‘A woman fell in love with a man who had been dead a number of years. it was not enough for her to brush his coats, wipe his inkwell, finger his ivory comb: she had to build her house over his grave and sit with him night after night in the damp cellar. ‘
I have had a lot of fun with this story this week!
Is it a short homage to Edgar Allan Poe with its Gothic infrastructure of morbidity and melancholy? Or is it a gloomy elegy on lost love unconsummated and unrequited ?
My feeling is that Lydia Davis is sardonically exposing the futility of many relationships. Afterall there are many ways to be dead before we take our last breath? Why do we often ignore the emotional signficance of those who declare their emotional aridity and still see them as redeemable and a challenge?
The brevity of the tale renders the subject matter stunning. Nothing is wasted, everything is suggestive. The connotations of the highly selective vocabulary are wildly resonant; who would want to sit in that damp cellar I wonder? We can almost smell the sexually fetid air. But what is the woman doing down there?Our mind wanders and wonders !
This is orchestrated behaviour for an audience both within and without the tale. The speaker is watching herself being ‘watched'( even with a dead gaze) and may take pleasure in such a gaze. And we as readers are repeating the same scenario. The sensory habits and rituals enjoyed by the unnamed woman make her strangely real to us. Her desire for daily activity is insatiable, and hardly unique. But where should the line be drawn?
In the cellar of our imagination perhaps?!
Drama is everywhere!