Virgil

All my blogs have been uncatorgorized but I have been intending to start a blog on writing ever since Antiquarian (remember her?) was around. But I never go to it. Antequarian left and I needed her proding to do this. Losing Antiquarian from Lit net was one of the biggest losses we've ever had, and I do miss her. She really focused on writing, and to be a writer is to write. To be a great writer is to write greatly. All that stuff about analyzing literature is academic and meaningless for the most part. Ideas are out there and very few writers of literature have any new ideas. Ideas are secondary. Writing is primary. And when Aunt Shecky recently started her word blogs, I recalled my passion to start a writing blog. This blog catagory is dedicated to the process of writing and analyzing fine writing, be it prose or poetry. This is just the first in the catagory and I wish to start by analyzing a single sentence. I take this concluding sentence from Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Sharer."

Walking to the taffrail, I was in time to make out, on the very edge of a darkness thrown by a towering black mass like the very gateway of Erebus--yes, I was in time to catch an evanescent glimpse of my white hat left behind to mark the spot where the secret sharer of my cabin and of my thoughts, as though he were my second self, had lowered himself into the water to take his punishment: a free man, a proud swimmer striking out for a new destiny.

A rather complicated sentence, but let's break it down into it's phrases:
Walking to the taffrail, (modifying phrase to the subject “I”)
I was in time to make out, (main clause, subject, verb, subject compliment, adverb phrase)
on the very edge of a darkness (parallel subject compliment)
like the very gateway of Erebus (simile modifying the second subject compliment)
yes, I was in time to catch an evanescent glimpse of my white hat (restarts sentence adverb phrases)
left behind to mark the spot (noun modifier)
where the secret sharer of my cabin and of my thoughts, (modifies spot)
as though he were my second self (modifies sharer)
had lowered himself into the water (modifies spot)
to take his punishment (modifies sharer)
a free man, a proud swimmer striking out for a new destiny. (sequence of modifiers to sharer)

The sentence divides into two halves, the double repetition of the main clause and then a long string of a subordinate clause starting with “where.”

Let’s take that first half. I find that opening repetition extremely interesting: “I was in time to make out…my white hat” and then “I was in time to catch an evanescent glimpse of my white hat.” And in between is a second subject compliment in parallel: “I was on the edge of darkness like the gateway of Erebus.” One subject and verb but essentially three different subject compliments.

The second half, while less complicated, is even more highly crafted. The first half ends with the marking of the “spot,” but the spot is modified as the point where the sharer lowers himself, and then we get a string of modifiers, modifying sharer, “second self, to take his punishment, free man, proud swimmer, striking out.” The ending of the sentence with a sequence of modifiers to the sharer gives the sense of a fading away and the sharer moving away toward his new destiny.

What’s really brilliant is that motion that the sentence suggests in the second half is set up by the rhythmic stasis of the first half. The back and forth of that first half is almost like a cocking of a spring and the second half the spring is released.