Connotative Imagery
In describing the city of Marseilles as seen from the harbor, the author likely introduces a great many readers to an unfamiliar word and then proceeds to carefully define that word through connotation. “Grisailles” is a form of painting that attempts to achieve a very particular effect visual effect. The repetition of a certain word combined with associated colors in the imagery painted with metaphor become clues pointing to what the particular visual effect is going for:
“Marseilles looked like a delicate palette of grisailles: the grey of the smoky sky, the blue-grey tones of the mountains, the pinkish-grey ones of the rooftops, the yellowish ones of the Colline de Notre Dame . . . the silvery, lilac hues of the seas.”
The Despotism of Climate
The power of metaphor to draw a comparison between two things intensifies with precision. The closer a writer gets to using the one perfect word that connects the parallel, the greater the impression and resonance. In at least one instance, the author hits just the perfect note, as anyone who has ever baked in an oppressively hot climate can attest:
“This morning the sky looked dark and cloudy, a most unexpected sight in this land of implacably blue skies and tyrannical sunshine.”
That “Diary” Stuff
At various points along the way, the entries begin to sound like what a lot of people probably think of when they think of reading someone else’s diary. The introspective glimpse into a soul laid bare by the thought of privacy and the absence of an inner censor. Perhaps surprisingly, it is these moments when metaphor becomes most prevalent:
“I sometimes feel so pessimistic that I look ahead with a feeling of irrational terror, as if the future can be only bad and terrifying, even though many of those dark clouds have in fact gone from my horizon.”
A Strangely Nietzschean Feminism
Isabelle is a feminist, but before that word gained traction. Her perspective on feminism one seen through a greater lens of learned behavior that transcends sex and gender. It is a population-wide phenomenon traceable to Nietzschean dialectics on the master/slave dynamic:
“Oh, how the common herd who pride themselves on their sophistication and their brains, abhor whoever does not toe their line and obey their asinine and arbitrary rules! ! How it rankles the common man to see anyone—and a woman at that—depart from the norm and be herself!”
Soaked in Metaphor
If there is one thing that sticks out above all else in these diaries it is the author’s love of metaphorical imagery. Rare is the page which doesn’t feature multiple instances, but even more impressive are those not entirely infrequent occurrences when multiple metaphors populate a single paragraph or, in the most extreme cases, soak up a single sentence:
“Last night, Cagliari was booming with the echo of the sea’s rolling thunder . . . Today, it was its most ominous; it had a dull and glaucous shimmer. This beloved hovel looks a desolate wreck in tonight’s grey sunset, the very image of departure and upheaval, and I am full of the sorrow that goes with changes in surroundings, those successive stages of annihilation that slowly lead to the great and final void.”
