The Old Mill
“Sta’s Little Adventure” is an interesting little tale. Interesting not so much for the tale itself as it is for the way in which it is told. The narrator is one of those types who feels compelled to address the reader directly with such information as the trepidation they feel about introducing a character and mixing the use of “I” and “we” in the narrative perspective. Despite that, the imagery used to describe something as inherently mundane as an old mill is conveyed vividly through simple imagery:
“By a dike that could only be crossed once in a blue moon, and next to a large pond with a luxuriant covering of verdure bordered by an alder grove, stood the mill. It was an old black building with grated windows, and on its right flank it possessed two enormous wheels, thank to which it had shaken and rattled for thirty years, bringing quite a fortune to its owner, Stawinski.”
Serpentine
The title “The Sins of Childhood” may give insight into the following imagery. Animal imagery is one of the most common types in fiction as it provides the author with opportunities to create links through familiar associations in the reader’s minds, often without the reader even being consciously aware they are making the connection. Any sort of imagery that includes any sort of reference to snakes should always alert the reader to Biblical associations:
“Stretching out like a snake in the warm sunlight, on the yielding bushes, I felt an indescribable happiness, mostly because I was able not to think at all. From time to time I turned over onto my back, my head hanging below the level of my body. Fanned by the w ind, leaves were stroking my face; I looked at the immense sky and, with a sense of unfathomable contentment, I imagined to myself that I was not even there.”
Mold
“The Mold of the Earth” is comprised of less than seven-hundred words and most of that considered superfluous—adjectives, adverbs, metaphorical language, etc.---has been pared down to the bone. What is left is to tell the story is, for the most part, dialogue and imagery. And most of that dialogue is imagery devoted to describing mold:
“This grey splotch, large as the palm of a person’s hand, was two years ago no larger than a penny. This tiny grey spot a year ago didn’t exist and comes from the great splotch that occupies the top of the boulder. These two again, the yellow and the red, are fighting. At one time the yellow was the larger, but slowly its neighbor has displaced it. And look at the green one — how its grizzled neighbor is making inroads into it, how many grey streaks, spots, clumps can be seen against the green background?”
The Statue
“A Dream” is a very strange story even for Prus, and that is really saying something. Its general weirdness inexorably leads to some of the most vivid imagery in the author’s canon that includes, among other things, some very industrious ants, giant smithy, and a sphere of granite. Not to mention an enormous statuary figure identified as “the image of Reality.”
“Suddenly he noticed that he was standing on a boundless expanse of white, fluffy clouds, in the middle of which there stood a magnificent statue of some person, taller than the tallest mountains on earth. 'This figure wore a white robe that cascaded down in folds to its feet; its arms were crossed on its chest and its face was plunged in thought, the folds of its robe looked like mountain ranges separated by deep chasms, while across these heights and depths there scuttled creatures the size of ants who bore an uncanny resemblance to humans in the caps and gowns of university professors.”
