the fruit of thy flowers: fanfiction
Notes
I’m a goddamned Harry Potter plagiarist. And I have so little shame that I want to tell you what and from whom I’ve stolen. Enjoy.
And In Arcadia I
Dedicated to Kay Taylor.
And in Arcadia I: Literal translation of the Latin “et in Arcadia ego.” It has two meanings: today, it is primarily used in the sense of “I, too, lived in Arcadia” – a “hello young lovers” nostalgia for a lost golden age; the older meaning is “Even in Arcadia, I, Death, am there.” Both, I think, apply, but the latter most obviously.
1. Mirrors make a room uncozy: Angela Carter, “A Souvenir of Japan”
across the hill, beyond the pale to slaughter: Geraldine McCaughrean, The Stones are Hatching: “Jack and Jill went up the hill,/Beyond the pale to slaughter.”
he's food for worms: Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I, V.iv, 86-87: “And food for—“/”For worms, brave Percy.”
2. That dance of death you dance so well: Arthur Symons, “To Emmy”
The written word abides: From the Latin “littera scriptem manet.”
3. Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images: Jean Cocteau, Des Beaux-Arts
content to live in parentheses: Angela Carter, “Elegy for a Freelance”: “We had purposely exiled ourselves from the course of everyday events and were proud to live in parentheses.”
4. To take your body and leave it cold: Traditional, “A Conversation with Death”
There are some hells you don't have to die for: Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum: “People were good at imagining hells, and some they occupied while they were still alive.”
5. The candle or the mirror that reflects it: Edith Wharton, “Vesalius in Zante”
grey as famine: Angela Carter, “The Company of Wolves”: “They are grey as famine, they are as unkind as plague.”
6. Who lives must learn to live his deaths: Jean Garrigue, “Last Letter to the Scholar”
goblin fruit: Christina Rossetti, “Goblin Market”
7. Mirrors contain infinity, and infinity contains more things than you think: Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad
Notes for the other stories coming soon.
Back to Fanfiction
Main