the description of that act is not literature;
but if your hypothetical Mrs. Brown opens the same purse at the same time
and takes out a baby crocodile, that is literature.
To this remark, Miss Michels had added the gloss:
“Romantic. Literature consists of having Mrs. Brown take out the handkerchief
in such a way as to make the reader become fascinated
by the sheer thought of that particular handkerchief.
Suppose it smells of her husband’s blood, with her husband dead?
Suppose it is the handkerchief of her poor sister, Amelia,
who married a Negro millionaire, Jamaica, 1893...?
—Felix C. Forrest, Ria
While the focus of this investigation is not strictly literary, any approach to a writer like Cordwainer Smith requires pausing, if only for a moment, to examine his style. When dealing with a born storyteller, expressive resources carry special weight.
In line with C.S. Pierce’s classic outline, which Todorov applied to fantastic literature1, we can approach the work from a triple perspective: verbal, syntactical and semantic.
The semantic aspect was touched on in the previous chapter. In regard to the verbal and syntactic elements, they are for our secondary purposes. This would not be the case if we were dealing with a writer such as Lovecraft, whose main strengths are description and metaphor. Umberto Eco focused precisely on these two aspects in his scrupulous demolition of Bradbury’s style, which he depicted as an example of kitsch2.
We will, however, pause to examine some of the genological, lexical and semantic elements of the style of Cordwainer Smith.
Story structure
The structure of a Cordwainer Smith story is quite different from the classic science fiction tale, which tends to focus on a technological-scientific problem or the consequences of an unprecedented event. At the same time, it does not conform to the model of the conventional fantastic tale, either.
The adventure itself is so secondary that the author grants himself the luxury of advancing it in the opening lines. Norstrilia begins with an outline of the events that are going to be narrated: “See, that’s the story. Now you don’t have to read it. Except for the details. They follow.” The second part of the novel also began with a brief synopsis of events, though it was eliminated in the final version. The author pretended this was the plot to a supposed Wagnerian opera.
In this way he frightens off the escapist reader, one that expects a thriller that will hold his attention until the very end. A story by Cordwainer Smith is attractive, however, because it alludes to situations already known to someone familiar with his work, arousing the reader’s complicity. These allusions also seduce readers encountering them for the first time.
This circumstance recalls the structure of the classical epic and tragedy, the central plot line of which everyone knew. Listeners participated along with the poet in the ritual of recreating the story, as also happens with traditional tales that bring repeated pleasure when told by a gifted raconteur.
Cordwainer Smith made it seem as if he relied on a fictitious tradition in order to accentuate his affinity with sagas, chanson de geste and Eastern tales.
He often said he wanted to recover pre-Cervantes narrative, the greatest expression of which was the epic poem. To overcome the limitations of Aristotelian structure (beginning, crisis, resolution) that Cervantes had carried over into the novel, he firmly resisted strict chronology and progressive linear order.3
Pre-Cervantes narrative pretended to be anonymous so that the work would appear to be a collective recreation of actual events. It was the opposite of the modern tendency, which normally highlights the personality of the writer.
In order to determine the genre to which Cordwainer Smith belongs, we will need to turn to Chinese novels, specifically those of late antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Cordwainer Smith did not invent an imaginary source for all of his stories, such as the Necronomicon by Lovecraft or the Red Book of Westmarch by Tolkein. He alludes to an apparent chronology (which he never makes known), stringing the stories together on the basis of it.
Each episode mentions some background information while also referring to other tales, including ones that were not written. In ballads and epics, each ballad or poem referred to the saga as a whole, designed around a heroic gesture. But the number of ballads could be as many as the poet’s talent permitted. This is how the story of the Palace of the Governor of the Night in Norstrilia and the legend of John Joy Tree in “Three to a Given Star” are both introduced.
