#the erl-king

[mournfulroses]

Angela Carter, from The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories; “The Erl-King,”

[words-and-coffee]

There are some eyes that can eat you.

Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories: The Erl-King

[wehavewords]

“His touch both consoles and devastates me; I go back and back to him to have his fingers strip the tattered skin away and clothe me in his dress of water, this garment that drenches me, its slithering odour, its capacity for drowning.”

Angela Carter, The Erl-King

[diorstarr]

The Erl-King

[the-wandering-waif]

There is a black hole in the middle of both your eyes; it is their still centre, looking there makes me giddy, as if I might fall into it.

[poems-from-around-the-world]

The Erl-King - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Germany

Translator: Edgar Alfred Bowring (German)

Who rides there so late through the night dark and drear?

The father it is, with his infant so dear;

He holdeth the boy tightly clasp'd in his arm,

He holdeth him safely, he keepeth him warm.

"My son, wherefore seek'st thou thy face thus to hide?"

"Look, father, the Erl-King is close by our side!

Dost see not the Erl-King, with crown and with train?"

"My son, 'tis the mist rising over the plain."

"Oh, come, thou dear infant! oh come thou with me!

Full many a game I will play there with thee;

On my strand, lovely flowers their blossoms unfold,

My mother shall grace thee with garments of gold."

"My father, my father, and dost thou not hear

The words that the Erl-King now breathes in mine ear?"

"Be calm, dearest child, 'tis thy fancy deceives;

'Tis the sad wind that sighs through the withering leaves."

"Wilt go, then, dear infant, wilt go with me there?

My daughters shall tend thee with sisterly care

My daughters by night their glad festival keep,

They'll dance thee, and rock thee, and sing thee to sleep."

"My father, my father, and dost thou not see,

How the Erl-King his daughters has brought here for me?"

"My darling, my darling, I see it aright,

'Tis the aged grey willows deceiving thy sight."

"I love thee, I'm charm'd by thy beauty, dear boy!

And if thou'rt unwilling, then force I'll employ."

"My father, my father, he seizes me fast,

Full sorely the Erl-King has hurt me at last."

The father now gallops, with terror half wild,

He grasps in his arms the poor shuddering child;

He reaches his courtyard with toil and with dread,—

The child in his arms finds he motionless, dead.

[voulezou]

“The woods enclose and then enclose again, like a system of Chinese boxes opening one into another; the intimate perspectives of the wood changed endlessly around the interloper, the imaginary traveller walking towards an invented distance that perpetually receded before me. It is easy to lose yourself in these woods. The two notes of the song of a bird rose on the still air, as if my girlish and delicious loneliness had been made into a sound.”

– Angela Carter, from The Erl-King (via voulezou)

[wesley-de-cornualles]

He must have had a peculiar fall on to just one knee, for he was covered in mud half-way up one leg, and otherwise untouched. As I tried to make myself scarce, he caught me by the arm, stuck out his knee, and ordered me to clean it. I hastily knelt down and set to work with a somewhat dubious handkerchief. But that wasn't quick enough for Pelsenaire. 'Is that all you've got? Lick it off, then!' His thigh and knee and the upper part of his calf were all sculpted in shiny black mud, flawless except for a complicated purple wound in the middle, under the kneecap. Out of it oozed a bright red streak turning first to ochre, then to a darker and darker brown as it mixed with the mud. I licked round the wound, surrounding it with a grey halo. Several times I had to spit out earth and bits of cinder. Blood went on welling out the wound. My eyes were right up against its whimsical geography — swollen pulp, whitish wheals of abraded skin, in-turned edges. I passed my tongue swiftly over it once, not so lightly that it did not cause a tremor, making the pad of muscle round the kneecap rise up in a kind of rictus. Then I licked it a second time, more slowly. Finally my lips rested on those of the wound and stayed there indefinitely. I don't know exactly what happened next. I think I was seized with a fit of shuddering, convulsions even, and was carted off to the infirmary. I seem to remember I was ill for several days. But I have only a vague recollection of this episode in my life at St Christopher's. What I am sure of is that the teachers thought fit to inform my father of my indisposition, and that the random explanation they brought up, with a grotesque irony of which they were unconscious, was that I had upset my stomach by eating too many sweets.

Michel Tournier, The Erl-King, trans. Barbara Bray

[derangedrhythms]

His touch both consoles and devastates me […]

Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories; from ‘The Erl-King’

[doinggreat]

ERLING HAALAND 2023 Ballon D'or

[onepiecefashion]

Outfit for Brook

ERL Fall 2022

[rherlotshadow]

'His eyes are quite green, as if from too much looking at the wood.

There are some eyes can eat you.'

Angela Carter: 'The Erl King'

[words-and-coffee]

He strips me to my last nakedness, that underskin of mauve, pearlized satin, like a skinned rabbit; then dresses me again in an embrace so lucid and encompassing it might be made of water. And shakes over me dead leaves as if into the stream I have become. Sometimes the birds, at random, all singing, strike a chord. His skin covers me entirely; we are like two halves of a seed, enclosed in the same integument. I should like to grow enormously small, so that you could swallow me, like those queens in fairy tales who conceive when they swallow a grain of corn or a sesame seed. Then I could lodge inside your body and you would bear me.

Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories: The Erl-King

[coachtfd]

Every time I see Haaland score now I just think of the people who complain about how he “doesn’t do much else” beside score goals. As I’ve said before, Heaven forbid a striker does what they’re paid to do and frequently scores goals. You’re going to be hard-pressed to find a greater football purist than Guardiola these days and if he has no problem with the guy, maybe everyone else needs to relax a little. 😂🤦🏾‍♂️

[diorstarr]

The Erl-King

[godzilla-reads]

Up next: “The Erl-King” by Angela Carter.

I have read this story before, but I can’t recall the details. I’ve been itching to read it again and what do you know, it’s in this fairy book!

🧚‍♀️ Fearsome Fairies edited by Elizabeth Dearnley