Romance Sonambulo Versions of Reality Quotes

This description of shadow as a belt strikes us as a bit strange. Shade is not really good for holding up one's pants, or so we've been told… Maybe this description suggests that there is a dark element to the gypsy girl. Perhaps there's a part of her that will always remain hidden.

What would it be like to have "all things" on Earth watching you? Let's ask Ryan Gosling. We bet it'd be disconcerting. Still, it doesn't seem to be a problem for our gypsy girl, since she can't see them anyway. In these twists of logic, the lines seem designed to highlight both the girl's desirability and her remoteness.

This fish of shadow sounds ominous, but it seems to have an important job: it brings on the dawn. If you've ever seen a pre-dawn sky, you'll know that, as the sun ascends, the sky changes from solid black to lighter and darker shades. Perhaps some deeper patch of darkness seems to suggest a fish of shadow, moving in the sky just before the sun emerges.

We don't know about you, but when we see a forest, we don't think of a cat, and vice versa. This metaphorical, alternative version of the forest's reality suggests a kind of disturbance, the kind that might set a cat's hair on end. Again, the poem uses its strange, dream-like elements to communicate an emotional tone, rather than a firm reality.

Come again? How can an "I" not be an "I"? Or a house not a house? This kind of statement seems designed to give us a major headache. What's clear, at the very least, is that the friend speaking here is experiencing his own alternative reality, in which things that you might always trust in (your self, your intimate surroundings) have now changed. Frankly, that doesn't sound like much fun. It might also explain why the friend is unable to help the speaker when he's asked for a favor.

This is a really striking auditory image, but, well, we're at a loss as to what it really means for the poem. Know what else? So was Lorca. Of these lines, he wrote, "I cannot explain their meaning, and that is how it should be" (source). It seems that the poet was content to let the poem's version of reality supersede his own, so we are, too. For the most part.

We mean, really. Is that safe? In this world of dreamy imagery and wild abandon, we guess it must be. In this case, the gypsy girl is enjoying some logically impossible exercise, high above our poor speaker. Most important about these lines, then, is the way that they communicate the girl's distance from our speaker. She's simply unreachable and, in this moment of alternate reality, that makes her ice cold.