2 quoted lines
b sharp wrote:
Yes, having a man in his 80's father someone in their 20's-30's is possible but a stretch. I was only hinting that my ideas might help: if Fechin is Dorcas' husband instead of father and the portrait of Rudesind is a self-portrait, then it rolls everyone's age back about 15 years and the ages fit nicely. That might mess up other aspects of your scenario though, not sure.
Rudesind said "An artist--a real one--came by where we lived. My mother, being so proud of me, showed him some of the things I'd done. It was Fechin." How do you parse this last sentence? Maybe "It [the work I'd done] was [in the style I chose to call] Fechin."? It seems quite forced.
I can't see the old husband switching back and forth between obsessively looking for Dorcas and being a chatty museum attendent. It diminishes him as a tragic figure.
Rudesind seems to have the role of directing Sev and getting him back on track when he's lost. He lets slip that Father Inire told him to say certain things, which I take to be repeats of conversations in previous iterations. Say other changes in the timeline have caused Sev's visit to the library to slip by a day. WIthout help, he will wander around for hours and return empty-handed. Father Inire directs Rudesind to show up at the right time and give Sev a hand, also instructing him to have the same sort of conversation as happened the first time around. Another time he says "There's always an explanation" for why he is where he is (but the actual explanation is that he's there to direct Sev).
Is Dorcas' husband the same sort of actor? Is his grief a performance designed to push Sev along? I hope not.