intertext

My dissertation thesis (I keep forgetting the proper UK-style name for this document) has a current working title of Hidden Turnings, which is a perfectly appropriate name given the thing - intertextuality - that I'm writing about. For a while, though, I have been thinking of changing it to Fish in Dark Water. A discovery I made today is making that even more likely.

I got the idea from a line in one of the pieces collected in Reflections on the Magic of Writing. She is talking about Fire and Hemlock, and writes that when she settled on the Tam Lin story as the main background, “about ninety other myths and folktales proceeded to manifest, in and out all the time, like fish in dark water.” I thought this was a lovely image, and it is. I also imagined goldfish in a pond.

Today I'm working on the intertextual references in Fire and Hemlock over and above the Tam Lin story, and I had just written something about the thirty-one named works that turn up, many of them books that Tom sends Polly to either help her to train as a hero or to give her clues about his situation. I was going over the list, coming up with links and connections, and got to Henrietta's House, by Elizabeth Goudge, which was Polly's favourite of the first bunch of books Tom sends her for Christmas. I love Elizabeth Goudge; The Little White Horse is one of my favourite books in the world, and I also love Linnets and Valerians, but I'm not familiar with Henrietta's House (to my shame, and now I think I should definitely read it). So I did a bit of web searching and came across a page devoted to Goudge's writing that discusses it. And look at this. The main characters apparently find some caves. In the caves is a pool.
” Look! cried Hugh Anthony excitedly, kneeling beside the still, inky pool, “There are white fishes here. Quite white. Like Ghosts.”
The Dean put his oil lamp on the ground and knelt beside him and together they watched fascinated as the strange white shapes swam round and round in the black water, their ghostly bodies rippling back and forth as though they were weaving some never-ending pattern upon the black loom of the water.”

It gave me shivers. Doesn't it you?

PS: I've just discovered that, thanks to my mother's Puffin collection, I actually own a copy of Henrietta's House So now I have absolutely no excuse and must read it.

PPS: I've also just realized that my last entry ended on an awful cliff-hanger, and am delighted to be able to report that Simon-the-cat came home two days after I returned from Toronto. I suspect he was loitering in the garden waiting to be sure it was me before he came to the door.