"At dusk they halted and built a fire and roasted the deer. The night was much enclosed about them and there were no stars. To the north they could see other fires that burned red and sullen along the invisible ridges. They ate and moved on, leaving the fire on the ground behind them, and as they rode up into the mountains this fire seemed to become altered of its location, now here, now there, drawing away, or shifting unaccountably along the flank of their movement. Like some ignis fatuus belated upon the road behind them which all could see and of which none spoke. For this will to deceive that is in things luminous may manifest itself likewise in retrospect and so by sleight of some fixed part of a journey already accomplished may also post men to fraudulent destinies."
Leading with my chin here as I am only 36% through this book: I do not yet understand all of the significances to that paragraph. However I recognize that it is significant, there has been no similar passage to this point, and my sense is that it is the key passage in the entire book.
I believe that to be a particularly hard-crafted paragraph. The moving fire is unconvincing, I have tried to call up from everyday experience something similar without success. It is clearly mere metaphor enabling the last sentence which, in use of the word "luminous" and in context of the biblical rhythm and phrasing of the book as a whole and the Pilgrim's Progress-like odyssey of the riders' trek I believe to be warning of following "false Gods," religious or secular. But...I could be wrong.
Leading with my chin here as I am only 36% through this book: I do not yet understand all of the significances to that paragraph. However I recognize that it is significant, there has been no similar passage to this point, and my sense is that it is the key passage in the entire book.
I believe that to be a particularly hard-crafted paragraph. The moving fire is unconvincing, I have tried to call up from everyday experience something similar without success. It is clearly mere metaphor enabling the last sentence which, in use of the word "luminous" and in context of the biblical rhythm and phrasing of the book as a whole and the Pilgrim's Progress-like odyssey of the riders' trek I believe to be warning of following "false Gods," religious or secular. But...I could be wrong.
