Spring in Fialta Fate and Free Will Quotes Page 1
Citations follow this format: (Paragraph)
| Quote #1 This time we had met in warm and misty Fialta, and I could not have celebrated the occasion with greater art, could not have adorned with bright vignettes the list of fate's former services, even if I had known that this was to be the last one; the last one, I maintain, for I cannot imagine any heavenly firm of brokers that might consent to arrange me a meeting with her beyond the grave. (9) |
Because we know from (nearly) the beginning of the text that Nina’s going to die, the entire story is infused with a sense of fatalism.
| Quote #2 Windows light up and stretch their luminous lengths upon the dark billowy snow, making room for the reflection of the fan-shaped light above the front door between them. Each of the two side-pillars is fluffily fringed with white, which rather spoils the lines of what might have been a perfect ex-libris for the book of our two lives. (11) |
And that’s the thing about memory. Because he’s looking back on these events, Victor is able to imbue them with a sense of fate. At the time, of course, he would have had no reason to see an ex-libris over the front door.
| Quote #3 …and as I watched her in the maze of gestures and shadows of gestures of which the rest of that evening consisted (probably parlour games — with Nina persistently in the other camp)… (12) |
Think back to being, oh, seven or eight. How FRUSTRATING is it when that crush of yours always ends up on the OTHER team in tug-of-war or capture the flag or whatever? In this agonizing way, it feels to Victor like fate is conspiring against him and Nina.
