“The Moon This Night”

Basiliké Pappa created “The Moon This Night” from Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1872). Please click here to read.

About the poem and the process of composing it, Basiliké Pappa writes:

“The moon, this night,” says Mademoiselle De Lafontaine in Carmilla, “is full of idyllic and magnetic influence.” I found the moon in almost every chapter of this book, repeatedly bathing the story in its silver splendor; the moon would be the protagonist in my poem as well, present in almost every stanza. The Gothic element, the eroticism and dreaminess in which the story is immersed were also aspects I wanted to preserve. I started by picking sentences and copying them into a clean file, then scanned the text for more sentences and words to remix. As I began to rearrange my findings, my theme emerged: the moon assuming the appearance of a lover on a night where happiness and pain blend; an invitation one cannot accept; a dream whose end, unlike in Carmilla, brings no comfort.

Also be Basiliké Pappa at Heron Tree: “How to Become a God and Fade from Sight” and “Portuguese Wires.”