The Facts on File Dictionary of Allusions - Green Valley High School

dark night of the soul
118
Error” (1782), which has “Judgment drunk, and
brib’d to lose his way / Winks hard, and talks of
darkness at noon- day.” “She could not trust God,
and in the bitterness of doubt her spirit was like
darkness at noon” (Os Guinness, Doubt, 1976).
dark night of the soul A period of intense mental
or spiritual anguish. <strong>The</strong> phrase, in its Spanish
form La noche oscura del alma, was used by the
Christian mystic St. John of the Cross (1542–91)
as the title of a religious treatise published around
1578. <strong>The</strong> phrase originally denoted a time of
spiritual isolation through which a mystic might
achieve union with God. Now, however, it refers
to any period of deep depression or hopelessness,
as in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous line: “In a real
dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in
the morning.” “And during his dark night of the
soul while he was at Cuddesdon, part of the darkness
was the behavior of the House of Commons”
(Owen Chadwick, Michael Ramsey: A Life, 1991).
dark satanic mills An industrial setting, or
industry in general, especially with regard to what
may be seen as its dirty, inhuman nature. <strong>The</strong>
phrase was coined by the En glish poet William
Blake (1757–1827) in what is now the much- loved
hymn ‘Jerusalem,’ which fi rst appeared as part of
the longer Milton (1804): “And was Jerusalem
builded here / Among these dark Satanic mills.”
Blake himself intended his lines to be a criticism
not of En gland’s factories, but of En gland’s
churches. He had never felt at home among the dark
satanic mills of the city and longed to escape to the rural
shires from which he had come.
Darling, Grace See grace darling.
D’Artagnan See three musketeers.
Darth Vader (dahrth vaydb) A thoroughly evil,
menacing person, sometimes with a slightly comical
aspect. Helmeted and dressed entirely in black,
Darth Vader was the archvillain in the original trilogy
of Star Wars fi lms made by George Lucas,
beginning with Star Wars itself in 1977. <strong>The</strong> original
idea was that his name was a version of “dark
father” (it is ultimately revealed that he is the father
of the young hero Luke Skywalker, lured to the
dark side). <strong>The</strong> name is sometimes applied to people
who have a similar rasping voice. Kitted out in
his black bike gear he looked like a paunchy Darth
Vader, lacking only the long black cloak. See also evil
empire.
Dartmoor (dahrtmor) A forbidding high-security
prison. Dartmoor Prison in Devon is one of the
most notorious of British prisons, being located at
Princetown in the middle of a windswept moorland
wilderness, which makes escape doubly diffi -
cult. It was built to house French prisoners- of- war
during the Napoleonic Wars and has since housed
many hard- bitten convicts. If the police fi nd out
about this it’ll be Dartmoor for the lot of us.
Darwinian (dahrwineebn) Of or relating to the
evolutionary theories of the British naturalist
Charles Darwin (1809–82). As proposed in his
celebrated book On the Origin of Species by Means of
Natural Selection (1859), Darwin emphasized the
role of the survival of the fi ttest in the course
of evolutionary progress. In fact, similar theories
were already in circulation before Darwin, but it
was his book that brought them to public notice.
“So how did it come to evolve by slow, steady,
infi nitesimally small Darwinian improvements?”
(Richard Dawkins, <strong>The</strong> Blind Watchmaker, 1986).
Dastardly, Dick See dick dastardly.