Friday, October 11, 2024

Sitting in a Big Owl

Well, I ordered and received a book called THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS, of course. See, Kitty Mrosovsky often mentioned this guy Jean Seznec in her "Notes to the Translation" of THE TEMPTATION OF SAINT ANTONY. I don't think it's the same book of his she was talking about, though. Or maybe it is. All I know is that the cover seemed to show a king and a queen sitting in a big owl. Like Pee Wee and Simone in their dinosaur! A big owl head, I should say, not like the big owl at that boy's camp for troubled billionaires. "Hmm!" I thought. "I wonder if this book has an owl in it!" Because I wasn't sure that thing was an owl. You got this queen and king in their owl head, and over here there's some devils poking a guy in the neck with a pitchfork, and down here I thought I saw a three-headed lion (with dragon scales?), but once I checked the fine print on the back cover and saw that the illustraion represented Pluto and Prosperina, it all came together, and I was like, I guess that three-headed thing is Cerberus. On either side of old Cerberus, you got a lady in a hennin playing a musical instrument. This one doesn't look too happy about it. This other one doesn't seem to mind. I believe she's gone and got herself a many-stringed instrument capable of all modes, such as Plato (not Pluto) so despised - I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's a viola da gamba. Not to be confused with what we know as an everyday viola, PLEASE! Get real. But none of this rigorous analysis tells me if that's an owl they're sitting around in, or if there's an owl anywhere in the book. I thought I could cheat and check the index for Minerva. She always has an owl hanging around! What a nut! But I don't know, there are so many entries for Minerva, and I'm so tired.