Anatoly Vorobey posted at FB (in Russian) about a novel I’d never heard of; I’ll translate what he wrote:
Jo Walton is a contemporary writer of fantasy and science fiction whom I have not read until now. Lent is a book set in Florence at the end of the 15th century, and its protagonist is a Dominican monk. The first part of the book—a pretty substantial chunk—is virtually indistinguishable from a historical novel (and a very good one, to my taste), containing almost nothing “fantastic”; but then, something happens… it would be too much of a spoiler to say more than that.
An interesting and original idea, wonderful prose—and, most importantly, in terms of the quality of its historical immersion, the book occasionally reaches the level of Patrick O’Brian (the highest possible praise from me). That said, there are some serious flaws—for instance, […], […], and even […]—but to my mind they didn’t outweigh the charm of this novel. Recommended: 4/5.
As you can imagine, that impelled me to read it, and having finished it, I’m in something of a quandary. Like Anatoly, I don’t want to spoil the plot turn, and like him I was somewhat let down by what followed it, but the first 40% (I read it on my Kindle) is so spectacularly good I’m eager to recommend it. He compares Walton to O’Brian, I’ll compare her to Hilary Mantel — I haven’t been so immersed in a carefully worked-out Renaissance environment since Wolf Hall. Furthermore, the portrait of Savonarola (for he is the Dominican monk in question) is as convincing as Mantel’s of Cromwell or Merezhkovsky’s of Machiavelli; for the first time I find myself feeling actual sympathy for that much-maligned fanatic. And it is a sterling example of religious sf/fantasy, not the most common subgenre; I would put it up there with A Case of Conscience and A Canticle for Leibowitz, though pretty much any seriously Christian reader is going to find it heretical, I fear. (The word apocatastasis crops up more than once!) All I can do is quote a couple of paragraphs from chapter 2 to give you a sense of the style and let you decide whether to give it a try:
APRIL 4TH, 1492
April morning sunlight falls on Girolamo’s desk as he makes notes for his next sermon. The heady fragrance of blossoming hazel wafts in through the window. He has been chosen to preach the Lenten sermons in San Lorenzo this year—a great honour, and a tribute to his powers of oratory. He has to admit that producing and delivering sermons daily for forty days does put a strain on him. Lent follows Carnival and goes on until Easter. It is the end of winter and the beginning of spring; it always feels like the longest season of the church’s year. He smothers a yawn. After the exorcisms he went straight to Dawn Praise, then slept for three hours before First Prayer at six in the morning. Then at nine he was preaching to a packed church in San Lorenzo. Now he needs to write another sermon for tomorrow. He has to force himself to concentrate on his work.
He has been taught how to put a sermon together—it was literally beaten into him at Bologna. Yet time after time God speaks to him in the pulpit and he finds himself extemporising. He knows it is a sin—and yet he wonders. How can it be a sin to speak of the future without premeditation when God shows it to him so clearly? He sometimes wishes God would reveal what is to come at quiet times, when he could better consider when or whether to share the vision. In the pulpit, speaking, it is easy to be carried away by his own emotion, and the emotion of the enthusiastic congregation. It isn’t easy to be politic. He has a reprimand on his desk from Brother Vincenzo, First of the Lombard Congregation of Dominicans, his direct superior. It is a letter which he must answer, humbly, once the sermon for tomorrow is written. And tomorrow he should definitely read his sermon as written, and not get into more pulpit dialogues with God. Yet the people like it, and God obviously likes it or He wouldn’t encourage it.
And here’s a Hattic bit from the author’s notes at the end:
I have chosen to use English words when I can, to give the kind of clarity lost by keeping terms in Italian—thus Senatorial Palace, Mercenary Captain, First Brother, instead of Palazzo della Signoria, condottiore, Prior. Similarly I am using Florence rather than Firenze. The reason for this is that unknown words lend distancing and exoticising. Sometimes you want that, here I wanted to minimize it as much as possible. The Signoria isn’t precisely a senate, but it’s not some weird unique thing either. They thought of themselves as being just like the senate of Ancient Rome. Maya Chhabra helped with getting Italian names right.
