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ward he opens a parenthesis and reminds Tacitus that it was coming from Vesuvius: the parenthesis marks a new temporal and epistemic shifting-in (an embrayage, a return to t0), expressed by the use of different tensescognitum est postea . . . Vesuvium fuisse. But, though the move is grammatically correct, from both the semantic and the syntactic point of view, its pragmatic effect is quite different: it reintroduces into the core of the epistemic world of P2 and of E the epistemic world of P1 and of Tacitus. The cloud is without any shadow of doubt the one that the Model Reader is supposed to know as cRv (knowing also that vRe). |
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The following move is more interesting: P2 and E are watching a cloud which is candida interdum, interdum sordida (sometimes white, sometimes dirty) and these are indeed the accidental properties of cRe, the cloud such as the Elder witnessed it in t-3. But the Younger (who in this case seems to be the Ego P2 but who in fact, by a sudden shifting in t0, is P1) says that the cloud looked so prout terram cineremve sustulerat (according to the amount of soil and ashes it carried with it): a property that could not be scored as belonging to C1 since it was typical of C2, the cloud of the later epistemic world of P1, the cloud coming from Vesuvius, the dangerous one, the one that now (in W0t0) everyone knows as the mythical co-agent of the subsequent disgrace. |
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This time the Younger has not signaled his shifting-in by a parenthesis; on the contrary, he has further confused the temporal situation, using a pluperfect (sustulerat) against the imperfect of the surrounding discourse (diffundebatur, vanescebat). He thus stresses the obvious fact that (from the point of view of the logic of events) the presence of soil and ashes was prior to the spreading out of the cloud. Which is correct from the point of view of the fabula, not from the point of view of the epistemic world of P2, who knew all this only afterward. P1 is telling his truth, which also happens to be the truth of the Reader but which was not the truth of P2 and of his unfortunate uncle. The reader could become conscious of this subtle operation, if he or she wanted. But how can he or she want it since the reader is so cordially invited to disregard this sudden embrayage-débrayage? |
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At this point it becomes difficult for a generously cooperating reader to avoid the conviction that the Elder in t-3 is courageously facing his evident destiny. The double jeu of shifting has, so to speak, projected onto a mirror, or a screen, the future that the encyclopedia has definitely recorded: the Model Reader is the only one able to watch that mirror, but he nourishes the impression that the Elder is watching with him.
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