"; her actions are "beggary," and she rides "the cold wave of greed, of greedy assent." Rose also likes being a "pounded" object. The pun is built on the interplay of the meanings "measure of weight" (Rose wants to reduce her hips and thighs); "unit of money"; "crush"; and "enclosed place for animals" (in her erotic visions, she mentions "pink snouts," cats, and, implicitly, horses and reptiles (creep refers to plants as well)), "late Old English pundfald "penfold, pound," related to pyndan "to dam up, enclose (water)," and thus from the same root as pond" (Online Etymology Dictionary). This is the "extension" of the LOVE IS A GAME metaphor, with the minister as the "master" (Latin dominus) in the game Flo wants to have-domino, "perhaps from the meaning "hood with a cloak worn by canons or priests" (1690s)" (Online Etymology Dictionary).

Due to a lack of sunshine, the waters of spring are candy-type crystallized, locked by Cela McKinney, as it were; what has been an orchard turns Glassco's Jams and Marmalades rather than a fairy-tale hedge covered with roses. Crystallization also has pseudo-erotic implications: Rose's nausea is induced by the minister's hand - and the ginger ale (cf. "Sanskrit srngaveram, from srngam 'horn' + vera- 'body', so called from the shape of its root") sold on the train by the toothless vendor - (the White Slavers' drugged) candy is "from Tamil kantu 'candy', kattu 'to harden, condense' (Online Etymology Dictionary). Plants do not take root in ice. Hence there is no air in the story: a prospective White Slave's sickness is allegedly caused by a lack of fresh air; a child, its face "black as ink", dies of a fit-cf. the ironically "pink and shiny" face (earlier it was "square ruddy") of the short minister who gets even shorter at the end of the aborted "squaring the circle"; the police, according to Flo, would be "the first ones to diddle" Rose, diddle probably originating from the name of Jeremy Diddler in the farce Raising the Wind (1803), who is in constant need of money (Online Etymology Dictionary); the undertaker finds Rose pale and says "young girls need fresh air" - on her previous trip to Toronto, she was also "lacking color" to match the pale bark of the trees and bushes in the south; the vendor on the train has "the tray hanging around his neck"; the minister wears a tie, which will be removed by Emily; in her orgasm, Rose "was careful of her breathing"; Mavis's cigarette holder was "black and mother-of-pearl" (Rose wanted her complexion to turn pearl). We are placed at the beginning of Genesis that fails through (consider the binaries of the two "bad women" (pronounced by Flo like "badminton" as part of the LOVE IS A GAME metaphor) that are ''''egged on" [emphasis added] and the cut watermelon of a stomach, which reappears as the bread-truck driver's belly)). Singing gives way to silence-or, rather, men sing whereas women do not. Among the singing men are the undertaker (even the verb dawdle, which characterizes his manner, can be influenced by the (sluggish) daw (Online Etymology Dictionary); and the minister who uses a poetic word ("fat tongues. . . lolling" associated with his caress) - both of them "sing" of snow. Rose, on the contrary, could not say a word: "She shaped the words in her mind, tried them out, then couldn't get them past her lips." Singing is substituted with the written word (cf. Rose's essay, which earned her the money for the trip; the minister's newspaper, a 'net' that makes the world illusory and dream-like (see below)), which brings about the dissociation between the senses (tasting, smelling, seeing, hearing, touching are implied (and mentioned) repeatedly in the three stories (see below)). Time, conceptualized as river, hardens as money, clock hands likened to the fuzzy forearms of a bread-truck driver (note the powder-blue angora sweater (a garment originally worn in rowing) that Rose intends to buy, which symbolically represent the clouds of winter, whereas the silver bangles will chain the sun into "the silver-wooded rubble of little hills" - or pounds).

The rose appears to grow through the three women (or three toads, as was the case in the fairy tale) like the proverbial yeast... to feed no one. Both Rose and Mavis are but mute swans in their mock-epiphany: you cannot buy the gifts of the Magi in a gift shop. Rose's breast, inside which the true transformation is to take place, has changed externally - by the rubbing (used in reference to the French teacher, fingers, and cats) of the little bag with ten dollars it grows "spotted", like that of the thrush, whose subfamily includes robins, subject of Yvonne Geary's hatred. Rose's "crossing" (mentioned repeatedly in the story) was botched up as soon as she uncrossed her legs. Here bread turns sties. Instead of the good grain, Cela McKinney, who was very stingy, sowed her wild oats that sprouted up as wild swans: her oatmeal porridge was served with raisins, sty being "from Old English stigend 'sty', literally 'riser', from prp. of stigan 'go up, rise', from ProtoGermanic *stig~" (Online Etymology Dictionary) (Rose looks at the minister "not raising her head", whereas he keeps his eyes closed most of the time, the windows looking filthy to him). Not unlike Gilgamesh, Rose loses her chance of immortality (the minister's clock (hand) ticking away her lifetime) when the serpent "steals" the boxthom-like plant and sheds its skin: the "refreshed", "dressed up" minister folds his paper and tries to help Rose with the coat whereas, at the beginning of her trip, Rose felt "her own weary self discarded", her essay future-oriented.

