Phantom Thoughts pt. 15
Dec. 17th, 2018 05:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zellephantomFinally out of flashback-land!
{"You don't answer!" he said angrily and unhappily. "Well, I will answer for you. It was because there was some one in the room who was in your way, Christine, some one that you did not wish to know that you could be interested in any one else!"
"If any one was in my way, my friend," Christine broke in coldly, "if any one was in my way, that evening, it was yourself, since I told you to leave the room!"}
GOOD POINT, CHRISTINE!
{"Then you were listening behind the door?"
"Yes, because I love you everything ... And I heard everything ..."}
Loving someone does not give you an excuse to spy on them and monitor their every conversation. (Sorry, just the 'I need to monitor everything you say because I love you' just hits a little too close to home for me.)
{"Christine!"
"Raoul!"}
Erik! (Oh, wait- he's not here yet.)
{He was terribly concerned and bitterly grieved to see the hours, which he had hoped to find so sweet, slip past without the presence of the young Swedish girl. Why did she not come to roam with him through the country where they had so many memories in common?}
Maybe she just needs some alone time? Maybe grief is a mostly private thing that she doesn't want to share with you, even though she recognizes that you miss him too? Just respect her wishes and try not to be overdramatic and read too much into it.
{They were marvelous red roses that had blossomed in the morning, in the snow, giving a glimpse of life among the dead, for death was all around him. It also, like the flowers, issued from the ground, which had flung back a number of its corpses. Skeletons and skulls by the hundred were heaped against the wall of the church, held in position by a wire that left the whole gruesome stack visible. Dead men's bones, arranged in rows, like bricks, to form the first course upon which the walls of the sacristy had been built. }
What a haunting mental image. Flowers and death are often intertwined, but the juxtaposition of flowers and long-dead bones is uncomfortable and wrong here, yet is the foundation on which this location is built. (And the presence of skulls reminds me of a certain death's dead who will appear momentarily.)
{A voice behind him said:
"Do you think the Korrigans will come this evening?"
It was Christine. He tried to speak. She put her gloved hand on his mouth.}
Oh. Now the tables have turned, and it is Christine who initiates contact with Raoul, and Christine who deliberately recalls elements of their childhood friendship. She mirrors his introduction in order to appeal for reconciliation, perhaps? (Also who would let children play and watch for mythical creatures in an area adjacent to a graveyard? Surely that is not the only place to glimpse the sea in Perros.)
{"And it was here that he said, 'When I am in Heaven, my child, I will send him to you.' Well, Raoul, my father is in Heaven, and I have been visited by the Angel of Music."
"I have no doubt of it," replied the young man gravely, for it seemed to him that his friend, in obedience to a pious thought, was connecting the memory of her father with the brilliancy of her last triumph.}
And Raoul tries to put two and two together. His current theory is good, considering what little information he has to go on. She was recently a success, and her deceased father promised to send her a means to achieve musical greatness, so since she achieved musical greatness she naturally attributes it to her father and his stories, because to do so otherwise would be dishonoring his memory.
{"I understand," he said, "that no human being can sing as you sang the other evening without the intervention of some miracle. No professor on earth can teach you such accents as those. You have heard the Angel of Music, Christine."}
Trying to interpret Raoul's tone here. We can reasonably assume that he does not believe the angel actually visited Christine, since his previous thoughts showed that he believes Christine only equates her recent triumph with her father's memory because of her 'obedience to a pious thought' (believing that her father sent the angel to bring her musical genius). Is he going 'yeah, I remember that story too! I can see why you would *metaphorically* associate that with your current musical talent, and I think you are as talented as anyone in those stories who was visited by the angel, and your voice has an unearthly natural beauty to it'?
{"Yes," she said solemnly, "IN MY DRESSING-ROOM. That is where he comes to give me my lessons daily."
"In your dressing-room?" he echoed stupidly.}
WHAT A SCANDAL, MISS DAAE. (Also Raoul's great surprise shows he was referring to the story to pay Christine a compliment, not out of genuine belief. If he was speaking literally, his surprise might be due to the fact that the angel visits her daily, when the story only mentions the angel appearing once in a person's lifetime.)
{"You don't answer!" he said angrily and unhappily. "Well, I will answer for you. It was because there was some one in the room who was in your way, Christine, some one that you did not wish to know that you could be interested in any one else!"
"If any one was in my way, my friend," Christine broke in coldly, "if any one was in my way, that evening, it was yourself, since I told you to leave the room!"}
GOOD POINT, CHRISTINE!
{"Then you were listening behind the door?"
"Yes, because I love you everything ... And I heard everything ..."}
Loving someone does not give you an excuse to spy on them and monitor their every conversation. (Sorry, just the 'I need to monitor everything you say because I love you' just hits a little too close to home for me.)
{"Christine!"
"Raoul!"}
Erik! (Oh, wait- he's not here yet.)
{He was terribly concerned and bitterly grieved to see the hours, which he had hoped to find so sweet, slip past without the presence of the young Swedish girl. Why did she not come to roam with him through the country where they had so many memories in common?}
Maybe she just needs some alone time? Maybe grief is a mostly private thing that she doesn't want to share with you, even though she recognizes that you miss him too? Just respect her wishes and try not to be overdramatic and read too much into it.
