Question about a sentence from the novel “Possession”
I have a question about the whole London Library. The
London Library was Roland’s favourite neighbourhood. It was shabby but civilised, alive with history but other lived poets and thinkers would be found squatting on the slotted metal floors of the stacks or arguing pleasantly at the turning of the stairs. Here Carlyle had come, here George Eliot had progressed through the bookshelves. Roland saw her black silk skirts, her velvet trains, sweeping compressed between the Fathers of the Church, and heard her firm foot ring on metal among the German poets who saw their women black and her grey and purple gowns.
Is Possession of A.S Byatt in my head?”
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Does the word sweep in the sentence mean to remove dirt, dust, dust and some other thing? , from (something), with broom or brush?
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Will the verb compress in the sentence mean press or squeeze (something) so that it is smaller or fills less space or a place it fills?
What is mean by sweeping compressed?
- Also, Does the word ring mean make a sound in the sentence and heard her firm foot ring on metal among the German poets?
What is ring on metal? I don’t understand its meaning.
The long velvet train of a dress’sweeps across’ the floor, trailing behind the novelist George Eliot, and Roland imagines she is still a visitor and researcher in the Library. Where did the penultimate take the ‘Mill on the Floss’? “Her
character George Eliot is compressed because she is only glimpsed between the heavy Patristics books on the shelves., she does not have many references, though “Mysteries” does. “And every time I see George Eliot in the room she is compressed by strange realities.”
A “Ring” as you guess suggests the sound of (leather) shoes on the cast iron galleries and stairs where there is a staircase.
Is there any news on the possibility of a cancer cure?
