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derspatchel, far too late last night: "What the hell is wrong with my brain? Why does it wake up at five in the morning to write fic for a series I haven't read for half a year? It's not even porn without plot! There's no porn! It's just people making literary allusions at each other on a boat!"
Then we had to get ready for my family's Hanukkah party, then we had a Hanukkah party, then we had to clean up after the Hanukkah party, and as a result I have just gotten around to finishing the thing now. It's the first prose I've written since September, which is better than no prose for the rest of the year; it's very short fic for Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January mysteries. Spoilers through the early parts of Crimson Angel (2014), massively for Dead and Buried (2010). All errors mine, especially since I own nothing later than Wet Grave (2002). I really wish someone would give Hambly money for a printed collection of the short stories, since I haven't read any of them and I'd like to. Happy New Year's Eve?
( ἐπὶ οἴνοπα πόντον )
I have no idea what set this story off. The central comparison had occurred to me as far back as the summer, but I haven't even gotten around to reading this year's Yuletide. The title is Homeric Greek for "upon the wine-dark sea." The Greek quoted in the text is Odyssey 13.291–303. It is one of my favorite pieces of Homeric epic; it is the first part of what the goddess Athene says when she encounters Odysseus on the shore of Ithaka, which he does not yet know is his own country. She takes the form of a shepherd boy to tell him where he is (Ἰθάκης γε καὶ ἐς Τροίην ὄνομ᾽ ἵκει—"the name of Ithaka reaches even to Troy") and in return he tells this new stranger a complete whopper about his identity—one of his Cretan lies, framing himself as a man who fought at Troy and killed someone he shouldn't have on the way home and ever since has had a hell of a time getting home, but is definitely not Odysseus the missing king of Ithaka, just some dude from Crete with a totally different set of problems, totally, thanks ever so. And instead of taking offense at his deception, Athene is flat-out delighted:
He would have to be all chance and guile, whoever would get past you
in any kind of trickery, even if it were a god who came up against you.
You troublemaker, shape-changer, untiring of tricks,
even on your own ground you would never give up
all those ruses and those clever stories that are dear as nature to you.
But come, we will talk no more of these things, both of us experienced
in guile, since you are far and away the best of mortals
at schemes and stories, while I among the gods am famous
for craft and cleverness—and did you not recognize
Pallas Athene, Zeus' daughter, who has always
stood by you in every trouble and come to your defense
and made you dear to all the Phaiakians
and who has come here now to weave craft with you?
The German comes from Franz Schubert's "Der Tod und das Mädchen." Ask about anything else that's unclear, although I hope it isn't. I worry about comprehensibility after dawn. I'll post my usual year-end summary tomorrow.
derspatchel, far too late last night: "What the hell is wrong with my brain? Why does it wake up at five in the morning to write fic for a series I haven't read for half a year? It's not even porn without plot! There's no porn! It's just people making literary allusions at each other on a boat!"Then we had to get ready for my family's Hanukkah party, then we had a Hanukkah party, then we had to clean up after the Hanukkah party, and as a result I have just gotten around to finishing the thing now. It's the first prose I've written since September, which is better than no prose for the rest of the year; it's very short fic for Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January mysteries. Spoilers through the early parts of Crimson Angel (2014), massively for Dead and Buried (2010). All errors mine, especially since I own nothing later than Wet Grave (2002). I really wish someone would give Hambly money for a printed collection of the short stories, since I haven't read any of them and I'd like to. Happy New Year's Eve?
( ἐπὶ οἴνοπα πόντον )
I have no idea what set this story off. The central comparison had occurred to me as far back as the summer, but I haven't even gotten around to reading this year's Yuletide. The title is Homeric Greek for "upon the wine-dark sea." The Greek quoted in the text is Odyssey 13.291–303. It is one of my favorite pieces of Homeric epic; it is the first part of what the goddess Athene says when she encounters Odysseus on the shore of Ithaka, which he does not yet know is his own country. She takes the form of a shepherd boy to tell him where he is (Ἰθάκης γε καὶ ἐς Τροίην ὄνομ᾽ ἵκει—"the name of Ithaka reaches even to Troy") and in return he tells this new stranger a complete whopper about his identity—one of his Cretan lies, framing himself as a man who fought at Troy and killed someone he shouldn't have on the way home and ever since has had a hell of a time getting home, but is definitely not Odysseus the missing king of Ithaka, just some dude from Crete with a totally different set of problems, totally, thanks ever so. And instead of taking offense at his deception, Athene is flat-out delighted:
He would have to be all chance and guile, whoever would get past you
in any kind of trickery, even if it were a god who came up against you.
You troublemaker, shape-changer, untiring of tricks,
even on your own ground you would never give up
all those ruses and those clever stories that are dear as nature to you.
But come, we will talk no more of these things, both of us experienced
in guile, since you are far and away the best of mortals
at schemes and stories, while I among the gods am famous
for craft and cleverness—and did you not recognize
Pallas Athene, Zeus' daughter, who has always
stood by you in every trouble and come to your defense
and made you dear to all the Phaiakians
and who has come here now to weave craft with you?
The German comes from Franz Schubert's "Der Tod und das Mädchen." Ask about anything else that's unclear, although I hope it isn't. I worry about comprehensibility after dawn. I'll post my usual year-end summary tomorrow.
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