"Papa, are you leaving on another of your business trips?"
"Of course my girl"
"Can you bring me a rose, please?"
With this exchange and scenario begins a classic tale existing in all folklores. But this Victorian version set in Tudor times by Eleanor Vere Boyle amused me by the sheer whimsy of what species inspired the Beast du jour! I find this walrus unintentionally hilarious...
Did you really think that I was going to purchase a catamaran with my limited means??? And furthermore baptise her in Moët et Chandon??? Oh really really??? Dead Sirius Black???
Well, in that case you are:
APRIL FOOLS!!!
The April Fool, who appears in many of these engravings, serves as chief jester and master of ceremonies for the feast. He seats the distant solstices together at the table:
The twenty-first day of June, I remember,
He sat next the twenty-first day of December;
The former the latter contemptuously eyed,
Like a maypole and marrowbone placed side by side.
Anyway, I'm laughing merrily at all of you, dear readers of all stages and every gender, who fell for the trick yesterday...
The chap in jester's guise in the middle is not me buying a catamaran, right?
Yes, you hear it right, I'm buying a seaworthy catamaran boat in perfect shape; and her name will be Éponine. Furthermore, this summer I am sailing all over the Mediterranean with a few trusted friends of mine. We'll mostly look at ancient ruins all over the place, starting with Valencia where we set sail and the nearby Roman-based town of Sagunto.
I immediately fell for Dorne. And Altavia. And for at least the council of Aritsar... for all of those cultures due to what TV Tropes calls "Gender Is No Object;" in these country-esque, hinterlandish, quaint fantasy lands there are -paradoxally- completely equal opportunities regardless of gender or sexual orientation.
This can be a Justified Trope, especially in futuristic settings where advances in technology have made physical differences like gender more or less irrelevant for soldiers. In medieval or early modern or gaslamp fantasy settings, authors may introduce some form of safe, reliable Fantasy Contraception, or the existence of inborn magic powers can be portrayed as making differences in size and strength less relevant, or there may be other social pressures encouraging gender equality (although all of these may or may not be convincing, depending on how well they're handled). Perhaps an abundant lifestyle permits more egalitarian views, if a territorial state has enough resources and is at peace. If the setting is not Earth and/or the characters are not normal humans, they may just have less sexual dimorphism. On the other hand, there are also plenty of cases of lazy or thoughtless worldbuilding, as well as cases where the author simply felt they needed no justification beyond Rule of Cool.
There are a wide variety of possible reasons for this. Sometimes it's pure Author Appeal: the author thinks thinks this setting is simply more awesome. Sometimes it's an Author Tract (or, in the best case scenario, a case of Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped), with the author trying to make a point about how gender restrictions are bad.
Oluwan and Swana bring his drum; nse, nse
Dhyrma and Nyamba bring his plow; gpopo, gpopo
Mewe and Sparti see our older brother dance—
Black and gold, isn’t he perfect!
Quetzala sharpens his spear; nse, nse
Blessid Valley weaves his wrapper; gpopo, gpopo
Nontes and Biraslov see our older brother dance!
Black and gold, isn’t he perfect? (In Enjolras' case, blue and gold).
Djbanti braids his hair; nse, nse
Moreyao brings his gourd; gpopo, gpopo
Eleven moons watch our older brother dance:
Black and gold, isn’t he perfect?
When you meet Egungun, will you have your eyes-o?
Tell me, will you hear him, if you have no ears-o?
Dead man, dead man, fell like a coconut
Round head rolling
on the red hard ground. (Execution song)
Of what use—Tell us!
Of what use is an empty throne?
We have found someone worthy—Have you found someone?
Aheh, Kunleo is worthy to fill it—Yes, Kunleo is worthy to fill it. (Coronation Song)
“ODODO the hunter, UKPOPO, UKPOPO, more handsome than princes; aheh, no lie!”
Eleven danced around the throne,
Eleven moons in glory shone,
They shone around the sun.
But traitors rise and empires fall,
And Sun-Ray-Sun will rule them all,
When all is said-o, all is said
And done-heh, done-heh, done...
But traitors fall and empires rise,
And Sun-Ray-Sun will rule the skies,
When all is said-o, all is said
And done-heh, done-heh, done...
Arit folk songs.
