Grendel and Beowulf: Avatars of Existentialism

     There are a lot of different interpretations on what exactly is happening in the last chapters of Grendel, and most of those I found to be misinformed or just plain wrong, and some of those can even be found in respected publications. I had a hard time with figuring it out myself, or at least, I think I figured it out, because the way in which Gardner wrote the last chapter was meant to be deliberately obtuse, to be deliberately confusing, in order to stick in the mind and to linger as a point of contention among the academics he so longed to be respected by.

He uses writer's tricks, to blur the lines together, so that it's sometimes hard to tell who has spoken, or if someone is even speaking at all, to make one doubt whether Grendel is making it up in the stress of the moment, or whether there might actually be something more going on. Reality blurs with illusion and it takes dedication to parse out which is which, or at least, to form a well-thought out opinion on which is which.

I've hardly figured this novel out completely (hell, I opened up a random page earlier and found myself bewildered by what I was reading) and I might be wrong on numerous points, no matter how much time and effort I spent on it. At this point I can only confidently say that all of this is informed by my opinions and knowledge gained by time spent with the book, and that this write-up can only be labeled as conjecture.

     Throughout the novel there are various hints and allusions of the thing yet to come: the doom and the death that will give meaning to the life of Grendel.
Retroactively Grendel's life will be given validity by his vanquishing: it is Grendel's death at the hands of a man, that will elevate that man into the status of hero.
We, the readers, know that this will happen. In the cultural zeitgeist, the name of Grendel is inextricably tied to the name of Beowulf, the monster destined to be killed by the hero (that is, until golden-tits Angelina Jolie came along, at least). This is known and one goes into this novel, this story that'll tell the tale from the monster's point of view, expecting some kind of foreboding, some sort of presentiment that will inform Grendel of his inescapable doom. And so when certain things begin to show up our expectations seem rewarded.

     Anyone who's read the Beowulf poem knows that the theme of Christianity is inextricably woven into it, and so, I suspect that Gardner needed to somehow weave it into his work too. And he does this in a highly intriguing manner.

     Earlier in the novel there's a very special scene, very short, where Grendel gazes on the children who are playing outside in the snow, and he becomes disturbed as he watches them lie down on the ground, moving their arms to create winged figures in the white.
     It seems to imply some sort of supernatural foreboding. And there are various little incidents throughout the novel that point to it as well. But it is in chapter 11, when Beowulf-poem and Grendel-novel begin to overlap, that the foreboding becomes undeniable.

     Even before Beowulf finally arrives, Grendel is gripped by an excitement that he can not put a name to, and strange, almost senseless, visions have begun to fill him with a restlessness. Later, as he watches Beowulf and his Geat-companions arrive on the coast, he finds himself almost recognizing the man's face, as if it is the face of one he has forgotten in a dream. He is impressed by Beowulf's almost grotesque musculature, and again and again he finds his eyes lingering on the man's shoulders, as if there's something hidden there. He looks at the stranger and begins to have the idea that the man's body is just a disguise, hiding something far more terrible than what it seems to be. This impression is one that returns again and again to Grendel's observant mind as he watches and listens to the meeting of the strange men and those of Hrothgar's court. The man's mouth doesn't seem to move in time with the words, and Grendel fancies he can smell an unpleasant scent, and he's assaulted by strange almost-memories, of twisted roots, and an abyss.

       And in the final chapter, when hero and monster have their fatal meeting, some very strange things begin to happen.

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      While spying on the men as they talk in the hall, Grendel realizes that the Danes aren't exactly happy that Beowulf and his Geats have come to deal with their resident monster. After all, their priests had been saying that their god would deal with Grendel in time, had been saying it for years, and as for Hrothgar's warrior-class; to be bailed out by warriors not of their clan would be supremely dishonorable. And so out of a strange respect to his acquaintances, but mostly to honour the recently deceased Shaper, and the wisdom that that one unknowingly had taught him, Grendel vows to kill the stranger.
     And so, whispering to himself, quietly and patiently, Grendel waits for time to pass and for darkness to fall. He waits until the Geats are the only ones left in the hall, and until all has gone quiet and dark. And then he moves.

     Grendel effortlessly bursts through the door that leads to Hrothgar's hall, and gazing on the silent hall and the unmoving forms of men, he thinks that he has caught them unawares, that they have been laid low by drink, and he proceeds to kill and eat a man.
     When he reaches for the second sleeping form he, all of a sudden, realizes that that man's eyes are open, and that they had been open all along, that they had been watching him to see what he would do, to see how he would set about his work of violence. The man he has reached for grabs him instead, and even though Grendel tries to get away, the man does not let go. It seems impossible, but Grendel, powerful, powerful Grendel, can not get away. And more than that, it feels like his arm is on fire and so Grendel fixes his gaze on the man and screams in fury.
     Then he feels the grip on his arm strengthen and dislocate his shoulder.
It's ironic, of course, that Grendel has been blessed by the Dragon to become impervious to steel, only to have him come to his end in hand to hand combat. But surely, Grendel isn't made from wood or kindling, surely a mere man can not just take an arm off of a genuine monster by simple force alone?
     Grendel by the pain is reduced to the here and now, and he becomes hyper-aware of the entirety of the mead-hall, and he notices that the man who his holding him is the stranger, and that his eyes are flickering with light, and that from his back arise fiery wings. He catches himself and does a double-take, but the wings are still there.
Then he shakes his head, reasoning that he can drive out the illusion, reasoning to himself that there is no possibility that something supernatural is going on here.

"The world is what it is and always was. That's our hope, our chance. Yet even in times of catastrophe we people it with tricks. Grendel, Grendel, hold fast to what is true!"

     And somehow it works. Somehow sanity returns, and darkness settles on the hall again, and so Grendel acts, and dooms himself: He kicks out, and slips on the blood of the man he's just killed.
Immediately the stranger twists his arm behind his back and forces him down, and, terrifyingly, the man begins to whisper. And feeling a terrible sense of doom Grendel whispers back at him, to try and drown out the other's words.

-----

     From this point onward, it becomes extremely difficult to parse what is said aloud and what is recited in Grendel's head, what is being said by Beowulf, and what by Grendel. And strangest of all up to a certain point, the two could even be said to be saying the same thing.

To illustrate what I mean take a look; Blue is Beowulf, Red is Grendel.

     The above is the way I think it should be read. Grendel is whispering to himself, quoting the dragon as he remembers him speaking of the vagaries of the universe, repeating to himself that all we are is pointless stardust. Then Beowulf speaks, imparting to Grendel some secret as he mentions the cave.

But it could be read differently too:

     You could read it in a way that it is Grendel who says the line of the cave, and which would certainly be in character, however, the entire 'Meaningless Swirl' monologue is an ode to meaninglessness, whereas the world is my bone-cave precisely implies dependency and thus meaning. I don't think it is Grendel who says this line. And yet, there is precedent for it, from back when Grendel mentioned his cave, as; the cave my cave is a jealous cave.

     But.

It could also be read as if Beowulf is saying all of it. That it is here where the 'Meaningless Swirl' line actually originally comes from, that the dragon has actually plucked it from the future, seeing this moment where Grendel and Beowulf meet, making it retroactively clear to Grendel that this moment could not be avoided.

     In this last one, it is precisely that because the dragon has already spoken this line as he heard it would be spoken by Beowulf, that Grendel is repeating the dragon's words at the same time as Beowulf is originally speaking them.

     It's madness, and quite frankly, this whole part is a bit of a dirty writer's trick.

But seeing as I think the first picture is most in line with what we know of these characters, I'll continue on from that one.

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     Grendel quotes the dragon, repeating to us words that we've read before; the Dragon's monologue of the meaningless swirl in the stream of time, a self-defeating line informing self-defeating philosophy. Grendel is here comforting himself by saying that all of it doesn't matter, and to drown out the man's terrifying whispering. But the man's words are undeniable and Grendel can't do anything but hear them. And though the sentence that comes next has never been heard before, yet it will ring familiar.

