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Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

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Chapter 32 -- To Cross the Styx<br />

For an example in modern literature, we'll cite The Rescue: A<br />

Romance <strong>of</strong> the Shallows (1920) by Joseph Conrad.<br />

"I have a most extraordinary feeling," he [the novel's insufferable<br />

narcissist yacht owner Mr. Travers] said in a cautious<br />

undertone. "I seem to be in the air -- I don't know. Are we on<br />

the water, d'Alcacer?... Are you quite sure? But <strong>of</strong> course, we<br />

are on the water."<br />

"Yes," said d'Alcacer, in the same tone. "Crossing the Styx --<br />

perhaps."<br />

We're thus forewarned.<br />

Conrad's Lord Jim (1900) contains "as black as Styx," another <strong>of</strong>tused<br />

metaphor. Heart <strong>of</strong> Darkness (1899) is set on about a dark<br />

river, but one entirely above ground.<br />

The allusion to fatality, we find, extends even to science, per the<br />

Acherontia styx, the Death's Head hawkmoth, made famous in<br />

the film Silence <strong>of</strong> the Lambs (1991).<br />

A Metaphoric Stygian Library<br />

Let us draw together books in English having titles employing a Stygian allusion. To maintain a<br />

degree <strong>of</strong> propriety, however, we'll omit titles dealing with<br />

1. Comic books set the underworld, a subject <strong>of</strong> Chapter 24, and<br />

2. The rock band mentioned in Chapter 36.<br />

The commonality <strong>of</strong> our collection stems from the word "Styx" in the title, the proclamation that<br />

what follows is about death.<br />

DRAFT 1122//66//22001122<br />

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