I have also simplified things—Fra Angelico’s name was Guido di Piero, Angelico was a nickname. Similarly, Leo’s name was Giovanni. Leo was a nickname before he chose it as his papal name. Ten percent of men in Florence in the period were called Giovanni, because John the Baptist was Florence’s patron saint. I have tried to simplify this by using Gianni for Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, Gio for Lucrezia Salviati’s son, Johannes for Bentivoglio, and sticking with surnames as much as possible. If you see “Giovanni” generally you know it means Pico. I have left out tons of people to keep the cast of characters possible to manage. I have also simplified the description of how the government of Florence worked before Savonarola’s reforms—the senate wasn’t always seventy, it was of different sizes at different times, and there were other councils, and it’s all more complex than you can possibly imagine. The utterly strange system of drawing eight names from a purse and shutting the chosen men into the palace for two months where they rule the state from splendid isolation is what they really did. It’s no weirder than other procedures republics have chosen to attempt to prevent tyranny. Savonarola’s sermons on political reform survive.
I guess what I’ll do is allow discussion of any and all aspects of the novel in the comments, and suggest that those who want to read it unspoiled stay out of the thread until they have done so. If you have any interest in Renaissance Italy, you shouldn’t miss this book.
A friend of mine is in Florence this weekend, and I’ll ask her about it tomorrow. Also, I love Jo Walton.
Also a Jo Walton admirer based on The King’s Name and The King’s Peace (thoroughly worked out fantasy alternate history) and Among Others (contemporary fantasy), and I really should catch up.
I’m mildly surprised that you haven’t read Farthing, because at the time it seemed that EVERYONE – within certain internet circles – was reading it. I kind of bogged down in the sequel and never went back.
I’m afraid I haven’t kept up with sf/fantasy for the last few decades. But I really should try more Walton.
I actually read this while staying in Florence at the time …
It is very well done. But I felt rather let down by the ending. “And then what happened, Walton? Eh? Eh?”
Among Others is also very good. But then, I would think so …
@Jen: I’m in very limited Internet circles. I didn’t even know Farthing existed.
I also liked Tooth and Claw, but not as much as the others I mentioned.
But I felt rather let down by the ending. “And then what happened, Walton? Eh? Eh?”
Yes, a lot of people seem to have had that reaction, but I think it’s unfair unless you want her to write a fucking trilogy, which I don’t. The ending resolved the situation of the novel; the fact that I saw it coming from a long way away is one of my problems, but the ending itself isn’t.
I’m not sure what you’re implying but I was about to suggest to James that he includes his review of “Among Others” in his Hugo bundle. He asked for suggestions? But I’m only up to June, I think? I have about a dozen candidates.
Anything like Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter?
(…not that that would actually tell me anything; I basically only know the title of that one.)
This would be Savonarola, Demon Hunter. He’s good at it!
Motet Demon Hunters?
Even though I am more interested in Renaissance Italy than in nearly anything else, I still don’t think this book is for me, and this is why:
The reason for this is that unknown words lend distancing and exoticising. Sometimes you want that, here I wanted to minimize it as much as possible.
When it comes to historical novels – or at least those set at a time earlier than the author’s own birth – I always want a generous portion of “distancing and exoticising”, simply because anything else feels inherently fraudulent to me. The past is another country; it should feel to some degree foreign. And the further back in time the story is set, the more foreign the writing should feel. The only kind of medieval or Renaissance historical novel I can enjoy is something like Eco’s The Name of the Rose, where he deliberately tried to convey something of the strangeness of the medieval mind. Of course the author can never succeed in doing that perfectly, but I can at least admire and enjoy the attempt. I can’t enjoy a historical story that makes no attempt to convey that strangeness of mind to me; it is a distortion of historical reality, a delusion (both of the author themself and of the reader).
I will always prefer to read literature written in a particular historical period, rather than literature written now that pretends to convey the feel of that historical period. The latter is always a project that just cannot fail to be fraudulent, despitte the best of intentions and the most thorough research.
The thing about translating Italian terms reminds me of Robert Graves in the Claudius books, using ‘market place, regiment, captain’ even though ‘forum, legion, centurion’ are perfectly familiar to English speakers with even minimal knowledge of ancient Rome. I don’t think there’s any ‘loss of clarity’.
