It's All Right, Ma, I'm Only Bleeding

So don't fear, If you hear A foreign sound, To your ear It's all right, Ma, I'm only sighing -Bob Dylan Well, in finishing book 5 I came across a passage that I think is central to Rowling's themes in the series and has focused me again on the meaning of Sectum Sempra in the specific nuance the "ever bleeding" effect on Malfoy has for the broader "meaning" of it (and, as you'll notice, I've been listening to Dylan while working and noticing similar themes). We have kind of batted this one around before and gained some valuable insight into the fact that it is important to keep clear that the immediate meaning of "ever-cut" has broader applications than just that of human blood, applications that may come into play in revelations about how Horcruxes are made and unmade. The incident towards the end of book 5, however, leads me to believe that Rowling has consciously in mind a two-leveled meaning to the image, with the "ever-bleeding" having a distinct place as a unique focused application. The Dementors In order to understand this incident it is necessary to examine the context. It comes at the end of book 5, and that book is the culmination of what I will call "the dementor sequence" that is the central chiasm within the larger 7 series chiasm. We do indeed hear of dementors in book 6 and I suspect we will hear some in book 7, but so far the chiasm in which we have seen the Dementors specifically active is that of books 3,4,5. In 3 they are introduced and try to kiss a wizard (Sirius); in book 5 they try to kiss a muggle (Dudley); and in the center, in book 4, they succeed in a kiss (Barty Jr). This pain is a fate worse than death. In fact this kind of pain brings a longing for death; it can bring those thoughts of the suicide that are the ultimate despair. To be robbed of the soul is to be no longer human, and in the same way being robbed of a loved one violently can feel un-human, in a way that tempts one to invite the wish to be simply no longer a living human, rather than alive but not human ... it can lead one to scream: "THEN - I - DON'T - WANT - TO - BE - HUMAN! ... I'VE HAD ENOUGH ... I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON"T CARE ANYMORE!" (OotP 824) The Blood As you can guess by now, I see the thought on despair and suicide especially present in a blood image. There is a very high concentration of blood imagery in the climactic scenes of book 5: I will have another post on the connection between Grawp's blood and the image of "riding death" as a symbol of accepting mortality (rather than making a "flight from death," a Voldemort), but there is also Neville's sacrifice in heroic action. With his nose broken from a brutal kick by Dulahov, blood freely pouring from it all over him - covered in his own blood and under the real threat of the Imperius curse from the same hands that bled his parents sanity away with it - he implores Harry not to relinquish the prophecy. There is also the high concentration of blood language in Dumbledore's explanation of how he protected Harry ... through his mother's blood (OotP 836). All of these various types of blood imagery flow into one (both literally and figuratively). But as regards despair specifically, and suicide as a temptation particular to despair, Dumbledore's portrayal of Harry's state provides too concise a possible foreshadowing of the specific application of Sectum Sempra and "ever-bleeding" (the effect on Malfoy in book 6) as a unique and important application of the broader "ever-cut"/"ever-separated" meaning. When Harry vents his anger in saying, "I don't care!", what does Dumbledore reply? "You do care ... You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it." This is the effects of the Cruciatus curse and pain, this is the effects of the dementors and despair: "Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn Suicide remarks are torn From the fool's gold mouthpiece the hollow horn Plays wasted words, proves to warn That he not busy being born is busy dying" Love That is why Love is so important ... the door that cannot be forced opened as a knife-blade opens a wound ("the handmade blade," to borrow from Dylan even further), but rather it must come from that which is freely given ... and as with all of the deepest, most powerful and most healing things, it is properly a mystery - you cannot "understand" Love, you can only give and receive it. Harry had spoken of his own death earlier in tones of despair that same night, when "They were fused together, bound by pain, and there was no escape." And then he thought that at least if Voldemort got Dumbledore to kill him it would at least mean he would see Sirius again, and Voldy could no longer possess a person with that kind of love in them (OotP 816) ... the kind of love that is willing to risk "bleeding to death" for the sake of loving the other.