Seaelven Studios: A Certain Quality of Light

Dear readers, I am thrilled to let you know that our art editor has opened her own studio online, Seaelven Studios. Definitely check it out: her art is intensely aware of light and shadow, of the atmospheric and insistent details of our surroundings that only really appear and are made real in a certain quality of light. Jessica Treadwell's site offers a small gallery of her black and white film photography, which will grow, I think, by the week.

The image shown above is her Swing Solitude. Explore her gallery and let us know what you think!

"Their Mother Was a Fay..."

It has been a little while since very many people read Spenser, but The Faerie Queene is worth a second look. Spenser's poetry is unique in its enchantment and in the raw and visceral force of many of its images. For enchantment, consider this passage:

Their Mother was a Fay, and had the skill
Of secret things, and all the powers of nature
Which she by art could use unto her will,
And to her service bind each living creature....

Though I have no longing for power to bind living creatures, yet ah, for the skill of secret things! That is every scholar's wish and the wish of half the poets too.

Here is a passage for a raw and visceral velocity of sound and image (read this aloud, and you will see what I mean), one of my favorite passages on Dragons. The scaly beast has just been wounded, in battle with the Red Cross Knight:

For grief thereof, and devilish despite,
From his infernal furnace forth he threw
Huge flames, that dimmed all the heavens' light,
Enrolled in duskish smoke and brimstone blue;
As burning Aetna from his boiling stew
Doth belch out flames, and rocks in pieces broke,
And ragged ribs of mountains molten new,
Enwrapped in coalblack clouds and filthy smoke,
That all the land with stench, and heaven with horror choke.

Aetna, it is worth knowing, is the volcano that the Greeks named: "I burn."

If you haven't read Spenser in a while, look for a copy! Like every great writer of fairy tales and fantasies, he reminds us that the world in which we walk is full of hidden wonders and hidden monsters, even in the mundanity of our daily lives: he demands that we peer below the surface of our choices and our encounters. He demands - in the first lines spoken in The Faerie Queene - that we "be well aware." These are beautiful and perilous lives we live.

Storm on the Sea of Galilee

Dear readers, it has been a whirlwind of a month! Issue 2, of course, is up; we are actively seeking interviews with some new artists & writers who are doing significant and startling work (and we'll get those up on the website soon), and...the weather is something to endure. Here in Colorado, a state that I love deeply during the winter, we had snow a weekend ago and today the land is dry as a parched stretch of saguaro and thicklebrush. I am showing a copy of Rembrandt's Storm on the Sea of Galilee in this post because I am thirsty for a good sea-storm. I am thirsty for a good sea. Having grown up on the brink of Puget Sound, with its orcas and its brisk ocean winds, I dread the summers here by the Rockies. So share with me my joy at the sight of that boat tossing helplessly on the waters. The land here is too solid for me. I have sea-fever.

Calls for Submissions (Ghost Stories; Irish Myth); and Dante's Heart on Facebook

Regretfully, our message board hasn't really picked up speed, so we are going to try a couple of new things:

First, we will resume posting CFPs and calls for submissions here on the blog.

Second, Dante's Heart is opening up shop on Facebook. So those of you who are online social networking people - come join us! We will be posting updates on Dante's Heart, calls for submissions, we will highlight pieces of great work that either we or another journal is publishing, we'll let you know when we have an interview out or a new book review. Come connect with readers, writers, and artists who share an interest in the fantastic.

Oh, and third! I almost forgot. Some of you know that our editor bios are unusual. Rather than tell where Editor Y was born or what Editor Z has published, we place Editors Y & Z as characters in a developing myth or fairy tale or other marvel-tale. The bios are serialized, meaning that you can read the first 1 or 2 installments, and then watch for the next chapter to appear. Come see what adventures Childe Daniel is up to, or learn about that dryad we have for an art editor.

And now here are a couple of Calls for Submissions, pertaining to Ireland and Scotland:

First: An Sionnach: A Journal of Literature, Culture, and the Arts invites submissions (complete essays) for a special issue dedicated to the Irish poet and writer Ciaran Carson. Carson most recently published a translation of The Tain, the Irish epic also known as The Cattle Raid of Cu Chulainn. Read the details of this call for papers here.

Second: Forum, a peer-reviewed journal for post graduate students, published by the University of Edinburgh in beautiful Scotland, is calling for papers for a special issue on "Haunting." Says Forum:

"The idea of haunting points to a residue or surplus of meaning that cannot be affirmed in the
present and nevertheless makes itself known in unexpected and disruptive ways. The haunting
traces of the forgotten, the disavowed and the effaced fundamentally undermine and trouble
what we have come to know and rely on as, or in, the present. In this sense, haunting opens up
the complex possibility of spectral knowledge and emerges as a powerful tool of
conceptualisation and representation. "

Go here for the details on this call for papers.

