Fafnir (Jun 2015)
Drowning in Rikki Ducornet’s The Fountains of Neptune
Abstract
In this article, I will argue that Rikki Ducornet’s The Fountains of Neptune is metaphorically permeated by water both in the sphere of the themes it explores and on the level of the text’s structure. After a brief historical sketch of the philosophical search for the first principle and the process of the emergence of the tetrad of archai, I will elaborate on the metaphorical potential of fire, water, earth and air and provide a list of works by North-American authors (with special emphasis on speculative fiction writers) which use the four elements as concretizing poetic patterns and controlling metaphors. Next, I will elaborate on the position of elements in Rikki Ducornet’s Tetralogy and proceed to focus on the metaphorical potential of The Fountains of Neptune. To this end, I will first concentrate on the function of the sea as an identity-bestowing space in which people’s lives are anchored and then proceed to analyze the concepts of surface and depth introduced in The Fountains of Neptune in connection with human emotions. I will examine the relationship between memory, past and the unconscious the novel introduces and then concentrate on water’s power of purification and its connection with innocence, (re)birth, and femininity. Finally, I will investigate what influence water imagery and the notions such as formlessness or changeability have on both the language and the narrative flow of the novel.