Especially since a couple of these are from Latin and presumably would have been used in English even at the time, no? And if by Signoria they meant Senate, they would have called it a Senato, as they did in Venice. The only translation choice she mentions that seems sensible to me is condottiere. And of course Florence, unless you’re going to have a bunch of Johnnies and Jacks, too. (Although this used to be a thing in some translation approaches, and not just for nobles: I recently read an Italian translation of Ferenc Körmendi from the ’30s and boy, were there a lot of Hungarians named Jolanda and Marietta and so on).
Of course that’s not the measure of a novel, and Savonarola is such a fascinating character that I’m curious anyway. But I’m afraid I might get tremendously distracted—even if the research turns out to be done very well, which is much more difficult when someone is writing not just about another era but another country. I remember a fellow translator going nuts with another fantasy book set in Renaissance Florence because half of the street names were fantastically anachronistic and there was no way she could use them for the Italian edition because people would have noticed. But they weren’t even easy to correct; it required a book specifically about the history of street names in Florence that my Florentine father-in-law luckily had on his shelf.
Robert Graves in the Claudius books
My favourite among his idiosyncratic choices is “assegai” for Germanic long spears.
When it comes to historical novels – or at least those set at a time earlier than the author’s own birth – I always want a generous portion of “distancing and exoticising”, simply because anything else feels inherently fraudulent to me. The past is another country; it should feel to some degree foreign. And the further back in time the story is set, the more foreign the writing should feel. The only kind of medieval or Renaissance historical novel I can enjoy is something like Eco’s The Name of the Rose, where he deliberately tried to convey something of the strangeness of the medieval mind. Of course the author can never succeed in doing that perfectly, but I can at least admire and enjoy the attempt. I can’t enjoy a historical story that makes no attempt to convey that strangeness of mind to me; it is a distortion of historical reality, a delusion (both of the author themself and of the reader).
Do whatever you feel is right, of course, but I assure you this book definitely conveys the strangeness of the medieval mind. Are you really going to reject, sight unseen, a novel about a period of intense interest to you simply because the author chooses to use “Senate” rather than “Signoria”? If you’re that demanding, it seems the thing to do would be to read only works in Renaissance Italian. Otherwise, I’d suggest you at least give it a try. I myself can’t stand works of “historical fiction” that pretend the past is just like the present except that people wore different clothes, and I assure you this is not that.
Biscia: Same goes for you; not having been to Florence (and not having done intensive research into the place) I can’t speak from personal knowledge, but the book has so many details of buildings, streets, and street life that it reads very convincingly, and since the author has spent considerable time in Florence, done a lot of reading about the period, and consulted with experts (as she reports in the author’s note), I’m pretty sure you won’t feel betrayed, although if you’re an expert yourself you might of course notice the occasional discrepancy. (And she does say she simplified things — she was, after all, writing a novel, not a history.) But do dip a toe in and see what you think!
I’ve read some truly awful examples of “Flintstoning” as sociologists call it from authors of historical novels over the years. I reviewed one years ago called Roman/Greek Fire: https://hotoffthepresses.blog/2021/10/14/roman-greek-fire-by-cora-kathleen/
I include the link only because I think it serves to show how important the main question of a historical novel is: “why is this set when and where it is?” the most egregious example of Flintstoning, the unforgivable sin of historical fiction, is the story that simply has no reason to take place anywhere outside of its author’s hometown.
I haven’t read Lent, but a political intrigue involving a priest who can supposedly banish demons seems like the sort of thing that would fit right into the world of the Medicis.
I would no more fault a good yarn for taking place in Popularly Imagined Florence than I would Tolkien for giving his characters access to smoking pipes and frying pans.
Some previous discussion of socially anachronistic conceptions of historical groups.
My favourite among his idiosyncratic choices is “assegai” for Germanic long spears.
Should have reserved them for Numidian ones, of course: “assegai” derives ultimately from Berber a-zäghay. Had the word been borrowed into Latin, it would probably have yielded *sacae or *secae.
(I jest, of course – I think it’s a fantastic choice given the era he was born into. But the word really does come from Berber.)
FTW.doit-on douter.Well, to some extent all of these are subject to Eddyshaw’s Law, and I think that was the point there. For example, how many people imagine a market when you say “forum”? A place, yes, but a market?
