Dept. of Forgotten Birthdays

[kaffy_r]

Happy Birthday, azalaisdep !

How could I have forgotten the birthday of such a lovely gentlewoman? She introduced me to the world of LotR fanfic with her own bewitching stories; she consistently shows kindness and thoughtful gentility in all her dealings, and she is a delight to know. I  hope your birthday was happy, and that you made a great start to your next year in this world.

Comments

[azalaisdep.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! I know you, like me, have an awful lot on your plate at the moment, so belated birthday greetings are much valued and please don't worry about having missed the day :-)

I had a lovely day and was much pampered. 2014 has been a bit gruelling; hereby putting in a karmic plea for my nearest and dearest and I to catch it a bit easier in 2015...

[kaffy_r]

I'm so glad to hear this. I know things have been sorrowfully hard for you and the family members you love. I wish you the best, my dear.

[flowsoffire.livejournal.com]

I just did a double-take, lol—first time I run into another Azalais online! ;D

[azalaisdep.livejournal.com]

Wow - and both on Kaffyr's flist? What are the chances? (I wanted the LJ username Azalais, but it was already taken - so since I took my fandom pen-name from the mediaeval Occitan trobairitz Azalais de Porciragues, on LJ I ended up as azalaisdep...)

[flowsoffire.livejournal.com]

Very, very limited! ;) Azalaïs is my fourth given name, for the very same reason, my father being into Middle Ages poetry… (And I'm French.)

Oh, sorry, where are my manners? Happy birthday! The name sidetracked me remarkably ;)

[azalaisdep.livejournal.com]

How wonderful to have Azalaïs as an actual name! I just borrowed it for my fandom pen-name (I studied Occitan troubadour poetry for my modern & medieval languages degree at university, and the contested identity of one of the trobairitz, given that troubadours generally wrote anonymously or under pen-names, seemed perfect for a fandom pseudonym)

And thank you for the birthday wishes :-)

[flowsoffire.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's rather lovely! My actual name is Guillemette but I prefer Azalaïs ;)

That sounds rather fascinating! :)

[azalaisdep.livejournal.com]

Oh but Guillemette is a beautiful name!

[flowsoffire.livejournal.com]

It is—Azalaïs sounds even better though :)

[kaffy_r]

Thank you for enriching my day immensely - I had absolutely no idea what the meanings were for either Occitan or trobairitz, so I used google-fu, and discovered what these things were and are. And now it's off to find out more about Azalais de Porciragues!

(Incidentally, I'll now think of your LJ call sign more accurately; in my head, until now, I've been transposing letters, and pronouncing the name, more or less, as "azalea dep." Silly me.)

[azalaisdep.livejournal.com]

There isn't a huge amount known about her (my icon is a picture of her from an illuminated MS in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, but whether she actually looked anything like that...) The history of Occitania, its religious, political and linguistic differences from the Frankish North of France, and the eventual brutal suppression of those differences by the likes of Simon de Montfort ("Kill them all, God will know his own") is both fascinating and very sad.

The troubadours wrote intriguing, scurrilous, lyrical, subversive and controversial poetry (which survives in very fragmentary form, often in MSS from several centuries later and written down in other countries, so studying it was a real exercise in hypothesising!) But as I said to flowsoffire above, the fact that they nearly all wrote under pseudonyms, that women's involvement was controversial/contested (it's thought that the authors of many of the "Anonymous" troubadour poems may in fact be women) and that the status of troubadour poetry itself was often subversive and marginal, made Azalais a perfect choice for my fandom pen-name :-)