Paracake (paracake) wrote, @ 2007-03-21 20:18:00

Chantal L. (Anonymous) 2007-04-05 12:12 (link)

With the Gastein journal, I recognized the parallelism between this and Don Giovanni. I noticed that it was a similar story, but in different format or structure. The descriptions are much more elaborated in this section in comparison to Don Giovanni. There are some kind of blanks left throughout the poem, leaving us with questions that are eventually answered to some extent in the Gastein journal. It becomes much more emotional and bizarre at the same time. I don’t know what that is, but it does. Painful but rather beautiful. I was baffled about a number of parts in this section, particularly the part when the man from the train made love to the maid lady and when the major called the people in for a meeting telling them that “odd things have been happening.” The school of whales, falling stars, and such seemed to have been symbolism of something but I wasn’t sure what. I hoped to read on to learn if they were but I didn’t get much just yet. Also, the postcards from the various people staying in the white hotel confused me. They, generally, said that the weather was nice and then something about a fire or a storm. It was strange. The only theories I had about this particular story is that if we read on, to different chapters, our questions and the whole story would be revealed to us. For it had been structured in that way for the first two sections, I would immediately assume such a thing. (Reply to this) (Thread)