"The world is my Bone-Cave, I shall not want."

     I pondered over this sentence for quite a while.
The first words that Beowulf chooses to speak to his opposite must be meaningful, after all.
And they are: they are the declaration of his philosophy. The sentence is an amalgamation of two things. The 'I shall not want' is clearly a reference to the Lord's Prayer: The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.
     But 'the world is my Bone cave' is an allusion to what Grendel had said before earlier in the novel itself, when he spoke of his cave as 'the cave my cave is a jealous cave', which also derives from a biblical source: 'the lord your god is a jealous god' (Deuteronomy).

     The first line Beowulf imparts to his mortal nemesis is a statement of religion and belief, it is an identifier, either as a way to reveal to Grendel that he, Beowulf, understands Grendel completely, or; that he, Beowulf, is rooted in reality, and that the world itself is his belief and his god.
     For the reader, this comes with associative strings attached, and their purpose is twofold. By using the Biblical language, Gardner, via the hero Beowulf, summons up the Christian faith, but then in the same breath removes that explicit tie to Christianity by substituting the object of that devotion as literally worldly, and even more than that: as the sentence only works if we have knowledge of Grendel's 'jealous cave' the sentence then becomes something quite personal to Grendel, and only to Grendel.

At this point, Grendel notes that fire slips out at the corners of Beowulf's mouth as he says:

"As you see it it is, while the seeing lasts, dark nightmare-history, time as coffin;..."

Confirming to Grendel that, indeed, life is meaningless, but then he continues:

"... but where the water was rigid there will be fish, and men will survive on their flesh till spring."

Beowulf states that, even though that life might be meaningless, life's purpose is for it to be lived.
And then he makes it clear to Grendel that he knows him and that he understands him when he says:

  "It's coming, my brother. Believe it or not."

With that line, he bestows a kinship on Grendel, the first character in the novel to do so. The human Beowulf, who stands so apart from the rest of the humans in the story as to seem like a mountain to their trees, explicitly identifies with the monster, calls him out on it.
     Of course, It is not a kinship of the flesh, but rather one of ideas, of thoughts, outlook and philosophy. It is the kinship of students. One pupil of self-actualization speaking to another.

"Though you murder the world, turn plains to stone, transmogrify life into I and it, strong searching roots will crack your cave and rain will cleanse it. The world will burn green, sperm build again. My promise. Time is the mind, the hand that makes (fingers on harpstrings, hero-swords, the acts, the eyes of queens.)"

     Beowulf, with this very obtuse way of speaking, states that life, and thus time, is only given relevance by the actions of men. It is as simple as that, Beowulf states that even though Grendel's acts of destruction might continue, the upward march, the desire of life for itself, will always continue. And then he states that he will kill Grendel for it.
     Knowing that the end is near Grendel whispers to him that the man only has won by chance; that it's all meaningless. To which Beowulf responds:

"Grendel, Grendel! You make the world by whispers, second by second, are you blind to that? Whether you make it a grave or a garden of roses is not the point.

Feel the wall: is it not hard?"

     He proceeds to try and demonstrate the way in which we make an impression on the world, the way in which we make reality exist by giving it our attention. It is the age-old philosophical conundrum of whether if a tree falls in the forest, with no-one around to hear it, whether the sound can be said to be real at all. Touch the wall and it has relevance, and it becomes real. And such too is life. Beowulf hints at the hero's philosophy, where the hero creates his own path, and his own meaning.

     But Grendel can not accept it. Though he does understand what Beowulf is saying, he is too fixated on the fact that it could have been different if he had been paying more attention to his surroundings, sure that it was an accident that gave Beowulf the upper hand, and that it could have been vastly different, that the hero, despite all his will and desire to make it all mean something, could still easily have been the one to die. But, the truth is that this didn't happen, and so comes the question: Was it or was it not inevitable? Was it destiny and thus meaningful, or was the very fact that it was an accident that gave Beowulf the upper hand precisely indicative of the meaninglessness of existence, of the absence of design and destiny?

     For Grendel the room goes white, and as he stares down he sees that Beowulf has torn his arm off at the shoulder. In terror, desperation and the mindless pain of a wounded animal, he runs out of Hrothgar's hall, leaving the scene of his wounding behind him, while behind him Beowulf stretches his blinding white wings and breathes out fire.
     Outside, Grendel sees visions of winged men that light up the night. He chastises himself once more, and again the world is reduced to darkness. He is alone, but he can still hear Beowulf's whispering. He is dying, but he still clings to the belief of meaninglessness, and refutes the hero's arguments. Grendel has a vision of a dark abyss, and a desire to tumble into it.
Then Grendel comes to himself for the last time, wet with blood, and without pain. He finds himself surrounded by the animals he shared his forest with, their mindlessness radiating out from their eyes.
And as he sees his death approach, he wonders at his feeling of joy. "Poor Grendel's had an accident," he whispers. 'So may you all.'

-----

It's so hard to see how much of this can be taken at face value, and how much is metaphor. One could argue that all the biblical imagery present is a product of the pain and stress of the situation, that Grendel is only seeing illusions, or one can argue that what Grendel sees is the truth of it. One is very tempted when reading this part to explain away the fantastical trappings that the story has, seemingly all of sudden, taken upon itself, but the truth is that there is precedent for the supernatural shenanigans: Grendel himself is revealed to have some sort of power when he screams in rage and is shocked to find that the lake he's standing by has turned to ice. Or for instance that, because of the Dragon's blessing no edge of steel can hurt him.

Either way, it's up to the reader. The book, and especially the last chapter is designed in such a way that multiple explanations are viable. For myself, I believe that one can take most of what happens as real, that Grendel is granted a look behind the veil, so to speak.

For me both the hero and the monster walk the earth as tangible avatars of their philosophies.
Grendel, as he says earlier, embodies the Dragon's idea of absolute waste, absolute destruction, destruction because why not, it's all meaningless anyway; an undeniably nihilistic philosophy.

But Beowulf, as the avatar of meaning, occupies the high ground. He is a vessel of world-altering will made manifest in the trappings of the dominant faith of that age, an agent of heroic self-actualization, clothed in wings of white and with a mouth spewing fire; classic angelical imagery. He might not actually be an angel, but as his philosophy is most beneficent to the one who wields it, the most positive, Gardner chose to let Grendel, and us, see him that way.

Grendel is a brilliant novel. But I do wish Gardner might've made it a bit more clear-cut. As it is, it is impossible to have one all-encompassing explanation that'll take into account all the different elements that the novel has. It's mostly up to each individual reader to make sense of the novel, as there really is enough in its literary make-up that multiple interpretations are possible. This is the point, of course, but I don't have to like it.

Fantasy Masterworks: Grendel, John Gardner

There's not a moment's doubt whether or not John Gardner's Grendel belongs in the Fantasy Masterworks series. It is a magnificent achievement. The novel itself is quite short, and yet there's a lot packed into its sleight page count.

* It seems impossible to do a blurb that would be in the vein of the novel itself. It doesn't seem like this could be the case, but it really is. For starters; the novel's in first person narration: okay, that is do-able, but the problem is that Grendel himself, his character, would not allow it.

He would rail against the self-aggrandizement that a self-conscious backflap blurb would necessitate.

There is a reason why most people use the novel's last sentence to start off or end their reviews: it speaks volumes: "Poor Grendel has had an accident, so may you all."

That sentence makes it clear that Grendel loathes the world, and implicitly; us, the readers. It is a loathing flowing forth from self-pity, from recognition of his being utterly apart, utterly alone, and his knowledge that, knowing what will come from his demise, he will be given a place in a canon that will distort him, that will make of him less than what he was, and he hates us, the enablers, for it.