The title of StrixAlluka's newest AU/crossover is still to be debated - Eleven Moons Aligned or Eleven Moons Eclipsed - it's actually the Eleven Moons Diptych, with each half sporting either title... but anyway, while waiting for her Aritsar take on the cast of Les Mis, here is a little dramatis personae:
The Oba's Council - noteworthy members:
Oba Othello - ruler of the Arit Empire, Raybearer. Currently comatose with his council as regency until he finally dies and his son becomes the next oba - or not?
High Priestess Nadia Satrinava - Dhyrma, death by contagion / hallow of seeing visions:
High Lord General Connor McLeod - Mewe, death by bleeding / hallow of invulnerability:
(Late High Lady General Morga Eirsdottir - Biraslov, death by mauling / hallow of unmatched speed):
(Late High Priest Bienvenu Myriel - Nontes, death by contagion / Hallow of not being able to say no to a request)
High Lady Magus Yan Lin: Moreyao, death by hexes / hallow of bilocation/astral projection:
High Lady Ambassador Cvetka Akulova (here Crown Prince Enjolras' mother) - Biraslov, death by suffocation / hallow of creating cold and ice:
High Lady Archdean Klytemnestra, my OC Elena the netmender's twin sister (Spare Prince Montparnasse's mother) - Sparti, death by organ failure / hallow of summoning fire and explosions
High Lord of Harvests Jean Valjean - Nontes, death by battery / hallow of superhuman strength:
High Lord Judge Javert - Nyamba, death by drowning, hallow of forcing people to tell the truth
High Lady of Castles Aidana (single mother, drunken and addicted to marijuana and kuso-kuso as an analogy to bonding sickness) - Quetzala, death by poisoning, hallow of "insanity" / seeing the worst in other people
The Crown Prince's Council:
Oloye/Crown Prince Enjolras; son of the oba and High Lady Ambassador Cvetka, heir to the throne, raybearer
High Lord Archdean Combeferre - Djbanti, death by poisoning / hallow of eidetic/photographic memory
High Lord General Courfeyrac - Nontes, death by battery / hallow of optimism inducement and happiness inducement
High Lord Laureate Grantaire - Sparti (cabin boy), death by bleeding / hallow of slowing down and taking away entropy (which works like the Stand Crazy Diamond)
High Priestess Cosette Valjean - Biraslov (half-Nontish half-Biraslov isoken), death by gluttony / hallow of glowing in the dark, a different colour based upon her mood
High Lady of Castles Éponine Thénardier - Swana (one-quarter-Nontish one-quarter-Blessid half-Swanian isoken), death by burning / hallow of lie detection
High Lord Judge Marius Pontmercy-Ghàilenor - Mewe (half-Nontish half-Mewish isoken), death by drowning / hallow of giving/taking away hallows
High Lord Ambassador Feuilly - Quetzala (realmless -ie stateless- orphan isoken dreamcatcher maker, origins unknown), death by suffocation / hallow of speaking and understanding every human language
High Lord Magus Jo-Lee Lin - Moreyao (born in Songland, Redemptor adopted by the Lins), death by contagion, hallow of healing illnesses and injuries and transferring them to himself
High Lord Treasurer Lesgle "Bossuet" - Nyamba, death by organ failure / hallow of giving good luck at the cost of suffering bad luck himself (he does so by shaking hands or having a kiss blown his way, alluding to the lyrics of "Chim Chim Cheree")
High Lord of Husbandry Bahorel - Dhyrma, death by mauling / hallow of unstoppable righteous anger-trance (think Cú Chulainn or the Incredible Hulk)
High Lady of Harvests Jehanne Prouvaire - Blessid Valley (half-Nontish half-Blessid isoken; trans girl), death by hexes, hallow of making plants grow by petting them and singing to them (her power is even seen to affect fungi, but half as much as plants).
