Peter
One-half of the title duo of “Peter and Rosa” is particularly suited to having his story told in this collection. Peter is especially sensitive to the minor fluctuations in climate and weather that play upon emotional and mental states of mind and this particular winter will prove to be one of significant change:
“The night was dark, yet this was no longer winter gloom; it was pregnant with clarity, and as he questioned it, it answered him.”
Everyone’s a Critic
The protagonist in the collection’s open story, “Young with a Carnation” is a successful convinced the pump has run day. Things are not made any better with the recollection of the perspective on modern literature once shared by his father-in-law:
“Superficiality is the mark of it. The age lacks weight; its greatness is hollow.”
Naturally-Occurring Metaphors
“The Invincible Slave-Owner” is set at a European resort frequented by the last of the dying aristocratic. It is a place surrounded by the kind of natural beauty that motivates flights of figurative thinking. The natural world becomes a perfect studio for making movies in one’s mind:
“The day was grey after a week’s rain, the forest roads were moist, the rush of water like a song, an elegy, the voice of the still wet woods, and the smell of the water was almost quenchingly fresh.”
Happy-Happy, Joy-Joy
The sheer volume of metaphorical images used to describe a state of blissful happiness over the course of the millions upon millions of stories which have published would likely be so vast in itself that it would require a multiple-set volume to categorize them. Many of them would be seeking to portray the complex state of happiness through an equally complex metaphor, but few would be as effective as one the author engages in a story with an equally simple title: “The Heroine.”
“Her silent triumphant happiness was as sweet to him as the smell of the ripe cornfield through which they drove.”
That is a simile with a comparison almost anyone can recognize and understand.
Denmark
A good many of the winters related in these tales are set in the author’s homeland, Denmark. As with any writer proud of their nationality, Denmark serves as fuel for metaphor throughout the stories:
“In all the short lifetime of Danish summer there is no richer or more luscious moment than that week wherein the lime trees flower. The heavenly scent goes to the head and to the heart; it seems to unite the fields of Denmark with those of Elysium; it contains both hay and holy incense, and is half fairy-land and half apothecary’s locker.”
