Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Say What? Who?

The writing group might want to draw and quarter me over this, but I like it: changing all the proper names to near-proper Greek, and subjecting them to Greek syntax. So Ajax is Aias, but when addressed by name is Aia. Troy is Troia, a person who lives there is a Traoianos but is addressed as Troiano, the people who live there are Troianoi. Agamemnon is Agamenonos, but is address as Agamemno. Hah!

I hesitated to mess with possessives, as that required restructuring the sentences in which they appeared, making my casual, contemporary language suddenly stilted: Instead of "Agamenonos' wife says..." it had to be "The wife of Agamemnonos says..." or some other structure. Anyway, I gave it a try.

What this did is something I did not predict. Until now, I've been bugged by how ordinary the narrative voice of this story is. This extremely simple Greeking has, just by itself, contributed a touch more flavor (ala Peryton) of strangeness without having to do it so deliberately that it sounds like TV quality pseudo-archaic.

And then, of course, there is this.... 


No comments: