"I always thought of muses as sacrificial lambs, tamping down their own unwieldy creative impulses as they offer themselves for delectation by male geniuses. But Elizabeth Hand suggests in a recent essay that the connection is perilous for both parties: "The threat of one being consumed or obliterated by the other is constant. Yet it is precisely this tension, this tango macabre, that underscores the erotic nature of the relationship between artist and muse, suspended as it is between longing and dread, the yearning to possess and the knowledge that capture is so often destructive of the very object of desire." This tango macabre is the core of Mortal Love, Hand's latest novel. … Calling Mortal Love "an imaginary tree with roots in the real world," Hand laces the novel with real historical figures like Algernon Swinburne and Lady Wilde (Oscar's folktale-spinning mother) and drops in amusing literary allusions and references to artists like Brian Jones and Kurt Cobain, who have themselves been scorched by the muse. … The novel succeeds as both a thriller and a meditation on the mysterious nature of inspiration."
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Fantasy authorsNovelists from the United StatesPeople from New York (state)Short story writers from the United StatesScience fiction authors
Original Language: English
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Sources
Joy Press, in "Cling Muse" in The Village Voice (20 July 2004)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Hand
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Elizabeth Hand
Elizabeth Hand (born 29 March 1957) is an American writer, whose first story, "Prince of Flowers", was published in 1988 in Twilight Zone magazine, and her first novel, Winterlong, was published in 1990.
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