The Ghàilenors of Faye's Crossing
Lleu Ghàilenor - the clan patriarch, Marius' maternal grandfather
Arianrhod Ghàilenor - Marius' maternal grandmother
Aoife Ghàilenor - Marius' maternal maiden aunt and tutor
Saoirse Pontmercy, née Ghàilenor (deceased) - Marius' mother, died in childbed due to heavy bleeding, married to a Nontish commander allegedly "killed in battle" at Gaelinagh as a volunteer
The Satrinavas
Nasrin Satrinava - Nadia's mother, governor of Dhyrma
Namar Satrinava - Nadia's father, consort of Dhyrma
Nafizah Satrinava - Nadia's firstborn sister, next-in-line governor of Dhyrma, a mystic
Nazali Satrinava - Nadia's secondborn sister, a powerful healer
Navra Satrinava - Nadia's thirdborn sister, a life-of-the-party
Nahara Satrinava - Nadia's fourthborn sister, a badass
Nasmira Satrinava - Nadia's fifthborn sister, a nurturer
Natiqa Satrinava - Nadia's sixthborn sister, a chatty cathy
The Lins of the Silver Dragon Inn (and a certain young woman from Songland):
Chen Lin - Hay Lin's father and son to Yan Lin
Jo-An Lin - Hay Lin's mother and in-law to Yan Lin
Chou Khan - Jo-An's father, wealthy tea merchant, against marriage to the Lins, still stern and a tad at odds with Yan
Hay Lin - foster sister to Jo-Lee, a creative and eccentric, artistic soul / Hallow of controlling air
Ye-Seul (Jo-Lee's real mother from Songland) - a high-ranking Songland court lady, unwilling to send her child to the underworld
Others:
Elena the netmender - Sparti (island of Star Point), R's (Grantaire's) biological single mother, unhallowed, outsider since her own shipwreck-widowed-mother Leda died
(Lucio Montagu Morgasson - deceased commander, Biraslov; son of Morga and her consort, husband of Nadia, killed in estate fire - a sociopath who physically, verbally, and emotionally abused his wife)
Montparnasse - spare prince of Aritsar, son of the oba and High Lady Archdean Klytemnestra, prospective usurper - hallow of giving entropy (not the same as accelerating already existing entropy, which his mum has!)
Clovis and Hannah Prouvaire - Jehanne's parents, an average though interracial couple in a semi-nomadic village society in a campsite in Blessid Valley
Sgt. and Mme. Thénardier, Azelma and Gavroche - Éponine's parents and younger siblings, innkeepers on the outskirts of a Swanian market town by a clear lake, a salt lake where lots of flamingos stop on their migration
Rollan, Aidana's son, raised in a Quetzalan orphanage, with the Hallow of becoming rubber and squeezing through tight spaces
Fleur Delacour, Nontish noble girl, with the Hallow of breathing underwater, Courfeyrac's fiancée
Gabrielle Delacour, Fleur's little sister, unhallowed
Cecily Alistair, Mewish noble girl, with the Hallow of super realistic art, bisexual, Marius' fiancée
(All of these and some more, including Hay Lin, make up Montparnasse's Council in Eleven Moons Eclipsed)
....
Both oloyés (crown princes), Enjolras and Montparnasse, were born of different races and different mothers, but both with the Ray, on the same day, when there was a conjunction of all eleven moons. There could only be one heir. And it is Enj, in spite of his lilywhite skin and the rumour around the court that he may be a bastard. Still, Parnasse, the spare, has not given up and is ready for a coup d'état. When this occurs at last, when all eleven moons eclipse the Sun, together with the young people he recruited as children after seeing them in his dreams, Crown Prince Enjolras has to prepare for civil war all over Aritsar...
THUS SAUNTER WE SO GRADUALLY: BELLMAN'S DANSE MACABRE
The following essay is a translation by Yours Truly of both the song and its analysis by Carl Fehrman. -
In 1787, the year the author's second-born Elias Bellman died, the latest edition released of Fredman's Songs added the lyrics where once more the symbolic worlds of hourglass and drinking glass collide; ie the grand Fredman's Song number 21. In an afterthought on hourglasses and drinking glasses, these lyrics must of course be the core text.
The psychological complexity of the Bellman characters, that often and rightfully has been questioned, is at least in this case consequent. Here he is the usual philosopher of wines and vanities:
The original title itself is "Mealtime Song." Sondén has added a subtitle like those of the Bellman Epistles: "During the feast, in which the author places Death before the eyes of the guests." In image after image, the lyrics present the stark contrast between the revels loud and bountiful of life and the deep darkness of the grave. Death comes calling: "Come to me, thy hourglass is full!" In older vanitas literature it has often been said that one's "hourglass has run out," and Bellman had used this crystallized fixed expression both before and after Song 21, both as narrator and having his characters utter it. In Song 21, "Thus Saunter We So Gradually," the words are not said, however, by any mortal person, but by Death. The Reaper himself, gaze fixed on the lower half of the hourglass, is the one to give the verdict, maybe with an ironic innuendo-thought that the narrator himself had generally preferred full glasses to empty ones.