     Grendel is of course a re-telling of that oldest and most influential work of Old-English literature; Beowulf, but in Gardner's novel the story's told from the view of the monster. The Beowulf poem itself however devotes less than half of its page count before the titular hero meets with Grendel and dispatches him, as Grendel is in truth only his first opponent. The poem then continues on into accounts of glory, and battles with both Grendel's mother and a fire-spewing dragon.
John Gardner's novel instead focuses on retelling only the first bit of the epic poem, choosing to end its narrative just past the violent meeting of hero and monster. And in truth it's only chapters 11 and 12 that can be said to overlap with the poem.
There is a great amount of humour within these pages. It is also quite vulgar, in the original meaning of that word; base and crude, but very approachable and relatable to any reader.

     The first ten chapters of the novel focus squarely on Grendel and his antagonistic relationship with Hrothgar and that one's steadily blossoming kingdom. Through Grendel's inner monologues, never revealed to the outside world, we learn of his (lack of) upbringing, his ideas, his psyche, and chapter by chapter we follow along as he slowly broadens his philosophical views, becoming more coherent with the passing of years.
     There are few other characters that get explored besides Grendel himself, but those that do share the spotlight tend to be highly interesting. Most notable of these are Wealtheow, Hrothgar, Unferth and of course, the Dragon.


Grendel, and the Rest (Definite Spoilers)

     The Dragon is a fascinating character in the story, who's mostly here to serve as someone who has both a foot in and out of the story, someone apart, being able to look within (the Beowulf/Grendel story) and from without (as a possible reader, aware of the Beowulf poem, like us).
      He swiftly reveals that dragons have a different experience of time than humanity and that besides the past and present, they can also see the future. This allowed him to see his own death at the hands of the hero Beowulf, an event that is still decades and decades away, but that is also, to the dragon's philosophy, despite his foreknowledge of it, inescapable. The Dragon reveals that all are in thrall to destiny, in fetters and chains bound to something that can not be altered. And that destiny is in even the smallest of things.
     The Dragon inhabits the lifespan of the universe, and is in full knowledge of it every heartbeat of the way. And so he speaks of being tired of being omniscient. He gifts Grendel with imperviousness to swords and he advises him to seek out his own 'gold' to sit upon, to make the time pass in a pleasant manner. And Grendel does, and as he already has some history with him, Grendel chooses to focus on Hrothgar.

     Hrothgar is of course another major character, serving as the main focus for Grendel's ire, his territory the focal point around which Grendel works his desire to make an impact on the world. As the members of Hrothgar's court treat the lonely cave-dwelling creature as a monster, Grendel, in rage and self-pity, takes up their view of him as his own, and deliberately becomes the monster they believe him to be, committing violence and atrocity on whim and later also for his own amusement.
Notable among these acts is a specific one: Grendel's treatment of Wealtheow.
     Some ways into the novel, the young and beautiful Wealtheow becomes Hrothgar's wife in return for his showing mercy towards her brother, who plotted to take Hrothgar's kingdom from him.               
     Wealtheow, now queen, suffers her lot with admirable stoicism despite her obvious sorrow. She is endowed with much beauty and goodness, and as Grendel looks on her he is gripped by a host of conflicting emotions. He is visited by his recurring desire to be a part of things, but ruthlessly stamps it down and, in rage and self-pity, dons the cloak of the monster once more.

     Grendel denies the compassion he feels, the desire.

He hates the one he loves, desires, because he realizes the impossibility of the situation and that he will never have her love returned to him. Spite and slurs instead of understanding,

outwardly carrying a grunt while the heart carries a whisper.

     It is this that makes Grendel as a character so compelling; though he is monstrous and violent and terribly quick to anger, he can also be touched by the beauty of mankind, to the joy of their various creations; to music, beauty, art and love, but rejected by mankind as he is, spoken of as the monster, said to be cursed and cast out by a loving God, he can only carry this in his heart, and even then he has no other choice than to suppress these feelings, to call them meaningless, pointless and vague.  He does this in order not to be grasped and destroyed by his loneliness, by his complete separateness, and what once had the capacity for good; these emotions and sentiments conducive to sharing, to build, to bond, these things he can not possibly acknowledge anymore in order to not be driven insane, mad, to death. Inability for love is the pointlessness of existence. And so he forces himself to latch expressly only onto this knowledge of the pointlessness of existence. He looks at the beauty, the love, and the art of the people he watches and pretends to scoff, pretends to hate, tries to laugh at all the imposed importance of all these ephemeral things.

     And yet, he can not do anything but look at them. Because he recognizes that love gifts meaning to all. And so, to save himself, he can do nothing but respond as they expect him to.

He presents himself as their enemy. Self-actualization through others.

     He enters Hrothgar's hall with great violence and noise. Impervious to the swords of the defenders due to the Dragon's gift he stalks unstoppable through the halls. Arriving in the King's chambers he finds Wealtheow, naked in her room, and grabbing her, he holds her aloft, a claw to each leg, and holds her there, to pull her apart like a wishbone. Everyone looks on in horror and anguish.
He can not be stopped in this, and everyone, Grendel included, is fully aware of this. And more than this; Grendel knows that they know, and that they think it is inevitable that this ends with the death of Wealtheow.
And then, having it let sunk in, Grendel lets the moment linger, and then drops Wealtheow to the floor. As he exits the building he leaves behind him a shocked and confused crowd, mystifying them with the actions of a reasoning creature, rather than the monster they think him to be.

     But in shape and form he is still the monster to be slain, and it must be true that for every monster there must be a hero to stand his opposite. And so we arrive at Unferth, who would be that hero. But who makes the mistake, at their first meeting, of revealing the reasoning behind his actions to Grendel, who then promptly makes it his mission to deny Unferth both a hero's death and a hero's grace.
     In some truly hilarious and yet pitiable scenes, Grendel mocks and humiliates Unferth, who has the soul of hero and decent qualities besides, but who is so overmatched by Grendel that he should have just been killed outright at their first meeting, were it not for Grendel's malice and intelligence. And as sad as it might seem, the scenes with Unferth are a highlight of the novel.

       Important too, is Grendel's Mother, though she is not very active and is kept nameless throughout both novel and poem, she is nonetheless crucial for the development of Grendel's character. When we meet her Grendel's mother has already devolved back into a mute animal, devolved away from humanity, the idea behind which is that she is supposed to be unable to actually rear and teach Grendel, so that he can be an empty vessel to explore philosophical points of view through. This does not mean she does not love him, because she clearly does as evidenced by various parts of the novel, but she can not possibly communicate in a relevant manner with her son. She is a sad and strangely heart-warming character, capable of eliciting both pity and good-will.

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The Shaper, though not too active a character in the story is nonetheless crucial to some of the ideas Gardner wanted to present and as such I'll talk about him in the next segment.

Beowulf, when he finally shows up in chapters 11 and 12 is of course also hugely interesting and rather important, but Gardner had something very specific in mind when he wrote this version of Beowulf and as such I'll be talking about him separately a little further on.


A Post-Modern Monster

     But this novel is more than just a re-coating of what is already known. Gardner was an ambitious sort of fellow, and actively set out to explore Sartre's philosophy and ideas, and, with having the coming novel's ending already predetermined, and so having that troublesome story-bit already out of the way, he was also determined to make his novel stand out using Western ideas of structure and postmodernism.
Grendel was basically a bit of a grandstanding endeavor embarked on by an author interested in making a name for himself.

     As such, on its completion, Grendel turned out to be a masterclass in post-modernism. The novel switches at various points from first-person narration to third, and even at a certain point, in imitation of the poem that informed it, it also switches to verse, and later it goes further by morphing into a script format, as if the story was written to be a play. By adhering to no specific style the novel demonstrates an unwillingness to adhere to convention, and it undermines the traditional expectations of what a novel should be.

