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a-tired-humanist · 7 months

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To be honest, I feel like some people are expecting way too much out of tumblr level essays. Just because someone is a linguistics, philology, literature or cultural anthropology student in their real life, it doesn't mean they should be expected to produce academia level essays on their free time for fun.

I promise you, those students and graduates are probably brilliant and far more capable of nuance that you are giving them credit for. But, let's be honest, no one writes the 10 to 20 pages with correct citations you are expecting them to for fun, unpaid and in their spare time.

Academics already work so much without compensation. So you can either pay us to write you the 15 pages of nuanced critic you are expecting of us, or stop expecting it and let us have as much oversimplified fun as the next guy.

Also, mind you, whatever essay we write here, we can't reuse for other purposes without risking a self-plagiarism issue.

So, yes, I can write a nuanced essay on the many ways Greek mythology retellings reflect on societal change and (pop) feminism. I can. And probably someday I actually will. But here all I will say about it is:

Demeter being the villain of the story in retellings reflects more on current mother-related trauma and Christian purity culture than it does the original text. And, even though that is not by any means an incorrect way to rewrite a story (because no creative endeavor is inherently wrong), the trend is getting tiring and starting to reflect heavily on the current cultural perception of the story.

If you want nuanced ideas on how vampires reflect societal changes better than almost any other monster, you can read my BA Tesis. For nuanced takes on how horror movies are linked to inmaterial human heritage through folklore and how horror movies aimed are children are starting to occupy the space left behind by the traditional fairytale after those had their teeth filled, you can read my Master's Tesis (if you speak Spanish, because unless you work for an Academic publication, I am NOT translating it for you)

#literature #lit crit #cultural anthropology #tumblr essays #greek mythology #horror movies #linguistics #philology #for the record: i am a cultural anthropologist

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offensivelyoffendsyou · 20 days

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Has anyone ever made a modern setting Reichblr AU?

It would be pretty funny if they were college roommates, Very likely is that Albert Speer is roommates with Hitler.

Hitler : Have you seen my art supplies???!!

Albert Speer : Nuh uh, I haven't (he actually stole it for an architecture project)

(After that incident, Hitler made a deal that they share their art supplies.)

Joseph Goebbels and Himmler are roommates, frenemies probably

Joseph : *Starts ranting about anything at all*

Himmler trying to study with his almost-broken headphones : SHUTTT UPPPP!!!

the worst thing is that they definitely call Goering the caseoh of the group (i hc him as a little bit chubby / most huggable person in the world) anyways I want to see at least one fan art or fan fiction about the inner circle in a modern setting au

I think Hitler would at least be an art student (finally) Albert would still be an architecture student, Goering would at least be an aviation student (considering ww1) Joseph Goebbels would be still be a philology student or any writing majors (ex: Poetry, Journalism, or even Philosophy), And all the others are still same majors, I would at least think that Hitler is a Reichblr fan (surprisingly) I feel like Dolfie is like a mix between Canadian and Asian? And Albert is German + Irish, Goering would be American (GRRAHHH) , Goebbels is surprisingly I think is an Asian more specifically Vietnamese, Himmler is European / Swedish, and Heydrich is deffss German.

I would love to think that they would have a group chat called the AVENGERS, Hitler would probably made the group randomly and called it a day, don't get me started with their genders + sexuality too 😭😭

#reichblr #austrian painter #joseph goebbels #heydrich #heinrich himmler #hermann goering #albert speer

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protoindoeuropean · 5 months

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Comments by people about how disappointed they are to hear that Etymonline is a pretty bad source for (English) etymology make me realize how spoiled we are in Slovene with the (relative) quality and accessibility of etymological dictionaries.

There are three (modern) etymological dictionaries for Slovene: the standard work by Bezlaj, Furlan and Snoj, ESSJ (Etymological Dictionary of the Slovene Language; 4 volumes + indices; begun by Bezlaj in 1976, joined in the following volume (1982) by his student Snoj and in the third and fourth also Furlan (1995, 2005); Bezlaj died in 1994); Snoj's more "popular science" version, SES (Slovene Etymological Dictionary, 1st edition in 1997, 3rd in 2016, available online); Furlan's much more rigorous and dialectally oriented NESSJ (New Etymological Dictionary of the Slovene Language; trial folio in 2013, online publication since 2017).

As mentioned, SES and NESSJ are available online, though the very limited scope of NESSJ means that SES is the usual reference. There are talks about putting ESSJ online as well, but there are some issues with rights and Bezlaj's family etc.