Yesterday, I was texting my daughter as we took our respective seats for her college graduation. She and the other graduates were down on the floor of the arena, and she knew which section I was in, but she wanted to give me a wave, so she asked where exactly in the section I was. I was seated directly over one of the tunnels leading from the outer concourse into the arena, so I messaged her back that was above the “fornix” (and that I would stand up so she could see me). I remember picking that word, instead of writing “tunnel,” because of the Latin meaning, related to the arches and vaulted entrance passages of the Colosseum and similar classical standing amphitheaters. It just felt natural, part of my Latinate vocabulary even though I don’t speak Latin.
Later, thinking about Eddyshaw’s Law, I checked the OED, to see what it says about fornix. The only general sense it has is “something resembling an arch,” with no specific English sense for the arches around amphitheaters or similar buildings. In fact, all the more specific meanings listed are for arch-shaped biological structures.
She and the other graduates were down on the floor of the arena, and she knew which section I was in, but she wanted to give me a wave, so she asked where exactly in the section I was.
I automatically think of the end of Canto IV:
In fact, all the more specific meanings listed are for arch-shaped biological structures.
The only “fornix” I’m aware of is located at the end of the vagina (which apparently doesn’t end with the cervix…), and I think I probably assumed that the word (in this meaning) is somehow related to “fornication”, but I wasn’t very confident and apparently never actually looked it up.
If I ever knew of anything else known by that word, I have forgotten it.
[Actually, what is the etymology of “fornication”? I can’t imagine any obvious way that arches would have been involved…]
[EDIT: apparently “arch” was an euphemism for “brothel”. Huh.]
Congratulations to Brett on his child’s baccalaureatude. (That sounds posher than “bachelorhood,” innit?)
@January First-of-May: The sexual fornication comes from the idea of “hanging around the arcades,” working as a prostitute or looking to meet one. Stephen J. Gould discussed the etymology in one of his columns—”Sex and Size,” collected in The Flamingo’s Smile—in the context of the weird sexuality of the Crepidula fornicata slipper limpet. The limpets, in spite their sex-changing behavior, are actually named after the shapes of their shells.
Congratulations to Brett on his child’s baccalaureatude
Indeed.
Gaudeamus igitur …
I can claim only the meanest credit for Lillian’s accomplishments. She’s a much wiser person than her father, and I am so proud of her.
I resisted the urge yesterday to pronounce her, having graduated, a “spinster of arts.”
Rosa Luxemburg Eddyshaw has now progressed from being a mere Spinster of Arts to being a Mistress of Arts. In fact, two Mistresses of Arts. (I myself am two Fellows, so it is probably hereditary.)
The thing is that “spinster” does not actually or primarily mean exactly “bachelor, but female,” because the former carries a fairly strong implicature of “past the typical marrying age per the relevant social/cultural context” and the latter doesn’t. You need to say “confirmed bachelor” to focus on the “if it hasn’t happened by now, it probably won’t” undertone. Now, it may be relevant that the two (out of seven total) of my first cousins who got married essentially contemporaneously with receiving their bachelor’s degrees rather than at a more advanced age had both gone to college in South Carolina, because there is some regional variation in typical marrying age. But even back in the Eighties they could have waited a bit longer without being statistical outliers.
In the U.S. only a small minority of colleges still generate diplomas in Latin, but I just realized that I’m not sure whether those that do use gender-inflection for their master’s degrees and specify magister/magistra as appropriate. Or whether the ladies just get diplomas that say “magister” because equality-via-assimilation was the way it played out. It might vary by institution, of course.
The thing is that “spinster” does not actually or primarily mean exactly “bachelor, but female”
Kusaal has yiwia “never-yet-married woman”, but AFAIK there is no male equivalent. Although dakɔɔnr “unmarried man” is usually “bachelor” (and also the usual way of saying “adult unmarried son”), it can also mean “widower”; it’s exactly parallel in formation to pʋkɔɔnr, which only means “widow.”
It probably has something to do with the fact that widows are a lot commoner than widowers, and (as in our own culture), widowers are more likely to remarry than widows are. (As Confucius famously remarked, A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.)
David: I hadn’t noticed the use of the word assegai in Graves, but in retrospect it’s very striking. I always assumed the references to the 1964 film Zulu in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator were clever, but now I wonder if he was actually making a roundabout literary reference as well.