"Thus Saunter We So Gradually" holds a unique place not only in Bellman's production, but also in literary genre history. It is Bellman's Dionysian take on the ancient death-dance or danse macabre motif. The medieval visual and literary convention of Death meeting people of diverse ages and ranks was still alive in the printed penny dreadfuls of the eighteenth century, during whose second half two different danses macabres were released in penny dreadful format in Swedish. The first one is a translation from the Danish (intermediate translation) of the originally German Natanael Schlott's modernised version of the traditional lyrics to the classic Lübecker Totentanz. It was released in Swedish, with a title that translates to Conversations Between Death and People of Diverse Ranks, in between 1760 and 1850. The second, released in between 1777 and 1858, was translated directly from the Danish; known from its publisher and illustrator as the Borup Death-Dance, its much longer official title being The Vanity of Human Life, or Conversations Between Death and People of All Ranks. In the last of these two penny dreadfuls, a whole little booklet with 38 woodcuts, the old parade of ranks has been expanded and diversified, adapted to eighteenth-century Scandinavian society. But the Reaper is still skeletal in black hood, and has not changed his ways the least since the days of the Black Death. He bows low before the queen and kisses her hand, he plays the cello for the music teacher, he defeats the fencing teacher in a swordfight with rapiers, he takes all the money from the innkeeper, and so forth, until he snatches the crutches from the old beggar.
The hourglass is a commonplace emblem in this danse macabre: the Reaper holds it often in his right hand to his victim, whenever his hands are not already busy.
Bellman must have known the danse macabre in one or another of its eighteenth-century iterations; it was also frequently depicted on coffins at the close of the century, in serially produced printings from the renowned Lundström printing press of Jönköping. In previous lyrics, Bellman had already directly represented the death-dance scenario when, in his musical world, he made Death strike a tune:
Around all what you see, where'er you take a glance,
the Reaper's silently ambushed to play a tune, to dance.
But Bellman's own grand variation on the danse macabre, "Thus Saunter We So Gradually," is more than a pale echo of these lines. It is a Dionysian paraphrase of an originally religious and moral motif. You may go the extra mile and say that Bellman, that great master of literary and musical parody, has written a travesty of a danse macabre. Memento mori, look at the time on the hourglass, was and is the message both ostensible and latent of traditional danse macabre. Memento bibere, memento vivere, carpe diem, let me the canakin clink, is the content of the Bellman-style death-dance. Fredman's Song 21 is more than just a parade of vanities; it is also an elegant mealtime song, which ends in a charming skål for the hostess.
How does Bellman do when he translates the danse macabre parade into his Dionysian lyrics, and which characters does he present in the stanzas in quick cavalcade? Right from the start, he has left the conversational-dramatic pattern of the real danse macabre genre, where Death shows up before each and every person with the command to follow, and gives the living a chance to reply. Bellman's lyrics are however more of a soliloquy, and the speaker, at least in the first stanza, partially also in the others, is supposed to be the Reaper himself, who in an old-fashioned way comes calling: "Come to me!" However, the singer who performed this roll-call or dramatis-personae song in real life was the author, C.M. Bellman. This complicated metafictional situation lets, as the lyrics unfurl, to add glissandos into each and every stanza.
In turn, the narrator turns to each and every of the different representatives of professions or character types, as if that person were literally present in the room. This gives the poem dramatic concretion. But one should pay heed to the fact that Bellman not only adds people from the catalogues of ranks of the medieval or Rococo danses macabres, but also a list of more actual character types. After the elder, the young man, and the nymph, who represent the ages of life (old age, youth, and midlife at least), the ones who come the closest are the Dionysian votary (the lush) and thereafter the braggart with his chest full of medals:
The ruddy face is one of the emblematic attributes in the Bellman world. The gentleman in the cocked hat in Song 21 is best understood as the innkeeper or restaurant owner himself. Right after him, Bellman names the great braggart, actualized in the theatre of that decade, the bombastic noble-blooded courtier or politician; Bellman is not as ordered in the list of ranks as the authors of real danse macabre. But his skill for concretion is admirable: he presents impending death in vivid symbolic images, ie the funeral procession and the carpenters making the coffin.
More of the stock character types of eighteenth-century theatrical comedy does Bellman replace the old parade of ranks with in his own character gallery. We have already mentioned the bombastic braggart; well, the lazy people-hater is another. And, by the side of the people-hater full of laziness, we find another actual type of the inflationary Gustavian Stockholm, the decadent aristocrat:
It is a fresh and elegant move made by Bellman to renew the old cast of characters in the danse macabre, which had partially lost its staying power in the society of his days, by adding the character types of comedic drama and satire. For him and for his era, these character types were as living as the personality type schemes (Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, the zodiac...) of our days. Boileau in his fourth satire, Molière in his comedies, even Shakespeare had all taken up their casts from Plautine comedy and commedia dell'arte, from which these character types all descend.
