Greeks and Geeks

Posted on February 5, 2007 by JE

I was rereading Euripides’ Crazy Hercules today to prepare for a class when I was poleaxed by a stray line.

ἄλλως δ’ ἀδυνάτων ἔοικ’ ἐρᾶν.

–Euripides, Heracles 318

“But I seem to be pointlessly in love with impossible things.”

It strikes me as a good epitaph for a fantasy-writer. Because every fantasy I write is (in part) a letter of protest against the way things are. I want to put on a coat of feathers and fly around the world. I want to see what’s on the other side of the flat earth. I want to break the door of hell and smash the bolts, and the hosts of the dead will outnumber the living. I want to bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion. I want to send lightnings, that they may go and say unto me, “Here we are.” I want to do any number of things whose realization seems to be, to put it mildly, unlikely.

Fantasy (in the literary sense) probably serves a lot of different functions. But it is, at least, a coping device for minds afflicted by the many pleasing impossibilities that can never be executed.

About JE

James Enge is the author of the World-Fantasy-Award-nominated novel Blood of Ambrose (Pyr, April 2009). His latest book is The Wide World's End. His short fiction has appeared in Black Gate, Tales from the Magician's Skull, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and elsewhere.
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6 Responses to Greeks and Geeks

    • JE says:
      February 7, 2007 at 5:41 pm

      Thanks! The Greeks have the right word for everything (though it wounds me a little, as a Latinist, to admit it).

      • filomancer says:
        February 8, 2007 at 3:04 am

        As an Americanist I must protest a little. I mean, could the Greeks say “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” in one word, as in Ojibwa? Alas, that is among the t-shirts I most regret not owning.

        • JE says:
          February 8, 2007 at 5:03 am

          could the Greeks say “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” in one word, as in Ojibwa?

          One of my big regrets from grad school is not taking Ojibwa or Dakota while I was at the U of MN. I would never knock Ojibwa or any American language. Or any language. Except German a little, and then only because I love it and fear it. I’m sure German could say “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” in one Richter-scale-shattering compound that would make me long for the peace of death.

          In Ancient Greek it might have gone something this: ἐφηβεναλλοχελονοί. This is a neologism, of course, but the Greeks loved to coin them. (My favorite: βοόω “to change someone into a cow, to encow.”)

          Latin does not have a word for everything, and must always remain Greek’s more-stern and less-bright stepbrother, who sadly plays the bassoon in his room late at night when he thinks no one can hear him. (I’m afraid that sentence sort of got away from me…)

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