     But there is a bigger idea at work in Grendel: the rejection of the Grand Narrative. Postmodernism in literature is often marked by a rejection of conventional storytelling, and one of the main ways this manifests itself in postmodern works is that the work in question turns out to not have a conventional overarching narrative, and that it is devoid of climax or resolution.
This concept of the novel without an actual narrative, in Grendel, happens in three steps.

1

      Through the crucial character of the Shaper, a bard at Hrothgar's court, Grendel becomes aware of the concept of subjective and objective reality, when he notices that the acts of the past are rewritten by the Shaper, who in order to entertain his audience, dresses up the the history of Hrothgar in his songs. And what's more, that from then on, rather than remembering the truth, those actual squalid beginnings of Hrothgar's kingdom, the listening audience begins to believe it to have begun as gloriously as the Shaper made it out to be. And Grendel himself, though railing against it, finds himself compelled by the myth, wanting to believe in the glory and the virtue that it offers.
     He knows that it was random chance that shunted Hrothgar and his kingdom into greatness and yet...
     It is at this point, holding on to the meaningless of existence itself, that Grendel realizes that this is all that humans do. That they re-write history to make of it a grand and glorious narrative.

2

      The second way in which meaningful narratives are disputed is of course when Grendel himself claims to have had an accident' at the end of the novel. He rails against the horror that he will be used as a narrative tool, that he will be made out to have been a mere monster, as something to just be vanquished by a hero. He knows that he will be the only one to believe this, and that in time everyone will instead believe the narrative of the Hero Beowulf and the Monster Grendel.

3

      But Gardner also goes a step further. And entices us to also try and find a grand narrative in the structure of the novel itself.
Though I've seen and read various interpretations on the use of the traditional (western) Zodiac in Grendel, and even quite a few compelling arguments wherein it is explored more fully, I believe that this is also part of the Post-Modern agenda in Grendel. I'm not sure how far that Gardner chose to go with this, whether he also incorporated the four elements in his structure or whether he even used the accompanying traits in his characters, but it is clear that at the very least in every single one of Grendel's 12 chapters a reference can be found to one of the signs of the Zodiac, either explicitly or through metaphor: The signs of the Aries (1), Taurus (2), Cancer (4), Virgo (6), Scorpio (8), Sagittarius (9), Capricorn (10) and Pisces (12) are probably the easiest to find as their signs have direct physical representations, or at the very least a mention or a comparison, in the text.

     Gemini (3), Leo (5), Libra (7) and Aquarius (11) are a bit more difficult to see as they are are more obliquely explored. Gemini, the Twins star-sign, is explored in chapter three through the use of the Shaper, who, with his music, creates a subjective reality to stand alongside objective reality. Leo, the lion in the cave under the element of fire, has his representation in the Dragon. The scales of Libra, are explored though Wealtheow, who keeps both her brother and Hrothgar balanced in peace through her marriage to the latter. Aquarius, as the carrier of water, is represented by Grendel's cave where an underground river flows.

The question then arrives; What does the presence of the Western Zodiac mean in Gardner's Grendel?

     Humans are, as the novel has already offered, primed to find grand narratives in life. Accidents and circumstance will always turn out to be meaningful and crucial occurrences, inspired by the self-importance of each individual in the human race, and will always have been put together by design. There are no accidents, and circumstance must always have been shaped.
     But the truth is that it means nothing, of course. The use of the Zodiac in Grendel is Gardner making us see signs (literally) that seem to point to a grander narrative, while it is precisely the novel's point that there is none. Gardner chose the Zodiac system for it, because that system is highly interpretative, and points that overlap can and will always be found; humans will always find meaning (even) where there is none.


Post-Modern Monster (continued)

4

Which brings us to the last part.

The presence and importance of Christianity in the original Beowulf text can not be understated. Mighty deeds are constantly attributed to be achieved only by the grace of God and the deity is constantly thanked and venerated by the pretty much unanimously pious characters of the poem, which itself, after all, stems from a time when Christianity had just finished bloodily carving its place into the every-day lives of the Scandinavian peoples.

So then, Gardner also needed to somehow incorporate this religious element into his philosophical character piece, an element which is not really all that useful or conducive when you're trying to construct a narrative that will explore ideas of reason and logic-based thinking. Which is why he ended up making it another red herring: yet again, the way that Gardner chose to weave it into the narrative is something that will infallibly bait mankind's (or at least the followers/ and those familiar with the West's most dominant faith's) tendency to find meaning where there is none. Hook, line and sinker, this time with blatantly religious phrasing and imagery.

I admit, I fell for it, hard.

I kept trying to construct a working theory around the presence of Beowulf's undeniably religious trappings and speech, veering from denouncing it all as a figment of Grendel's fevered mind in the throes of pain and terror, to making an argument for the hero Beowulf's obvious angelic nature, only visible to his foe and counterpart during their fateful clashing, and then at the end there I even found a theory I was all-round pleased with, but it is very likely that it is none of these things, that this is again; just Gardner placing elements in his text with the knowledge that it would be analyzed by beings desperate for meaning and resolution.

Conclusion:

Grendel is endlessly re-readable, as it's such a tight novel, so full, and so perfectly itself. There's probably no other book like it, a genuine masterwork of literature.

It is an obtuse novel, and definitely not for everyone. And though it is short and easy to read, there are so many elements hidden that even a fan of the book will always be able to find some new revelation waiting in its pages.

There'll be another post because I couldn't do anything less than completely analyze the last chapter since I found it so baffling, but this post is already long enough as it is.

Pegana and the Eternal Return

I found myself a little at a loss before beginning the Fantasy Masterwork Write-up (the extra-special one :) for Time and the Gods. There's just so much one can talk about with this collection. There's over a hundred stories after all.
But, halfway through The Gods of Pegana short stories I struck on an idea that I had already touched upon on the blog, pointing back to an earlier personal post; Time as a flat Circle, and looking at Time and the Gods I found that I could continue on here in that same theme: The concept of Eternal Return.

Circe in front of a circular mirror.

Did Richard Carr, the cover designer for this Fantasy Masterwork, know what he was doing here whe he selected this picture, I wonder?

If so: absolutely brilliant, my man.

Dunsany apparently read Nietzsche's philosophy while writing The Gods of Pegana, and if you read it with some attention you'll recognize that he actively worked Nietzsche's nihilistic philosophy into his god-mythology.

 Or well, if there are gods, is it then in fact nihilism?
Hah, sorry about that; it's my religious upbringing rearing its head once more.

Either way, it's important to note that this is Nietszsche's pre-determinism which has central stage here, as is evinced by the Dreams of A prophet short story. Time as fixed and cyclical, not: time as endlessly recurring but different in sequence.

