{"id":2437,"date":"2018-04-08T01:13:43","date_gmt":"2018-04-08T01:13:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/?p=2437"},"modified":"2021-05-24T17:43:00","modified_gmt":"2021-05-24T17:43:00","slug":"writing-a-raven-and-pallas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/writing-a-raven-and-pallas\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing, a Raven and Pallas"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Once upon an evening dreary, while I pondered, fogged and bleary,
\nOver many a disconnected fragment of erratic text,
\nWhile I dithered, nearly dozing, suddenly I started thinking:
\nI should be sleeping!<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a>Sleeping more and brooding less might have done the narrator in Poe’s “The Raven” some good. More, I suspect, than pondering “forgotten lore.”<\/p>\n

Although if the lore’s forgotten, how’d it come to be in “many a quaint and curious volume?” On the other hand, it is “a midnight dreary.”<\/p>\n

Maybe he’s too befuddled to think clearly. Opening a window to see who, or what, is tapping doesn’t strike me as a smart move.<\/p>\n

Grief and fatigue don’t always result in ravens perching on a “pallid bust of Pallas.” Many folks don’t have a bust of Pallas, pallid or otherwise.<\/p>\n

It’s anyone’s guess why Poe’s narrator had one. Or why he thought putting it over his chamber door was a good idea.<\/p>\n

Pallas was Triton’s daughter. Athena inadvertently killed her, with a misguided assist from Zeus. Maybe that’s why Poe made pallid Pallas the raven’s preferred perch. Greek mythology wasn’t all that edifying, but boring it wasn’t.<\/p>\n

<\/a>It’s a Start<\/h4>\n

<\/a>I might have had something about Marlowe’s “…Doctor Faustus” done by now.<\/p>\n

It turned into a discussion of spirit photographs, spiritualism and Poe’s “The Raven.” My guess is that I’ll have two posts by the time I’m through.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, I’m about a thousand words closer to having a first-draft text for that book ready. That wasn’t as hard as I’d feared, or easy as I’d hoped: which is about what I expected.<\/p>\n

Fretting about not having more done won’t do much good. If any. So I’ll consider this a pretty good start, and keep writing.<\/p>\n

Writing-related posts:<\/p>\n