Mavis's taking the name of Frances Farmer is another act of dressing up. Replacing Florence with Frances evokes the image of Mr. McLaren, the French teacher, whose name bears resemblance to the Latin laurus "laurel." Besides, he is described as "sallow" ("from Old English salo 'dusky', of Germanic origin" (OED)), also a pussy willow ("mid 19th cent.: originally a child's word, because of the resemblance of the soft fluffy catkins to a cat's fur" (OED)); willow bark was used to weave a net to carry Eliza (cf. Mavis's lace dress, Rose's little cloth bag (cf. strap, "ultimately from Greek strophos "twisted band," from strephein "to turn" (Online Etymology Dictionary)), and Flo's stockings - the three of them represent the omphalos stone covered with a net which failed to develop into cosmic order (flower)). Rose saw her teacher, the Serpent, "lapping and coiling his way through slow pleasures." In the immediate context, she is said to spread her epitrachil-like coat "over herself, like a lap robe"; she takes it down off the hook-the teacher's nose is hooked. The name angora (see above) was also given to a cat whose fur resembles wool whereas the eponymous city itself (modem Ankara) got its name "from the Greek word for "anchor, bend," a diminutive form from PIE root *ang/*ankbeing angle" (Online Etymology Dictionary). Cats are also mentioned in Rose's erotic vision.

Lap has the archaic meaning of "a hanging flap on a garment or a saddle" (OED). In his Description of Greece, Pausanias recounts a story of Daphne as a mortal pursued by Leucippos ("white stallion"); according to Ovid, the nymph Daphne, chased by Apollo, was transformed into a laurel tree, the horse and the serpent being "enemies-cum-friends" of the basic Indo-European myth-note "trotting" and "creeping" of the minister's fingers (Homer Barron's buggy is drawn by the matched team of bays.) Ironically, a wreath of bay laurels was given as the prize at the Pythian Games (Rose won her prize for "swallowing a dictionary"). Rose's memories of the minister "slip into place at a critical moment." Slip is employed as both a noun and a verb in the story. Slip (n.), apart from 'woman's sleeveless garment', 1761, from slip (v.), is probably derived from Middle Low German or Middle Dutch slippe 'cut, slit', possibly related to Old English toslifan 'to split, cleave'; sense of 'sprig for planting or grafting' first recorded in late 15c." (Online Etymology Dictionary). Having slipped on Rose's slip, the whole world "falls down": "...the world is tumbling with innocent-seeming objects ready to declare themselves, slippery and obliging".

3. Something Special by Iris Murdoch (Murdoch 1995:1056-1067)

Yvonne Geary is fascinated by a Christmas card, which she holds aloft in her "bony brown hand", - "a frame of glossy golden cardboard enclosed a little square of white silk on which some roses were embroidered." "Squaring the circle" signifies human efforts to get rid of things material and become divine, something special. However, the terrestrial world bursts in as the square face of an ugly minister on the train or the squarish frame house, "an eyesore among eyesores."

Squares are numerous in this story, the principal being Sam ("short-haired" Samson) Goldman the boyfriend ("no fancy worker" vs. special Christmas card as "the fancy thing"). Sam is the one who is supposed to accomplish the proverbial task and bring the diamond wedding ring, which he never does {rock (v.) is from "late Old English roccian, probably from a Germanic base meaning 'remove, move'; related to Dutch rukken 'jerk, tug' and German rücken 'move'" (OED)). Like the minister from Wild Swans, Sam is short, portly, and unhandsome; even his suit is dark (midnight) blue. Cf. "Old Church Slavonic pariti 'fly'; Late Latin portarius 'gatekeeper' (Online Etymology Dictionary) - the young man is the "owner" of port, an intoxicating drink, who "makes" Yvonne fumble for the phallic latch(Lynch)key to the "Christmas card" life with a picture and a verse that "have a universal appeal" (the poet, who gripped Sam by the arm like he did Yvonne, fumble in his pocket in search of a poem.)

Sam does not live up to his name either - of Hebrew origin, it probably meant "sun": he frowns in the electric light, has a pale moonface (cf. the name Cela from Wild Swans); his eyes are dark and his hair is "like the brave plume of a bird," which tends to "bob" as he "trots": bob (v. 1) is "probably connected to Middle English bobben "to strike, beat," and bob (n. 2) is "attested in sense of "a horse's tail cut short," from earlier bobbe "cluster" (as of leaves), mid-14c., a northern word, perhaps of Celtic origin...Used over the years in various senses connected by the notion of "round, hanging mass," e.g. "weight at the end of a line" (1650s)" (Online Etymology Dictionary). As we know, Yvonne is reproached for "hanging around acting the maggot" (the "bait") (see below) - a person described as "acting in a play" is her English ex-boyfriend with a "mouth all prissed up" (cf. "Middle French précis "condensed, cut short" (14c.), from Medieval Latin precisus, from Latin praecisus "abridged, cut off," pp. of praecidere "to cut off, shorten"), who "won" the Sweep(stakes) ("prize won in a race or contest," 1773, from Middle English swepestake "one who sweeps or wins all the stakes in a game" (late 15c., as the name of one of the King's ships)" (Online Etymology Dictionary)) and brought Yvonne flowers to be replaced with Sam's diamond ring "in the pot" ("potty" is Yvonne's mother)) - his palms are mentioned repeatedly, apparently, as a symbol of victory. The only light spot - light yellow silk tie - makes Sam similar to the robin in the regular Christmas card ("a traditional theme") identified with the pervading stuffy atmosphere-which makes people "shrink." To Yvonne's parents, Sam Goldman will make a perfect frame for the girl (and provide a house "built on a rock"). Before going out, Yvonne, like Rose, puts on her coat - another frame of the would-be tailor.

