rosa_acicularis (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rosa_acicularis) wrote2007-07-18 02:10 am
rosa_acicularis) wrote2007-07-18 02:10 am
Entry tags:
Self-indulgent, Fic Related Geekery
Ever since I started writing in the Doctor Who fandom, I have been haunted by eerie literary coincidences. Here is the latest.
As should be fairly obvious from the title, Do I Twist, Do I Fold is largely inspired by the lyrics to Rogue Trader's Voodoo Child. But I suppose I've been writing with Tennyson as a crutch for far too long, and I felt like I needed something else to make the story really congeal in my mind, to make it whole. And as I wrote the first chapter, a nonsense phrase kept popping into my head. Nothing coherent, just the same vaguely familiar string of words, over and over again: "...said the spider to the fly."
After accidentally typing it into the text of the fic itself, I gave in and googled it.
I was both relieved and alarmed to find that it belonged to an actual poem, called, appropriately enough, The Spider and the Fly. Relieved, because finding it meant it would stop driving me mad. Alarmed, because even though I had no conscious memory of the poem whatsoever, it fit exactly with what I was working toward in the fic. Fit it perfectly, in mood and tone and theme. It was one of those odd moments when you begin to suspect your own brain of conspiring against you.
So I shrugged and submitted to fate or my unconscious or whatever, because no matter where it came from it worked.
I was browsing in Powell's this afternoon (best bookstore in the known universe, for non-Oregonians) when I saw it. A beautifully, creepily illustrated copy of The Spider and the Fly: A Cautionary Tale by Mary Howitt.
And it was on sale.
So I bought it, because while I am stupid I am not that stupid and I know when the universe is trying to tell me something. I took it home and stared at it, unsettled and not a little perturbed. I had never even heard of this Mary Howitt until a few days before. I still had no idea who she was. I'd obviously read this poem as a child and forgotten about it, though as a rule I was not a child particularly interested in poetry, no matter how dark. Still sending the book the occasional uneasy glance, I did a little research on Mary Howitt. This is what I learned.
Mary Howitt was born in Gloucestershire, England, in 1799. Both she and her husband William Howitt were hugely influential and successful authors, and between them they wrote more than 180 books. Of the two Howitts, Mary is generally considered to be the more accomplished, and Dickens himself invited her to contribute to his journal, Household Words. (Yes, Dickens. As in, "I'm your biggest fan", "squeeze box between knees" Charles f'reakin' Dickens Dickens.) During her distinguished career, Mary was closely associated with such renowned literary figures as Wordsworth, Browning, and Tennyson.
Yes. Tennyson. Alfred, Lord. You know, the bloke on whom my entire involvement in the DW fandom has hinged. That Tennyson.
And this is right on the heels of the Tennyson/T.S. Eliot/George Eliot But Broken Lights-related strangeness.
Maybe I should give up books. Nasty habit anyway, reading. Leads to heartbreak and poor eyesight.
Nevertheless, you should really go read Mary Howitt's The Spider and the Fly. It is, as they say, made of awesome.
After accidentally typing it into the text of the fic itself, I gave in and googled it.
I was both relieved and alarmed to find that it belonged to an actual poem, called, appropriately enough, The Spider and the Fly. Relieved, because finding it meant it would stop driving me mad. Alarmed, because even though I had no conscious memory of the poem whatsoever, it fit exactly with what I was working toward in the fic. Fit it perfectly, in mood and tone and theme. It was one of those odd moments when you begin to suspect your own brain of conspiring against you.
So I shrugged and submitted to fate or my unconscious or whatever, because no matter where it came from it worked.
I was browsing in Powell's this afternoon (best bookstore in the known universe, for non-Oregonians) when I saw it. A beautifully, creepily illustrated copy of The Spider and the Fly: A Cautionary Tale by Mary Howitt.
And it was on sale.
So I bought it, because while I am stupid I am not that stupid and I know when the universe is trying to tell me something. I took it home and stared at it, unsettled and not a little perturbed. I had never even heard of this Mary Howitt until a few days before. I still had no idea who she was. I'd obviously read this poem as a child and forgotten about it, though as a rule I was not a child particularly interested in poetry, no matter how dark. Still sending the book the occasional uneasy glance, I did a little research on Mary Howitt. This is what I learned.
Mary Howitt was born in Gloucestershire, England, in 1799. Both she and her husband William Howitt were hugely influential and successful authors, and between them they wrote more than 180 books. Of the two Howitts, Mary is generally considered to be the more accomplished, and Dickens himself invited her to contribute to his journal, Household Words. (Yes, Dickens. As in, "I'm your biggest fan", "squeeze box between knees" Charles f'reakin' Dickens Dickens.) During her distinguished career, Mary was closely associated with such renowned literary figures as Wordsworth, Browning, and Tennyson.
Yes. Tennyson. Alfred, Lord. You know, the bloke on whom my entire involvement in the DW fandom has hinged. That Tennyson.
And this is right on the heels of the Tennyson/T.S. Eliot/George Eliot But Broken Lights-related strangeness.
Maybe I should give up books. Nasty habit anyway, reading. Leads to heartbreak and poor eyesight.
Nevertheless, you should really go read Mary Howitt's The Spider and the Fly. It is, as they say, made of awesome.