At times, Smith relies on distance. Instead of relating a crucial event, he moves in circles, talking about engravings that depict it, ballads that sing of it, and the paintings it has inspired.4 Often he will stop the action in order to describe the sources that he claims to rely on. He uses this device to construct one of his best stories, “The Dead Lady of Clown Town”. Here the central figure is not approached directly but through testimonies, so that the reader identifies with D’joan without any diminution of her hieratic character. The achieved effect is, as Sandra Meisel aptly puts it, similar to a copy of a Cranach engraving done by Picasso.5
All of this subverts the suspense. In “genre” literature (detective, horror, science fiction), suspense helps facilitate an escape that is achieved more subtly here. There are no definitive endings, however, and happy endings are not in abundance. Any totalization in which characters seem to have found their destiny is diminished in light of its consequences.
Discouraging re-reading was typical of genre literature, including science fiction. Once we knew who the killer was, it was impossible to read a whodunit novel again: even a “meta-reading” was practically out of the question. Reviewing the text, the reader could not experience the emotion anew, nor could he identify the mechanism that provoked the thrill.6 For the reader of detective intrigues or scientific riddles, it was difficult to recover the initial enchantment once the charm of the ending had vanished.
The stories of Cordwainer Smith, however, are true literature in that they offer the possibility of constant and cyclical re-reading. They are an open text to which one can always return with a certain amount of innocence.
Words and contexts
One thing that clearly distinguishes Cordwainer Smith is his habit of manipulating the evocative power of the names he gives to people and places. Some draw us in because of the echoes they arouse; others attract us due to their sonic quality and extravagance.
Since the stories unfold in a remote future, the names are cosmopolitan. This is an intelligent solution if we recall writers that imagined men and women of the future as if they were their neighbors of today ―except with unpronounceable names utterly devoid of meaning.
Aside from English, Linebarger spoke Chinese, German, French and Spanish, and he could read Russian, Portuguese and Dutch. Being a polyglot allowed him to jump from one language to another, sometimes transliterating, other times translating, and more than anything playing with the meaning of names.
He was a master at creating believable pseudo-scientific expressions, such as “congohelium”, “cronoplast”, “jonasoidal” and “planoform”, which were as effective as Vonnegut’s famous
“chronosynclastic infundibulum”. He often adjoined them to words like “adiabatic”7 (taken legitimately from thermodynamics) to confuse the reader. “Jonasoidal”, for instance, sounds a lot like “sinusoidal” (a kind of wave), although most likely it alludes to the prophet Jonah. The “jonasoidal effect” creates a force field inside of which a house with a driveway and everything else can be transported, in the same way as Jonah travelled in the belly of a whale (Jonah 2: 1-11).
Linebarger was genuine collector of words. He was drawn to euphonic and whimsical names like Benjamin Bozart or Hipsy Di
psy. The word cranch, which appears in his first story, was taken from the sign of a closed store in Washington, though he never learned what it meant.
Some names were transparently ironic. A Lady of the Instrumentality, a tough and severe woman, is named Arabella Underwood: the name of one of the old brands of typewriters that Linebarger collected. The mother of Helen America, a militant feminist, is named Mona Muggerridge, an allusion to Myra Breckenridge, the androgynous character created by Gore Vidal. The engineer responsible for space launches is named Hagen von Grün: if we substitute Grün (green) with Braun (brown) we get Wernher Von Braun, the father of the V2 missile. The same applies to a character named Giordano Verdi, who has translated his name into English and calls himself Gordon Green.
The main character of “Drunkboat” (inspired by the poem by Arthur Rimbaud) is named Artyr Rambo. Henriada, the tempestuous planet, evokes the epic poem by Voltaire (1728), the hero of which, after facing down a squall, meets a soothsayer who prophesies his fate.
The planet Pontoppidan owes its name to the Swede Henrik Pontoppidan, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1917 and author of the novel The Promise Land. Being a world in which gems abound but organic matter is incredibly expensive, the paradox is evident. Whoever had read that novel would recognize the name of the capital as being as “appropriate” as the author claims. The city is named Anderson, like the protagonist in The Promise Land.