However, Yvonne's wish is to break through to England. No wonder she is always cross; her last name, Geary, makes Yvonne attracted to everything that moves - trams, which rattle like a baby's toy and a rattlesnake, Maya's symbol of transformation; mail boats; noisy companies; rocking chairs - or grows, like a flower (even her ex's name Tony is commonly, but incorrectly, associated with Greek anthos "flower"). Yvonne's legs are emphatically long (nevertheless, she wears high-heeled shoes) and are opposed to Sam's "small feet" - though, at the end of the story, she "thrust" them "down under the clothes" (and also "snuggled her head under the sheet" [<emphasis added] (cf. snug (adj.) "1590s, "compact, trim" (of a ship), perhaps from a Scandinavian source, cf. Old Norse snoggr "short-haired," Swedish snygg, Danish snog "neat, tidy". . . . Meaning "fit closely" is first found 1838" (Online Etymology Dictionary)). Yvonne's manner of walking is described with the verb prance, which, again, evokes the "horse-serpent/cat" metaphor (Ivo was an occupational name for "archer"), associated with the controlling image of "squaring the circle." There are supporting details: Yvonne rocks the "rockinghorse" of a chair (cf. the rocking movement of the boat and the verb brace in the immediate context {brace is "a rope attached to the yard of a ship for trimming the sail" (OED))), "rubbing her small head animal fashion" ("Who's she? She's the cat!"); she "wants" to marry the Sheik of Araby (a hero of a song and fox trot - Sam "trotted behind her" and "whined" (cf. German wiehern "to neigh" (Online Etymology Dictionary))); a shiny horsehair sofa takes up half of the inner room in the Gearys' house; Yvonne's high-heeled shoes are also a pretext not to walk by the sea and "sit on the rocks", inducing the mail boat's sad sound and "the racing breeze." At the end of the story, she is "destroyed walking in these shoes", that appear to turn "high cold edge of the bed".

The frame theme is further developed through a number of images. The mail boat, its lights on, metonymically "glowed like a coloured postcard", with "roses" and "roses" of people agitating white handkerchiefs - the sub rosa scene is definitionally silent but for two lighthouses, whose beams were kindled when "a curly plume of black smoke gathered upon the metallic water" (cf. the description of Sam's hair and his hedgehog-like posture at Kimball's) and "hid the ship". Flowers in metal baskets along the Liffey are hanging suspended from the street lamps (Sam's "lamps of the moon") like the "bait" (see above), so is the banner announcing Ireland At Home for visitors. (The druggist, to whom the barman in the saloon lounge is compared, imagines Emily's face looking like that of a lightkeeper.)

The pop shop window thickens into the frosted glass in the Gearys' inner room, which melts, for a while, into the golden windows of Ross's Hotel and glows outside the Shelboume, narrowing, through the chink of the glass in the hands of a clumsy barman and the hole in the railings of Stephen's Green (Yvonne's bed also has rails), into the lights of the coffin-like bar in the basement and a fallen tree as the axis mundi, traditionally associated with light, which functions as the "wrong" omphalos. The frame metaphor is further materialized as the Liffey, the river of life (which is opposed to the sea as having "not far to go"), the gilded mirror beside a fat chintz (from Hindi chïmt 'spattering, stain' (OED)) sofa at Kimball's - a bar, a drugstore, a church, or a mousetrap? - in which Sam's head is reflected and which turns black (cf. the door of the bar in the basement), as the lake in the public garden - another imitation along with the moon as compared to the sun or tailor-made romantic escapism as compared to life.

What is the habit of placing robins (or thrushes) inside golden frames? Roses can transcend; robins cannot. Who is Sam? Yvonne's parents are quite hopeful: the clothes presser-tumed-tailor of their imagination, the clothes press a mock-steamer; a buyer of a Drumcondra house (almost a portmanteau word 'combining' a drum, a cobra, and an anaconda, to create a composite monster to rival that of the fallen tree) to address "a man in Macmullan's shop", of Scottish origin, a former nickname for a bald (tonsured) person; a magus - but the young people met at Mr. Stacey's sale (no hope for regeneration).

