Holy the Firm

“Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time.”

This is the opening sentence of Holy the Firm, and it works to establish the book's themes relating to God’s multiplicity and his relationship to time. More than that, it also establishes the kind of repetition—both thematic and verbal—that Dillard uses throughout the work to establish her points. The minor differences between “Every day is a god” and “each day is a god” represent Dillard’s slow progress toward a refined truth.

“The day is real; already I can feel it click, hear it clicking under my knees.”

“Real” is one of the few words in Dillard’s account that takes on a non-conventional meaning. The suggestion that the day is real because Dillard “can feel it click” points toward the phenomenological, experiential definition of reality that Dillard later establishes. This sentence is also an example of Dillard’s use of repetition.

“Her six-inch mess of web works, works somehow, works, miraculously, to keep her alive and me amazed.”

Another example of Dillard’s use of repetition to meditate on a topic or word, this sentence is also an example of zeugma. Zeugma is when one word, in this case “keep,” applies to two or more words with vastly different meanings. In this case, Dillard uses zeugma to juxtapose the web’s ability to keep the spider alive and to keep Dillard amazed. Since this sentence only makes logical sense with the first meaning—what amazes Dillard is that the web keeps the spider alive—and not the second, this quote illustrates how zeugma can be used to make logical leaps.