No less ironic is the fact that the capital of the Sixth German Reich is named Eisenhower, the same as the general that defeated the Third Reich. A post-Soviet Russian is named Herbert Hoover Timofeyev, an allusion to the food aid provided to Russia by the United States during the famines of the twenties. Nelson Angerhelm, for his part, owes his name to two admirals: the British Nelson and the Swede Ankerjelm.
Certain names feign being corruptions of ancient forms, such as Vomact (Vom Acht); paroskii (Po ruskii, “in Russian”); murkins (Americans) and doyches (Deutsche). In Norstrilia, Ancien Inglish (Ancient English) is still spoken and telepathic communication is called spiek & hier (speak and hear).
In other cases there are transliterations such as Norstrilia (North Australia) and Meeya Meefla, a loose phonetic reading of Miami, Fla (Miami, Florida).
Nor is there a shortage of puns. An underperson descended from bears is named Orson (“orso” means “bear” in Italian). C’mell’s father is named C’mackintosh, because the Mackintosh coat of arms featured two rampant cats. In addition there are “Charley-is-my-darling” (a Scottish song), Wait, Not-from-here, Grey-no-more, John Joy Tree and Teadrinker. “Calvin Dredd” is an ironic reference to Calvin and the Calvinist “dread” of pleasure. Lord Redlady is a wink at the Chinese wife of Lord Lindsay, a communist.
German is the source of an entire series of names. Suchesache is a “thing” (Sache) that “searches” (suchen). A spieltier is an animal (Tier) for playing (Spiel). Englok is a narrow (eng) door (loch). Schmeckst, the name of a gluttonous extraterrestrial, comes from schmecken, or “to lick one’s chops”. His comrades, the apicians, are descendants of Apicius, the Roman gastronomist, and hail from the planet Gustible (gust).
An-fang, the place where the epic struggle of the underpeople begins, means “beginning” (anfang) in German. As the name indicates, the Gebiet and Bezirk8 are a territory and a district, respectively. Finsternis means “darkness”. Other German-based names are Lady Ru (Ruh, stillness), Hansgeorg Wagner9, Nachtigall10, Raumsog11 Quel (Quelle, fountain) and Golden Laut12. Grosbeck13, on the other hand, could be from the French (gros bec, big mouth).
Dutch is also mined for names. The planet Linschoten XV bears the name of Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, the 16th century Dutch spy who stole Indian herbalist secrets from the Portuguese. The names of the planets Wereld Schemering14 (“the world of twilight”) and De Prinsens-macht15 (“the power of the prince”) are also Dutch.
The androgynous beings of Aracosia, a province of the kingdom of Persia, are called klopt (“adequate”) because they are a fair solution.
Spanish also contributes many names: Amazonas Triste16, Gulf of Esperanza, Hechizera (sic) de Gonfalon, Capitán Álvarez, Kalma (calm), Santuna and the drug santaclara. A dog-historian named D’igo17 exhumes a spanish bop, a kind of bolero with the chorus “ignoraba yo... hoy y mañana.”[1]
From Italian come the names Crudelta, Tedesco (German), Magno Taliano (the Great Italian) and possibly Celalta, known as “the other” (l’altra). Gonfalon was the royal standard of medieval Italian towns.
There are Greek names (Olympia, Hesperides, Daimoni) and Latin ones too, such as Viola Siderea, which is the “violet of the heavens”, for it revolves around a lilac sun. Shayol is the equivalent of the Arabic sheol, the biblical purgatory. B’dikkat comes from the Turkish word dikkat (caution). Sokta is “maybe” in Korean. Suzdal is a place in Russia and the native land of Alexander Nevski. Laird and Mmona mean “noble” in Scottish and Irish.
Some names produce a curious “Impressionist” effect. Just as the Impressionist painters used pure colors to manipulate light (blue and yellow to create the sensation of green), Cordwainer Smith combines names from different cultures to produce strange effects, creating hybrids of Spanish and Japanese (Dolores Oh), Japanese and Basque (Issan Olascoaga), and Saxon and Portuguese (Tostig Amaral).