Anyway, without further ado:


The Mythology

Our compressed mythology, which consists mainly of metaphor built on metaphor, goes as follows:

Before the beginning, before Time, before all, there were Fate and Chance. Until, of these two, one strode out of the mist and declared existence through the First, who is MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI.
It was He who was ordered to make the Gods, for that is what the game will be about. And then on this one's bidding MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI made the Gods. Alongside the Gods is created Skarl the Drummer, who lulls MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI asleep with his drumming.
And while their creator sleeps, the Gods, at first in silence, play games, and in the first they create the spheres that move in patterns or not at all, and it is in the second game that Beasts are created, and in the third Men, and it is with their creation that the Gods begin to speak.
  It is Kib, who is the first of the gods, and who is the bringer of Life itself, who created beasts and he also made mortal man.
  Second to him is Sish, the god of entropy who has Time as his hound, until the age when Time will remember Himself and will turn on his masters The Gods.
  Then there is Mung who is the third, the God of Death, who is ever relentless, and ever unmoved. Mung knows where the souls of those that died go.
  And there is Slid whose soul is in the Sea, and who is in all the waters.
  There is also Limpang-Tung, the god of youth and mindless mirth, who names himself lesser than the Gods, but who nonetheless is the painter of the sky and lord of the winds, the dweller in the mountains.
 There is also Yoharneth-Lahai, the sleep-giver, the one who brings peace through little dreams.
 There is also Roon, the never-still God of Going, who is the God of momentum and movement, and it is his spirit that stirs all things. For His opposite, Roon declared there to be 1000 sedentary house gods, who sit before the hearth and mind the things of home. These gods be lesser than men and serve them and the Gods. Once, some of them rebelled but the Gods proved greater.
 There is also Dorozhand, who is the gazer at the end, and the god of Destiny and the one who sets in motion all the moving things; He is the beginner, for a purpose of his own.
There is the God who was once the God of outright mirth, but who is now just Hoodrazai, the God silent and alone, ever since he overheard the sleep-whispers of MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI, and the secret meaning that they conveyed.
There is also a Thing, which doesn't howl, and which doesn't breathe and which is neither God nor beast. IT is called Trogool and IT sits on the rocks of the rim at the edge of the universe where IT turns, one by one, the pages of a great book. The pages are black and white, and days pass as they are turned. Trogool will turn these pages until IT will come to the final page whereon is written MAI DOON IZAHN, which means The End Forever, and all will come to an END.

Mythology continued in THE END

The meaning of existence

In the mists before all, Fate and Chance cast lots to decide who gets to decree the forthcoming 'game'. The winner of this lot-casting is unknown, giving the whole of existence the conceit to be both pre-ordained or to be a consequence of pure random chance, effectively rendering it meaningless. But the act of this game before time itself also makes it clear that even if Fate is the one to give meaning to the universe, it isn't much of a meaning at all.
For the game before time, its outcome truly determined by these two, could just as well have been won by Chance.

There are multiple ways to figure out who the winner is in the game before time.
Mung, the God of death has some of the most interesting passages that'll help with this:

'Alas, that I took this road, for had I gone by any other way then had I not met with Mung.'

And Mung said: 'Had it been possible for thee to go by any other way then had the Scheme of Things been otherwise and the gods had been other gods. When MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI forgets to rest and and makes again new gods it maybe be that They will send thee again into the Worlds; and then thou mayest choose an other way, and so not meet with Mung.'

Besides implying that the winner of The Game Before All is in fact Fate, it also seems to adhere to the Time as a Flat Circle theory, time as predetermined and recurring. And which would also rule out Chance as the victor of the game before time.

However.

Time and the Gods' The Dreams of A Prophet further also talks about this; where a prophet describes his vision of Fate and Chance in a time when the entirety of existence has already played out. In this vision Fate says to Chance: "Let us play our old game again." and then everything happens again exactly as it had happened before.

This occuring again exactly as it happened before is of course Nietschze's concept of the Eternal Return

The ideas hinted at throughout the Gods of Pegana point to fate not as meaningful, but predetermined, and cyclical. Pointless in its repetition. Or, not pointless, and instead; fateful.
As in learning and loving one's own fate. Amor Fati.


Pegana and the whole of creation

Pegana is the place in the middle of all, where the Gods sit in the middle of Time; because Time is equal unending before it, and unending after it. There is below Pegana, what is above it, and beyond it, what lies before. Meaning, there is nothing outside of Pegana.

 In truth, this there was('nt) before the creation of anything outside of Pegana, at that point these things were true, as it was the whole of time encompassing the whole of creation. At that moment it is/was the absolute focal point. 

After this, Pegana is in every way the center of the universe. It is Dunsany's Heaven-allegory, employing occasional lofty 'downward-gazing upon creation', and the use of mists, implying popular depiction of ethereal planes.
There are vales, and mountains whereon the Gods sit, with MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI resting in the highest place of Pegana above Them.
There is a highway between the worlds, on which light travels, and this might be the same as the river of Silence on which Yoharneth-Lahai travels when he brings his dreams to Man.
At the ending of the universe lies the rim, which is a mass of rocks which the Gods did not use in their creating, and beyond the rim lies only the Silence, and the old, dead days.


MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI

Is the First of the Gods, and might be interpreted as being the fabric of existence itself. Forever dormant, dreaming, until the end, when his awakening will herald the end of all the gods... Unless (p556):

For none shall know of MANA who hath rested for so long, whether he be a harsh or a merciful god. it may be that he shall have mercy, and that these things shall be.

Skarl the Drummer

The first one who is talked about is Skarl the Drummer, who seems to stand apart from the Gods.

Skarl the Drummer drums MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI asleep, and an interesting metafictional/physical concept is introduced which implies that it could be that, indeed, all that existence is, is the dreaming of MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI given form by the drumming of Skarl the drummer.

Should Skarl the Drummer ever cease his drumming, MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI will waken and, in his laughter will end the Gods, which indeed, makes them but dreams in a sense, regardless of their actuality during the dreaming of MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI, to go away into oblivion upon the awakening of that dreamer.

See also the Yoharneth-Lahai quote p549:

Whether the dreams and the fancies of Yoharenth-Lahai be false and the Thing that are done in the the Day be real, or the Things that are done in the Day be false and the dreams and the fancies of Yoharneth-Lahai be true, none knoweth saving only MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI, who hath not spoken.

Dunsany explicitly connects Yoharneth-Lahai with MANA-YOOD-SAHAI and furthermore, emphasizes the last part of the sentence.


Time and Sish 

"Before Sish is Kib, and behind him goeth Mung."

Before Entropy there must be life, and following upon entropy's heels there must be death.

Also, Time is the hound of Sish, because time is inextricably linked to the process of entropy.
Time, as hound, will serve for as long as there are gods, but when even the gods go away or vanish, then even entropy will hold no longer sway over time. If there's nothing to break down there can be no entropy. This is why Death and Time will kill each other in mutual extinction. The ending excludes the process. Nothing will decay, will break down, because there will be nothing to break down. Time will be void and nonexistent, as will be death. Unless we're thinking about death as a different concept. But we're not.


Zodrak

And there, according to Imbaun the prophet, the most reliable of all prophets, if such can be reliable in any way at all, is yet another god, a god who was once a man, and who, thinking to do good, brought love, wealth and wisdom into the worlds.
His name is Zodrak, and he brought, while bringing these, unhappiness into the worlds.
But look upon him gently, because before He was a god He was a man and a sheperd, and he could not have known.


Dorozhand

Dorozhand is actually the divine name of Fate itself. The same Fate who in my interpretation (not by personal preference) is the one who won the game before the Beginning itself. All the rest of the Gods fear something about Dorozhand and it is said that both the destinies of men and those of Gods are under his purview.

It is stated verbatim that it is Dorozhand's goal, for the completion of which, the rest of creation is in play (p555):

The reason and purpose of the Worlds is that there should be Life upon the Worlds, and life is the instrument of Dorozhand wherewith he would achieve his end.

This goal is unknown. But is said that when it will be achieved or when it will be found, that then MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI will be wakened by Kib, the god of life. And either THE END of all will be, or... (see MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI above).

OR, by pretty much the same reasoning; Dorozhand is Chance, which would explain why Hoodrazai, previously known as The Mirthful God, has become the silent and aloof God, since hearing the revelatory dream whispers of MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI, who after all, created the Gods by order of either Fate or Chance, He is burdened by the knowledge that life is utterly without meaning and that "The Game" will be everlasting, in pointless, unceasing eternity (for Dorozhand has no true goal...) and there will in fact be no END.
Or Hoodrazai knows that all will return endlessly, again and again, endlessly recurring, exactly as before.

Either way, Hoodrazai is symbolic for those of us who are crippled by existential depression.

THE END

There isn't actually any one clear way that events will happen at THE END. I've compiled here what I found. And apart from the possibilities already written above, in the Dorozhand section, the most un-self-contradictory way this might happen is:

The mythology continued:

When Dorozhand achieves his end and when also Trogool will come to his final page, then Kib will touch reverently the hand of MANA YOOD-SUSHAI, and Skarl will stop drumming and the dream of Gods will end. 

