(no subject)

[rymenhild]

Via Quod She and Making Light: Newspaper comic strips are dull and dated, argues the anonymous blogger-glossator at Japes For Our Time, but perhaps they're not dated enough. Why not translate Family Circus and Beetle Bailey, into Middle English, adding bits of Wyclif here and there, to produce theological allegories that are actually funny? I have to say, most of the results are real improvements on the source material. (One recent Japes post even includes a nod to recent events at Geoffrey Chaucer's former blog!)

Meanwhile, sister_coyote wrote me a gorgeous story for the No on Proposition 8 fundraiser livelongnmarry. The Hawk in the High Air is a tale set in the aftermath of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogion.* Llew of the Skillful Hand still loves his treacherous wife Blodeuwedd, even though Llew's uncle and foster-father Gwydion has transformed her into an owl as punishment for her adultery and attempted murder. Gwydion has his own troubles with love and memory, long years after the time he was cursed into animal form and forced to mate with his brother Gilfaethwy.** The story sets up convincing parallels between Llew and Gwydion's old curses and present sufferings.

sister_coyote draws not only the primary characters, but also the secondary characters with sharp, well-chosen language, reminiscent of the source text but not restricted by it. Here is Gilfaethwy, as Gwydion sees him: Gilfaethwy's smile always had the bright edge of a wolf's, even before, but now looking at him Gwydion can see the she-wolf's hunting grin, the pale alert eyes... Here is Arianrhod, Llew's mother and Gwydion's sister: It is impossible to believe cruelty of her when she stands in the redgold firelight and yet takes nothing of their hue, but remains herself, white and blue and black.

Most importantly, I think, sister_coyote understands the strangeness of the Fourth Branch. Gwydion and Llew, Gilfaethwy and Arianrhod and Blodeuwedd, live by value structures entirely alien to our twenty-first century minds. Gwydion isn't bothered by his feelings for his brother because incest is a sin (although it is a shame, which is an entirely different thing). Rather, Gwydion's worried that Gilfaethwy could use Gwydion's emotional attachment to betray him. sister_coyote's story always stays within the ethical world of the Mabinogion, and it's very, very well done.

*If you'd like to read "The Hawk in the High Air" and you haven't read the Fourth Branch, see Will Parker's 2003 translation. It seems to be painfully literal, and is therefore an improvement on Charlotte Guest's bowdlerized nineteenth-century version. If you have access to a good library with paper books, read Sioned Davies's fluent and accurate translation instead of either of the Internet translations.

**Every character in the Fourth Branch ought to be celebrating Dysfunctional Families Day today.

Finally, a certain company just sent me an e-mail offering to pay me for my class notes -- presumably, the notes for the classes in which I might be enrolled, rather than the notes for the classes I have taught. The letter includes the tagline, "Less library. More lazy. Better grades, guaranteed." Oddly enough, I find that I am not tempted by the offer of less library.

Comments

[just-ruth.livejournal.com]

Everything I know of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogion I learned from Evangeline Walton. :)

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I actually haven't been able to get past the first three chapters of Walton's First Branch. I'm not sure what stopped me, although it might have been a tone of pervasive despair that I wasn't in the mood to deal with when I was trying to read it.

Do you recommend Walton?

[just-ruth.livejournal.com]

I've been reading and enjoying her quadrology since I discovered it in 1978. The only book I have trouble reading through is "the Children of Llyr" because the ending is so horrible.

I love "the Song of Rhiannon" the best, because she describes the relationship between the older Rhiannon and Manawyddian (and I'm pretty sure I didn't spell that right, but I'm not looking it up right now) in terms that as *I* got older, I find very realistic.

Her writing improves from one book to the other, and I adore her lyrical descriptions. The fourth branch is a little grating because she really makes Arianhrod into a spoilt tantrum-thrower, but on the whole I like her viewpoint of the changing society from the matriarchal to the patriachal.