In the Labyrinth

I'm Being Watched: Characters Weigh In on the Progress

Have you even noticed how it feels like your characters are peering over your shoulder as you write? Making sure, no doubt, that you will properly represent them. So many authors have written on that weird sensation that characters take over one's life, that they refuse certain manipulations, that they interrupt the flow of writing at times to yell at you, or sit stubbornly inert in the corner while the author flails helplessly. (My favorite example of character interruption and insurrection is the wonderful At Swim Two Birds by Flannery O'Brien. So when I saw this lovely bit of ceiling mural created by 16th century artist Niccolo dell' Abate, I laughed aloud at my desk. While my characters have often whispered in my ears -- never had they taken such a perfect polaroid of themselves on high.

Falling Into Water and Rising Swimming

Can I just say how much I love these two etchings by 18th century artist Thomas Rowlandson? The first is a woman diving into the water from a wagon pulled into the surf to serve as a diving platform. "Venus Bathing" is vigorous, round and robust as she takes a "Fashionable Dip" into the ocean at Margate. She dives fearlessly, the people and the shore are small and far away, making her even more wonderful, a woman in her element.

And then she swims...effortlessly like a mermaid on a stroll. "Side Way or Any Way" -- she is perfectly at home in the water, buoyant and serene.

Alphabets, Satyrs, and My Name

Artful alphabets please me. Here is a beautiful early 18th century Italian alphabet currently housed in Berlin, but happily digitized and available online. I like the the fact that my first intial "M" -- is graced by Masks and Satyrs (and mules? stubborn girl). It reminds me of Zizola and the Satyrs in The Innamorati. The site has posted the entire alphabet and I invite you to find your intials among these wonderful and playful engravings.

The Dancing Fool

"To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution." Marcus Aurelias.

I love this image of the dancing fool by Hans Sebald Beham (1549) and I am working to find a way to get him into Zizola's novel. His body is so expressive -- ears back, head turned toward the sky, the arms pushing away behind him, the feet stomping forward, and  codpiece in the center of page. Vigorous, raucous, and full of movement. A perfect engine for a stalled plot.

Basilisk Hunting in the 16th Century

"On the Trail of the Warsaw Basilisk" is the sort of unexpected article that gives answer to the age old question, "Where do you get your ideas?" A Smithsonian article provides a fascinating history of Basilisk sightings -- from antiquity through the middle ages and Renaissance. The Basilisk is a peculiar hybrid, "a crested snake that hatched from an egg laid by a rooster and incubated by a toad." Really, I can't resist being inspired by information from the Roman poet Lucan like this:

"...a characteristic commonly ascribed to the monster–the idea that it was so venomous that if a man on horseback stabbed one with a spear, the poison would flow up through the weapon and kill not only the rider but the horse as well. The only creature that the basilisk feared was the weasel, which ate rue to render it impervious to the monster’s venom, and would chase and kill the serpent in its lair."

Rue! Who knew it could protect one from the Basilisk's venom? But the best -- and historically verifiable account comes from "The Basilisk of Warsaw, 1587"... a terrifying encounter  and eventual capture of a Basilisk hiding in the cellar of a house who is suspected of bringing the plague:

"The 5-year-old daughter of a knifesmith named Machaeropaeus had disappeared in a mysterious way, together with another little girl. The wife of Machaeropaeus went looking for them, along with the nursemaid. When the nursemaid looked into the underground cellar of a house that had fallen into ruins 30 years earlier, she observed the children lying motionless down there, without responding to the shouting of the two women. When the maid was too hoarse to shout anymore, she courageously went down the stairs to find out what had happened to the children. Before the eyes of her mistress, she sank to the floor beside them, and did not move. The wife of Machaeropaeus wisely did not follow her into the cellar, but ran back to spread the word about this strange and mysterious business. The rumour spread like wildfire throughout Warsaw. Many people thought the air felt unusually thick to breathe and suspected that a basilisk was hiding in the cellar."

The rest of the history is about the complicated efforts to remove the creature -- and it reads like the best sort of scary--fairy tale--horror story. Great stuff -- and I hope to find a little corner of my wiritng life devoted to this creature.

Art: Basilisk: Kongelige Bibliotek, Gl. kgl. S. 1633 4º, Folio 51r...note the weasle attacking its breast.

Harlequin in Magic Poses

"Children hear them, see them, know them;
See the things the fairies show them
Harlequin in magic poses."

From the 1923 Commedia play: The Harlequinade, by Dion Clayton Caltrop and Granville Barker. The painting is "Carnevale di Arlecchino" by Joan Miro. Both seem to be kicking up some new ideas for the new novel...which fairly soon must have a working title because it is getting boring saying "the new novel I am working on." Some how without a title it doesn't seem real.

Return to Sender: The Rejected Brides of Fairy Tales

Lately, I have been reading a lot of Italian fairy tales as a kind of inspiration and preparation for the new novel I am working on, a companion to The Innamorati. As the plot is a renaissance road trip with a young woman in search of herself and her trickster companion (to create a little drama along the way), I have been imagining who she might encounter as she trudges southward from Tuscany in the north towards Calabria at the heel of Italy's boot.

Among the fairy tales I have been reading there appears a creature who is rarely ever seen for she is merely a place holder in the climatic tension of the story's finale: she is the bride the Prince almost marries, because he is too foolish, too enchanted, or too impatient (not waiting those seven years) and impulsively plans a wedding with the wrong woman. Of course, the heroine bride arrives in the nick of time, challenging the Prince to recall his vows of love. The Prince is chastened and then furious, turning to the almost bride (and sometimes just married bride) and denouncing her -- as if it were her fault he screwed up. And she is summarily packed off to her home without fanfare. In one of my favorite ballads, Lord Bateman, the bride's mother complains mightily at the affront to her daughter (of whom we never hear a peep). But Lord Bateman now emboldened by the arrival of his true love,  "pounded his fist on the table and he broke it in pieces one, two three, saying I'll forsake all for the Turkish lady, she has crossed the whole wide world for me." To be fair, Lord Bateman does financially compensate the banished bride -- but still, it has to sting.

So what happens to those banished brides -- not the deceitful and disguised brides, they always meet with bad ends -- but those brides like poor Anne of Cleves determined too ugly (and "too swarthy") by Henry the Eighth and sent home as unsuitable. Since we never get their side of the story, or the what-ever-happened-to-that-young-woman?, the writer in me couldn't resist wondering what those women might do to reclaim themselves if given a chance in a novel. A young writer I know suggested they went home with a huge sigh of relief -- imagining that such weddings to total strangers would have been scary enough to contemplate.

But from a narrative point of view, that's no fun -- especially after reading the Lost Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Laura Gonzenbach, I know that the Italians -- or at least the Sicilians-- are firm believers in spectacular revenge. So I couldn't help but think of a sisterhood of Banished Brides coming together and taking their fury on the road to extract some form of punishing compensation. A band of marauding almost-brides offering to my young heroine roadside companionship and rancorous cautionary tales about men in general. (Although I suspect the trickster traveling with her would not be able to resist the temptation of meddling with those dangerous women.) Well...there's a few chapters to meditate on and then to write.

Art in order from top to bottom: John Bauer, Edward Burnes Jones, Sandro Botticelli, and Artemisia Gentileschi