Before illustrating the differences between the various Slovene and English sources for etymology, a few notes on what a good etymological dictionary entry should include:

philological documentation (current meaning, phonetic/phonological information (incl. suprasegmental features), morphological characteristics (inflection, gender), word family (derivatives, parallel formations), attestation (historical sources), onomastic material (esp. anthorponymy and toponymy)

comparative material (cognates or related words in closely related languages and in the wider language family)

etymological explanation (word form at the moment of creation, morphemic structure, meaning and semantic motivation)

To demonstrate the differences between the dictionaries, it's best to consider their entries for the same words:

— ESSJ, SES poln, adj. 'full' in ESSJ and SES. NESSJ does not have this word. ESSJ includes more information on Slovene historical and dialectal attestation, as well as all the existing forms in other Slavic languages. SES, on the other hand, besides the relevant derivations only includes those Slavic languages that are more relevant for the Proto-Slavic reconstruction. It is important to note that this entry from ESSJ is from the third volume, which systematically takes into account the findings of the laryngeal theory (you can see that the reconstruction of the PIE root in ESSJ is *pelH-, with a laryngeal, even if it is not specified which one; cf. the update in SES with *pleh₁-). The first two volumes do not, however, and are therefore in many ways superseded by the entries in SES, even if those are otherwise less rigorous.

***at this point I should note that I'll gladly(!) translate all the Slovene entries if anyone wants me to do so, but I'm not going to do it if no one asks because there are quite a few of them here

Compare the entries in popular English online sources for etymology – Wiktionary and Etymonline; and then also Kroonen's Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic for comparison:

— Kroonen, Wiktionary, Etymonline 1, 2 The Wiktionary entry for full is roughly on par with SES, while Kroonen's Germanic material is more comprehensive. Etymonline, however, shows no trace of the laryngeal theory and when looking at the cognates listed under the root, it's like they've never heard of a diacritic either (except in Old Norse "fjöl-", even though ö is not normally used for Old Norse – ǫ is) – even though those are often crucial! –, not to mention fully replacing ə with e in what should be Avestan pərəna- ...

To also include NESSJ, the word for 'birch' will be used, but first the entries for this word in the already mentioned dictionaries:

—Kroonen, Wiktionary, Etymonline Again the Etymonline entry just does not compare – it's not just that the PIE reconstruction is non-laryngeal, it's also plain wrong because it has *g instead of *ǵ; also again with the diacritics ...

— ESSJ, SES As you can see, this entry is from the first volume of ESSJ and thus also non-laryngeal. It is still more comprehensive in terms of material, but the explanation in SES is more up-to-date.

The entry in NESSJ simply does not compare to the ones above – it is more in line with a dictionary like the Etymological Dictionary of Slavic Languages (ÈSSJa) in the amount of information it includes, which means that it is so long that I will put it under the cut:

— NESSJ You can see that this entry includes much more dialectal and historical material and discusses in depth its historical morphology and types of derivation, finally constructing its diachronic word-family.

And since I mentioned it, here's also the ÈSSJa entry for 'birch':

— ĖSSJa As it is from the very first folio, from 1974, the explanation is non-laryngeal, as in ESSJ. Compared to NESSJ, it includes (literally) a couple more Slavic languages: Slovincian and Polabian, though understandably no further dialectal material, which NESSJ includes specifically for Slovene. ÈSSJa, as a rule, doesn't reconstruct accentual paradigms for Proto-Slavic, while on the other hand, some of the discussion in NESSJa specifically concerns the question of accentual features of the discussed word and its IE word-family. NESSJ is also more explicit in the discussion of the models of derivation and morphological variants.

#j #etymology #slovene #slovenian #etymonline #wiktionary

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daveofguy420 · 7 months

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youre a philology student?? damn i thought you were a yaoi major or something 😭

MAN COME ON

#all jokes aside though i WISH #anon this is a very funny ask im gonna make yaoi major my dn on twitter or something. mwah #mail

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igotanidea · 1 year

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Selflessness : Matt Murdock x fem!reader pt 1

Request: Ages ago (I'm so, so, sorry) @somest1 gave me an idea: in her free time from law school(*) reader does kind of volunteering - helping people in the church under the guidance of Matt's mom. Season 3 where he is healing in the church, so she basically helps him, but doesn't know who he is.