When 3 moons, not waxing or waning, will stand towards the north above the star of the abiding and when the seeking comet will stand still, then finally MANA YOOD SUSHAI will arise and slyly speak and then laugh witheringly at the Gods and they will then cease playing with spheres and beasts and man, and then the Gods will put those matters behind them and leave.
Or they will lie about their creating and then MANA YOOD SUSHAI will wave them away, like someone waving away an irksome matter.
Thunder will roar horribly among the worlds, and Mosahn the bird of doom will fly from Pegana's innermost vale and proclaim in a trumpet-voice that it is THE END. The hound Time will die when there is nothing to devour, or he will turn on his masters the Gods and Mung, the God of Death, will fight him and, killing him, will die also.
And then the Gods will have left and will have sailed away on Imrana, the river of Silence, in galleons of gold to a place far from Pegana, to where it is not known, and then they will be no more. Imrana will overflow its banks and Silence will fill creation.

There will be no worlds, nor will there be Gods. Skarl's work will be done and he will walk into the void so that at the end there will only be MANA YOOD SUSHAI because the Gods and all their works will have gone, and even Skarl the Drummer will be gone. MANA YOOD SUSHAI shall be alone.

But it may be that MANA YOOD SUSHAI will allow the old dead days to return from beyond the rim, for it is not known whether he is a harsh or a merciful God, and it is in this case  that the Gods will play their games once again. This will be the Eternal Return.

No Rest for the Wicked

'Thy life is long, Eternity is short.

So short that, shouldst thou die and Eternity should pass, and after the passing of Eternity thou shouldst live again, thou wouldst say: "I closed mine eyes but for an instant."

There is an eternity behind thee as well as one before. Hast thou bewailed the aeons that passed without thee, who art so much afraid of the Aeons that shall pass.'

The eternal return writ small.

Dunsany's Ode to Death

Ah, now for the hour of the mourning of many, and the pleasant garlands of flowers and the tears, and the moist, dark earth. Ah, for repose down underneath the grass, where the firm feet of the trees grip hold upon the world, where never shall come the wind that now blows through my bones, and the rain shall come warm and trickling, not driven by storm, where is the easeful falling asunder of bone from bone in the dark.

The Gods of Pegana, Yun-ilara

Together with mark Twain's 'Death is a valuable Gift' quote, from his Letters from the Earth, this is one of the most moving yearning for death poems/quotes I've ever read.
It is spoken by Yun-Ilara, the one who thought himself clever when he challenged Mung, the God of Death. Yun-Ilara now is nothing but a heap of bones, lying around the ruined base of a tower that he once built, and he is still undying, and from his bones still goes up a shrill voice, crying out for mercy.

Fantasy Masterworks: Time and the Gods, Lord Dunsany

Fantasy masterwork nr 2; Time and the Gods collects 112 short stories in 6 short story collections. Written by Lord John Edward Moreton Drax Plunkett Dunsany, these collections quite rightly made the earliest cut of the Fantasy Masterworks, back when they were still being published under the initial Millennium imprint.

There's no reason to talk about this one too much (*manic laughter*) as anyone who's ever read Dunsany knows; he belongs to the greats, his work having had enormous influence on the genre as a whole and still being very readable now, over a hundred years later.

Style

Dunsany is another one of those few writers whose style and themes effortlessly evokes a gloriously mythic quality.

Many influences contributed to the creation of this style, but one of particular interest to me, and something which I had already noticed in his work before learning of it, was how much of an influence reading the King James Bible had on him. I've talked before how this style; the collage of epic pedantry present in the Bible, is one that has resonated with me most whenever an author employs it.

This ornate style doesn't stay the same throughout the book though, and in fact Dunsany changed his approach to whatever he was working on whenever he felt that he had exhausted the possibilities of a style or medium. And this is already very noticeable in the 6 short story collections in this Masterwork.


The Fantasy Masterwork

Dunsany's 6 short story collections are undisputed classics, both for their influence in the fantasy genre, and purely for their own dreamy lyricism.
But, it must be said, because of the aforementioned shifts in style, Time and The Gods (,the Gollancz Fantasy masterwork edition of) as a whole is a bit of an uneven work and could have done with a clearer divide in which works fitted in which universe. To wit: I've named them; the Books of Wonder, the Pegana Universe, and the Tales of Faery.

The first book in this collection; Time and the Gods, together with its last; The Gods of Pegana, form Dunsany's Pegana universe, a place of Gods, petty or not, and the men that worship them, willingly or not. These tales are clearly the most serious and are where Dunsany's the most in love with his world-building. Parabel and metaphor form an intriguing and deep narrative and occasionally serve to drive home a barb or two against organized religion.
Although it is the novel's last collection, The Gods of Pegana is more of a story cycle collecting 30 tales over the course of 50 pages. As their individual story threads tend to run one into the other, they are rather more inter-linked than the rest of the short story collections in this book and should be considered as one extended story. These should preferably also be read before beginning the Time and the Gods read.

Then you have the stories of The Sword of Welleran and A Dreamer's Tales, which are a collection of serious and occasionally quite beautiful Faery tales. And although there is on occasion made mention of several gods, named or not, and the ubiquitous entity 'Time', I never felt that these were the same characters as those from the realm of Pegana. But then it is my opinion that Dunsany was a bit careless about his continuity overall: Time switching from the Hound of the Gods, to their Swarthy servant with sword dripping red, to being the father of the gods in the House of the Sphinx (Book of Wonder).

And for the remainder you have The Book of Wonder and the Last Book of Wonder which are for the most part most clearly indicative of one of those shifts in Dunsany's style and his views on his work. Unlike both the Pegana stories and the Faery tales, these are more self-deprecating, more aware of themselves, and occasionally even outright mock the serious narratives of the previous collections.


Time and the Gods
Time and the Gods, the second collection, here put first (foolishly), was published in 1906, and builds on the mythology in the Gods of Pegana short story collection, which was released the year before.
Though the stories here proceed from the same basis, of Gods and the men who worship them, there's less tolerance of what was once so reverently created, those stories and themes once paid such dear homage to. There's a wistfulness here, a slight mockery that wasn't present yet in the Pegana tales. An attitude of small-mindedness where before was only awe and a sense of being separate from these beings and this mythology so far beyond ourselves.
The vignette-style of the Gods of Pegana has also vanished almost completely, with the longest story of the collection; The Journey of the King, comfortably taking up over 30 pages.


The Sword of Welleran (1908)
Contains among others, the (arguably) first ever sword and sorcery story; the Fortress Unvanquishable, save for Sacnoth. If that wasn't enough, also present is titular The Sword of Welleran, which, with its portrayal of an 'almost' sentient sword, delivering victory through bloody and horrific slaughter, likely influenced the creation of Sword and Sorcery's most famous anti-hero: Elric of Melniboné. It's also notable for shifting the focus from the divinely inspired narratives to one of a more human frame.


A Dreamer's Tales
In A Dreamer's Tales, published in 1910, we find many a memorable and influential tale. For instance; Idle Days on the Yann which directly inspired Lovecraft to write his Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.
It also has the sad but triumphant melancholy of one the best Dunsany short stories, and my absolute personal favourite; Blagdaross, which is an anthropomorphic tale of a bunch of discarded objects left in a waste disposal park which regale one another each with a tale of how they ended up there. From an old wine cork, to a piece of rope, to the wooden rocking horse Blagdaross itself, the short recountings start out ordinary and whimsical but soon touch on profound themes of human darkness and loss. (Fun in-universe note: the House-God of Broken things is called Jabim. I enjoy lumping this particular tale in with the Pegana universe.)
The Unhappy Body reads like the lament of a creative soul, wishing he had more time in which to release his creativity.


