too, were pulled to follow the sinking rays and quietly to vanish from the earth. She sat still, feeling no desire to resist it.
This description illustrates the art of combining denotation and connotation.
My assignment was to describe a sunset seen from the window of a train—a dismal sunset that would match Dagny’s mood in this scene. I give the reader precise information about the sight by means of those details which convey its essence; and I convey the mood by the kind of words and metaphor I select. Unlike Thomas Wolfe, I do not try to convey the mood apart from that which creates the mood. Instead, I carefully select words that both convey the exact physical details and have specific connotations.
For instance, in the phrase “a solid spread of rusty, graying clouds,” the word rusty conveys not only the color, but also something dismal. In the next sentence, the word twilight has connotations of sadness. And the best part of this description is: “The twilight was draining the sky without the wound of a sunset.” Since a sunset would look like a wound across the sky, the metaphor is visually appropriate and helps the reader visualize a sunset; and by saying that the sky was being drained without the wound of a sunset, I convey, by means of a negative, both the exact description and the mood. Then I continue the metaphor in the same style: “it looked more like the fading of an anemic body in the process of exhausting its last drops of blood and light. ” When I say “and light,” I bring the metaphor back to the concrete reality of the sunset and the evening.
Suppose I had started by saying: “It was evening and she sat at the window of a train. The twilight was draining the sky without the wound of a sunset.” That would have been a floating abstraction. I first have to give specific details: there is a brown stretch of prairie, the sky is covered with clouds, they are of a rusty shade so that one would not see the sun setting. Then the metaphor “without the wound of a sunset” becomes convincing. To start with such a metaphor would be vague and unclear, because the question would be: Where did the sunset go?
In the next sentence, the words all have a downbeat, twilight feeling. “The train was going west”—this connotes the sunset and evening—“as if it, too, were pulled”—it is not even going of its own power—“to follow the sinking rays and quietly to vanish from the earth. ” This is a literal description, since the train is going west, but by saying “quietly to vanish from the earth,” I imply more than merely vanishing into the sunset. I imply destruction and hopelessness, and the feeling of “your days are numbered,” which is the emotional key of this chapter.
According to my metaphysical view, nature is of interest to a human being only as his material or setting. I therefore always describe nature as a background for man, never as an end in itself considered separately from the characters or the scene taking place. (This is a point open to debate. If a writer attaches some special value to the description of nature, I would say that he has a wrong premise; but one could not say that, in carrying out his premise, he is guilty of overwriting.)
The above description is written from Dagny’s viewpoint; she is sitting at the window of a train, and this is what she sees. However, observe that I could have written the same description without referring to anyone sitting at a window, since I describe what the place and the sunset actually look like. I do not project Dagny’s emotions into the description.
When we come to the last quotation, from Thomas Wolfe, you will see a different approach. In his description of New York, he does not differentiate between what is being seen and what the character feels.
From Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen
The road from Closter Seven to Hopballehus rises more than five hundred feet and winds through tall pine forest. From time to time this opens and affords a magnificent view over large stretches of land below. Now in the afternoon sun the trunks of the fir trees were burning red, and the landscape far away seemed cool, all blue and pale gold. Boris was able now to believe what the old gardener at the convent had told him when he was a