I changed it a bit and decided to divide it into parts (probably up to 3 or 4) but the main idea stays unchanged. Once again, I'm sorry and hope you enjoy it :)

***

„I’ve taken care of the kids in the room 6, sister Maggie. They seem unruly, but to tell the truth all they need is some care and attention.”

“Thank you, Y/N. You are a saint.” Sister Maggie Grace smiled lightly at the girl. Normally, she was far more reserved in her opinions and praises but this girl brought on the softer side of the nun.

“I assure you. I am not. I made a lot of mistakes in my life. Some worse than others.” Said girl looked down, a bit ashamed of her past.

“We all did, Y/N. What is important is that you are trying your best to do good. You help people.”

“I still think like I’m not doing enough….. Like there are so many men and women and kids who are suffering …..”

“You sound awfully like someone else I know…..”

“Really? Who?” that little tone of curiosity In her voice was not a good sign. Y/N was the nicest person even but also the one who wouldn’t take no for an answer. If she wanted to do or know something there was no power in earth, heaven or hell that would prevent her from it. She would charm her way around, getting exactly what she set her mind to.

“Doesn’t matter. But he has the tendency to put himself on the cross and take the pain and suffer from everyone in the name of greater good.”

“Seems like a charming person.” Y/N smirked

“Oh, you poor girl…..” Maggie sighed and shook her head. It was better to just distract her little helper from whatever was going on inside her head and heart “if you are done talking here, off you go. You might have covered for 6, but little Tom has been crying all night again. I have no idea why, but you are like the only person who can get to him, so why don’t you focus on the job?”

“On it, sister Maggie.” Y/N flashed her most beautiful smile and with her sunshine and rainbow attitude left the nun by herself.

“Don’t you think she could be the one to help our guest downstairs, Maggie?” the second Y/N was out of sight father Lantom emerged from the adhering porch.

“No.”

“Maggie.”

“No, Paul. I’m not putting her into this mess. She’s been through enough.”

“And you are wondering who Matt took his stubbornness after.” Lantom muttered, but it was done with his representative sympathy. He was not the one to mock people. “I’m just saying, that perhaps she will help him see the other side of life. Not all the darkness and evil. And bring him back up. She has a natural talent for it, and you know it.”

“If anything it would consume and crash her. Just like it did to Matt. I’m not letting another kid go through something like that.”

“She’s not a kid.” Lantom shrugged but turned serious under the nun’s stern gaze “Just think about it Maggie, that’s all I’m asking. She’s been through a lot and nothing broke her, so maybe she’s stronger than you presume.”

“Hm.” Maggie scoffed

“Promise me, you’ll consider it. You know I only want what’s best for both of them.”

“Fine, fine, I promise.” she threw her hands in the air “you are so persistent at times. God have mercy on us all if they were to meet.”

***

Y/N Y/L/N was a perfect kid. Obedient, helpful, cheerful. Great student coming from a good family. An only child, never causing any trouble. Listening to her parents, her teachers, her lecturers. Graduated with honors and getting her MD, even if it came as a surprise to those who knew her. She always gave an impression of a person who would focus rather on some humanistic studies like literary science or philology.

Her choice however was deeply rooted in her past, in her good family heritage.

You know this saying that every family has its secret. Some of them have more than it seems, and sometimes so called good ones are truly the worst, after you strip them from all the window dressing and hypocrisy.

Y/N had to be good and avoid trouble. Otherwise, any manifestation of disobedience, even the slightest would be met with extensive punishment. Most of the times leaving her with literal bruises, that she had to learn to cover and in tears and sobs that she had to muffle to avoid harsh words and accusation of her being weak and pathetic. Both of her parents were esteemed at work, mum being a CEO and dad a computer programmer and were extremely busy. To say the least, they have little to no time to take care of a kid, more often than not leaving Y/N wondering why the hell did they decide to have one in the first place. Their relationship was based on the how was school, did you do your homework and what grade did you get from the test questions. And that was only from her mother, her dad never cared enough to even form them. Excusing himself with tiredness and the argument that woman should be taking emotional care of the kid, especially a girl.

All things considered, Y/N was lonely. She did not really have any friends, because how can you form any relationship if you have no good patterns of how it should look like. How can you connect with someone when all you know are quiet evenings filled with work and avoiding another members of the family. What was surprising about her, was that despite all this gloominess and coldness stemming from her closest surrounding she developed this quiet, inner happiness, calmness and peace. When there was problem she was the one to keep straight head and solve it. When someone was in distress she was the one to ease the situation and placate the conflict. But despite that, she was lonely. Always looking for something more, trying to make it better for people who were less privileged then her. And that was how she ended up volunteering at the convent under sister Maggie’s guidance.