The Book of Wonder
For the Book of Wonder Dunsany changed his work methods, and experimented a bit with his storytelling.
During the original short story publications Dunsany contracted Sidney Sime, a fantastical artist using monochromatic colours and frequently employing satire, to illustrate every collection, but of these it is the Book of Wonder that is the odd one out. Published in 1912, where before the art was created to suit the story, here Dunsany wrote stories to suit the art. Apparently Sime had complained that his editors did not offer him suitable subjects to work his art around, so Dunsany, in the hopes of adding some extra mystique to both his writing and Sime's art, wrote his tales inspired by them. Which led to some pleasingly memorable tales, such as The House of the Sphinx, a mystifying tale which offers up the possibility of reading the story in several ways; as dream, analogy, parable or just as a straight-up fantasy.
But is also leads to the side-effect that these 14 tales are even more than usual, very unrestrained in their imagination; a detrimental effect, as if Dunsany cobbled together a short tale by flinging anything together that he could come up with, leaving them more inconsequential, and unmemorable than previous tales.
A great many of the stories present in this one and in the following Book of Wonder are exercises in infinitely delayed gratification, with their plot and resolution remaining unresolved as Dunsany almost coyly drops back the curtain that he previously had only barely lifted.
There's a lax attitude to his own work here, as if unconvinced of previously held convictions of merit on his own stories.


The Last Book of Wonder
From The (first) Book of Wonder to the Last Book of Wonder (initially published as Tales of Wonder), where Dunsany clearly was more energized as he found his original idea, of working from Siney Sime's artwork, paying off. The idealism returns, the love of the telling, the romance.

This is most readily apparent in A Story of Land and Sea, which is far and away Last's longest tale, tying back to the (first) Book of Wonder's The Loot of Loma. In the Last Book of Wonder, originally published as Tales of Wonder in 1916, Dunsany revisits many of the characters and settings he visited for his previous Wonder outing, most notably, Captain Shard and his merry crew of pirates from The Loot of Bombasharna, get the lengthy prequel story: A Story of Land and Sea; set in the time before the crew's retirement on the floating island. It's a tale that unlike most other tales in the collection is more focused on historical adventure rather than outright fantasy.
Many of the tales in this collection end whimsically humorously: for instance; How Plash-Goo came to the land of None's Desire is a darkly ironic tale of a giant developing an irrational hatred for a dwarf, the title only given meaningful relevance at the very last sentence.
The Long Porter's tale, ends with self deprecating sentiment. A tactic Dunsany frequently employs in these, the latest written tales; Something to take the wonder out of the narrative, an unhappy denouement. However Thirteen at Table is one the few that doesn't take the wind out of its own sails and is instead a pleasant little ghost story.

The Gods of Pegana
Paid for publication in 1905 by Lord Dunsany himself, The Gods of Pegana is the book that's readily the most interesting as it flat-out gives you a whole mythology; The Pegana universe. Written and published in 1905, and despite being chronologically the first of the short story collections in this book, it is in this collection at the very back (it should not have been), probably because it's a bit of an unusual one, and any modern mainstream reader should be forgiven for exiting immediately upon being confronted with a narrative of this nature. It is in effect a linked series of character vignettes of various metaphors and parables. The longer the book goes on the more you can see Dunsany's narrative style shifting from vignettes to the longer form of his later short stories.

Upon its completion I found a few questions lingered, most interestingly; who is the victor in the game before the Beginning, Where lies Pegana, and what does it look like, and: when and what exactly will be THE END?

Lord Dunsany

SO.

I got stuck for a long while on the Fantasy Masterwork write-up for Time and the Gods, and for the longest time I was clueless as to why. I kept writing and writing, and after a while I just stopped because it wasn't going anywhere I wanted. Then I stopped writing altogether because of a whole bunch of personal reasons, and most of those I've even talked about here on the blog.

A few days ago, maybe just due to the medication I was ready to again delve into it, but even then I ended up butting my head against a wall until I decided to split up the parts of the text to see what the problem was. Which is a very tried and true tactic for the longer posts and which was long overdue for this one.

I then realized immediately that I had let myself go a bit on the 'Dunsany, the man' part of the write-up and that I just didn't want to delete it, even though I should've.
So, here, for your delectation, a mildly humorous and an occasionally (unwarranted) scathing look at several aspects of Dunsany's life.
It's very incomplete (and I might come back and edit) but I bet I've got some information in here that you won't even find on Wikipedia.

Dunsany: The man

Born in 1878 in London to nobility, with a silver spoon in his hand and with the world delivered to him on an easy platter, John Moreton Drax Plunkett, the eighteenth baron himself might be forgiven for not having had to work a day in his life, or for never having been given over to backbreaking labour in order to make ends meet, and to verily be ground out under the daily toil and struggle of putting food on the table, as that would inevitably have crushed the talent and zest of a true creator, a true original, and the accomplishments of a giant in the field might have been less than those of the smallest field-mouse. I mean, God forbid Lord Dunsany were to have been born burdened by the iron ball and chain of 'working-for-a-living', right?

Far be it from me to throw shade at one of the English language's premier artists but I do generally find that the cumulative wallop of soldier, globetrotter, big-game hunter, sportsman, literary giant, and playwright has always sounded far less bombastic and admirable when you find that these people have actually been born into wealth, status and fame and have had their life's roads, and all those murky avenues and dead-end alleys ahead of them, well cleared of the debris that clogs the routes of so many of us. Not a pothole in sight, not a shred of detritus to be blown by errant winds into the spokes of benign forward momentum.

But, credit where it is due, even given the most clear and perfect road to travel, not a lot of us would be able to match the many varied achievements of this noble Englander scion.
During his life he was to become one of the most recognizable and famous writers in the English speaking world.

Before he ever published his first story or play though, the then not-yet-Lord Edward Dunsany traversed the many pitfalls of childhood with English reserve. He went to school at Cheam and college at Eton, while shuttling between the supervision of his father in Castle Dunsany, and his mother in Dunstall priory, as they mostly lived seperate lives.

By 21 he graduated from military school in Sandhurst.
That same year he also inherited the title of Lord Dunsany after the death of his father, whereafter he was promptly commissioned in the Coldstream Guards at Gibraltar. It seemed to have been a leisurely posting as he was able to take long rides through the Spanish countryside.
After this though he was active in the Second Boer war in Africa in 1900, where he fought in the battles of Graspan and Modder river, but there are scarce mentions of his time here.

Cue comments of British imperialism laid low, and a past preferably forgotten, or at best looked at through the selective rose-coloured lens of fleeting wealth and glory. Though any glory that's held onto after the use of concentration camps, under whatever pretext, has shaded from rose-coloured into a distinctly darker shade of red. Concentration camps? Yes. Look it up.

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Mind you, as a Belgian, my native association with Leopold the second, should prompt me to leave some things well enough alone, and to just shut my waffle-hole.

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Mind you, the second; the current Brexit-situation? Where we leave the past alone around here, mindful of our hidden misdeeds, there's a current imperialist sentiment rising in Great Britain. Where the British government is desperately shoving out piece-meal patriotism in a bid to remind the general populace of a so-called 'better' time before their inclusion into the European Union, which was seen as a last-ditch effort to halt the UK's economic situation, which had been declining since World War 2, which though it was not the largest catalyst for the Empire's decline, serves to mark the clear beginning of the end for the British Empire, when Britain's major colonies of the time took the opportunity to rid themselves of the 'British yoke'. 

Before WW2 Britain was still riding high, which is why there's so much of this Pre-World War 2 and World War 2 war-movie veneration going on in the British media.

By 1901 Dunsany had retired from his African posting and had returned to Dunsany castle.
3 years later he married his wife, Beatrice Villiers, who went on to support him in all his interests, and who had a large role in his writing, frequently typing out whatever he dictated, amanuensis-style.

