EmmaD
1801 Posts
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I'm not sure I'd agree with Marg Macallister's second one. The
problem with prologues in general is that the beginning of any
novel asks a lot of the reader: we have to work out a whole lot of
who/when/where, even before we starting wonder why/how, and all for
characters we've had no chance to start caring about. And then it
stops, and we have to start all over again in a new place, with new
people, and all the time carrying the stuff from the prologue with
us, waiting for the moment when it turns out to be important. If it
does. Which is why I said mile further up the thread that almost
all the reasons people use prologues might well be better served by
other means.
Having said that, this is the prologue to A Secret Alchemy:
What I have known, I shall not set down. My habit is silence, and
it is a habit that has served me well. Words set on paper are
dangerous. Wise men will write no more than is needful, and give it
into the hand of their most trusted messenger. No more, that is,
than gains the messenger stabling for his horse and safe conduct
into the hall, and a privy hearing with its lord. All else is a
tale for the messenger to tell: arms and allegiances, open war and
secret plans, love and hate and the safety of the realm. So it is
with me. After a lifetime of such tales there is no house so safe
they may be told within it, no castle so strong it may not be
breached at the turn of Fortune’s wheel. At the hour of my death my
memories, my tales, will die with me. The great men and their
masters, whom I have served with so much diligence and secrecy,
expect it.
There are men, and women too, who have witnessed these events and
others that I have not. Like pilgrims we have travelled the same
road, stumbled over the same stones, knelt at the same shrines, yet
each one of us has made a different journey and met a different
end. And what our journey truly was, what story each has to tell,
none can discern until all journeying is done.
Even the one I loved above all others did not know everything that
I have known. He was spared that much sorrow. I sang the ‘Chanson
de Roland’ and he spoke of Gawain. I held him in my arms while he
wept for his father’s murder, and side by side we shed the blood of
traitors and the infidel. We rejoiced in our love: body and soul
together. Though seas and mountains and the enmities of princes
kept us apart, there was no distance between our hearts. That I
could do nothing for him when his boy was taken is the great
bitterness of my long life. That he is dead is my great
grief.
But my greatest secret he cannot know, and that is a mercy for
which I thank God. For I know what came to his boy, and the younger
one too. I know as few others do, for few others could have found
it out. I could not tell my love, so I told the woman he loved most
in the world, as he would have wished. She is wise, and discreet,
and lives retired. She will not speak of it.
No human creature knows all. That is the power of God alone, and to
God alone shall my story be told.
Louis de Bretaylles
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EmmaD
1801 Posts
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"Does it actually tell us anything at all, though - other than
that you are not going to tell us anything? Is it's intention
merely to intrigue? And (shame, shame) not having read the book, is
it somehow necessary in order to understand the rest of the
book?
Please tell."
It has various functions, but no, it's not essential to the plot,
nor at all to understanding it:
It gives a voice to a character who is the beloved of one of the
three narrators, but who only appears in the rest of the novel in
flashbacks (apart from a brief scene at the end).
It sets out several of the major themes of the novel: storytelling,
pilgrimage (and the connections between the two), secret love
It explains why there are gaps in the historical record - gaps in
which I've written the novel - because so much isn't written down,
but given orally by the messenger.
It hints at the beginning that the storytelling/pilgrimage ideas
develop into a sense of journeys which come full circle: all the
three narrative strands do that in one way or another.
And it hints that in the book the reader will discover "what came
to his boy, and the other one too".
And more than that I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill
you...
Emma
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