... After Peer in a lucid moment has picked off leaf after leaf of himself, as if he were an onion, he finds no true self, and exclaims to her:
    "Then tell what thou knowest!  Where was I, as myself, as the whole man, the true man?  Where was I, with God's sigil upon my brow?"
    After he has picked off every leaf, nothing is left!  The real man does not appear.  There is none!  His questions are really a confession of his own worthlessness, but Solvej, the woman, whose character is symbolized by her name, the Sun-way, "she of the golden way," far from condemning him, answers:
    "In my faith, in my hope, and in my love." (The Word, Percival, v.12, 1911)