by E R Eddison
‘For now Night,’ She said, scarce to be heard, ‘rises on Zimiamvia. And after that, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, of Zimiamvia. And all of Me. What you will. For ever. And if it were possible for more than for ever, for ever more.’
Upon the sudden, She put on Her full beauty, intolerable, that no eye can bear, but the heart of Her doves turns cold, and they drop their wings. So the eternal moment contemplates itself anew beside the eternal sea that sleeps about the heavenly Paphos. Only She was: She, and the hueless waiting wonder of the sea at daybreak, and Her zephyrs, and Her roses, and Her hours with their frontlets of gold.
In that high western room in Acrozayana, the transfiguring glory passed. So shuts darkness behind a meteor that, sliding out of darkness silently between star and star in a splendour to outface all the great lamps of heaven, slides beneath stars silently into the darkness and is gone.
The Lady Fiorinda turned to the sideboard beyond the mirror. Its polished surface was dulled under the dust of neglect. There lay there a sword of Barganax’s, a pair of her crimson gloves, a palette of his with the colours dried up on it, and a brush or two, uncleaned, with the paint clogged stiff in their bristles; and among these toys, two or three pear-shaped drops of coloured glass, one blue, another red, another purple of the nightshade, no bigger than sloes and with long thin tadpole tails, such as are called Rupert’s drops. She, upon a remembrance, took one daintily and between jewelled fingers snapped off the end of its tail, and saw the drop crash instantly into dust. So she dealt with another and beheld it shatter: another, and beheld that: so, till all were ruined; and so stood for a while, looking upon their ruin, as if remembered of the saying of that old man. At last, she went to the window and stood, and so after a time sat down there in the window, upon cushions of cloth of gold. Her face, turned side-face to the room and the warmth, was outlined against night that rolled up now filthy and black. When, after a long time, She spoke as if in a dream, it might have been Her own Poetess herself speaking out of the darkness in the high between the worlds:
The moon is set, and set are
The Pleiades; and midnight
Soon; so, and the hour departing:
And I, on my bed – alone.
Motionless She sat: Her gaze downward: upper lids level and still: eyes still and wide. There was no sound now save in changeless ceaseless rhythm, through the open window of the Duke’s great bedchamber and the open door that led there, the land-wash of the sea.
Seeing that Her thoughts are higher than our thoughts, it were the part of a fool to think to comprehend them, or set them down. And yet, very because that they are higher, it sorts not to man to let them go by: rather note such looks and such casts which, upon such nights, have ere this shadowed the outward seeming of Her divinity; as if that impossible were possible, and His hand had failed wherein Her weak perfections lie trembling; or as if the thunder of His power were turned an insensate thing, and His eyes seeled up, and love found but a school-name, and She (for all that nought else is of worth or of verity) found not worth much at last. And as if, under the imagination of such thoughts in Her – Who of Her vernal mere unquestioned I AM recreates and sets Him on high, the patent of Whose omnipotency is but to tender and serve Her – the very heart of the world should be closed with anguish.
As the glory, so now this agony passed, resumed so, with that glory, into Her pavilion of Night.
NOTE
IN Vandermast’s aphorisms students of Spinoza will recognize that master’s words, charged, no doubt, with implications which go beyond his meaning. Readers who have a holiday place, as in some isle of Ambremerine, among the rare surviving pages of Sappho, will note that, quite apart from quotations, I have not scrupled to enrich my story with echoes of her: this for the sufficient reason that she, above all others, is the poet not of ‘that obscure Venus of the hollow hill’ but of ‘awful, gold-crowned, beautiful Aphrodite.’
As for the verses, all originals, except as noted below, are mine, as also, except as noted, are all translations. Baudelaire’s Le Balcon, which appears on a fly-leaf as a kind of motto, is so apt (even in details) to fulfil that function that it is well to note that I never read it until after this book was written. Lessingham’s reference to it (‘reine des adorées’ in Rialmar in Starlight), was added on final revision.
