Glotta: On monsters, coastlines and desire

English words like “glossary” and “polyglot” reach back to the Ionic Greek glossa and its Attic cousin glotta — the physical tongue, but also language. And there was perhaps no greater poly-glot in the Ancient Greek world than that fearsome lake serpent known as the Hydra, who possessed a seemingly infinite supply of heads filled with forking, sibilant tongues.

Luckily nothing so treacherous dwells on this fair isle, and our “Hydra” has little to do with the beast: only that both were named after a Greek word for water. Yet it’s nevertheless wise to remember that the etymology of monstrum (from which “monster” descends) suggests “that which reveals.” To talk about monsters is to uncover own fears, dreams, and desires.

Why tell you this? You probably bought this magazine to browse on Avlaki beach, as reading material to quiet the mind on its inevitable slide toward a delicious summer nap. It can be that too — and you should do that still. But perhaps also allow yourself to remember that coastlines are where hybrid forms like the Hydra are wont to dwell . . . in those choppy transitions between land and sea, firmness and indistinction, wakefulness and sleep.

Glotta is a new annual magazine. Each issue will weave together three themes and disparate voices from the present and past. It’s a hybrid publication for a many-headed audience. We take the ancient paradoxographers as inspiration, their attention to miracles and marvels, the abnormal and inexplicable. We have no manifesto. Only a sense that the subterranean rivers of history flow closer to the surface than might initially appear. And that if you listen attentively, you can still hear the babble of their currents’ many tongues.