St. Ursula's Day

[calimac]

Today in the Catholic calendar is the feast day of St. Ursula, some probably legendary Romano-British virgin martyr (the Virgin Islands are named for her), and, though I don't believe they were Catholics, in recognition of the day Theodora and Alfred Kroeber gave that name to their daughter who was born on it in 1929. (No, really: see Theodora Kroeber, Alfred Kroeber: A Personal Configuration [UC Press, 1970], p. 132.) It's a good thing she wasn't born a week later or she might today be known as Black Monday K. Le Guin.

Ursula is not that common a name, and Le Guin has made some play with it in her work. Some of the poems in Always Coming Home are attributed to "Little Bear Woman."

Anyway, today is the 80th of her natal, so those of us so inclined are celebrating and commemorating. kate_schaefer writes, "What a lot of joy, thought, distraction, inspiration, and perspective your work has added to my life." That's about right. Her work has led me to so many enriching, enlightening, and even inspiring places that I'm willing to follow her anywhere. There is a wholeness about her worldview, and what I might as well call a sanctity, matched only by Tolkien among authors I know. Though words like "sanctity" don't do credit to things like her sometimes light, sometimes corrosive wit, often in the same works.

Some SF authors of advanced age retire; some devolve into gas giants. Le Guin has gone on writing valuable and worthy fiction (and poetry), that neither duplicates nor denies her earlier work. The trilogy of Gifts, Voices, and Powers are all written from the viewpoint of serious and thoughtful young people of both sexes, all the more impressive from an author in her 70s, until you consider who that author is, because she's been writing that well all her professional career. But she still gets better.

So happy birthday to our St. Ursula. Long may she pen.

Comments

[cynthia1960.livejournal.com]

I have never really gotten into Greek and Roman writing, but LeGuin's recent Lavinia was a fascinating sidelight into the Aeneid, and makes me want to dig further.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I have read the Aeneid, an experience I would not care to repeat. (Homer is much better.) That is why I have not gotten around to Lavinia yet. But because it's Le Guin, I will anyway.

Lavinia

[(Anonymous)]

I did read it for MFA this year. I thought it the strongest entry, but fairly watery Le Guin. Still, I was hoping it would win as she's never received the recognition from the MS, not that she needs it.
--David Lenander