Category: Creative Writing
À la Pushkin
Here is a quick sketch inspired by an Alexander Pushkin story. Enjoy!
February 27, 2013
On Clichés and Kennings
Writers are often told to avoid clichés or risk the work being criticized as banal. There is a lot of truth to that sentiment. But we must remember that clichés are more than just rehashed creativity. Clichés carry with them entire universes of associated knowledge. Old Norse had a word for this called kennings. Kennings, like clichés, originate from a figure of speech. For example, terms like “the whale’s road” are used in place of “the sea” in their poetry. It was not considered unoriginal or in bad taste to use kennings, in fact, Norse poets tried to find ways to fit as many kennings in a poem as possible. Before humans invented writing, all of our stories, our ‘literature’, was oral.
February 25, 2013