Rereading Edison

REFLECTIONS Robert Silverberg REREADING EDDISON “The greatest high fantasy of them all,” and memoranda; but somehow, in his is what I called it when I was asked for a free time, he was able to turn his remark- comment to be used on a British reprint able mind to vast and soaring fantasies edition in 2000, and—though I antici- set in worlds far removed from the drea- pate grumblings from the partisans of ry precincts of bureaucracy. Messrs. J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis The first of them, which apparently and, perhaps, George R.R. Martin—I took him five years to finish, was The still feel that way, after my latest reread- Worm Ouroboros, published in London ing of it. I’m talking about E.R. Eddison’s in 1922 and in the United States four The Worm Ouroboros, that strange, pro- years later. (The “worm” of the title is no found, and inimitable novel of magic and worm at all, but the gigantic mythic ser- adventure on an imaginary world that pent, first encountered in ancient Egypt- its author preferred to call Mercury. ian legend, that encircles the world with It’s a book that I’ve been reading, on its tail in its mouth, and that serpent and off, since 1952, when I was a fresh- plays no part in the novel at all. The title man at Columbia. I had plenty of other is strictly metaphorical, referring to the things to read that freshman year— circular structure of the plot, which dou- Homer, Sophocles, Dante, and that was bles back on itself like the Ouroboros for just one of my many courses—but de- serpent so that the last sentence of the spite the rigors of college life I was at the book returns the story to its starting same time an avid reader of SF and fan- point.) tasy, and The Worm Ouroboros, of which The Worm Ouroboros had only modest I had heard a great deal, was deemed a commercial success, but those few who legendary classic of its genre by those in a read it loved it greatly, which accounts for position to know. The book was impossi- the great repute that the book had bly, fabulously rare, of course, but when a achieved by the time of its 1952 American new edition of it appeared I hastily reissue. Eddison followed it in 1926 with scraped up five dollars for it, I know not Styrbiorn the Strong, a novel written in how, that amount being the equivalent of imitation of the Icelandic sagas—like about seventy-five dollars in today’s Tolkien and Lewis he was fascinated by money, and read it in one long gasping “the Northern thing,” the saga literature burst of astonishment and enthusiasm. of medieval Europe—and then, in 1935, There is, I still think, nothing like it in with Mistress of Mistresses, a fantasy that all of literature: it is not only a fantasy is tangentially linked to The Worm but is epic but an epic fantasy, a book of gigan- not at all like it in tone. He retired from tic scale and overwhelming power. the civil service in 1937 to devote himself to his next novel, A Fish Dinner in All I know about Eric Rucker Eddison Memison (a sequel to Mistress), and was is that he was born in Yorkshire in 1882, still at work on the third book in that se- entered the British civil service after his quence, The Mezentian Gate, when he schooling, and eventually ascended to the died in 1945. (It was published posthu- post of deputy comptroller-general of the mously, incomplete as it was, in 1958.) Department of Overseas Trade. We can Those three books, the Zimiamvian trilo- imagine him reporting to his office five gy, as they are known, are fine and fasci- days a week and dutifully filing reports nating works, subtle and sophisticated, 6 Asimov’s but too rarefied in tone and concept to his book is taking place there. (It does not reach any but the smallest of reader- take place on Earth, either. It takes place ships. The Worm stands apart from in a self-contained world of Eddison’s them: also not an easily accessible novel, imagination, original and unique, as a but one, which once the reader has en- pure work of fantasy should.) Nor are tered it, grips one with inexorable force. the warring nations of that world—the Witches, the Demons, the Ghouls, the It starts quietly, and, I have always Goblins—in any way the witches and thought, with a miscalculation of narra- demons of our own mythology. In The tive design: Worm they are simply the names of war- There was a man named Less- ring nations, quite human in nature. ingham dwelt in an old low house An ambassador from Witchland arrives in