Nevertheless, Sam and Yvonne leave Kingstown ("When Jesus was bom in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the King-") for "Abyssinia" - a flight to Egypt, i.e., the underworld, with the oily and glistening Liffey as the Serpent. Down in the well of the bar, Yvonne gets her drink from the publican who is "an infernal version of his upstairs colleague" (the bouncer's name is Patsy, a diminutive of Patrick; St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland), which makes her eyes bright and the bar look like a Christmas card mail boat (but without "the upholstered stillness" [<emphasis added] of the saloon lounge above (cf. upholden 'to repair, uphold, keep from falling or sinking' (Online Etymology Dictionary)), with its white tiled walls (the "great" quilt on her "mountainous" double bed is also white) and a round bar in the centre, "circled" by ironwork pillars (cf. the railings surrounding Stephen's Green), with the poet waving, his fist flourishing, to get a jab in the stomach (cf. the man with a cut stomach from Wild Swans), and the drama unfolding, herself in the middle (at the end of the story, the deep centre of the bed will be taken up by her mother) - the rose - and women "lurking" (cf. lower (v. 2) 'to look dark and threatening' (Online Etymology Dictionary)) in the alcoves, one of them a prostitute with a red carnation in her hair, Yvonne's 'infernal' double.

It is the flowers that have initially attracted Yvonne to Kimball's, with their ability to break boundaries, including social ones: "She refused to sit down, but stood there swaying slightly. .."; "Upon the confused flood of noise and movement she was now afloat"; "... Sam shouted back, propelling Yvonne fussily into a space in the middle of the floor". She gets one - a prostitute's carnation - and also a punch from a man as brown as she is, which pins her Christ-like to the tiles, the English poet, a delighter in trite metaphors (like the undertaker and the minister from Wild Swans and like Sam, his and the poet's (another example of "enemiescum-friends")-and Yvonne's-actions described respectively with stumble and fumble - 'onomatopoeia from a sound felt to indicate clumsiness' (Online Etymology Dictionary)), who thrusts the flower into the bosom of Yvonne's frock (cf. her uncle's words: "Sensible people marry because they want to be in the married state and not because of feelings they have in their breasts"), being, ironically, the "infernal inversion" of her ex-lover, a singer (note the following words: "I thought the flowers were all falling, but here is a rose in the bud!" [iemphasis added]").

The slap of the "quick as a flash" carnation owner (Sam tried to "catch Yvonne's eye" by "flashing his wad around", wad evoking a mythic rain cloud, followed by the verb lay, realized polemically as "vulgar, slang have sexual intercourse with"; nautical "follow (a specified course)"; "trim (a hedge) back, cutting the branches half through, bending them down, and interweaving them" (OED); and Yvonne's symbolic "deflowering" provokes the dragon-slaying. As a result, the scene is drenched with "water" diction (before that the poet is "frozen"; Yvonne "stiff', "rigid", and "stony"- and, later, upon seeing the fallen tree, crying): the poet "keeled over," "plunged" his fingers into the basket; rose petals "rain down" on Yvonne; geraniums together with earth engulf Yvonne's shoes (due to which the stroll by the sea, beyond the Baths, was aborted) - that prompts swaying and shaking on her part - and, finally, giving in. Caught up by Sam at Hannah's bookshop (books being the primary source of her savoir vivre), Yvonne turns in the direction of Westmoreland Street, her hand "limp". Sam, "his plume of black hair bobbing over his eyes", like Mavis's hat, overtook her "well up the street" (Grafton Street) and "kneaded" her hand in his palm (cf. Cela McKinney's wild oats). Hence the sun would not appear, giving way to the moon, which started its rise as soon as the mail boat vanished in the open sea to witness Sam's hand "creeping" about Yvonne's waist, and, when almost full, from the lake, to see him persuading the girl to marry him. Now Yvonne, cat-tumed-hare, is in the power of the self-styled good Samaritan, whose moonface and manners become cat-like, the Samson-Delilah opposition reversed. No wonder the girl gets "weary" (as if from the White Slaves' drugged candy: 'Old English werig 'tired', related to worian 'to wander, totter', from West Germanic *worigaz (cf. Old Saxon worig 'weary', Old High German wuorag 'intoxicated (Online Etymology Dictionary)), as her fingers are locked through Sam's. He slinks (cf. Middle Dutch and Middle Low German slinken 'subside, sink'(OED), paws at her arm, and ducks in the golden glow of a fashionable hotel (with a square nearby) to land, after crossing the road, in a tangle of damp undergrowth and then near a lake with a fallen tree close by - Yvonne meaning 'yew'.