She quickly proved herself to be great working with kids, and Maggie warmed up to this optimistic, energetic soul in a way that surprised and delighted father Lantom. It’s been three years of her work there now and she gained sympathy and trust of both.

***

“Hey there little guy” Y/N entered the room when Tommy was placed. His back was to the door but he turned around as soon as he heard the girl’s voice.

“Hi, miss Y/N.”

“Some little bird told me you had a hard night?”

“I wasn’t sleeping” he rubbed his eyes with fists, looking so small and fragile, Y/N heart was breaking.

“Come here.” she sat on the edge of the bed and opened her arms, in which the boy immediately dived in. This poor little one, abandoned by his mother was in desperate need of warmth and whatever little joy could be given. And Y/N was more than willing to give hugs to him. “Did you have nightmares, again?” he muttered something, hiding face in her sweater “come on, Tommy, I need you to use human language.” She laughed

“It was the clown.” He pulled away, a few tears dripping down his cheeks

“Again? Oh, you poor thing.” Y/N caressed his cheeks rubbing the water away “was it that guy at school again?”

“Yes. He’s making me scared…..”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll settle that matter” she embraced him once again rocking gently from side to side “and in the meantime…..”

“Why is the time mean?”

“Oh, no, it’s not like….. “ the girl could not stop the giggle. Luckily the boy smiled as well, dispelling her worries that he might feel laughed at “ you know what, in fact, we are going to have a really, really nice time. I got a new book if you are interested. No clowns there. How does that sound?“

“Ok.” he mumbled

“Ok? Good. I’m gonna pick it up in just a second…..”

“Can you hug me some more?” the boy asked

“Sure, Tommy. We got time here.”

“Y/N?” Lantom was like a literal ghost, appearing out of shadows, out of nowhere “how’s out little fella doing?”

“I think it’s nothing a good story and a serious talk with certain guy from room 11 could not fix.”

“Was it Anton again?”

“Mhm. Unfortunately. I’ll talk to him.”

“I think this boy may need some more seriousness than you can treat him with.”

“I can be serious.” She scoffed moving towards Lantom with twinge in her eyes, causing Tom to hold onto her tighter and whimper.

“That’s good. Because we got one serious matter we need to discuss.”

“We being me and you, father?”

“We being you, me and sister Maggie.”

“Oh. I don’t know if I’m worthy enough.”

“You are the most trustworthy person we know, Y/N.”

“All right then. I’ll meet you after I make sure Tommy is taken care of.”

***

“You want to me to take care of a guy in the basement.” She repeated, both Lantom and Maggie watching her reaction carefully. She showed no emotions and it was hard to guess what was going inside her head. “Is he in need?”

“Yes.”

“All right then.” she shrugged “I’ll help.”

“Just like that? No more questions?”

“Why would I need any? If you trusted him enough to take him in. It’s not like he is the daredevil, right?" she smirked (not realising how shocked her interlocutors were for a moment) "So of course I’ll help. Should I go now?”

“You know the way.” Lantom managed to say, since Maggie couldn't force herself to say a word.

“On it, father.” she smiled, using her typical sentence and walked away.

“I think we made a mistake here, Paul.”

“She’ll be fine. She’s gentle but not naïve and know how to take care of herself.”

“I still think we made a mistake.”

to be continued (part 2 is up)

@pinksirensong

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apollopythios · 8 months

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Χαῖρε!

my name is Kevin, I'm nineteen, I come from Poland and I'm a second-year student of classical philology! I warmly welcome you to my blog, feel at home here. Let the flame of Hestia's fire wrap you in warmth! I have been interested in Ancient Greece since I was a child, I always dreamed of learning Ancient Greek and telling people about Greek mythology, which is why you will find here all kinds of information posts about Ancient Greece, the Greeks and Greek mythology. What's more, I am also a Hellenist, and I talk about my gods and my relationship with them with great faith and love! May the gods bless you, newcomer!

#classics #greek history #classical studies #mythology #classical mythology #classicalphilology #greek myth #ancient greek #ancient greece #hellenismos

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marssmellow · 9 months

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𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐦𝐞 ☕

My name is Mars, I am 21 years old. My pronouns are she/her.

