Moonwise, by Greer Gilman

ペーパーバック・オリジナルで1991年に出た作品なんですが、何年か前に読みかけて10ページほどで置いてしまった記憶があります。なにやら捉えどころがない始まり方だったということもあるんですけど、意味がわからないという以前に、見たことがない単語がまるで当たり前の顔をしてずらずらと出てくるんですよね。それもラテン系の造語とか特殊な専門用語とかならまだわからないでもないですが、純英語の単語なんです。

関連作品の "Jack Daw's Pack" という短編から誰かが拾った例を挙げると： laithe, kist, clagg, rantipole, flyte, thrawn, shawm, crowdy, sain, tib, lyke, belantered, flaycrow, bacca …。ううむ、たしかにヘン。まあそのあたりは気分で流しても雰囲気は通じる作品ではあるんですけど。

ちなみに、世界幻想文学大賞受賞の普通の英語で書いた（笑）中編 "A Crowd of Bone" はこちらで読めます。

で、この Moonwise なんですが、今回ハードカバーでリプリントを出す Prime のサイトによれば、推薦の言葉を書いてる顔ぶれがすごいです。

"Moonwise remarkably attempts to compose an entire long fantasy at a pitch and density of language reminiscent of Gerard Manley Hopkins . . . . GIG's deep knowledge of English etymology (including dialectal variations) charges every word with all its possible meanings . . . . Moonwise is a work of inexhaustible richness." —Encyclopedia of Fantasy

"Greer Gilman is a writer like no one else. Many try to employ the matter of myth and folktale, but their tongues are inadequate—Gilman can employ words as the bards of Ireland did, to make realities, and she does it handily, and over and over. Moonwise doesn't resemble a work of the past age—it is the past age come back new, in its clothes and its language and its dark riddling heart. Moonwise simply has no peers."—John Crowley

"Moonwise is an amazing book, a work of genius. It deserves to stand beside Lud-in-the-Mist or the writings of Lord Dunsany as a truly original seminal classic. And yet the most remarkable thing about it is that, amidst its intense and serious magic and its astonishing use of words, it causes you to laugh aloud—quite suddenly, taken unawares by an outrageous pun or an ingenious one-liner. I love this book and admire its nature magic more every time I read it."—Diana Wynne Jones

"There are some books that seem to have existed forever. That when you find them for the first time you are only rediscovering something you had lost, long ago. Hope Mirrlees's Lud-in-the-Mist is one of these; David Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus is a second; Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is another. Green Ilene Gilman's Moonwise is one of that company. It does not take you to where the dreams start. It is where the dreams start."—John Clute

ううむ、マーリーズの Lud-in-the-Mist （『霧の都』）が引き合いに出されてますね。やはり読まなきゃいけないかな。辞書と首っ引きで……と思ったら、OEDの全巻揃いあたりでないと載っていない単語があるんだそうな^^;