That was Sam's "something special" - "a dirty rotten maggoty old tree". As was mentioned above, Yvonne plays maggot at the start of the story where something special is identified with a diamond ring on loan - the late Mrs. Taylor is a "faggot" (Middle English, in the sense 'bundle of sticks for fuel', from Old French fagot, from Italian fagotto, based on Greek phakelos 'bundle' (OED)). In Mr. Lynch's words, who cuts off the Kimèa/fs of lunar Sophia, paleand stumpyhanded Sam-hedgehog (a solar animal, symbol of fertility, its spikes identified with the rays of the sun) "curling into himself': "We are as grass which today flourisheth and tomorrow it is cast into the oven". (Or Mr. Leech's (?), a bloodsucking worm and a healer, a 'cane'/card man ("from Greek khartes "layer of papyrus," probably from Egyptian"), who mends broken "ship" chairs, Charon - "the surname is perhaps from Ir. Loingseach 'sailor' (Online Etymology Dictionary). Yvonne's reaction is predictable: her voice "rose," as the special Christmas card did earlier, when Sam (whose clock hands are also described as fugitive (used as a noun meaning 'runaway, fugitive slave, deserter' (Online Etymology Dictionary)) trades the fallen beauty of the tree against a pair of Christmas card robins up in its branches (from the start of the story, we have the binaries of Yvonne's two eyes . . . worn away by reading-, her mother and uncle - the uncle's name, of Irish origin, having to do with 'hill' and 'eminence'; Betty Nolan (of Irish and Gaelic origin, 'chariot-fighter, champion') and Maureen Burke, her married co-students, the latter's first name, of Irish and Gaelic origin, meaning 'star of the sea' and the last one 'abstracted from William Burk, executed in Edinburgh 1829 for murdering several persons to sell their bodies for dissection', 'murder by smothering' (Online Etymology Dictionary); the "two rounds" Sam, who 'was for catching Yvonne's eye', paid for in Sullavan's ('black-eyed') bar; Julia Batey {bate (v.l) 'to reduce, to lessen in intensity', c.1300, Online Etymology Dictionary) and Polly's (pet name of Mary) sister, "who married Jews the pair of them"; two lighthouses; and, finally, Sam's two eyes that "gleam almost cat-like" and his two hands).

"The poor tree" seems to evoke the parable of the trees (Judges 9:7-15), a bramble mentioned in the immediate context (cf. 'And the bramble said to the trees, 'If in truth you anoint me as king over you, then come and take shelter in my shade; but if not, let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon!"'). This is where Yvonne begins turning into Eve. The verb touch is used twice in the story - the prostitute's bare arm touches the girl's sleeve in the bar, and the branches of the fallen tree touch the water - for the same reason, to recover after the 'battle", panting Yvonne runs to the river, leans against the parapet, and droops her head down (the verb is used poetically in reference to the setting sun). However, as she raises her voice, the sleeve "goes down" until, stockings tom, bramble (wild shmb of the rose family) trailing from the skirt (note 'the trail' of the mail boat's "smoke taken up into the gathering night"), neck (cf. "a narrow piece of land or sea, such as an isthmus or channel", OED) having turned red with whisky and now "overgrown" with leafy twigs, she, not unlike Inanna, descending to the underworld, strips herself naked at the end of the story. The runes have told the same old story of change and decay, smell turning to odour, despite Yvonne's efforts to cause a storm with her "whipping a flurry of foliage across Sam's round moon-lit face" and "blubbering" (late Middle English, denoting the foaming of the sea, also a bubble on water, OED), the adjective sad used repeatedly to point to a parallel with "a sonorous booming sound, very deep and sad" of the departing mail boat (Old English seed 'sated, weary', also 'weighty, dense', of Germanic origin; related to Dutch zat and German satt, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin satis 'enough', OED).

Yvonne takes a lurching tram (the tipsy poet moved in the same manner), gets to the top, back to Upper George's Street (St. George the dragon-slayer), and in on tiptoe. Sam seems to be left on the quay - but his "gesture of dereliction" points to the opposite - "1590s, 'abandonment', formerly with a wider range than in modem use, e.g. of the sea withdrawing from the land," (Online Etymology Dictionary), to the heavy breathing of Mrs. Geary, we might add. Irony is pervading - like the familiar smell of wood and old paper in the shop. No high hopes, no roses, no more sun for Yvonne - now she will have to leam to stand still for a long time. The swan remains mute - "the cat got her tongue", as the girl's mother put it (and so are the "little listening animals" on the shop's shelves (and the brass animals on the mantelshelf, which rose when Yvonne (herself petulant) held aloft the special Christmas card) - the ox and the ass at the manger, as it were - which 'jumped' and 'tinkled' at the start of the story when the tram for Dublin rattled by (the tinkling of a piano came from the bar in the basement - as well as an uproar of male voices and applause, which replaced that of the boat) - the prostitute in the bar called Yvonne, who had just crossed O'Connell's bridge (of Irish origin, having to do with a hound or a wolf), "little pet" - another mock-epiphany has taken place). The ironic vocative "your Majesty" in the immediate context evokes a truism. Yvonne Geary of Kingstown, the first letter of the name a cross, is on board the rocking bed of her mother, a fine frame, buried alive. The world turned out tougher than the rocks by the sea. It takes the nerve, Flo would say... .

4. A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner (Faulkner 1995: 400-406)

Emily Grierson is, perhaps, the most persévérant of the three. Through a mystical conversion, which was implied in Wild Swans and once materialized in Something Special, a rose has turned into a verb, rose, another story-scaffolding gesture. The ups and downs of Emily's fortune, manifested persistently at the linguistic level, are leveled when the uroboros (or the rat) is eaten to induce a pregnancy with a corpse. In Gnosticism and in the Cabbala (the word cabal is mentioned in the text), Sophia is both a virgin bride and a womb. In Aurora consur gens, the seed that falls into it produces a threefold fruit, which is. . . the tripartite Caduceus, the Christ-Mercury, the healing serpent, the curing water that flows into Hades to awaken the dead bodies of the metals and free his mother bride. This is the beginning stage of the "whitening": her clothes are now "purer than the snow", and to her husband she will give wings like those of a dove, to fly away with him in the sky (Roob 2001:238).

