#epigraphs

The Wire Epigraphs: Season 3

The Wire Epigraphs: Season 2

I accidentally wrote “add epithets” instead of “add epigraphs” in my notes so… um… how about Smart One, Greedy Bastard, Insane, ADHD Bisexual, and Workaholic?

The Wire Epigraphs: Season 1

Little is the luck I’ve had,

And oh, ‘tis comfort small

To think that many another lad

Has had no luck at all.

— A. E. Housman

The stars have not dealt me the worst they can do:

My pleasures are plenty, my troubles are two.

But oh, my two troubles they reave me of rest,

The brains in my head and the heart in my breast.

— A. E. Housman

What I seem to myself, do you ask of me?

No hero, I confess.

— Robert Browning, “A Light Woman”

a truly strange maxim from Adolfo Bioy Casares

dedication and epigraph to Partha Chatterjee’s The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories

epigraphs from Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities: Reflections from The Origin and Spread of Nationalism

Here come my first impressions of Part 1’s epigraphs. I think they are visions of the possible future given to people as they die. Collected by a faction who owns ardents. These are my thoughts on what they mean:

The love of men is a frigid thing, a mountain stream only three steps from the ice. We are his. Oh Stormfather…we are his. It is but a thousand days, and the Everstorm comes. - They are of “the enemy” the Heralds fought against. The Everstorm will be a disaster caused by him

Ten orders. We were loved, once. Why have you forsaken us, Almighty! Shard of my soul, where have you gone? - The Knights Radiant returning to the world after millennia. But instead of abandoning humanity, they’re now abandoned by the Almighty. And they don’t have Shardplate or Shardblade. Or maybe… this is a reference to the past?

I have seen the end, and have heard it named. The Night of Sorrows, the True Desolation. The Everstorm. - Three apocalyptic events caused by “the enemy.”

I’m cold. Mother, I’m cold. Mother? Why can I still hear the rain? Will it stop? - I was confused by this at first. Still am. But since this followed the previous one, and a key part of Roshar’s climate are the highstorms, I think this refers to the Everstorm. The Everstorm bringing eternal rain

Ten people, with Shardblades alight, standing before a wall of black and white and red. - The ten Heralds standing against the Voidbringers

Three of sixteen ruled, but now the Broken One reigns. - There were once three Shards of Adonalsium active on Roshar. But now only one is active. The Broken One

“An enemy defending a homeworld or a handful of colonies can be overwhelmed numerically and defeated. But an enemy without a clearly defined homeworld has a strategic advantage over even a militarily superior opponent.”

— Star Wars: The Essential Atlas pg. 6, written by Jason Fry and Daniel Wallace

ALT

TARNIT

Atqunarnarniqšaitchuuřuq inuuhirmi inuit tarniinnarnik niqautiqa’mata. Hapkuat anŋutikšaqqut niqautikšaqqut, hapkuaraaluit aŋuvaktaqqut tuquhaqpaktaqqut a’nuraaqaqu’luta, tarniqa’mata, uvaptut, tarniŋit tuquvaŋŋi’mata timiŋit tuqugaluaqti’lugit, ta’nai’mallu haturiaqaqtavut akinahuaquŋŋi’lugit uvapti’nik timii’nik aturapta.

—Kunuuti Rasmusan (1879-1933) qiniqtitauqatauhimali’mat Akukitchumiutaq Inuŋmik anaanalik Tainisimik ataataqaqłuni, akiani’ŋaaqtunik hivulliitchuuhimaliqłuni qimukhikkut ukiuqtaqtuup apqutiaguuqtunik.

SOULS

The greatest peril in life lies in the fact that human food consists entirely of souls. All the creatures that we have to kill and eat, all those that we have to strike down and destroy to make clothes for ourselves, have souls, like we have, souls that do not perish with the body, and which must therefore be propitiated lest they should avenge themselves on us for taking away their bodies.

—Knud Rasmussen (1879-1933) was a Danish-Inuit explorer and anthropologist, and the first European to cross the Northwest Passage via dogsled.

(—via ᐊᒡᓗ | Aglu | The Breathing Hole by Colleen Murphy with Siobhan Arnatsiaq-Murphy, Natchiliŋmiutut translation by Janet Tamalik McGrath.)

I like epigraphs as much as the next girl but the book I just started has 4 epigraphs before chapter 1 starts. Let’s have some tact

Finn Longman: Borrowed Words

A blog post about epigraphs – what I think they should do, what they mean to me as a writer, and what I was trying to say with each of the three Anne Carson quotes I used for The Butterfly Assassin, The Hummingbird Killer, and Moth to a Flame.

Showing an absolutely classic amount of overthinking every part of the writing process, of course, but I don’t think I’m capable of writing any other way.

“I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”

— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

Good, good! Let the freedom from copyright concerns flow through you! Summon the voices of those gone hence!!!

Also, you could stick in a quote from Tom Lehrer! I’d vote for ‘So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)’, 'We Will All Go Together When We Go’ or 'Poisoning Pigeons in the Park’.