With one exception, the references for the Sappho quotations are to H. T. Wharton’s edition (John Lane, 1898). In the corrupt third line of the fifth stanza of the Ode to Aphrodite (Ch. 22) I have taken the amended text adopted by the Loeb Classical Library.
Three friends of mine I can never thank as I would: Keith Henderson, for enriching this book with decorations which in an almost magical way have caught its moods and spirit: George Rostrevor Hamilton, for reading and re-reading it in manuscript and giving me the benefit of his delicate judgement and constructive criticism on a hundred points of importance: Gerald Ravenscourt Hayes for a like assistance, and also for his delightful maps which should help readers in picturing to themselves the country where the action takes place. Last I am much obliged for permission given me by Messrs Heinemann to quote (in the Overture) from Swinburne’s Ballad of Death; by Mr Claude Colleer Abbott and his publishers to quote from his fascinating collection of Early Mediaeval French Lyrics (Constable, 1932); and by the Clarendon Press to use the text of Mark Alexander Boyd’s ‘Sonet’, printed in The Oxford Book of English Verse. For the Webster quotations I follow the text of Mr F. L. Lucas’s magnificent edition (Chatto & Windus, 4 vols., 1927).
OVERTURE A Ballad of Death Swinburne, Poems and Ballads, First Series.
‘Ici gît Clarimonde’ Théophile Gautier, La Morte Amoureuse.
CH. II ‘Bitter-sweet’ Sappho, 40.
CH. X ‘In a dream I spake’ Sappho, 87.
‘Thou, and My servant Love’ Sappho, 74.
‘Gondul and Skogul the Goths’-God sent’ Eyvind Skaldspiller (fl. circ. 970 AD) Hákonarmál.
CH. XII ‘O we curl’d-haird men’ Webster, Vittoria Corombona, Act IV, sc. 2.
‘That Friend a Great mans ruine strongely checks’ Webster, Duchess of Malfi, Act III, sc. 1.
CH. XV ‘Gold is pure of rust’ Sappho (Loeb Classical Library) Lyra Graeca, I, fr. 109 (conjectural).
‘Li rosignox est mon père’ Early French.
‘I love delicacy’ Sappho, 79: transl. Wharton.
CH. XVII ‘The prophetic soul of the wide world’ Shakespeare, Sonnet CVII.
‘Bitter-sweet’ Sappho, 40.
‘Por la bele estoile’ Early French.
‘Fra bank to bank’ Mark Alexander Boyd (1563-1601).
CH. XVIII ‘Evening Star, gath’rer of all’ Sappho, 95.
‘Not clearly knowing’ Homer, Hymn to Aphrodite, I. 167.
‘Se’j’avoie ameit un jor’ Early French.
‘Ah, lad, and were’t but so’ Homer, Iliad, xii, 322-8.
CH. XX ‘Enn Freki renna’ Völospá (in the Elder Edda).
CH. XXII ‘Sparkling-throned heavenly Aphrodite’ Sappho, 1.
‘The moon is set’ Sappho, 52.
P.S. For two small errors in the maps I am responsible, viz. (1) the misspelling of ‘Tabarey Sound’, and (2) the omission of the route taken by the Admiral east of Ridinghead, and his attack on that position from the east.
E. R. E.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
THE action in Chapter I begins on 22nd April, Anno Zayanae Conditae 777, about ten months after the death, in the 54th year of his age, in his island fortress of Sestola in Meszria, of the great King MEZENTIUS, tyrant of Fingiswold, Meszria, and Rerek.
In this list the number of the chapter where each person is first mentioned is given in brackets after his or her name.
MAPS OF THE THREE KINGDOMS
Also by E. R. Eddison
The Poems, Letters and Memoirs of Philip Sidney Nairn
Styrbiorn the Strong
Egil’s Saga
The Worm Ouroboros
Mistress of M
istresses
A Fish Dinner in Memison
The Mezentian Gate
Dedication
To my son-in-law
Flying Officer KENNETH HESKETH HIGSON
who in an air fight over Italy
saved his four companions’ lives
at cost of his own
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
which he had twice read.
