Dvorak and MacDonald

"But her chief pleasure was in her instrument. Her very fingers loved it and would wander about its keys like feeding sheep. She was not unhappy. She knew nothing of the world except the tomb in which she dwelt, and had some pleasure in everything she did. But she desired, nevertheless, something more or different. She did not know what it was, and the nearest she could come to expressing it to herself was -- that she wanted more room."

-- George MacDonald, The Day Boy and the Night Girl



I read this passage from MacDonald last thing last night before I went to sleep, and it was still with me when I woke up this morning. Then I heard the Dvorak romance just now, and they seem somehow to go together perfectly. I can see Nycteris the Night Girl practicing her virtuosity in her lonely cave, the only means of expression she has for the passions and longings buried deep inside of her. Not knowing what it is she's missing; not knowing what it is she's longing for; not knowing that sunlight, and freedom, and Photogen the Day Boy are waiting for her out there. And it sounds exactly like this.