I am a Bachelor's degree student in Modern Languages and Literatures. I will graduate in October.

Next year I'll join the Master's degree in English Studies and specialize in Germanic Philology.

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾ more info under the cut! ☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

My interests include research, reading, watching movies and TV shows, writing poems and novels, and studying. If you want to know more about my interests, feel free to ask!

I am a huge Swiftie! 🪩

I am very friendly and generally extroverted. If you ask me anything I'll be very happy to answer!

📓 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐠

This is supposed to be a studyblr inspired by the dark academia aesthetic, where I register my studies.

I'll post study inspiration, as well as tips and fun stuff!

I will reblog moodboards and quotes that keep me motivated and that will, hopefully, help you as well.

Tracking tag — #mars's café

I could also post/reblog political reflections. I don't want to do this that often because I want this blog to be a little peaceful corner of the world. But it'll probably happen every now and then since I consider myself a very opinionated person.

✒️ 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐦𝐞

You can also follow my other blogs!

@thelittlemars — my main blog, where I share my passions and interests in movies, books and tv shoes. You can learn more fun facts about me on here!

@antiquariaunt — a dark academia themed blog where I focus on my passion for history, literature and the medieval times.

Apart from these, I also accept asks and dms. Don't be afraid to ask me anything!

𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐞𝐥𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐛𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐝! ✨

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r3dblccd · 2 months

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NINE PEOPLE I'D LIKE TO KNOW BETTER

last song: Water by Ten (it's sooo good)

favorite color: If I had to pick, then I'd say red

currently watching: Nothing currently. I watch some YT videos. I usually watch TV shows at night, but now my nights are occupied with reading (like, I had to read Decameron, thankfully not the whole thing, in a week, now I have to read Macbeth in a week, I still have have to finish Eugene Onegin, after I finish those next on the list is Don Quixote, which, our tutor would want every single one us us the read the whole thing, I also have to check at least a bit of In Praise of Folly by Erasmus Rotterdam and goddamn just by looking at the contents of how many chapters are there I can tell it's long. I am just at the beginning of Dante's Inferno and I do also want to check out at least Purgatorio even though our tutor said it's not compulsory to read the whole trilogy. There are also a few, again, not compulsory reads that I still want to check out. And I haven't paused my reading outside of what we have to read for our literature disciplines with Douglas Adams' The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide because I'm already so deep into the book, I don't want to just pause it and lose my rhythm when I get back to it and because I hate myself. The life of a philology student is just so beautiful, isn't it. Save me, kill me.)

spicy/savory/sweet: I think I lean more towards, but I do like savory food and a bit of spicy, but not too spicy or Imma cry

relationship status: Happily single

current obsession: I am mesmerized by some of the visuals for rave parties (I think they are rave parties, idk?). I got traumatized by the Shrek video though (I saw it, you all have to see it too now, but tw for flashing lights if you click to see the video)

TAGGED BY: @unfinishedjulyrain TAGGING: @vienrose, @midncghts, @irrwicht, @weedzkiller, @luneblush, @formorethananame, @frxgmcnts, @dozenrozez, @temporalobjects

#misc; dash games #misc; ooc

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metaphrasis · 1 month

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(DAYDREAM: In my daydream College for Bards, the curriculum would be as follows:

I. In addition to English, at least one ancient language, probably Greek or Hebrew, and two modern languages would be required.

II. Thousands of lines of poetry in these languages would be learned by heart.

III. The library would contain no books of literary criticism, and the only critical exercise required of students would be the writing of parodies.

IV. Courses in prosody, rhetoric, and comparative philology would be required of all students, and every student would have to select three courses in mathematics, natural history, geology, meteorology, archeology, mythology, liturgics, cooking.

V. Every student would be required to look after a domestic animal and cultivate a garden plot.

— W.H. Auden, from "The Poet & The City," excerpt featured in Lapham’s Quarterly Fall 2008 issue: “Ways of Learning”

#W.H. Auden #Lapham's Quarterly #education

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seldonhari · 6 months

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semi-active this month, i'm trying to act like a serious student of spanish philology who doesn't spend her time lusting after older men. and then i log in here for one minute and see this:

it's the jared harris as captain mike post resurfacing again. of course it is

#is everyone okay #god i want him

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 10 months

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Last September, while working at his desk in Philadelphia, Samuel R. Delany experienced a mysterious episode that he calls “the big drop.” His vision faded for about three minutes, and he felt his body plunge, as if the floor had fallen away. When he came to, everything looked different, though he couldn’t say exactly how. Delany, who is eighty-one, began to suspect that he’d suffered a mini-stroke. His daughter, Iva, an emergency-room physician, persuaded him to go to the hospital, but the MRI scans were inconclusive. The only evidence of a neurological event was a test result indicating that he had lost fifteen per cent of his capacity to form new memories—and a realization, in the following weeks, that he was unable to finish his novel in progress, “This Short Day of Frost and Sun.” After publishing more than forty books in half a century, the interruption was, he told me, both “a loss and a relief.”

