Introducing a new project!

Some backstory :)

Eala! Today I wanted to start talking about a new project that I’ve been working on for a while (almost a year now!) and that I am so excited to finally get to share!

I remember one of the first things I translated in Old English was the story of The Fall of Eden, the biblical tale of Adam, Eve, and the fated fruit that caused the strife of man to begin. Coincidentally, the same night I finished translating that piece I sat down to write some sentences using the preliminary vocabulary and grammar I knew at that point for my next lesson. With that tale swirling around my mind and my faithful Old English dictionary open beside me, a story began to formulate in my mind. For some reason, it was the forbidden fruit itself that struck my fancy at the time, and so in a few minutes I had come up with and translated eleven (very bizarre) lines and christened it with this title: The Tragic Story of The Little Apple, The Tax-Fish, And The King. It was odd and experimental, and I didn’t think much of it for a while after I had written this first chapter.

It was only later that I thought further about those few sentences. This fruit, how did it come to be in the Garden of Eden? What untold story lay in that most instrumental detail?

Over the next few months I continued on, my idea expanding as my knowledge of the language did too. I found Hieronymus Bosch’s spectacular triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights. It was as wonderfully strange as my own story, and so it became my map, a grainy printed copy tacked to the bulletin board above my desk, covered in sharpie lines outlining the apple’s journey through heaven and hell.

Bosch’s Inspirational Artwork

Most weeks I would write and revise a new chapter, slowly building a bilingual piece of writing. I painstakingly copied each title out in various period-accurate scribal hands, giving me a fresh appreciation with every shaky letter for the glorious manuscripts I examined from behind museum glass.

Only now, many months and pages full of mistranslations and scribbled-out sentences and doodles later, am I finally able to share this project. I plan to post one chapter each Saturday, so stay tuned! The first chapter will be up soon!