As if the half-light ruling this perhaps even unmapped periphery were not a simple scarcity of streetlamps but deliberately provided in the interests of mercy, as a necessary veiling for the faces here, which held an urgency somehow too intense for the full light of day and those innocent American visitors with their Kodaks and parasols who might somehow happen across this place.
* * * * * * * * * *
This is the second half of the thought begun in the previous sentence. In this case, we see the perspective change a bit. Yes, this a world outside what "American visitors" expect: light, law, order, cleanliness. It's the world left on its own by "law" or "government" or the social mores and expectations of Western Civilization. A place which holds "an urgency somehow too intense for the full light of day" is a place full of passions unfazed by social expectation, of needs and desires which know nothing of withholding due to convention and tradition. In the perspective of this sentence, this place is not dark because it has been left on its own by the Fair; in this perspective, it's dark to simply protect the innocence of "American visitors with their Kodaks and parasols" (read: middle class white people). If these people stumble past the light, they can get back on track before completely being overwhelmed by darkness in the "half-light." But at least the darkness protects their tender sensibilities from witnessing the raw passions that abound in the dark periphery of the Fair.
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