The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily 66 · 66

<p>With the old woman gone, the snake picks up the thread, and the narrator marks it precisely: she continues das abgesprochene Gespräch, the broken-off conversation, a small signal of how thoroughly the errand had interrupted them. Her opening concession, wie dem auch sey, however that may be, gives up the argument about the bridge and moves to firmer ground: der Tempel ist erbauet. The old participle erbauet, where later German would say erbaut, keeps the sentence solemn, almost liturgical.</p><p>The undercurrent is the ledger the characters are keeping. The prophecy is a list of conditions, temple, bridge, river, and they are being ticked off one by one in dialogue, each claim tested as it is made. When the snake says the temple is built, she reports what she has lain inside and seen; hers is testimony, the one currency Lily's exactness accepts. The next exchange will test even this.</p>

Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.

You are reading a page of the The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.

The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.

Also on our shelves:

• Plato's Phaedrus — complete, ancient Greek
• Heraclitus, the Fragments — complete
• Dante's Inferno — Italian, canto I
• Dom Casmurro — Brazilian Portuguese