But Bellman has not completely left the old pattern of danse macabre. Here the warrior is present, as well as the lover and the scholar:
Also here these that Bellman present are more types than individuals; the whole song constantly gives beautiful proof of his typifying human depictions, as Afzelius so finely characterized this in Myt och Bild (Myth and Picture).
At the end of the poem, the parade of both types and ranks disappears out of sight, and the character of the lyrics to a merry party song surfaces through and through. The old convention in drinking songs of offending and slandering the killjoys who won't partake in the revels is something that Bellman has variated with mastery:
Death had called: "Come to me!" The host commands now: "Drink!" Both give commands that must not be questioned. Not returning a toast was then seen as a particularly offensive insult, a token of hate itself.
In the Bellman song, this stanza, the second from the end, has a special function. It links associations in a new direction: it revolves around courtesy towards the hosts. And the coda is written as a speech of gratitude from the guests to the hosts, especially the hostess; thus, the character of the lyrics as drinking song with friends at a celebration table is guaranteed:
This is one of the most whimsical stanzas, where Bellman moves across different levels simultaneously. If the guests are all heading the same way, they usually follow each other; this is the shallow, ostensible meaning of the third and fourth verses. In vanity literature and sacred texts, it is also spoken of that same way that everyone has to go; ie towards the afterlife. This innuendo gives the words their double meaning.
Venus, the evening star, has begun to shine; this element of nature is both literal and symbolic. Of the path "from tavern to grave" underneath the starry skies has Bellman spoken quite often, including in the parody instructions for his own funeral, but seldom with such a carefree phrase as "slip freely into the grave!" Dead drunk, many of Bellman's Dionysian knights had reeled; this grave is deep and dire... of the "dark dire deep" of both intoxication and death he had earlier spoken. Dying in peace was the traditional wisdom of the sacred texts. Dying and feeling alive is Bellman's Dionysian and whimsical variation on the religious wisdom of preparing for death.
In spite of this last stanza tying into the previous ones and carrying through the song's twin themes of death and drinking, it has overall a merry and whimsical character, as does this simultaneously pleasant and tragicomic deathly promenade polonaise, sung to the tune of Naumann's March from Kellgren's opera Gustaf Vasa.
Bellman has also used the same tune twice more; interestingly, both other times in drinking songs, both of them also written around 1787.
Hourglass and drinking glass; one could at last see these symbols as emblems of two poles in Bellman's personality. The hourglass stands for melancholy, gravity, and sadness; the drinking glass for the excessive elation, for the Dionysian ecstasy.
And not only that, the characters by Julien Choy are gorgeous...compare to Ryuta Osada or Nemanja Filipovic designs or my own mental images of the charas (all of them elsewhere on this blog), for Desdemona and Cassio and Emilia look just as they did in my mind's eye more or less, AND IAGO LOOKS DOWNRIGHT AND OUTRIGHT PSYCHO ON THE COVERS... Observe the master of the strings!!
I also luved Choy's design of Cassio, different from Osada's shota boy and Filipovic's Rule 63:d Snow White and far closer to my own depiction of the faithful lieutenant. I can't wait to see him hand-kissing, getting wasted, and getting crippled. Just for the fun of it. I also love how the layout of this page placed him in the centre of the dramatis personae, as the sole survivor and the one caught in the crossfire.
I also want to see more Iagothello dynamics, especially here when you have basically Jason Momoa against a blond Raito Yagami (the latter without the deathnote). Just consider Choy's Othello being a towering man with rippling limbs and scars on his face from years of battle - he looks like a veteran warrior who has always been surrounded by the din of battle and is completely new to peace and domestic life. This portrayal with this battle-scarred face makes the character both believable and quite scary when he turns to the dark side, as well as contrasting with the petite, smooth-skinned, fragile-looking, golden-haired Desdemona and Iago in this version - the former warm and kind and the latter icy and ruthless, but both equally fair of hair and skin, and competing for the general's favour.
Hats off for Julien Choy and I cannot wait for this to be released in Spain (if the Science Fiction Bookshops in Sweden don't get some issues of this treasured book)...
