Wednesday, 3 June 2026

Vignette 10: Twenty-five words.*

         On Saint Agnes’ Eve
                  her bridal veil burst into flames 
                         when her suitor clasped her hand 
                  and she saw his face 
                                  for the first time.
.

Saint Gertrude and Saint George of England
The noted anthropologist and folklorist, Gertrude M. Godden records the Legend of the False Bride: ‘Thereat the veil of the false bride took fire’ and the true bride was released to marry.

I‘d like to record here my profound admiration for Gertrude M. Godden, the Scourge of British Communism and National Seer in the interwar years, who stands in parallel beside George Orwell as our companionate Patron Saint of all anti-communists and Russophobes.
 
My copies of the Seer’s two powerful indictments
of Soviet incursions into our national life, 
published respectively in 1935 and 1936.

.

Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. Within these disciplines Eisner’s fictions seek to explore variant literary forms derived from psychotherapy and criminology to trace the traumas of characters in extremis. Compulsive recurring sub-themes in her narratives examine sibling rivalry, rivalrous cousinhood, pathological imposture, financial chicanery, and the effects of non-familial male pheromones on pubescence, 
see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)
and Listen Close to Me (2011)
 

*THE LAW OF TWENTY-FIVE: ‘Of the quinary, or number five; that number five pertains to the Law. . . . accordingly the number twenty-five signifies the Law, because five by five — that is, five times five — make twenty-five, or the number five squared.’   
Augustine’s Tractate 25 on the Gospel of John.