Proper names the reader will no doubt pronounce as he chooses. But perhaps, to please me, he will let Memison echo ‘denizen’ except for the m: pronounce the first syllable of Reisma ‘rays’: keep the i’s short in Zimiamvia and accent the third syllable: accent the second syllable in Zayana, give it a broad a (as in ‘Guiana’), and pronouce the ay in the first syllable (and also the ai in Laimak, Kaima, etc., and the ay in Krestenaya) like the ai in ‘aisle’: accent the first syllable in Rerek and make it rhyme with ‘year’: keep the g soft in Fingiswold: remember that Fiorinda is an Italian name, Beroald (and, for this particular case, Amalie) French, and Zenianthe, and several others, Greek: last, regard the sz in Meszria as ornamental, and not be deterred from pronouncing it as plain ‘Mezria’.
This divine beauty is evident, fugitive, impalpable, and homeless in a world of material fact; yet it is unmistakably individual and sufficient unto itself, and although perhaps soon eclipsed is never really extinguished: for it visits time and belongs to eternity.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
EURIPIDES, ION, 1615
… though what if Earth
Be but the shaddow of Heav’n, and therein
Each to other like, more than on earth is thought?
MILTON, PARADISE LOST, V. 571
Ces serments, ces parfums, ces baisers infinis,
Renaîtront-ils d’un gouffre interdit à nos sondes,
Comme montent au ciel les soleils rajeunis
Après s’être lavés au fond des mers profondes?
—O serments! ô parfums! ô baisers infinis!
BAUDELAIRE, LE BALCON
SAPPHO, ODE TO APHRODITE
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction by James Stephens
A LETTER OF INTRODUCTION
I. Aphrodite in Verona
II. Memison: King Mezentius
III. A Match and Some Lookers on
IV. Lady Mary Scarnside
V. Queen of Hearts and Queen of Spades
VI. Castanets Betwixt the Worlds
VII. Seven Against the King
VIII. Lady Mary Lessingham
IX. Ninfea di Nerezza
X. The Lieutenant of Reisma
XI. Night-Piece: Appassionato
XII. Salute to Morning
XIII. Short Circuit
XIV. The Fish Dinner: Praeludium
XV. The Fish Dinner: Symposium
XVI. The Fish Dinner: Caviar
XVII. In What a Shadow
XVIII. Deep Pit of Darkness
XIX. Ten Years: Ten Million Years: Ten Minutes
NOTE
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
MAP OF THE THREE KINGDOMS
ALSO BY E. R. EDDISON
INTRODUCTION
BY JAMES STEPHENS
THIS is a terrific book.
It is not much use asking, whether a given writer is great or not. The future will decide as to that, and will take only proper account of our considerations on the matter. But we may enquire as to whether the given writer does or does not differ from other writers: from, that is, those that went before, and, in especial, from those who are his and our contemporaries.
In some sense Mr Eddison can be thought of as the most difficult writer of our day, for behind and beyond all that which we cannot avoid or refuse – the switching as from a past to something that may be a future – he is writing with a mind fixed upon ideas which we may call ancient but which are, in effect, eternal: aristocracy, courage, and a ‘hell of a cheek’. It must seem lunatic to say of any man that always, as a guide of his inspiration, is an idea of the Infinite. Even so, when the proper question is asked, wherein does Mr Eddison differ from his fellows? that is one answer which may be advanced. Here he does differ, and that so greatly that he may seem as a pretty lonely writer.
There is a something, exceedingly rare in English fiction, although everywhere to be found in English poetry – this may be called the aristocratic attitude and accent. The aristocrat can be as brutal as ever gangster was, but, and in whatever brutality, he preserves a bearing, a grace, a charm, which our fiction in general does not care, or dare, to attempt.
Good breeding and devastating brutality have never been strangers to each other. You may get in the pages of, say, The Mahabharata – the most aristocratic work of all literature – more sheer brutality than all our gangster fictionists put together could dream of. So, in these pages, there are villanies and violences and slaughterings that are, to one reader, simply devilish. But they are devilish with an accent – as Milton’s devil is; for it is instantly observable in him, the most English personage of our record and the finest of our ‘gentlemen’, that he was educated at Cambridge. So the colossal gentlemen of Mr Eddison have, perhaps, the Oxford accent. They are certainly not accented as of Balham or Hoboken.