Other names are more difficult to decipher. For example, there seems to be a relationship between Zickel Jone, a character in Ria and Carola, and the Jwindz Jo, the sect displaced by the Instrumentality, though the nature of the kinship is unclear.
Many seemingly whimsical names are nothing more than numbers. Under the Instrumentality people have been assigned numbers and are identified by the last digits of their code, as one would read in one of the old languages. Thus, “trece” is “13” in Spanish, “Terza” is “third” in Italian, “Sto Odin” is “101” in Russian, Sh-san is “4” in Japanese, Issan is “13” and Ch’ao “one million” in Chinese.
The number “56” must have had special meaning for Cordwainer Smith. The Dead Lady tells Elaine that in Fomalhaut III all the names of important people end in “5” and “6”.18 Panc Ashash is “5-6” in Hindi. Femtiosex is “56” in Swedish. The leader of the robots is named Fisi, (five-six). Goroke is 5 and 6 in Sino-Japanese. Veesey-Koosey (viisi-kuusi) is 56 in Finnish. Numerical keys have also been suggested for Limaono, Nuru-or, Tiga-Belas and Menerima.
The most fully realized names are symbolic. To underscore the severity of the Instrumentality, two of its leaders are named Jestocost and Crudelta, “cruelty” in Russian and Italian, respectively. The surname of Lady Johanna Gnade, on the other hand, means “clemency” in German. It is she who, through the intercession of Mercer (mercy), redeems the prisoners of the planet Shayol. T’ruth reveals the “truth” to Casher O’Neill. His servant is Eunice, Greek for “good victory”: the bloodless victory of forgiveness. D’alma helps Casher discover the destiny of his “soul”.
The underperson/bison that attacks D’joan is named Crawlie. While crawling seems inappropriate for a bison, it is fitting for something playing the role of the tempting serpent.
E’ikasus, the son of E’telekeli, could be ikésios (“supplicant” in Greek) or perhaps Jesus. When he is on a mission, however, he refers to himself as A’gentur (“agency” in German).
All of this gives us an idea of how Cordwainer Smith makes use of the evocative power of words. He was a great poet with an exceptional sense of rhythm. At times, it seems like he actually preferred verse to prose.19 Songs and poetic fragments20 are interspersed in the stories, creating English verse using Persian or Chinese forms. Some of the rhythmic elements of his prose such as alliteration21 are practically untranslatable.
Cordwainer Smith saw writing as a game. One of his favorite books was Homo Ludens by Huizinga.22 Sometimes it took him years to achieve the final version of a text23, but “he never labored over its style.”24 Some of the
best titles came from Frederik Pohl, who had found them in the stories themselves.
“Golden the Ship Was Oh! Oh! Oh!” and “The Lady Who Sailed The Soul”, the latter signed by Genevieve Linebarger and P.M.A., were the result of the writer’s collaboration with his wife. This collaboration, however, was so unrepeatable that “Down to a Sunless Sea”, written almost entirely by his widow, seems nearly apocryphal.
To achieve his unmistakable denouements, Cordwainer Smith also relies on unprecedented situations, surrealist images and absurd humor.
His scenery always has some scientific basis, a common feature in all science fiction, yet his sources are more poetic. “Alpha Ralpha Bouelevard” is inspired by a romantic painting (“The Storm” by Pierre August Cot) and explicitly evokes Paul et Virginie (1788) by Bernardin de Saint Pierre.
His spaceships have as little in common with the ones Flash Gordon flew as they do with those of NASA. The great sailing craft of the Second Era and the suggestive planoform spaceships are as romantic as a galleon.
Given that they travel through a different dimension, planoform craft do not require a defined structure. The spaceship Wu-feinstein is a replica of George Washington’s villa on Mount Vernon. A force field protects its sunny park and bright artificial sky from the cold and darkness of space. The craft that carries Rod MacBan from Mars to Earth is a log cabin. Beauregard mansion, where T’ruth keeps vigil over the sleep of Murray Madigan, is enclosed in a planoform bubble, which includes parks, gardens and a stretch of bay.
Lord of the Afternoon Page 7
