"So her mind is like a wonderful bird-cage, filled with nightingales, which, like all captive nightingales, feed upon hearts—upon her heart."
— Gregorio Martinez Sierra (1881-1947)
Work Title
Date
1908
Metaphor
"So her mind is like a wonderful bird-cage, filled with nightingales, which, like all captive nightingales, feed upon hearts—upon her heart."
Metaphor in Context
PROLOGUE
Why not? Know then that she is white, but not pale, because in each of her cheeks every instant a rose is about to be born. She has painted her lips with the red of poppies, and one day when she sat down to dream, looking out over a meadow, two violets sprang up and jumped in her eyes. Since then nobody has been able to tell whether her glances were fragrance or light, [end page 96] and out of this sweet confusion, as out of all beautiful confusions, a harmony springs, which we call music. And so the look of Columbine is a song. Merely from listening to her song and hearing her laugh, men have gone mad. So her mind is like a wonderful bird-cage, filled with nightingales, which, like all captive nightingales, feed upon hearts—upon her heart. That is why Columbine is unfaithful to Pierrot sometimes—to feed her heart. For Pierrot, who is a marionette and a puppet as she is, refuses her the heart’s meat on which, as I have told you, the nightingales feed.
(pp. 96-7)
Why not? Know then that she is white, but not pale, because in each of her cheeks every instant a rose is about to be born. She has painted her lips with the red of poppies, and one day when she sat down to dream, looking out over a meadow, two violets sprang up and jumped in her eyes. Since then nobody has been able to tell whether her glances were fragrance or light, [end page 96] and out of this sweet confusion, as out of all beautiful confusions, a harmony springs, which we call music. And so the look of Columbine is a song. Merely from listening to her song and hearing her laugh, men have gone mad. So her mind is like a wonderful bird-cage, filled with nightingales, which, like all captive nightingales, feed upon hearts—upon her heart. That is why Columbine is unfaithful to Pierrot sometimes—to feed her heart. For Pierrot, who is a marionette and a puppet as she is, refuses her the heart’s meat on which, as I have told you, the nightingales feed.
(pp. 96-7)
Categories
Provenance
Contributed by Suzanne Morgen. Searching GoogleBooks
Citation
Martinez Sierra, Gregorio. "Love Magic" in Plays of G. Martinez Sierra. Trans. John Garrett Underhill. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1922. <Link to Google Books>
Date of Entry
12/03/2009
Date of Review
06/16/2010
