Ras: Allusions – Small, Good Things

“The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea.”

That’s how James Joyce in Ulysses refers to the arm of the Irish Sea that laps at Dublin. And isn’t this a wonderfully vivid way of evoking our old familiar ocean? Joyce is channeling the mind of the young poet Stephen Dedalus here, but the literary tool he’s using is the allusion, a good one to have in your repertoire.

The standard explanation of an allusion is “a reference in a literary work to another work of literature.” Sounds a little intimidating, but it’s not. The Latin root word is ludere (meaning to play), and a playful echo of the original is part of the pleasure of a good allusion.

What’s more, an apt allusion works whether the reader gets it or not. In this case the source is Homer’s Odyssey and his repeated references to “the wine-dark sea” – an epithet that has acquired deep resonance for the Mediterranean, suggesting a sunset on water, eternity, beauty, richness, adventure, and a poet’s vision of the world. (Since Homer is reputed to have been blind, I’m using “vision” metaphorically here.)

Obviously, a snot-green sea is a bit different from a wine-dark one. It may be a low-rent, low-comedy version, but it is the same eternal sea that Homer evokes. The allusion also links Stephen to Homer, hinting that the unsung Irish bard is kin to the greatest of epic poets.

But even if you’ve never seen a wine-dark sea or heard of Homer, you will not easily forget Joyce’s take. Over Labor Day weekend, in fact, I gazed out at that snot-green, scrotum-tightening sea on a cool overcast day at Bethany Beach.

Do not fear being “too literary” then. Stay alert for the possibility of connecting to a more established writer than yourself. If the seed of an allusion sprouts in your imagination, let it grow. Judiciously, of course. These are the small, good things that give your work pizzazz.

(Thanks to Eric Jones, whose copyrighted photo of the Irish Sea above is used under a Creative Commons license.)