Dario's Hella: Idiosyncratic or Ideosynthetic?
Readers have seen this before, but since Dario's only now posting these images of characters from my story on his blog, I figure I might as well post them again here, along with quotes from the short story version, which below has the vampiric witch Hella speaking to the demonic clown Koroviev, two characters some readers will recognize as borrowed from Mikhail Bulgakov's greatest novel, The Master and Margarita:
She looked up from her readjustments to give me a seraphic smile and say, "Koroviev, who's your friend?" . . .Koroviev is not to be trusted, but neither is Hella, though Koroviev is perhaps forthright in his response since his acquaintance with the 'friend' (the Naif) is unearthly. The expanded, novella version of the story -- which doesn't differ in these lines, however -- can be previewed here, though not specifically these two interlocutors, for whose dialogue the novella must be ordered.
"Hmmm," he mused. "I've no earthly idea."
- Horace Jeffery Hodges, "The Bottomless Bottle of Beer," in Emanations: Second Sight, pages 130-131
Dario's Hella, incidentally, is an idiosyncratic synthesis of Bulgakovian and Hodgesian ideas . . .
Labels: Dario Rivarossa, Mikhail Bulgakov, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer, The Master and Margarita
2 Comments:
Dario's Hella, incidentally, is an idiosyncratic synthesis of Bulgakovian and Hodgesian ideas
Well, only Geodgesian: I never happened to read Bulgakov's story!
Btw, is Bulgakov's Koroviev like yours? Great fun! The dialogue of which a couple of sentences I have quoted here is one of the most amusing parts of your story. It belongs to the best tradition of Lewis Carroll, Samuel Beckett, Groucho Marx . . .
Back to Hella . . . look at Hella's back! those spines try to suggest her Lilithian side.
Bulgakov's Koroviev was my model, so both are great fun.
Jeffery Hodges
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