29. Wrath
As
part of my research for the Labyrinth website, Greg
and I put together a set of feast days –
a different saint for each day of the year. Some of those brief lives
are downright bizarre.
I remember reading a French newspaper around the time of the Gulf War. I discovered that day that it was – officially , if not in practice – illegal to name your child by any but the legally recognised names set out by the French legal code – le code civil.
France is a country with a strongly Catholic tradition – though with secular education and government – and the allowed names in the code civil are those of the saints of the Roman calendar.
Of course this didn't warrant column inches in a national daily alone. It was because a couple opposed to military action against Iraq had attempted to name their recently-born child Saddam Hussein and been refused.
I was reminded of this reading a biography of Ira Gershwin, whose first name is Latin for 'wrath', one of the seven deadly sins. (The figure of wrath is depicted in classical art attacking a defenceless innocent, or sometimes a monk.)
How is it that these interconnected stories feed
my novel Labyrinth? I don't know for sure, but I do
know that these odd, esoteric connections have all been jotted down
in my notebook and – when their time comes – they will serve.