The sowing motion is performed by the four Aldermen, three greybeards and a youngster (a perfect square!), who "slink" ("Old English slincan 'crawl, creep'; compare with Middle Dutch and Middle Low German slinken 'subside, sink"' (OED)) Sam's way, "like burglars" (cf. Hermes-Mercury), to sprinkle lime, which is to become the dough of Emily's face, the bread in the truck of Flo's supplier, and Yvonne's hand "kneaded" in Sam's palm; then they recross the lawn and hide in the locusts from her, a "motionless" Christ-like idol in the rose window, the same adjective employed in the extended metaphor above: "She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water..." However, her eyes are "like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough..." At the end of the story the old Negro servant, a sphinx-like character ("a combined gardener and cook"), the one who killed the "snake-rat," disappears through the back door, the black lunar Sophia giving way to the solar celestial one (cf. the swan's double nature). But the parallel doesn't cease there. Homer Barron is described as a dark man who drives a glittering buggy, so is the "watchful" Mr. Grierson, who "robbed" his daughter - a silhouette-tumed-crayon portrait ("from French, from craie 'chalk', from Latin creta" (OED))-both armed with a horsewhip. Twice the man, Homer Barron {baron is "from Old French, from medieval Latin baro, baron 'man, warrior', probably of Germanic origin" (OED)) constructs twice the home for Emily who is, in fact, a man (English feminine form of Aemilius, from Latin "rival"). In that case she is the virgin earth who gives birth to a new sun in the single combat of the old sacred king and a rival claimant to the throne, described by James Fraser (Fraser 1994), North and South, Winter and Summer. In the same manner the right to the hand of the princess is determined by a race-cf. the famous "love chase" in the story of Pelops and Hippodamia. In Wild Swans, Rose imagines herself an object in the (clock) hand of the masturbating French teacher, the domestic Creator; Homer Barron is said to like men and was not a marrying type.

Another composite monster is Ganesha. According to the druggist, arsenic "can kill anything up to an elephant", which is also an attribute of HermesMercury, whereas lime does away with the smell of a killed rat, the mount of Ganesha (or that of a killed snake, which is wrapped round Ganesha's neck). Ganesha, who protected Parvati from Shiva, was made of the dirt left after his mother's ablutions and worshipped with red flowers, his lost and recovered head representing the sun. Arsenic is "of Greek origin arsenikon 'yellow orpiment', identified with arsenikos 'male', but in fact from Arabic al-zarmk 'the orpiment', based on Persian zar 'gold'" (OED). When, following Homer Barron's death, not unlike the sun in winter, Emily failed to appear on the streets for six months, she was said to be under the influence of her father's quality, too "virulent" to die-"late Middle English (originally describing a poisoned wound): from Latin virulentus, from virus "poison" (Online Etymology Dictionary).

The rat is a chthonic creature, which can stand for the human soul; lime that covers up the crime is "used in traditional building methods to make plaster, mortar, and limewash" (OED). Not unlike Shiva the destroyer, the rat (transformed Gajamukha Asura) represents lightning inside the elephant-cloud, which releases the waters of spring from winter's embrace (and also the "embrace" of cotton gins and wagons that "obliterated even the august names"), Ganesha referred to as the master of obstacles and producer of wealth, patron of merchants and travelers. Homer Barron is associated both with the elephant and the rat, a vehicle supposed to take Emily to "England," in Yvonne's terms. In the East, the rat that nibbles is said to be "counting money" (Biedermann 1996:279). Hence the remission of taxes-no death in Emily's Garden of Eden. Ironically, Yvonne, who is said to be leading Sam up the garden, finds in her enclosed garden, which she entered through the truly narrowest of the gates, a hole (her own place a "poky hole"), but a fallen tree. Homer Barron (or "barren," we might say) happened to nod and is "eaten" (according to J. Fetterley's feminist reading, Emily "feeds off' Homer Barron, hence her suspicious fatness (Fetterley 1978)) along with the watch on the gold chain, to become a virtual vahana, a dove bom by the mother bride, his silver toilet set oxydized over time lunar Sophia's way (the one intended to cut the sunrays of the bristles); Emily leans on "an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head"; "tarnished" is the g(u)ilt easel by the fireplace with Mr. Grierson's crayon portrait.

No wonder the suitors in the three stories are represented as vehicles. In Wild Swans, Rose is attracted to a bread-tmck driver and an undertaker driving a hearse; the minister drives to the pond to see a flock of swans and represents a wild swan; the French teacher, although a local, belongs to another world; besides, most of the scene is set on the train. In Something Special, Sam represents a mock-mail boat. In A Rose for Emily, Emily, "humanized" to the degree of refusing to get free mail delivery, prefers "pigeon post."