{They were marvelous red roses that had blossomed in the morning, in the snow, giving a glimpse of life among the dead, for death was all around him. It also, like the flowers, issued from the ground, which had flung back a number of its corpses. Skeletons and skulls by the hundred were heaped against the wall of the church, held in position by a wire that left the whole gruesome stack visible. Dead men's bones, arranged in rows, like bricks, to form the first course upon which the walls of the sacristy had been built. }
What a haunting mental image. Flowers and death are often intertwined, but the juxtaposition of flowers and long-dead bones is uncomfortable and wrong here, yet is the foundation on which this location is built. (And the presence of skulls reminds me of a certain death's dead who will appear momentarily.)
{A voice behind him said:
"Do you think the Korrigans will come this evening?"
It was Christine. He tried to speak. She put her gloved hand on his mouth.}
Oh. Now the tables have turned, and it is Christine who initiates contact with Raoul, and Christine who deliberately recalls elements of their childhood friendship. She mirrors his introduction in order to appeal for reconciliation, perhaps? (Also who would let children play and watch for mythical creatures in an area adjacent to a graveyard? Surely that is not the only place to glimpse the sea in Perros.)
{"And it was here that he said, 'When I am in Heaven, my child, I will send him to you.' Well, Raoul, my father is in Heaven, and I have been visited by the Angel of Music."
"I have no doubt of it," replied the young man gravely, for it seemed to him that his friend, in obedience to a pious thought, was connecting the memory of her father with the brilliancy of her last triumph.}
And Raoul tries to put two and two together. His current theory is good, considering what little information he has to go on. She was recently a success, and her deceased father promised to send her a means to achieve musical greatness, so since she achieved musical greatness she naturally attributes it to her father and his stories, because to do so otherwise would be dishonoring his memory.
{"I understand," he said, "that no human being can sing as you sang the other evening without the intervention of some miracle. No professor on earth can teach you such accents as those. You have heard the Angel of Music, Christine."}
Trying to interpret Raoul's tone here. We can reasonably assume that he does not believe the angel actually visited Christine, since his previous thoughts showed that he believes Christine only equates her recent triumph with her father's memory because of her 'obedience to a pious thought' (believing that her father sent the angel to bring her musical genius). Is he going 'yeah, I remember that story too! I can see why you would *metaphorically* associate that with your current musical talent, and I think you are as talented as anyone in those stories who was visited by the angel, and your voice has an unearthly natural beauty to it'?
{"Yes," she said solemnly, "IN MY DRESSING-ROOM. That is where he comes to give me my lessons daily."
"In your dressing-room?" he echoed stupidly.}
WHAT A SCANDAL, MISS DAAE. (Also Raoul's great surprise shows he was referring to the story to pay Christine a compliment, not out of genuine belief. If he was speaking literally, his surprise might be due to the fact that the angel visits her daily, when the story only mentions the angel appearing once in a person's lifetime.)
no subject
Date: 2018-12-18 01:50 pm (UTC)Maybe she just needs some alone time? Maybe grief is a mostly private thing that she doesn't want to share with you, even though she recognizes that you miss him too? Just respect her wishes and try not to be overdramatic and read too much into it.
yeah, Raoul, pull your head out of your overbred butt and read the room!
Also, hi! Just wanted to pop over and say hello since I saw your name in my inbox.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-19 04:00 pm (UTC)Hello! Even though I mostly post Phantom here (are you into Phantom of the Opera in any iteration?), as I find my way around DW, I've ended up subscribing to a lot of random people fleeing from the tumblr apocalypse whose content looks interesting, even if I don't share their fandoms.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-19 07:01 pm (UTC)I have read Leroux, and at least one sequel adaptation, but I have no recollection which one except for the cover art and some fanfic waaaay back in the day.
I'm mostly in Venom fandom just now, but I also am happy to read good fic in any fandom - I love different viewpoints and odd couples and aliens and miscommunication. Like, I'm reading a fic now where the Transformers hire an anthropologist to study them, and it's pretty great
no subject
Date: 2020-11-13 02:14 am (UTC)I don't see anything odd in that; Perros-Guirec was, at the time, a pretty small community (in fact, I get the impression it was basically a single street) and the children used to play up on the moors above the village (and the church).
And certainly in England, being sent to play in the churchyard was quite normal in any case; it was a convenient walled grassy area in the days before fenced-in children's playgrounds, where your offspring were safe from passing road traffic and couldn't get lost. Provided you didn't do too much yelling and jumping on gravestones, nobody saw it as disrespectful.
Note that de Mattos has omitted another paragraph here (as elsewhere), where Raoul is described as responding to the incongruity of this statement by staring at her in dismay, as if at someone who affirms the existence of some wild illusion "in which she believes with the whole force of her poor sick mind".
The contrast between their previous abstract religious conversation and Christine's announcement that the Angel of Music comes to give her personal lessons in her dressing-room at the opera is a bit like the crazy woman next to you in the queue who whispers confidentially that God has taken up residence in her airing-cupboard :-(
Raoul has been assuming that Christine is speaking metaphorically; that she has been 'visited by the Angel of Music' in terms of being touched by a divine gift of song, a talent sent from heaven rather than drilled into her by professors at the Academy, and that her performance the other evening was the result of inspiration from above. What he does not expect to hear is that the Angel of Music has manifested in the bowels of the opera house to teach her vocal exercises...