For years, Delany has begun most days at four o’clock in the morning with a ritual. First, he spells out the name Dennis, for Dennis Rickett, his life partner. Next, he recites an atheist’s prayer, hailing faraway celestial bodies with a litany inspired by the seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza: “Natura Naturans, system of systems, system of fields, Kuiper belt, scattered disk, Oort cloud, thank you for dropping me here.” Finally, he prepares oatmeal, which he faithfully photographs for the friends and fans who follow him on Facebook. Every so often, when the milk foams, he sees Laniakea—the galactic supercluster that’s home to Earth.

In the stellar neighborhood of American letters, there have been few minds as generous, transgressive, and polymathically brilliant as Samuel Delany’s. Many know him as the country’s first prominent Black author of science fiction, who transformed the field with richly textured, cerebral novels like “Babel-17” (1966) and “Dhalgren” (1975). Others know the revolutionary chronicler of gay life, whose autobiography, “The Motion of Light in Water” (1988), stands as an essential document of pre-Stonewall New York. Still others know the professor, the pornographer, or the prolific essayist whose purview extends from cyborg feminism to Biblical philology.

There are so many Delanys that it’s difficult to take the full measure of his influence. Reading him was formative for Junot Díaz and William Gibson; Octavia Butler was, briefly, his student in a writing workshop. Jeremy O. Harris included Delany as a character in his play “Black Exhibition,” while Neil Gaiman, who is adapting Delany’s classic space adventure “Nova” (1968) as a series for Amazon, credits him with building a critical foundation not only for science fiction but also for comics and other “paraliterary” genres.

Friends call him Chip, a nickname he gave himself at summer camp, in the eleventh year of a life that has defied convention and prejudice. He is a sci-fi child prodigy who never flamed out; a genre best-seller widely recognized as a great literary stylist; a dysgraphic college dropout who once headed the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; and an outspokenly promiscuous gay man who survived the aids crisis and has found love, three times, in committed, non-monogamous relationships. A story like Delany’s isn’t supposed to be possible in our society—and that, nearly as much as the gift of his writing, is his glory.

It took several months to persuade him to meet. Delany has polemicized against the face-to-face interview, reasoning that writers, who constitute themselves on the page, ought to be questioned there, too. He warned in an e-mail that a visit would be a waste of time, offering instead a tour of his “three-room hovel” via Zoom: “No secret pile will be left unexplored.” Yet a central theme in his work is “contact,” a word he uses to convey all the potential in chance encounters between human beings. “I propose that in a democratic city it is imperative that we speak to strangers, live next to them, and learn how to relate to them on many levels, from the political to the sexual,” he wrote in “Times Square Red, Times Square Blue” (1999), a landmark critique of gentrification which centered on his years of cruising in the adult theatres of midtown Manhattan.

His novels, too, turn on the serendipity of urban life, adopting the “marxian” credo that fiction is most vital when classes mix. Gorgik, a revolutionary leader in Delany’s four-volume “Return to Nevèrÿon” series, rises from slavery to the royal court in an ancient port city called Kolhari, where he learns that seemingly centralized “power—the great power that shattered lives and twisted the course of the nation—was like a fog over a meadow at evening. From any distance, it seemed to have a shape, a substance, a color, an edge. Yet, as you approached it, it seemed to recede before you.”

In January, Delany finally allowed me to visit him at the apartment complex that he now rarely leaves. A hulking beige structure near the Philadelphia Museum of Art, it looms like a fortress over the row houses of the Fairmount. I crossed a lobby the length of a ballroom and rode the elevator to the fourth floor. As I walked down the hallway, I noticed a small man behind a luggage trolley taking my picture. It was Delany, smiling in welcome with his lively brown eyes and strikingly misaligned front teeth.

[A Delightful portrait of my favorite Science Fiction writer]

#Samuel Delaney #Science Fiction #Nova #words and writing #my favorites #Driftglass #The Big Drop

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