"The Disinterment of Venus" by Clark Ashton Smith

10 months ago
15

chariness: the trait of being cautious and watchful

maculation: the state of being spotted

Cotytto, a.k.a. Kotys: a Thracian goddess whose festival, the Cotyttia, resembled that of the Phrygian Cybele, and was celebrated on hills with riotous proceedings and orgiastic rites, especially at night. "Companion of Cotytto" was synonymous with "slut"... Although I could find a little bit of info about Cotytto, I could not find a useful pronunciation guide for the word, so I have no idea if I got it right.

Cytherean: relating to the goddess Cytherea, which is an alternate name for Aphrodite (i.e. Venus), Cytherea being a Greek island from which Venus is sometimes claimed to have originated from. I don't understand the "hollow hill" reference - if you do, please leave a comment below!

piacular: requiring atonement; sinful; heinous

lubric: lubricious, i.e. marked by wantonness; lecherous

Anthony: Anthony the Great (A.D. 251 to 356), a.k.a. Anthony of the Desert, the Father of All Monks, and many other names, who was a Christian monk from Egypt who in 270 went into the wilderness of the Eastern Desert of Egypt (i.e. that part of the Sahara east of the Nile) and endured supernatural temptation therein.

disapprobation: strong disapproval, typically on moral grounds

captious: tending to find fault or raise petty objections

The picture used is a statue of Venus, Conservatory Gardens, Rosalind Park, Bendigo, Victoria, Australia. Photo taken by Dansforth and used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).

It's not exactly in a turnip and carrot garden, but at least it's outdoors - most Venus statues you can find pictures of are indoors, which doesn't suit this story at all.

To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/47/the-disinterment-of-venus

Although it should be noted that the last two chapters have very notable differences from the book I am reading from, so apparently there were some non-trivial revisions to this story! Especially the third chapter, which goes from a Brother Louis POV used here to a follow-the-trail-of-his-actions POV in the link above. Not sure either one is necessarily better, just different. Which one you like depends on your own personal preference for story-telling styles.

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