Meet my friend. Meet Anna Fora.

As the Vitruvian Duck caught, last post's figure of speech was the Anaphora: beginning a series of sentences or clauses with the same words. Once again, while I tried to use the figure more than once, it seemed to take over of its own accord and shape one paragraph through and through:

A home is first of all for human life. A home is a practical place of everyday living and an emotional place of comfort. A home is eventually the repository of a human history, a sacrament of memory. A home deserves sweat and late nights for its design.

A home is not about the architect--not unless the architect is designing his own home.

But the Duck pointed out something further in his comment:

That second paragraph: "A home is not about..." is an anaphora to the first paragraph (when viewed as a part of a greater whole). But as viewed as whole unto itself, it's not...It was the fact that 'home' was used at the beginning AND the end of the clause that was bugging me.

This is a good example of how an author writes and does not write. I was certainly trying to shape my prose, and I certainly felt that I had achieved a nice effect, but until the Duck pointed it out I had not even noticed that I began and ended that last line with the same word, or how the second paragraph acts as an anaphora to the first. Those effects are there and are certainly "intended" in some sense, but in what sense? I make my living by interpreting ancient texts, and so the Duck's point fascinates me: I cannot honestly say that beginning and ending that sentence with the same word was actually "on my mind," but I have to accept his observation as an accurate interpretation of how I achieved the effect. The author's "intention"--what the author would say about his own text--may not always be the gold standard.

But I am too tired to unscrew the inscrutable. Tonight anyway.

Anaphora was a fun figure to play with. It was like each sentence was a path that began the same way but might or might not go to the same place; it might actually go in the opposite direction by the end. Mnemonically, I picture in my mind four paths of letters, each beginning with a large letter "A"; each "A" is on a fur rug, and the path stretches back behind it into a dense, mysterious wood. If "four A" does not phonetically cue me, "On a fur A" should recall the needed term.