Medieval 10th Century Students' Love Song

Come therefore now, my gentle fere is a tenth century medieval student's song. It is marked by an element of tenderness of sentiment in an invitation by a young man to his mistress, bidding her to a little supper at his home.

Come therefore now, my gentle fere,
Whom as my heart I hold full dear;
Enter my little room, which is
Adorned with quaintest rarities:
There are the seats with cushions spread,
The roof with curtains overhead:
The house with flowers of sweetest scent
And scattered herbs is redolent:
A table there is deftly dight
With meats and drinks of rare delight;
There too the wine flows, sparkling, free;
And all, my love, to pleasure thee.
There sound enchanting symphonies;
The clear high notes of flutes arise;
A singing girl and artful boy
Are chanting for thee strains of joy;
He touches with his quill the wire,
She tunes her note unto the lyre:
The servants carry to and fro
Dishes and cups of ruddy glow;
But these delights, I will confess,
Than pleasant converse charm me less;
Nor is the feast so sweet to me
As dear familiarity.
Then come now, sister of my heart,
That dearer than all others art,
Unto mine eyes thou shining sun,
Soul of my soul, thou only one!
I dwelt alone in the wild woods,
And loved all secret solitudes;
Oft would I fly from tumults far,
And shunned where crowds of people are.
O dearest, do not longer stay!
Seek we to live and love to-day!
I cannot live without thee, sweet!
Time bids us now our love complete.

Provenance:

A Source Book of Mediaeval History: Documents Illustrative of European Life and Institutions from the German Invasions to the Renaissance, edited by Frederic Austin Ogg (New York, 1907), reprinted by Cooper Square Publishers (New York, 1972), pp. 351-359. Scanned by Jerome S. Arkenberg, California State University, Fullerton.

Promotion Tips by Amish Tripathi, a Million-Books-Sold-Million-Dollar-Advance Author

Wellness guru Deepak Chopra says, "Amish's mythical imagination mines the past and taps into the possibilities of the future. His book series, archetypal and stirring, unfolds the deepest recesses of the soul as well as our collective consciousness."

Last week, I attended a conversation with India-based author Amish Tripathi (writing as, Amish). His Shiva Trilogy is a mythological fantasy continuity series that falls between young-adult and adult books and became a blockbuster hit in India due to his marketing chutzpah. He's known as India's literary pop star.

With a million and a half copies of the self-pubbed trilogy in print and his fame outstripping him week after week, Amish was recently given a $1 million advance (for South Asian rights only) by Westland Books of India for his next series.

Amish has achieved cult status now with fans sporting Shiva Tattoos, as reported by the Deccan Chronicle of India, and wearing embroidered shirts of his book covers.

The Wall Street Journal recently featured an interview with Amish wherein he talked about his rocky road to publishing fame. He was rejected more than twenty times when he shopped his first book around, so he decided to self-publish it.

In the conversation I attended last week, he said that he quickly realized that no bookseller was willing to sell the self-pubbed book of a debut author. "How will a reader then buy my book if he doesn't even know it exists?" asked Amish. "It's a fallacy that a good book sells itself. While good marketing cannot sell a bad book, it can drive business for a good one. So write a very good book first, and market it like mad."

Amish came up with the idea of creating a free sampler: He bound the first chapter of his book in the same cover as the book and handed stacks out to booksellers to give away at the cashier counters two weeks before the release day. The book started pre-selling itself and created such a buzz that by the release week, the presales and sales put him on multiples bestseller lists. This was the first time in the history of the Indian publishing industry that such a phenomenon had occurred.

His book was then acquired by Westland Books, who published all three books in the series.

(Amish said that he wasn't willing to give away free copies of his first book, however, not even in the first few weeks, because he says when the whole thing is given away for free, it lessens its value.)

Amish used the cash he was raking in to make professional movie-grade book videos. Take a look at his book trailers. He had them shown at top movie theaters all over India in a publicity blitz, as well as released on YouTube. This was the first time, this had been attempted in India. And it proved to be extremely popular. His sales went through the roof.

Then he went a step further for his third book. He hired top recording artists to create a CD of ten original songs depicting themes and scenes from the book. He sold those CDs in advance of the release date of the book, and they flew off the shelves, adding to the waiting frenzy for the third book.

All three of his books are optioned for movies, and the first one is in pre-production. In addition to self-promotion savvy, he also has a sound head on his shoulders for the business side of things with contracts and such. He has portioned his rights out very carefully, leaving most of them in his hands to bargain with.

His writing style and presentation of the story appeals to the young and the old, male and female. He took Indian mythological tales and his personal philosophical beliefs and fashioned storylines to convey them in his trio of books. His books have a devoted female following, because it is rare for a male writer to write such strong female protagonists in addition to male ones. He believes that "stronger women make for a better family." (He claims this is how the original myths were, with powerful female leads, but in the middle of the last millennium, they changed as society changed into a patriarchal system.)

