DISQUS

Christine Phillips · 3 months ago

The Fountain House is a museum in St. Petersburg that honors poet Anna Akhmatova, a symbol of suppressed Russian heritage during Stalin’s reign. So I'm guessing that the “dead” daughter is Russia’s suppressed culture during Stalin. And the revived daughter is culture's rebirth.

DH · 3 months ago

Wow Christine, I have to thank you for that. I love allegory. But I'm hoping that my reading has some resonance anyway. I'm also wondering, for the sake of argument mind you, why employ allegory if there's no more repression...no further need for evasion? What I'm trying to drive at is what role allegory can play in 21st century fiction. Is the Faerie Queene still relevant? Does this kind of symbolic thinking still make sense? I'd like to understand how...

Patrick T. Kilgallon · 3 months ago

I did not know the author was pulling a Jorge Luis Borge on us. Kudos to Christine Phillips who took the time to do an inquiry on that short story.