When he wrote himself, he wrote fast, never rewrote and never corrected and in 1903 he finally began to write the stories that made him a master of the fantastique. Though he would go on to write an enormous amount of fiction, he actually said himself that writing took up less than 10 percent of his adult life, and that he mostly occupied himself with sport and soldiering.

Most notable of the latter, are ever the heroic exploits of the true Patriot, defending his country and his fellow man: In 1916 Dunsany volunteered to defend his native soil, and was promptly shot in the head while driving from Dunsany Castle to Dublin when he and a fellow officer ran into an IRA-manned street barricade. Though the car itself ended up totally riddled, Dunsany and his companion managed to get clear without any damage. However, a ricochet hit Dunsany as he dodged for cover, and the bullet lodged itself in his nasal sinuses. He was taken prisoner and apologized to profusely before being rushed to a doctor. He was then put in a hospital and tenderly cared for until the IRA was pushed back.

Later in the war he spent time on the front, though he was refused forward positioning, and relegated to the terrifying tediousness of trench warfare, where he was valuable as both a trainer and, by merit of his burgeoning literary credits, for the creation of propaganda material.

Dunsany was a noted chess player and once played 7-year-reigning world champion raul Capablanca to a halt, and in 1924 won the championship of Ireland. He also invented an asymmetric version of chess where one does not use the so-called 'fairy' pieces, which is more than slightly ironic.

In World War 2 Dunsany joined the home guard, in which he witnessed the Battle of Brittain, much of which took place right over his head, and which he commemorated with a poem.

One thing I know which Milton never knew:

When Satan fell, hurled headlong to the shade

Of Hell eternal out of Heaven's blue,

I know the screaming wail his pinions made.

After the war Dunsany traveled extensively, just like he did his whole life, but now especially to North America where he found himself more famous than in his home country.

Alas, even the best and most influential of lives come to an end and in 1957 Lord Dunsany died from appendicitis, (or quietly in a nursing home if L. Sprague de Camp is to be believed. Whatever the source, generally it is agreed upon that) he became 79 years old.

Image out of Providence, because of course.

-----

During his long life, Dunsany wrote over a 100 works consisting of poetry, short stories, novels, plays, essays and even an autobiography or two. During his lifetime his plays were more popular than his writings were. He was involved in radio, television, cinema and theatre.

These achievements never would have come about if he hadn't, himself, payed for the publication of his first short story collection; The Gods of Pegana, in 1905. After this, he never had to pay for the publication of anything else he ever wrote.

Born with a silver spoon in his hand, but damn it all if he didn't earn the rest of the silverware as well.

Early February Update

Hi. It's been a whole week, I know. I'm honestly not sure where the time went, as I have certainly not been doing anything productive. In fact looking back, it doesn't look like I've done much of anything.

Weaveworld's spine was already cracked when I bought in the Grim Bookshop.
Which I did a post on Here. Pretty good shop.

Also, reading and shelf copy of Time and the Gods, 

in case you're wondering why there are two of 'em. Got the older one in a lot sale online.

Incidentally, this one has instead of the customary G, the M from when the Fantasy Masterworks were still under the Millenium imprint. 

I have three of those, in case you're interested. I submit the picture here because I read something, somewhere, sometime, where someone wondered if there were any of these in actual existence, and there were pretty firm negatory responses to that question.

But eh. Yes. Yes, there are.

I've been reading Weaveworld on and off, but that's stalling, partially due to a lack of immersion. I'm actively letting it slide right now (though it will be done by the end of the week) because the read isn't going that great. I'm not sure why it hasn't been clicking, and it could be a response to an excess of imagination on Barker's part.
What, I hear you say?
Yes, I respond: Barker packs the novel with so much fantastical imagery it can be very hard to keep up with what's on display. There are rules, naturally, as to how this all works and fits together, but nothing settles for long enough to get comfortable. There also might not be enough build-up to do the story, setting, characters and imagery justice. That OR, I'm just extremely worn-out.
And I'm pretty sure it's actually this. I feel like I've been crashing for some time. Don't want to go too much into that right now. It's the mental stability thing and how it's gotten very wobbly. It's not depression though. It's just something that leaves me with an inability to deal with much right now. So to deal with that I'm easing off the throttle. It's resulted in me diminishing my working hours in order to try and find a balance somewhere.
For now, it's not doing much for me, but hey... here's a post right now, so it must be doing something, right?

The Time and the Gods Fantasy Masterwork short story collection is nearing its end, with practically only the Gods of Pegana being left. So far it's been a mixed bag, I have the feeling that both Books of Wonder have been mostly hit and miss. The best stories are in the earlier books in any case. And since Pegana was actually the earliest published short story in this collection I'm looking forward to this one, but for now I've still got about 5 of the Last book of Wonder short stories to go.

In the wake of the Next Testament post, I'm also continuing my Paradise Lost exploration, which got away from me after I blogged about book 2 last year. I'll be making a concerted effort to dedicate time to that this year, and so far it's been going good (I think). I've started reading and putting together my thoughts on book 3, which seems to contain the bulk of Milton's 'justifying the ways of God to men', and it's pretty much what I expected.
Putting together the reasoning here I'm very much reminded of the third Road of Faith post, where I tackled my expectations and conjectures on the finale to the Aspect Emperor cycle. It's actually quite surprising to see how close those are starting to align.
The 'Justifying' would always be the thing that I would be taking my time for, as it's something that I wanted to get absolutely right, but it's surprising to find that most of what I'm reading seems to correspond so closely with my once-held beliefs. But, as Milton was a protestant this maybe shouldn't have been so unexpected.

In gaming news, I finished Watch Dogs 2, which was stupid, silly, cringe-inducing and very good at the same time.

Here's a little outtake of about 70 percent into the game where the main characters just go somewhere and bond, have a time-out. Half the time the game is just over-the-top silliness, with the gadgets, guns and techno-conspiracy, but here, in the quiet, you get to notice just how good the dialogue can be and how cleverly and how, almost insidiously, Ubisoft starts to make you care about this thing they've built. On top of that, as you can hear, the music is quite pleasant, the Dedsec playlist especially.

I've also, on a whim, bought the complete edition for The Surge, and that's been pretty cool, albeit very confusing in its level layout. I've been pretty much playing only this today (and starting from today) and doing nothing else, because I knew I wasn't going to get anything done that I wanted to do. It's a very moody and brutal souls-like with a semi-open sci-fi world, which was what I was looking for. I've been having a hankering for sci-fi of late. Very unusual.

Here's a slice of gameplay, nothing much special and certainly no bosses (as the only one I killed was quite a tough bastard, and as a result that fight ended up not looking pretty... at all), but there's some cool moments nonetheless. No good ending though, as there's more of a focus on gameplay than storytelling here, the darkness and the occasional bloodcurdling scream do provide for a very good atmosphere though.

On my home trainer I've just passed the season 7 opening of the Walking Dead. You know, the one where Negan introduces himself properly.
I must say, for some reason, it didn't hit me that hard.And it really should have. I've known that this scene was coming since before I even watched episode 1 way back when but still, it should have done a little bit more to me. It's a shocking and painful episode, but it just didn't get me as much as I expected. I'll just ascribe it to the same thing that's negatively impacting my Weaveworld read. A worrying trend. I really need to bring myself back on a stable plane.

And to end on a pleasant note in background curiosities, while reading said novel, the world of the Weave, I perused some interviews with Clive Barker and it struck me how much he resembles Toby Stephens' depiction of captain Flint in Black Sails.

It goes beyond the physiognomy and the earrings. These guys have a lot in common.

Of course, Mister Barker is a little older now but it's still a funny little coincidence.

Also. To close it out: I met a friendly horse this week.

Well.

I say friendly.

It's not as if those apples didn't have anything to do with it.