[Curator's note: A prequelic Writing introducing the person known as The Starling appears under this same heading in Volume Two of We Descend, and is excerpted here in order to provide context.]

These fanciful Writings incorporate what may have been intended as a collection of exemplary tales or fables about the personal lives of historical or semi-historical figures.

The familiar sobriquet "Romantic Impulse" Writings derives from the imputed tender heart of their unidentified Author, who treats their protagonists with affection as well as respect, apparently in an effort to "bring them to life" for readers. It has been proposed with some success that these Writings were intended for young persons, perhaps even children.

It is only natural to wish to discover what any author whom one admires is (or was) really like as a person — to try to conceive what were the internal resources that made for such penetrating perceptions, what external circumstance formed the author's development, what personal conflict produced such strength of feeling, what hard lessons in life led to such depth of discernment. Unhappily, in this instance as in so many others, the Author's work itself is the only resource available — except for the imagination.

{Starling redux} continues its protagonist's story to a kind of conclusion, though why the tale was broken into two parts is likely to remain a mystery.