That "haunting" painting, by the way, is Catherine Jorden's Ghost at the Door. You can see more of her work here at Elfwood.

We'll put up a few more calls for submissions shortly. Until then, swing by and read the developing myth-stories of our editor bios, and be sure to visit Dante's Heart on Facebook.

Dante's Heart Issue 2 is here!

Happy Friday, dear readers – Issue 2 of Dante's Heart: A Journal of Myth, Fairytale, Folklore, and Fantasy is here! Please swing by www.dantesheart.com and take a look.

The centerpiece of Issue 2 is a compelling translation by Roberta Payne of the cycle of folktales known as The Seven Sages of Rome, taken from an Italian text. The origins of this cycle are in ancient India and Persia, and through the centuries these tales have traveled a long way.

Issue 2 also includes:

• A translation of a Dutch story featuring a Scandinavian water spirit
  
• An exclusive film featurette offering a behind-the-scenes look at an independent film, Titania, currently in production
• Other poetry, reviews, fiction, and art -- a dessert tray of thoughtful and evocative work
  

You can also visit our message board to offer responses to the work in Dante’s Heart or to post questions for the authors and artists. We look forward to fostering a more active community of writers, artists, and scholars interested in myth, fairy tales, and folklore.

Enjoy Issue 2: Seven Sages – our Spring gift to you – a reward for whatever work, exams, or spring cleaning you may have inflicted on yourselves over the last month.

P.S. The first image above is Waterhouse's painting The Enchanted Garden, depicting a scene from Boccaccio's Decameron, a cycle of folktales with a frame narrative, one of few such framed cycles surviving in the world, part of the same literary family as and The Thousand and One Nights and The Seven Sages of Rome. The second image is Gustav Dore's portrait of Dante carried by an Eagle into realms new and exciting, and brilliant with wonder and light. Needless to say, these are not images from our journal! But they are part of our invitation to you to step into a new place with us, to hear tales and see wonders.

Starfare's Gem: A Ship for Giants

As might be gleaned from an earlier post, I have a fascination for Giants. I think it goes back to a childhood book with lavish illustrations of giants tromping out of their massive carved homes under the hills.

So I have to share this passage from Stephen R. Donaldson's The Wounded Land, in which a ship rides the breakers in toward shore, with Giants climbing in the rigging:

...Starfare's Gem arrived in a gleam of white sails, as if it had been newly created from the sun's reflection on the blue Sea. It hove into sight like a stone castle riding gallantly before the wind, beautifully both swift and massive, matching the grace and strength of the Giants.

Imagine how large such a ship must be, to be piloted across the wild seas by Giants! What a sight that must be to humans...a ship the size of a stone castle coming in to shore.

I have included the cover art from the Australian edition of the sequel to The Wounded Land, because it depicts that magical ship carved out of granite. I am amazed at the beauty of this cover.

Students Create Life-size Mythological Statues

Check out this article from the news. Students at Holten Richmond Middle School in Danvers, Massachusetts have created - as part of their studies on classical myth - life-size papier-maché sculptures of the Cyclops, the Medusa, the Minotaur, a centaur, and other figures. The sculptures are on display at a local library. Other art projects the students undertook included masks of the Hellenic gods and fictional retellings of Greek myths. Sadly, no photographs of the students' work are available with the news piece, but it is great news nonetheless!

Pardon my tardiness in posting to the blog this week - things are quite hectic given the preparations for Issue 2 of Dante's Heart and (on a personal note) the preparations for an upcoming wedding. In atonement for the tardiness, here is a slew of other Cyclops from our century, a morbid tribe that might arouse interest, gasps of horror, polite amusement, or wonder at our persistent interpretation of the physically deformed and disadvantaged as both other and monstrous.

First, the stop-action Hollywood Cyclops:


Second, Odilon Redon's remarkable painting Cyclops (1914), which walks the line between cute and deeply unnerving:


Third, Ray Harryhausen's conceptual image of the Battle of the Cyclops for The 7th Voyage of Sinbad:


Fourth, an interesting piece from Julio Garay's studio, blending the illustration of cannibalism with echoes of the old "contemplation of death" motif. That is to say, is Julio Garay's Cyclops groaning, "Munchings and crunchings!" or "Alas, poor Yorick!"


And finally, not to be forgotten, the X-Men Cyclops, regarded as much as a mutant and other as his ancestor Polyphemus, and unlucky in love despite his ability to shoot lethal fire out of his mono-opthalmic visor:

Enjoy this gallery, and stay tuned for news of our Issue 2, which is only a few days away.