@JWB, there are virgin-girl and dauther-girl bundles. By “girl” I mean any young woman rather than child specifically, and by “bundle” I mean that in certain languages same word can be used for both. English maid(en) and Slavic déva (poetic in modern Russian, numerous (or ennumerable?) diminutive derivations of this root denote “girl” and the meaning “virgin” is specified by piling up a Slavonic nominalising suffix on top of adjectivising suffix on top of abstract noun suffix: maid-hood-ish-er). And bint, of course, but it is Persian speakers who I hear “daughter” in the sense “young woman, girl” from, perhaps because the English word is so similar to duxtar.
French is one of these languages: fille is “daughter” and “girl”
The academic sense of “bachelor” (or words from the same medieval Latin etymon) is widespread in European languages, but the extended sense found in English of “marriageable but unmarried male” seems more unusual/quirky. No doubt there is a literature about why things worked out that way. It’s a bit odd because the extended sense arose at a time when the percentage of the male Anglophone population who actually attended a university was tiny, but OTOH there were also some other “stage of career” senses floating around back then, like “knight bachelor” and a sense (marked “obsolete”) given by wiktionary as “Among London tradesmen, a junior member not yet admitted to wear the livery.”
In the academic sense, the bachelor’s degree marked the same stage as was marked in more wholesome ways of making a living by graduating from apprentice to journeyman. So the concept was presumably that you weren’t quite in a social/economic position to marry while still an apprentice/undergrad, but you probably ought to be married by the time you were a master of your trade, so the journeyman years were when you should actively be in the market for a bride.
The Baccalaureat was not a usual university or school degree in Germany when I obtained my higher education in the late 80s /early 90s; the degree of Bachelor (yes, the English language term) was only introduced after that in the course of a European harmonisation of university degrees.
fille is “daughter” and “girl”
In Kusaal, the default way of saying either “son” or “daughter” is actually biig “child”, but if you do want to specify sex you use biribiŋ “boy” or bipuŋ “girl.”
It’s actually an unambiguous usage, because although Kusaal family-relationship words are not invariably possessed, they only turn up without possessors in very limited contexts, and some words acquire a family-relationship meaning precisely by being used with a possessor: pu’a is “woman”, but m pu’a means “my wife”, not “my woman”, and conversely, “wife” in general can’t be expressed as just pu’a, but has to be sɔ’ pu’a “someone’s wife” (or as the compound yipu’a, where yi- is “household, family.”)
So e.g. Mark 7:25
Pu’a sɔ’ da bɛ mɔr o bipuŋ ka kikirig dɔl o
woman certain FAR.PAST exist [LINKER] have her girl and fairy follow her
is unambiguously “There was a woman whose daughter was oppressed by a demon.”
German is actually like Kusaal in that regard – Frau with a possessive (or with a person in the genitive) means “wife”, otherwise “woman”, and the same is true for Mann “man / husband”. (This doesn’t work as neatly in the plural.)
I have some vague recollection that in at least one Inuit language/dialect, “my woman” actually means “my mother.”
I always understood this as shortened forms of Ehefrau/Ehemann.
And I always understood Ehefrau/Ehemann as disambiguation. I don’t have the time currently to check what the historical development was.
There’s nothing in the DWDS (I checked all four words).
…thinking about it… Mann/Frau in this function is more widespread than Ehe probably ever was, so Ehemann/Ehefrau being disambiguations strikes me as more likely.
Well, the way I remember it, 60 years ago, when I was a child, those who were “better off”, said Gatte/Gattin, or Ehegatte/Ehegattin (you can’t call that disambiguation); Ehemann/Ehefrau was definitely “common”, and Frau/Mann was almost vulgar. My intuition is that people stopped using Gatte etc sometime in the 1970s, when Mann/Frau became the de facto standard.
I must be only a couple of years younger than you (60 years ago I barely had learnt to speak and walk), but I don’t think I ever heard anyone use (Ehe)Gatte/in or Ehemann/-frau used spoken in real life (as opposed to on Radio or TV) except humorously until long into my adulthood, not even by the Gymnasium teachers I had.
Just goes to show how different experiences can be even for people of about the same age and living in the same country.
If the differentiation was sociolectal, I’m not surprised. I’ve found Vienna (country’s biggest city) much more socially stratified than Linz (country’s 3rd-biggest city, at the time 1/6 of Vienna’s population), less than 200 km apart.
I’ve been to Vienna several times and lived in Linz briefly, and they are quite different.