The CW Fallacial Law 2.0

I wrote the first version of this a long time ago, I decided to spruce it up a little. So here it is. I edited and included some suggestions from the comments on the first version.

The CW Fallacial Law

<>As the amount of pubescent teenagers available on MT:CW nears 1, so does the occurance of the 'CW Fallacial Law' and its colloraries exponentially increase. <>

The CW Fallacial law are ultimately subcategories of Appeal to Authority and the Association Fallacy. <>It lies in the nature of having your writing critiqued that on occasion you will hear some less-than-uplifting things about your work. We all understand that writing is a craft you put a lot of effort into and as such, a rebuttal of your work can be misinterpreted as a rebuttal of your person. Occasionally when a writer is so rebuffed they find themselves unable to handle it in a mature manner and will attempt to make up excuses and justifications for their errors. <>

They seem to believe that merely by explaining what they actually intended to do; the error and the harsh feelings will go away. Naturally, this does not work and eventually, many will fall back on the CW Fallacial Law.

Writers guilty of this fallacy tend to make statements such as:

"If Shakespeare wrote this you would've loved it." Or,

"Cummings wrote like this"

Usually when a remark is made about writing here they are making a remark on the execution of said work. It's got little to do with WHY something is in a story it's HOW you insert it that creates problems. Referring back to a famous author or poet proves nothing. A writer that emulates or imitates somebody else’s style is not necessarily good at it. As a matter of fact, imitating the masters is one of the hardest things one can attempt, because they were the best, and they regularly attempted styles that are by nature hard to work with, or geared to the mindset of people who lived hundreds and hundreds of years ago. It will not easily endear you to your audience in the early 21^st century.

The real issue is that the writers who fall back on the CW Fallacial Law expects to be given the benefit of the doubt. S/he wrongly assumes that famous writers are given this benefit because of their fame, rather than the fact that their skill and talent brought them their fame.

<>Writing does not exist in a vacuum, as most crafts, it has developed over time. While certain true masters of the craft (like, you guessed it, Shakespeare) have managed to write things that truly and genuinely still move and engage us centuries after the fact, it does not remove the historical aspect of their work. Shakespeare is not only enjoyable because of his great skill, he is enjoyable as high water-mark of classical sonnets and 16th century play-writing. Trying to duplicate his archaic syntax just because you like your poetry to be flowery is completely missing the point of why it works for him and not for you, just like most fantasy writers who want to be Tolkien manages to miss that the The Lord of The Rings is a by-product of a life-time spent creating an alternate-world Europe, which is what carries the books through in the end. <>

While there are a few choice exceptions in these Fallacies, such as writing a 16th century styled Sonnet, archaic syntax to boot to better understand such sonnets overall, or to increase your mastery of language, budding writers would do best to let these fallacies go, along with their pride.

A stab at translating

Try as I might, I can find no translation of Pär Lagerkvist's poems on the internet. At best, I've been able to scrounge up the two first lines of my favourite one in his wikipedia article.

Naturally, that means I have to make a botched attempt of translating it myself. So here goes. Swedish version at the end for the curious.

Untitled (1916)

Anguish, anguish is my heritage
my wounded throat,
my heart's cry in the world.
Now stiffens the lathery sky
In the night's heavy hand,
now the forests rises
and the stiff heights
so harshly against the sky's
abortive vault.
How harsh it is,
how stiff, how sable, how still!

I grope my way through this dusky room,
I feel the cliff's harsh edge against my fingers
I tear my upstretched hands
to blood against the cloud's frozen tatters.

Oh, my nails I tear from my fingers,
my hands I claw marred, wounded
against the cliffs and darkened woods,
against the sky's black iron
and against the bitter earth!

Anguish, anguish is my heritage, my wounded throat, my heart's cry in the world.

***

Ångest, ångest är min arvedel,
min strupes sår,
mitt hjärtas skri i världen.
Nu styvnar löddrig sky
i nattens grova hand,
nu stiga skogarna
och stela höjder
så kargt mot himmelens
förkrympta valv.
Hur hårt är allt,
hur stelnat, svart och stilla!