All Mr Eddison’s personages are of a ‘breeding’ which, be it hellish or heavenish, never lets its fathers down, and never lets its underlings up. So, again, he is a different writer, and difficult.
There is yet a distinction, as between him and the rest of us. He is, although strictly within the terms of his art, a philosopher. The ten or so pages of his letter (to that good poet, George Rostrevor Hamilton) which introduces this book form a rapid conspectus of philosophy. (They should be read after the book is read, whereupon the book should be read again.)
It is, however, another aspect of being that now claims the main of his attention, and is the true and strange subject of this book, as it is the subject of his earlier novels, Mistress of Mistresses and The Worm Ouroboros, to which this book is organically related. (The reader who likes this book should read those others.)
This subject, seen in one aspect, we call Time, in another we call it Eternity. In both of these there is a somewhat which is timeless and tireless and infinite – that something is you and me and E. R. Eddison. It delights in, and knows nothing of, and cares less about, its own seeming evolution in time, or its own actions and reactions, howsoever or wheresoever, in eternity. It just (whatever and wherever it is) wills to be, and to be powerful and beautiful and violent and in love. It enjoys birth and death, as they seem to come with insatiable appetite and with unconquerable lust for more.
The personages of this book are living at the one moment in several dimensions of time, and they will continue to do so for ever. They are in love and in hate simultaneously in these several dimensions, and will continue to be so for ever – or perhaps until they remember, as Brahma did, that they had done this thing before.
This shift of time is very oddly, very simply, handled by Mr Eddison. A lady, the astounding Fiorinda, leaves a gentleman, the even more (if possible) astounding Lessingham, after a cocktail in some Florence or Mentone. She walks down a garden path until she is precisely out of his sight: then she takes a step to the left, right out of this dimension and completely into that other which is her own – although one doubts that fifty dimensions could quite contain this lady. Whereupon that which is curious and curiously satisfying, Mr Eddison’s prose takes the same step to the left and is no more the easy English of the moment before, but is a tremendous sixteenth- or fifteenth-century English which no writer but he can handle.
His return from there and then to here and now is just as simple and as exquisitely perfect in time-phrasing as could be wished for. There is no jolt for the reader as he moves or removes from dimension to dimension, or from our present excellent speech to our memorable great prose. Mr Eddison differs from all in his ability to suit his prose to his
occasion and to please the reader in his anywhere.
This writer describes men who are beautiful and powerful and violent – even his varlets are tremendous. Here, in so far as they can be conjured into modern speech, are the heroes. Their valour and lust is endless as is that of tigers: and, like these, they take life or death with a purr or a snarl, just as it is appropriate and just as they are inclined to. But it is to his ladies that the affection of Mr Eddison’s great and strange talent is given.
Women in many modern novels are not really females, accompanied or pursued by appropriate belligerent males – they are mainly excellent aunts, escorted by trustworthy uncles, and, when they marry, they don’t reproduce sons and daughters, they produce nephews and nieces.
Every woman Mr Eddison writes of is a Queen. Even the maids of these, at their servicings, are Princesses. Mr Eddison is the only modern man who likes women. The idea woman in these pages is most quaint, most lovely, most disturbing. She is delicious and aloof: delighted with all, partial to everything (ça m’amuse, she says). She is greedy and treacherous and imperturbable: the mistress of man and the empress of life: wearing merely as a dress the mouse, the lynx, the wren or the hero: she is the goddess as she pleases, or the god; and is much less afraid of the god than a miserable woman of our dreadful bungalows is afraid of a mouse. And she is all else that is high or low or even obscene, just as the fancy takes her: she falls never (in anything, nor anywhere) below the greatness that is all creator, all creation, and all delight in her own abundant variety. Je m’amuse, she says, and that seems to her, and to her lover, to be right and all right.
The vitality of the recording of all this is astonishing: and in this part of his work Mr Eddison is again doing something which no other writer has the daring or the talent for.
