At the next highest level, I read two more
chiastic structures, one in the first metrical section and one in the third.
71) The composite of ordo--weaving, lining up, and beginning--thus appears most evidently, like the
chiastic X, in an almost invisible structure.
The
chiastic movement is predicated on that vulnerability; both Krzysztof and Irena reveal to us, as they change places with each other, that there is no safe haven, that the integrity of either position depends upon a constant awareness of the haunting, even corrosive presence of the other position; oddly, one measure of the strength of either position is that Irena and Krzysztof are both drawn away from their original entrenched complacencies.
This poem is also one of the
chiastic poems in Drum-Taps, ending where it begins.
This
chiastic structure, however, crumples in Marlowe's experiences with his client families.
As was the case with the letter to Esarhaddon mentioned above, the Nebuchadnezzar inscription contains a
chiastic borrowing:
I had forgotten everything Tony had told us about
chiastic pattern.
The second couplet expands the thought in similar metaphorical language, but in reverse,
chiastic order.
Eventually, he comes to see that he has '"put up with'" something far more than '"a little inferior'" (67): he provides a
chiastic description of Anne and Louisa, the former standing as the paragon of perfection, the latter, the foil (263).
The
chiastic structure of the tale reflects, and is informed by, the two major concerns which the two men bring to the fore: even though he is not a ruler, Melisso is concerned primarily with his relationships with his fellow citizens--how he can be loved--and thus with matters of politics outside his own household, about which the text tells us nothing.
After surveying previous research, he considers building and house-filling; a new
chiastic structure of Proverbs 1:20-33; close readings of 8:1-36 and 9:1-6; the Gattung definition of the three speeches of wisdom; poetic imagery as a unifying element of structure; and the gradation of enticement, temptation, and desirability in wisdom's speech.
What we learn from the transformation of sequential time into something more like a
chiastic temporal structure (the past and future meet at the moment of narration and radiate out from there) is that while we may use stories to take revenge against time, time is also taking revenge against us.
