How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"You are – how old? Twenty-six or –seven? I am nearly twice that and, let me tell you, you are lucky. You are lucky that what is happening to you now is happening now and not when you are forty, or something like that, when there would be no hope for you and you would simply be destroyed." (1.3.66)
Clearly, as Jacques is giving David advice about what to do with Giovanni, he is speaking partially of himself. What is Jacques saying about himself through his advice to David? Why would he "simply be destroyed" if he fell in love when he were older? What would happen to Jacques if he were to meet someone at his age?
Quote #5
"That you must ask yourself," he told me, "and perhaps one day this morning will not be ashes in your mouth." (1.3.89)
The expression "ashes in your mouth" is commonly meant to refer to a bitter memory. Why do you think people describe such a memory as "ashes in your mouth"? Clearly, it relates to it being an unpleasant experience, but push the metaphor further. How does memory relate to sensation – to taste and smell? Why would a regret from the past be compared to ashes? Given what happens, do you think the morning is ashes in David's mouth or not?
Quote #6
I suppose they will come for him early in the morning, perhaps just before dawn, so that the last thing Giovanni will ever see will be that grey, lightless sky over Paris, beneath which we stumbled homeward together so many desperate and drunken mornings. (1.3.198)
OK, let's pick this line apart. First, David does not know where Giovanni is or what is going to happen to him. Yet he imagines Giovanni, on the day of his death, as looking up at the grey sky over Paris. Here he is imagining something in the future. Yet, when his thought falls from the sky back to the ground he is in the past – he is remembering the time that he and Giovanni spent together under that same grey sky. How does memory relate to imagination? Is it possible to have a memory of the future?