He wrote articles and gave talks to kids as well as to adults on the background behind his books. He said he did this to encourage coffee house discussions of the themes and motivations and conclusions of the books.

He has made a deliberate study of the brand he wants to convey. He told us that he chose only his first name as his pen name, because in India, his last name immediately puts him in a social class, which might mean fewer sales outside his social class. I noticed very similar answers to the questions from yesterday's conversation and the Wall Street Journal interview, which shows he has studied the most commonly asked questions and decided beforehand how he's going to answer those.

He very personable during his author appearances. He comes across as very intelligent, well-researched, knowledgeable without being pedantic, at ease, courteous, very honest, and witty. As with everything about him, I do believe that he gave considerable thought to this aspect of his brand, too.

You can reach the author at his page on Facebook or via his active Twitter feed. You can buy his books in the U.S., new or used on Amazon.

His advice to aspiring writers: "Write first with absolute commitment, with absolute love of the loneliness of writing. Don't write for the reader or the market. Write for yourself and for the story you're telling."

Picture Day Friday: German Renaissance Round-shaped Book

This round book was bound in 1590 as a gift to the Prince and Bishop Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn (1545–1617).


[Image courtesy of the University Library in Würzburg, Germany.]

Rejection of Austen Books Reveal Modern Publishers' Pride & Prejudice

The Telegraph wrote: "Her work has endured for two centuries, sold in its millions and inspired countless film and television adaptations. But would Jane Austen be able to find a publisher and an agent today?"

In 2007, British author and the director of the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, David Lassman decided to find out.

He made a few minor changes to the opening chapters and plot synopses of three of Austen's works, using the pseudonym Alison Laydee (a hat tip to Austen's nom de plume "A Lady"), and sent them off to 18 of the U.K.'s top publishers. He was astounded to receive decided rejections to his submissions.

Mr. Lassman said, "I was staggered. Here is one of the greatest writers that has lived, with her oeuvre securely fixed in the English canon, and yet only one recipient recognized them as Austen's work."

And this was despite the fact that he left this line intact in his submissions: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

Not only did this experiment uncover modern publishers' pride and prejudice towards a different writing style, but it also revealed their shocking lack of education of the classics.

I mean, come on. Jane Austen has been so hot in the last few years, and that seminal opening line from her Pride & Prejudice appears on mouse pads and mugs. How on earth could acquiring editors not know it?!

Lassman then published an article, titled Rejecting Jane in issue 28 of Jane Austen's Regency World magazine, in which he detailed his literary experiment.

What Is Your Most Memorable Summer Reading?

"The rites of summer are, by definition, fleeting: the summer romance, the summer job, or [the summer] vacation. Only the books seem to stick." What I Read That Summer chronicles the summer reading experiences of twelve well-known writers: Louise Erdrich, Alexander McCall Smith, and Junot Díaz, among others.

My most memorable summer of reading was the summer I turned eight. I was taken down to meet an English Literature professor. From the university library, she borrowed a heap of twenty Classics for me by: Jane Austen, Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne, Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, and others I have since forgotten. I was given two months and was instructed to not only read all of those unabridged books, but was to discuss each of them at the close of summer.

It was a painful summer. I was too young to understand many of the themes and theses of the stories. This was my first introduction to The Novel, and I found it to be, in Tom Wolfe's words,"big, poetic, strange, disorderly, 'a story of the buried life.'"

But on the flip side of that summer, I gained a love for a well-crafted story with complex characterization with motivations beyond the immediate and beyond the sundry. As Pico Iyer said, "Books seldom so possess you as when you’re a kid, alone and eager for transformation." And so it was with me. I luxuriated in the stories, while I lolled on the sofa with my legs up on the arms, sitting in a fashion deplored by my mother.

It turns out, eight was the right age for me to have read those books. I, as Joy Williams puts it, "was on the verge of maturation, [like the] summer, the season that eternally promises and confounds so much."

Everyday, the door to the living room would stay shut, and, as Jorie Graham put it, "I began to cross that other doorway, that frame filled with lines of black on white, and began to forget. My hands disappeared, my head, the room, the garden, its bursts of sparrows..." I would be immersed in the stories and would barely surface to eat. I have no memory of what I ate that summer or what I did other than read. I do remember my mother scolding me a few times to go down and play. I remember my friends calling my name in the evenings from below (our apartment building had only two floors and we lived on the top one), urging to come down and play. But I have no memory of playing or gossiping with them.

I read and read and read, and the only memories that exist from that summer are from within the pages of those books. The twelve writers in the article, What I Read That Summer, also prove that "perhaps if you’re looking for an enduring summer romance, a good book might be your best bet."

Picture Day Friday: Fountain Pen

Pelikan Toledo Fountain Pen with 18kt gold.