9/13/2023 0 Comments Harry potter phoenixIt should come as no surprise, therefore, that in her Harry Potter books, Rowling has chosen to cast her hero as a kind of metaphorical phoenix: a reconciler of opposites and a bringer of hope out of despair. For these reasons, the phoenix also represented the philosopher’s stone of medieval alchemy, the result of the ‘chemical wedding’ of opposites that produces pure love. The phoenix was also the symbol of individual constancy, a symbol of the countless readjustments and renewals that a person required to survive so many setbacks and disappointments. When considered historically, the symbolism of the phoenix has implied the reconciliation of counterbalancing realities: death and rebirth, destruction and re-creation, change and continuity. Yet, I would argue, in the solitude and despair of that moment another phoenix begins more clearly to emerge: Harry Potter himself. Fawkes had stopped singing.Īnd he knew, without knowing how he knew it, that the phoenix had gone, had left Hogwarts for good, just as Dumbledore had left the school, had left the world. Upon climbing into bed later, he first notices its significant absence:Īs he lay there, he became aware suddenly that the grounds were silent. (HPB – US 614-15)įor a while, at least, the song continues, passing in and out of Harry’s consciousness. How long they all stood there, listening, they did not know, nor why it seemed to ease their pain a little to listen to the sound of their mourning. And Harry felt, as he had felt about phoenix song before, that the music was inside him, not without: It was his own grief turned magically to song that echoed across the grounds and through the castle windows. Somewhere out in the darkness, a phoenix was singing in a way Harry had never heard before: a stricken lament of terrible beauty. ![]() Rowling’s most-recent book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, a number of characters experience a moment of sublime enchantment, rooting them in place as they find in their pain some release from it: Kernĭepartment of History, Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin ![]() The Phoenix in Harry Potter: the Metaphoric Power of the Past by Edmund M.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |