Jamaica Kincaid's "Song of Roland" has the structure of a sonata. The story is remarkable, but in keeping with the dictum that there are only a few stories out there, the content is not novel—it's a love story about a woman who has an affair with a married man. The language is exquisite and precise throughout, but I would argue the story's impact is realized above all because of the rigor of its sonata-like shape.

Like a sonata, "Song of Roland" has several distinct sections: Exposition, Development, Recapitulation and Coda.

The Exposition lays out the main subject and themes (the narrator's infatuation with Roland, his beauty rendered through imagery of the island where they live, the lovers' passion).

The Development explores these ideas, characters and themes and works variations of them. The key variation in this part of "Song of Roland" is the introduction of Roland's wife and they way her existence — and the existence of his many other lovers — alters the status of the narrator on the island, and what it implies for their affair.

The Recapitulation is where the ideas of the Exposition return, with changes. The greatest change in Song of Roland's Recapitulation, is the shift in the equation of Roland with the island, the land itself where they live. Initially, this metonymy was a vast and beautiful thing, making Roland larger than life, a whole landscape, a world ("His mouth really did look like an island, lying is a twig-brown sea."); now, it becomes a limitation. Roland is merely of the island, just a stevadore who unloads freight ("he did not cross the oceans, he only worked in the bottom of vessels that did so"). Exactly where this pivot occurs (middle column, p. 96), the island itself is called a "false country."

In the Coda, it is clear that the narrator now loves herself and no longer loves the sexually unfulfilling and unfaithful Roland. With her eye on the horizon, she can and will go off island to pursue larger dreams.

There is much else to the story, including the major allusion to the eponymous French epic poem about a battle fought by Charlemagne, but the sonata structure is there like an armature. It dictates the way the story unfolds without determining any of the details.

PROMPT:

Choose a natural object, a work of art or an artifact you love and mirror not the object itself but its shape in your prose.

What to choose? A sonata, a haiku, a fairy tale, a suspension bridge, a jar, a skeleton, a branching tree, a tryptic, a sewer system, the Passion Play. Your options are nearly infinite.

For your own version, start small. First, try to write just a sentence with the shape of your object or artifact in mind. Then a paragraph. Then a scene. This exercise is scalable. It could even be used to organize a book-length work.

© Elizabeth Gaffney 5/10/2021

Further reading: Song of Roland, Jamaica Kincaid