Blood, Gore, and Fegato

My class in uncial is winding down. It almost didn’t finish at all, but some quick footwork on the part of the teachers found us an alternative site for our class when the old one blew up (or rather was disconnected by a disgruntled computer person).

Uncial has many connotations. It’s invariably the script used around witchcraft, good or bad, on television or in shop windows. Given that the Irish variant was used for centuries (and still is) in Ireland, it often gives a Celtic flavor to whatever you’re writing. I’m not Irish though my accent sometimes leads people to think I might be—and I do have a kind of horror of piggy-backing on someone else’s culture.

I was going to do a quote from Beowulf, but I’d want to do it in the Old English as well as the translation, and that seemed cumbersome. Plus it’s translated by Famous Seamus, see horror in paragraph #2 above.

So instead I have been immersing myself in a piece written by Elck of the late lamented Vernacular Body. It concerns the liver, which seems an admirable subject for a hand as old and venerable and earthy and be-wormed as uncial. Here’s an excerpt:

4. Livered.

A bloody formless mass sitting in the inner dark. Brooding, suppurating, sweating like an injured animal. Prometheus on the Caucasus, delivered. Fava beans, Chianti.

(We have not eaten fava beans tonight but we did have lentils cooked in the solar cooker with tomatoes and capers, and cracked open a bottle of Fat Llama Chilean Cab, which is a lot chewier than Chianti. A la tienne, Elck.)