However, Homer Barron is cuckolded by death. Cuckold is "from Old French cucuault, from cucu 'cuckoo' (from the cuckoo's habit of laying its egg in another bird's nest)" (OED). The archaic meaning of the verb lime is "catch (a bird) with birdlime" or, figuratively, "entrap by clever deception; inveigle" (OED). Emily herself is associated with a boat. In the arsenic-buying scene, her face is first compared to that of a lighthouse-keeper, then to a strained flag, the Jolly Roger, as it were (cf. the rose-cross as a symbol of spiritual regeneration of the flesh, the rose representing the femininity and the cross masculinity; a mouse appears on Ganesha's flag); a rat killed seems to point to "rats leaving the sinking ship." Emily even seems bloated through Homer's mock-steamer of a cigar {bloat is "from obsolete bloat 'swollen, soft', perhaps from Old Norse blautr 'soft, flabby' II [with obj.] cure (a herring) by salting and smoking it lightly" (OED)).

At Thann, in Alsace, a girl called the Little May Rose, dressed in white, carries a small May-tree, which is gay with garlands and ribbons. Her companions collect gifts from door to door, singing a song... In the course of the song a wish is expressed that those who give nothing may lose their fowls by the marten, that their vine may bear no clusters, their trees no nuts, their field no com...(Fraser 1994:92).

The old May-tree is burned at the end of the year. So is Emily, the rose, sacrificed for the regeneration of the town, for the townsfolk are associated with the underworld: they are socially inferior; they hide from the sun behind jalousies ("from French jalousie "jealousy," from notion of looking though blinds without being seen" (Online Etymology Dictionary)); after Mr. Grierson's death, some ladies have the "temerity" to call ("from PIE base Hemes- "dark" (Online Etymology Dictionary)); when they enter Emily's house, they speak in "sibilant" ("chthonic") voices (employed twice).

Emily, pregnant with Homer's love, who is the real tribute (from Greek 'hostage, pledge'), is the pot-bellied Ganesha Lambodara, pregnant with all the universes of all the times. The very old men know what the young do not: they confuse time with its mathematical progression. The number of rose leaves on the stem increases in accordance with arithmetic progression. The same principle applies to rose windows. Hence to these Confederate soldiers "all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years."

The story is framed with Emily's funeral. When the snake bites its tail, the cycle is over. The serpent Vasuki, occasionally a throne, is wrapped round Ganesha's neck and, as a sacred thread, round the stomach and coils at the ankles. Likewise, Emily pervades Jefferson-as a Negro woman apron, for example, in the same manner as a net covers an omphalos stone. The town is not only "tied to her apron-strings," in the meaning of "wife's business," {money is "from O.Fr. moneie, from L. moneta "mint, coinage," from Moneta, a title of the Roman goddess Juno ("the young one" (perhaps as goddess of the new moon)" (Online Etymology Dictionary)), but is also protected by her veil as the Virgin Mary or Hera, "protectress" (Emily is referred to as "the carven torso of an idol"). (Remission of taxes, "the dispensation dating from the death of her father into perpetuity", is contextually connected with the edict "fathered" by Colonel Sartoris that "no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron" {sartor 'pertaining to a tailor', 1823, from Mod.L. sartorius, from L.L. sartor 'tailor', lit. 'patcher, mender', from L. sari-, pp. stem of sarcire 'to patch, mend'. Sartorius, the name of the long leg muscle, is used in crossing the legs to bring them into the position needed to sit like a tailor" (Online Etymology Dictionary).

Another feature, characterizing Emily, is her hair (and also her servant's hair). Connected with it are the brushes used by Emily's china-painting students. She gave her lessons when her hair was turning gray in a downstairs room for six or seven years (for almost six months after Homer Barron's death she did not go out) - the half-year when the sun is not active. China-painting lessons resemble church-going on Sundays - Emily's awkward attempt to color the angels in the church windows to whom she is likened by the narrator - or sweep the dust that began settling on the furniture till it becomes pervading, an acrid pall of the tomb. At Emily's funeral old Confederate soldiers wear "brushed" uniforms. Emily's squarish frame house that "was left, lifting its stubborn, coquettish decay above cotton wagons" (the "square" is the place where Homer Barron was heard laughing in the center of the group) is reflected at the end in the collar and tie, "which, lifted, left upon the surface a pale crescent in the dust" - "squaring of a circle" is accomplished. The heiress's strand of hair on the pillow is a sun-ray thwarted due to a lack of love - but lifted by somebody at the moment of epiphany. Another meaning of strand is "the shore of a sea, lake, or large river" (OED) whereas heir is from L. heredem (nom. heres), from PIE base *ghe- 'to be empty, left behind' (cf. Gk. khera "widow)" (Online Etymology Dictionary).

