the tiger’s wife

“The living know that, at daybreak, the soul will leave them and make its way to the places of the past—the schools and dormitories of its youth, army barracks and tenements, houses razed to the ground and rebuilt, places that recall love and guilt, difficulties and unbridled happiness, optimism and ecstasy, memories of grace meaningless to anyone else—and sometimes this journey will carry it so far for so long that it will forget to come back.”

—TÉA OBREHT, THE TIGER’S WIFE

Why it’s beautiful

A list can be more than just commas separating things. Like this list between the dashes. There’s hardship. (Army barracks and tenements. Houses razed.) Found hope. (The razed houses get rebuilt.) There’s antithesis, or contrasting elements. (Love and guilt. Difficulties and unbridled happiness.) The list ends in a rhetorical climax, items ordered in rising importance. (Optimism moves into ecstasy moves into an ethereal grace.) And it’s melodic. (Rebuilt, guilt. OPtimism and ECstasy.)

I’m also used to “recall” describing a person remembering something. But here it means an item calling something back to your mind…which I like.

And the sentence structure reflects the story. The soul and the sentence carry on a while.