"This is a duet, but the woman does all the singing"

[larryhammer]

This time through The Comedy and Fruits Basket, I'm focusing on narrative structures, which is only increasing my admiration of Dante's and Takaya's skills. They both, after some initial awkwardness,* know how to command the pace and flow of their story, and they both have taken on a challenging task (making a road trip interesting, keeping a large family cast from getting confusing when you can draw only one face, respectively) amplified by needing to bring in related material (theological explication, thematic relations of past and present). They solve the latter fillips with very different tactics, governed by their medium: Takaya, working in a graphic form, can, and often does, have two or three things happen "at once," with dialog, internal monolog, and other scenes and flashbacks intercut within the same frame, often continuing for several pages; poetry, however, is linear in multiple ways, but Dante uses almost every trick in the book** to amplify the journey through digression, symbolism, and allegory. Plus juicy gossip.

Both works deal with the bondage of past actions: our own (sins) and others' (abuse). Both, in the best tradition of what a fantasy can do, literalize these, as cosmology and curse. And both are sustained arguments for the power of love to break those bonds.

Another two things this reading of Dante*** has made clear: reading Statius a couple years ago has paid off,**** and I really need to read Lucan -- Pharsalia is just as influential on medieval and renaissance lit, more so than I've been recognizing. So that, I think, will be next after Dante.


* Cf. Dante's apparent decision around Hell canto 8 to switch from 33 cantos for everything to 33 per division. Takaya, I think it was more a growing comfortable with the story. Or possibly realizing it was popular enough she could do what she wanted to.

** I've yet to see him use an Ovidian transition. Not sure how he could, in first person.

*** This is my third time all the way through The Comedy, not counting a couple one-off reads of Purgatory and Hell. Or it will be if I make it through Cary's Miltonic Paradise. Cover me -- I'm going up.

**** I did roll my eyes when Statius shows up saved and fanboys Virgil.

---L.

Comments

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

I've been picking at Pharsalia for a while, because Daniel imitates it in The Civil Wars. (In fact, he imitates it surprisingly closely; I was a bit boggled when I realized that he'd pretty much cast Henry IV in the role of Julius Caesar.) I've found it really hard to follow -- I can't tell whether it's because I don't know the history well enough, or just because the translator sucks. (I suppose I could suck it up and work through the Latin, but I have enough on my plate right now!)

[larryhammer]

Daniel too? Oy.

Which translation do you have?

---L.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I am at my parents, and this post epitomizes much of what I like about the world outside of my parents; and also would not have been made by anyone but you. It is awesome.

[larryhammer]

Yer welcome -- anything to help someone through the dark home wood.

Though surely, given the reams written about Fruits Basket, these are hardly new observations.

---L.