Who is Sylvia, what is she?

[desperance]

It's time for definitions again - or rather for an absence of definitions, for a shrug and one of those indefensible assertions, "it is what I say it is".

This story I have been writing, the Alexandria story: there has never been any doubt in my mind that it is fantasy. Sometimes I say it's about Vikings in Alexandria, but that doesn't matter; it's still not historical fiction. They're not Vikings, and it isn't even Alexandria. It's a city with a dozen names, all of which sound a bit like Alexandria, and it has a face to match each name; I hope for a dozen stories in the end. It might perhaps occupy an Alexandrian space on the map, except that there are no maps. It is a city of my imagination, a city of exile, the last place on earth; undoubtedly, it is a fantasy and so are all the stories that I have to tell about it.

And yet, and yet - it struck me suddenly, today. No magic.

There is nothing about this story to say that it is fantasy, except that I made it all up. It's about recognisably human people doing recognisably human things. There isn't even the rumour of something strange off in the shadows somewhere: there is no suggestion that this is in any way not a story of this world, except that you won't find its setting in Wikipedia. Yet.

And yet, in my head: utterly and irredeemably fantasy.

I find this odd.

Comments

[glass-mountain.livejournal.com]

I was introduced to Cavafy via a Geoffrey Grigson anthology...we now have his collected works in the bathroom :)
I also associate him a bit with Naomi Mitchison, who seems to have written a lot about the Hellenistic period.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Weirdly, my Cavafy? Also in the bathroom.

Also weirdly - for someone who has read almost everything, and most particularly everything Graeco/Brit - I have never read Naomi Mitchison. Did you know she was one of Tolkien's proofreaders for Lord of the Rings?

[glass-mountain.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that! I came across her through 'Corn King and Spring Queen' - I don't know when it originally came out but it was re-published by Virago. It is pure fantasy - I don't know how it was originally marketed...