Dry tears 10


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page 69  As for the line "Dry tears", it merely confirms the meaning is sad, whether or not we add an unlikely but possible hidden allusion to the alternative meaning of the word "tears", thinking of an old wound or some cut in the past. There has to be a deep meaning behind the shimmering carcass to be really sad: if it was only a stark meaning, it would be not enough to cry, especially to cry till the tears become dry. Unlike the "empty way", we can find something about "dry tears" from the above list of authors:  
 * But ah! no drop

From Lethean springs would check my wasting sigh, Nor, till the fountains of my tears were dry
 * Would they e’er stop

Their sad outpourings: and the midnight gale Was oft wild witness of my mournful wail.
 * — Mark F. Bigney, "The Lament"

Note that this is the seventh time Mark Bigney is helping us: the statistics say it all. There is still the previously noted lack of links between the shipwrecked man, namely Jim Frisbee, and the totem, namely Naranath Branthan: but as Syd may have had to adapt Sisyphus to a more laughing character like Naranath (Syd himself is remembered by friends as a very laughing person), he may have had to use different stories to adapt Sisyphus to his unique vision of a shipwrecked character who has lost himself and his sense of purpose, seen in his life's work, and then in Naranath's pebble: a unique story of a floating Sisyphean figure. And, just as the pebble inspired the idea of Prichard's sought-after opal, the distant shore inspired the idea of Bigney's stark Last Island, eventually inspiring other ideas to be taken from the entire book: lines from Bigney permeate Opel more than those of other authors.  sources → Bigney, Mark Frederick. "The Lament." The Forest Pilgrims, and Other Poems. New Orleans: J. A. Gresham, 1867. 33. Print. http://www.archive.org/stream/forestpilgrims00bignrich#page/n33/mode/2up