That, and glass slippers

[flemmings]

My happy-making thing of the day, courtesy the FFL. The Fisher King, right? Crops up everywhere. Grail Legend and all its progeny, Lewis' That Hideous Strength, Eliot's Wasteland:

While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother's wreck
And on the king my father's death before him.

The wounded king, keeper of the holy grail, whose obscure hurt, punishment for some obscure transgression, cannot be healed, and who spends his time fishing in the river outside his castle. I always loved that last detail-- strange, resonant, inexplicable. A king who fishes.

Well, as one who knows better than I says, "Did any of your sources mention that the fishing is a pun (or misunderstanding of the French)? Le Roi Pecheur is the SINNER King, but with a different set of diacritical marks, it's FISHER King." Pécheur, pêcheur, what's the diff?

Comments

[joasakura.livejournal.com]

of course, now I'm thinking that first like as "while I was sinning in that dull canal"

Sinning how? humping a cow on a fish day?

[incandescens]

Who was it who said something about:

"to sin
With Elinor Glyn on a tiger skin
Or err with her on some other fur..."

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Oh! I bet that's where what's-his-name got the base idea for that what's-it's-name! Um. Hang on. "Steven Brust got the base idea for the Brokedown Palace story."

Sigh. I had to check with the spouse that today is indeed Friday. That's the kind of week it's been.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Oh, is that what Brokedown Palace is about? I might give it a whirl then. When I can *read* again, she says darkly.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

I think it's more accurately a novel based on a Grateful Dead song called Brokedown Palace. But the fisher king myth imagery is certainly there and it all ties remotely into the jhereg universe.

You will be reading soon, I'm sure!

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I'm reading already, of course, but it's work. Operated eye is now long-sighted and still a bit blurry. Fine with large-print book, but I've finished that.