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Dagny Taggart has been listening to what seemed to her a symphony, until she realized that it is actually only a lad whistling. Before we get to the dialogue between Dagny and the brakeman, I want to cover this additional paragraph on her musing over the music. She recognizes it as the music of Richard Halley, and when I first read this novel, I was firmly convinced that she was echoing a Nietzschean theme, so that Richard Halley stood for Richard Wagner, the nineteenth-century German composer known to be very pro-Aryan. However, I have found no support for this idea, and I must accept that I was barking up the wrong tree, being too eager to catch all the racist roots behind Ms. Rand’s philosophy.
She thought dimly that there had been premonitory echoes of this theme in all of Richard Halley’s work, through all the years of his long struggle, to the day, in his middle-age, when fame struck him suddenly and knocked him out. This - she thought, listening to the symphony - had been the goal of his struggle. She remembered half-hinted attempts in his music, phrases that promised it, broken bits of melody that started but never quite reached it; when Richard Halley wrote this, he... She sat up straight. when did Richard Halley write this?
She cannot recall Halley having actually written this piece, and it is at this point that she realizes that she had only been listening to a lad whistling the tune, and she probes him, trying to get a handle on this music, what is it, where it came from.
_ _ _
“Tell me, please, what are you whistling?” The boy turned to her. She met a direct glance and saw an open, eager smile, as if he were sharing a confidence with a friend. She liked his face - its lines were tight and firm, it did not have that look of loose muscles evading the responsibility of a shape, which she had learned to expect in people’s faces.
“It’s the Halley Concerto,” he answered, smiling.
“Which one?”
“The Fifth.”
She let a moment pass, before she said slowly and very carefully, “Richard Halley wrote only four concertos.”
The boy’s smile vanished. It was as if he were jolted back to reality, just as she had been a few moments ago. It was as if a shutter were slammed down, and what remained was a face without expression, impersonal, indifferent and empty.
-- “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand
_ _ _
So, we are presented with a mystery. We may take it that this is Halley’s music, but Halley had been struck down and is vanished, without ever publishing this concerto. Where did this music come from?
We may think of this as the second mystery. We did not spell it out, but our first mystery, if you recall, was ‘who is John Galt?’ What does that expression mean? Where did that meme come from? Does the name John Galt refer to an actual person?
She thought dimly that there had been premonitory echoes of this theme in all of Richard Halley’s work, through all the years of his long struggle, to the day, in his middle-age, when fame struck him suddenly and knocked him out. This - she thought, listening to the symphony - had been the goal of his struggle. She remembered half-hinted attempts in his music, phrases that promised it, broken bits of melody that started but never quite reached it; when Richard Halley wrote this, he... She sat up straight. when did Richard Halley write this?
She cannot recall Halley having actually written this piece, and it is at this point that she realizes that she had only been listening to a lad whistling the tune, and she probes him, trying to get a handle on this music, what is it, where it came from.
_ _ _
“Tell me, please, what are you whistling?” The boy turned to her. She met a direct glance and saw an open, eager smile, as if he were sharing a confidence with a friend. She liked his face - its lines were tight and firm, it did not have that look of loose muscles evading the responsibility of a shape, which she had learned to expect in people’s faces.
“It’s the Halley Concerto,” he answered, smiling.
“Which one?”
“The Fifth.”
She let a moment pass, before she said slowly and very carefully, “Richard Halley wrote only four concertos.”
The boy’s smile vanished. It was as if he were jolted back to reality, just as she had been a few moments ago. It was as if a shutter were slammed down, and what remained was a face without expression, impersonal, indifferent and empty.
-- “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand
_ _ _
So, we are presented with a mystery. We may take it that this is Halley’s music, but Halley had been struck down and is vanished, without ever publishing this concerto. Where did this music come from?
We may think of this as the second mystery. We did not spell it out, but our first mystery, if you recall, was ‘who is John Galt?’ What does that expression mean? Where did that meme come from? Does the name John Galt refer to an actual person?