Wastdale, set in a gray old gar- at the court of Demonland, demanding den where yew-trees flourished that the Demons recognize King Gorice that had seen Vikings in Copeland XI as their master.The Demon lords reply in their seedling time. Lily and rose that they will submit only if the king can and larkspur bloomed in their bor- best Lord Goldry Bluszco in wrestling. ders, and begonias with blossoms The match is held; Goldry Bluszco, we are big as saucers, red and white and told, “heaved the King over his head, pink and lemon-colour. hurling him as one hurleth a ponderous And so on for quite a bit of pleasant bu- spear, head-foremost to the earth. And colic descriptive prose. Lessingham and the King smote the ground with his head, his lady enjoy a summer evening togeth- and the bones of his head and his spine er; she reads to him from The Saga of were driven together and smashed, and Burnt Njal, one of the Icelandic master- blood flowed from his ears and nose.” The pieces; bedtime comes, and they disagree Witches gather up the corpse of the king amiably about which of the bedrooms of and withdraw; their new king, Gorice XII, their house to sleep in, so that ultimately employs his court sorcerer to seize Goldry Lessingham goes off alone to a room Bluszco by magical means and carry him called the Lotus Room, whose occupants off to a mountain prison—the war is on, sometimes are subject to strange dreams. and away we go. During the night he is awakened by a bird that summons him to the planet As the passage I have just quoted Mercury, promising to show him “the should indicate, The Worm’s style is ma- forests, plains, and ancient mountains, jestic and archaic, a style concocted out cities and palaces of this world.” Once of the Norse Eddas and the Elizabethan there, she tells him that they are in a dramatists and the rhythms of the sev- land called Demonland, and points out enteenth-century essayist Sir Thomas some of its great lords and captains. Very Browne, a tour de force of singing, soar- swiftly we are among them—three puis- ing prose that is sustained from the first sant brothers, the Lords Juss, Spitfire, page to the last. To appreciate it, of Goldry Bluszco, and their cousin Bran- course, one needs a tolerance for ar- doch Daha—and Lessingham disap- chaisms (“She said in his ear softly,‘I see pears, never to return again in the book. that thou art too masterful. I see thou The entire prologue is elegantly handled, art one who will be denied nothing, in drawing us gently into Lessingham’s whatsoever thine heart is set. Come.”) dream of far-off Mercury, but the book and for great swaths of vivid description. could have begun just as effectively if it (“Cloud and mist abode ever in the had plunged us down at once among Juss south, and only the foothills showed of and Spitfire and their companions. the great ranges beyond Bhavinan. But Mercury, of course, has no forests and on the evening of the sixth day before plains, and Eddison quickly forgets that Yule, it being the nineteenth of Decem- Reflections: Rereading Eddison 7 February 2011 ber when Betelgeuze stands at midnight the retort, and the King gathered them on the meridian, a wind blew out of the in a flask. The King muttered an in- north-west with changing fits of sleet cantation, and the powder moved and and sunshine. Day was fading as they heaved, and was like a crawling mass of stood above the cliff. All the forest land cheesemites in an overripe cheese.”) And was blue with shades of approaching so on until the earth quakes and whirl- night: the river was dull silver: the wood- winds rage with the force of their spells. ed heights afar mingled their outlines (The power of the scene is matched in with the towers of turbulent blue vapour Chapter 32, “The Latter End of All the that hurtled in ceaseless passage Lords of Witchland,” which culminates in through the upper air . .”) I could quote a cataclysm of Shakespearean force. But for pages and pages. (“The rift ran wider, then, too, there is the conquest of the un- eastward and westward, opening on climbable flame-encircled mountain Zora more peaks and sunset-kindled snows. Rach, and the crossing of the torrential And a rainbow leaning to the south was Bhavinan River on the back of a friendly like a sword of glory across the vision.”) I crocodile, and Lord Juss’s flight aboard could quote all 440 pages, if only I had the hippogriff, and much, much more.) the space.

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