Tobe disappears because the job is done: in the apocryphal Book of Tobit, there is a tale "Tobias and the Angel," according to which Tobias, through the help of the archangel Raphael, collected a debt for his father, got a wife, and cured his father's blindness. (Ganesha has the third eye or the mark of the crescent on the forehead.) When the townsfolk see the strand of iron-gray hair, they transcend what is offered by the five senses, or "five material faculties" guided by the "chariotdriver" of the mind in Buddhism. Sight is represented by Emily's house as "an eyesore among eyesores" and also by her perception as a tableau-her father a silhouette and a crayon portrait-as an angel in colored church windows, as a carven torso of an idol in a niche, in the window frame - and, finally, on the frame of the bier. Smell, "another link between the gross, teeming world and the high and mighty Griersons", is connected with taste: "Just as if a man - any man - could keep a kitchen properly..." Touch, among other things, could be represented by taxes (money "has no smell" either), "from O.Fr. taxer "impose a tax" (13c.), from L. taxare "evaluate, estimate, assess, handle," also "censure, charge," probably a frequentative form of tangere "to touch" (Online Etymology Dictionary). As for hearing, there is no other music in the story apart from the ticking of the invisible watch, the clop-clop-clop of the matched bays, the rustling of gossips' silk and satin, their sibilant voices, and the harsh and rusty voice of the Negro servant. The five senses, identified with the five petals of the rose and the five wounds of Christ (that makes up ten, symbol of completion and unity, mentioned in all the three stories), are transcended in the cedar-bemused cemetery where both Union and Confederate soldiers lie side by side. At the end of the story the narrator mentions the crayon portrait of Emily's father "musing profoundly" above the bier of his daughter. Muse and bemuse ("from be- (as an intensifier) + muse, M.Fr. muser "ponder, stare fixedly"; Pope (1705) punned on it as "devoted utterly to the Muses" (Online Etymology Dictionary)) form a kind of synesthetic metaphor, knowledge that confuses like a giant-tumed-mouse.

5. Conclusion.

In the Sino-Japanese tradition, the Flower Sermon story is referred to as nengemishö "pick up flower, subtle smile". Mahäkäsyapa, who smiled when not unlike Yvonne from Something Special, Buddha, held up and admired a flower, is enlightened through direct experience, as was the case in the Eleusinian Mysteries when a mown ear of grain was silently shown (Kerenyi 1991). In Hindu tantrism, this happens when Kundalini, due to the purification of the nadis, rises from the four-petaled Muladhara, its deity being Indra, mounted on the white elephant Airavata, or Ganesha, to Sahasrara, or the thousand-petaled lotus. Vegetation is the symbol of human ability to go beyond oneself during the celebration of Succoth. Whereas the walls of the succah are made of a solid immovable material, its roof is built of cut vegetable matter. Marc-Alain Ouaknin (Ouaknin 2000) points out the entire month of Tishri, in which Succoth takes place, is under the sign of lamed, the semantic root of all things related to study and teaching and the only Hebrew letter that, when written, goes beyond the top line. No wonder the Oriental tradition developed selam, a secret language of flowers; the term can well be applied to the figurative vistas of the analyzed stories. The coded bouquet of meanings acquires a cosmic dimension as love transcends time. The fact is captured iconically through reverse chronology, which is most blatantly manifested in A Rose for Emily, where the first scene is the conclusion to the plot, and in Wild Swans with its digressions (which slow down the plot and, in a way, cause Rose's orgasm to abate): the story of the undertaker; Cela McKinney and her husband; Mavis. Something Special employs flashback. When analyzing Ivan Bunin's short story Gentle Breathing, Lev Vygotsky (Vygotsky 2000) emphasized reverse chronology served to purify the "turbid water of life" and keep the reader's breathing gentle despite the tragic nature of the material (and the vacuum it leaves behind).

Along with this compositional device seeking to bring out the best in the reader, we can pinpoint other means that make this task practicable. Let us look at the protagonist. This is a fatherless (young) woman whose name has to do with vegetation and who is in search of love. The metaphor is quite conventional, but the way it is developed in the story could make a difference: the heroine stands no chance of growing, her epiphany always a fake and an opportunity for us (or/and the narrator) to find out why. The flower discourse reveals a world of binaries (in accordance with the metaphor LOVE IS WAR), which springs from the symbolic complex of the flower, the rose, in this case, materialized as female vs. male (slave vs. master), virgin vs. whore, daughter vs. mother, Thunder god (horse) vs. Devil (serpent/cat), winner vs. loser, father vs. husband, dynamics vs. statics, inner sun vs. outer black sun (moon), spring vs. winter, water vs. ice, plant vs. stone, air vs. vacuum, rich vs. poor, greedy vs. generous, love vs. lust, human vs. animal, absence of hair/teeth/vision vs. presence of hair/teeth/vision, words/poetry/singing vs. silence, oral tradition vs. written tradition, given vs. stolen, good grain vs. "wild oats," poisonous vs. healing, dressed vs. naked, artificial vs. natural, life vs. death, and the task of "squaring the circle" is assigned to the protagonist, who, both "victim and accomplice," must descend into the underworld. The stories' sine qua non is the motif of weaving, which gives the protagonists the status of the Fates and makes the poetics of the story itself a crazy quilt of allusions, reminiscences, and intertextuality that covers a deeper truth.

References

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