Fanfiction: Jackdaw (Princess Tutu)

[nebroadwe]

Title: Drabble: Jackdaw
Fandom: Princess Tutu (anime version)
Character: Autor
Pairing(s): None
Rating: G
Word Count: 100
Warnings: None.
A/N: Yet another Princess Tutu drabble: I wasn't expecting Autor to jog my elbow, but he did, at once entrancing and horrifying me with visions of old books recycled to bind new ones. I think him a jackdaw; he considers himself a scholar. We compromised on slightly demented antiquarian. Crossposted from nebroadwe to princesstutu and tutufic.
Dedication: Still for fmanalyst.

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      He haunts Goldkrone's secondhand shops, almost a byword for oddball acquisitiveness. The merchants of Nikolausstrasse call him (not quite behind his back) Herr Dohle, but as long as they take his money, he ignores their jibes. In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Who tells gold from lead by weight alone?

      Books he buys to disbind, teasing manuscript fragments from backstrips and linings, searching for overlooked words. But those teacups, that inkwell: them he touches sparingly, lovingly, for history fills them as full as he expects to brim with power, once his knowledge is complete.

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Author's Note: Dohle is the German word for jackdaw, a member of the crow family proverbial for snapping up unconsidered trifles; Sankt Nikolaus (Saint Nicholas) is the patron of pawnbrokers as well as of children. The saying about the one-eyed man's advantage among the blind is usually attributed to the Renaissance humanist Desiderius Erasmus. And it was long customary for bookbinders to use scraps of old manuscripts in the bindings of new books; some fragmentary pieces of medieval literature have been recovered by dissecting later tomes, to the subdued joy of my colleagues in paleography.

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[Disclaimers: Princess Tutu was created by Ikuko Ito and Junichi Sato. Copyright for this property is held by HAL and GANSIS/TUTU. All rights reserved.]

Comments

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I think I'd come back to this when I need some inspiration to write his character.

Now there's a compliment. Thank you very much.

I also really like the idea of having him go through palimpcests (spelling is wrong, I know, but that's the name of tomes that are written on leafs of old books, am I right?) to find old writings, and that he feels himself gaining power from that.

I'm actually having him do something different (but thank you for reminding me of palimpsests -- the back of my brain sat up and became very attentive just now, which may eventuate in another story, whereupon I will credit you properly for the inspiration :-). Autor's actually ripping books up to see whether the bindings contain bits of other books. It's not uncommon to find fragments of, say, medieval manuscripts being used as pastedowns (the endpaper attached to the inside front and back covers, or "boards," of a book) or backstrip (i.e. spine) linings in later books. Paper has never been cheap and parchment and vellum are even more expensive, so if you had an old copy of Aristotle or the Sarum missal nobody was using anymore, you might just take it apart and recycle it into somebody's new copy of Hugh Latimer's collected sermons (ugh). You can see some examples of manuscript pages recovered from such recycling here (http://www.uwm.edu/Library/special/exhibits/incunab/incpg4.htm); the whole exhibit (http://www.uwm.edu/Library/special/exhibits/incunab/inctoc.htm) on early printing is quite interesting, IMO, with pretty pictures and a nice basic summary article (http://www.uwm.edu/Library/special/exhibits/incunab/incmwh.htm) at the end. I liked the picture of Autor methodically destroying books in search of the bits of Drosselmeyer's work that the Book Men might have overlooked; it picks up both his cleverness, his scholarly streak and his odd attitude toward creativity (like his determination not to write until he can make the world dance to his pen).

For more information about the making of books (since there is no end to it, or at least not until society goes completely digital), my supervisor recommends Jane Greenfield's ABC of Bookbinding (http://www.oakknoll.com/detail.php?d_booknr=49915&d_currency=) and John Carter's quietly snarky yet informative ABC for Book Collectors (http://www.amazon.com/ABC-Book-Collectors-John-Carter/dp/1884718051). You'll never handle a hardcover the same way again ... :-)