Not sure if anyone here has read The Sheltering Sky...I love it, but was confused by this passage.
What does that mean exactly, the part about blood and excrement? Is blood symbolic for the sky, and excrement the Earth??
UPDATE: So there's a forward to my copy, and the author mentions Port getting Peritonitis, which explains the blood & excrement line. He had an intestinal rupture.
So when Port is dying there's the following paragraph.
His cry went on through the final image: the spots of raw bright blood on the earth. Blood on excrement. The supreme moment, high above the desert, when the two elements, blood and excrement, long kept apart, merge. A black star appears, a point of darkness in the night sky's clarity. Point of darkness and gateway to repose. Reach out, pierce the fine fabric of the sheltering sky, take repose.
His cry went on through the final image: the spots of raw bright blood on the earth. Blood on excrement. The supreme moment, high above the desert, when the two elements, blood and excrement, long kept apart, merge. A black star appears, a point of darkness in the night sky's clarity. Point of darkness and gateway to repose. Reach out, pierce the fine fabric of the sheltering sky, take repose.
What does that mean exactly, the part about blood and excrement? Is blood symbolic for the sky, and excrement the Earth??
UPDATE: So there's a forward to my copy, and the author mentions Port getting Peritonitis, which explains the blood & excrement line. He had an intestinal rupture.
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