Jag famlar kring i detta dunkla rum,
jag känner klippans vassa kant mot mina fingrar
jag river mina uppåtsträckta händer
till blods mot molnens frusna trasor.

Ack, mina naglar sliter jag från fingrarna,
mina händer river jag såriga,ömma
mot berg och mörknad skog,
mot himlens svarta järn
och mot den kalla jorden!

Ångest, ångest är min arvedel, min strupes sår, mitt hjärtas skri i världen.

The Step-Grandfather

I had to spend ca 11 h and 40 min in air planes and on airports in order to attend your funeral and when I stood outside the church, greeting strange relatives I hadn't met in a decade or more and making awkward small talk somebody mistook me for my mother. That's right, somebody genuinely thought I was my mother. Not merely that I looked a lot like her (which people insist on reminding me of. There's a genius way to instil daughterly affections in somebody) but that I was actually her. They asked me where the children were. I told them I WAS the children and then things were as awkward as they could possibly be, until they said I looked very much like my mother and I said that I'd come to understand they felt that way and we broke the sound barrier of polite conventions.

Additionally, you never liked me. Or my brother, or my mother. Our entire family was anathema to you as far as I've been able to discern. So you'll just have to forgive me when I say that I did not attend your funeral for your sake and that in fact, I did go in equal parts because I wanted to support my father but also because I was pretty sure you wouldn't have wanted me there.

It was tangible proof of something I've known for a very long time. I'm a better person in my twenties than you were your entire life.

I've always known your lesser qualities. You were dishonest. You cheated on your wife with the Girl Next Door for Seven Years before you were caught and subsequently filed for divorce. You were cruel and calculating. We celebrated one Christmas with you. Our cousins were given expensive hockey and riding equipment. Me and my brothers were given small, porcelain garden gnomes. Fucking GARDEN GNOMES. I remember this, even though I didn't understand the significance at the time, but my mom did and to her your feelings very pretty clear. We didn't celebrate Christmas with you again, which was what you had hoped I'm sure. You were elitist and unaccepting. We never got to call you Grandpa, you made it clear that you had no relatives unless they were blood-relatives. You felt that we prevented our dad from having children of his own. You tried to make my dad feel ashamed about us.

You were a fucking Scrooge.

I learned more about you and your life on your funeral than I had known all my life.

You were a hard worker. You had money, you paid your ex-wife a monthly allowance so she would never have to worry about money of your own volition. You loved your grandchildren and loved to spend time with them. And you liked reading and learning. I got to know where you grew up, see a picture of your house. Your eyes were far bluer than I remembered them in your picture.

I'm sure nobody would've talked about the lesser qualities you possessed on your funeral, but I don't think any of the things mentioned were false. To the people you considered your "real" family you displayed an entirely different side of yourself that I never had an opportunity to know. We would have had much in common if things were, as they say, different. If YOU had been different.

Pardon me if this sounds like an accusation. It is one.

I don't regret losing the opportunity to know you. I don't mourn your death because it doesn't affect me. You were never a good man. The way you differentiated between people, your refusal to accept the family your youngest son chose for himself speaks more for your character than all the good deeds you did perform and all your affection for those who gained your approval. My mother never wanted to have additional children with my dad because she knew you would treat them differently. Through your own behaviour you ensured that my dad would never have the family you felt he had a right to. It's pretty damn close to poetic in justice.

When I think about you, I don't feel anything in particular. I don't ask myself what either of us could have done differently. You were never a lack in my life. You did not create an absence or a hole. I never missed you, but I do wonder about things. I wonder why you didn't want us in your life, how you justified the way you acted. There are a lot of things I don't know about you and why things turned out the way they did. My assumptions are constructed on a few scarce events. I don't know how my dad felt about it all, if he said anything to you about it, or if he just accepted things as they were. It's not the sort of thing you can really ask about. I'll probably never now and you were about as likely to answer me before as after death.

Sleep well, Scrooge.