by E R Eddison
And now, as the company began again to take their departure towards the Duchess’s summer palace, my Lady Fiorinda, in her most languefied luxuriousness lazying on Barganax’s arm, idly drew from her back hair a hair-pin all aglitter with tiny anachite diamonds and idly with it pricked the thing. With a nearly noiseless fuff it burst, leaving, upon the table where it had rested, a little wet mark the size of her fingernail. The Duke might behold now how she wore glow-worms in her hair. His eyes and hers met, as in a mutual for ever untongued understanding of his own wild unlikely surmise of Who in very truth She was: Who, for the untractable profoundness’ sake of his own nature and his unsatiable desires’ and untamed passions’ sake, which safety and certitude but unhappieth, could so unheaven Herself too with dangerous elysiums, of so great frailty, such hope unsure: unmeasurable joys, may be undecayable, yet mercifully, if so, not known to be so. – Her gift: the bitter-sweet:
‘Well?’ she said, slowly fanning herself as they walked away, slowly turning to him once more, with flickering eyelids, Her face which is the beginning and the ending, from all unbegun eternity, of all conceivable worlds: ‘Well? – And what follows next, My Friend?’
NOTE
IN Doctor Vandermast’s aphorisms students of Spinoza may often recognize their master’s words, charged, no doubt, with implications which go beyond his meaning. Lovers of the supreme poetess will note that, apart from quotations, I have not scrupled to enrich my pages with echoes of her: this for the sufficient reason that Sappho, 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 where noted) are all translations. For Sappho’s Ode to Anaktoria I follow the text of H. T. Wharton’s edition (John Lane, 1898); references to ‘Loeb’ are to Lyra Graeca Vol. I, of the Loeb Classical Library. I have lost the references for the two verse quotations in Chapter XII.
I thank those who have helped and inspired me with their criticisms, notably George Rostrevor Hamilton and Kenneth Hesketh Higson: also Gerald Ravenscourt Hayes for his excellent map, which should help readers in picturing to themselves the country where the action takes place; and I thank Edward Abbe Niles, for nearly twenty years friend and supporter of my work in our great sister-country the United States of America.
CH. I ‘Mighty, mightily fallen’ Homer, Iliad, xvi, 775.
‘With the Gods’ will, or if not, against’ Aeschylos, Seven against Thebes.
CH. IV ‘He’s tell’d her father Old Ballad: Katharine Jaffray: Herd’s MSS. I, 61; II, 56.
‘Awful, gold-crowned, Beautiful Aphrodite’ Homer, Hymn to Aphrodite.
CH. V ‘Who, on the high-running ranges’ Homer, Hymn to Aphrodite.
CH. VI ‘Tho’ wisdom oft hath sought me’ Thomas Moore, Irish Melodies: ‘The Time I’ve lost in wooing’.
‘Like is he, I think, to a God immortal’ Sappho, Ode to Anaktoria.
CH. VIII ‘The day shall be when holy Ilios’ Homer, Iliad, vi, 448.
‘A quiet woman’ Webster, The White Devil, iv, 2.
CH. IX ‘Injoy’d no sooner but dispised straight’ Shakespeare Sonnet CXXIX.
CH. XI ‘One desire may both their bloods’ Chapman.
‘O lente, lente’ Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (after Ovid, Amores, i, 13, II.39-40): transl. George Rostrevor Hamilton.
CH. XII ‘Here ripes the rare cheer-cheek Myrobalan’
‘From women light and lickerous’
CH. XIII ‘God’s adversaries are some way his own’ Robert Harris, Sermon (1642).
CH. XV ‘To an unfettered soules quick nimble hast’ Donne, Progress of the Soul (First Song, xviii).
CH. XVIII ‘Death said, I gather’ George Meredith, A Ballad of Postmeridian.
CH. XIX ‘I heard the flowery spring beginning’ Alkaios (Loeb, 166).
‘Come – sweet with all that beauty you mad me with’ Sappho, To Atthis (Loeb, 82).
‘With an immortal Goddess, clearly knowing’ Homer, Hymn to Aphrodite.
‘It was no dream: or say a dream it was’ Keats, Lamia.
‘Sleep folds mountain and precipic’d ridge and steep abysm’ Alkman (Loeb, 36).
E. R. E.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
THE ACTION begins on 24th June, Anno Zayanae Conditae 775. In this list the number of the chapter where each person is first mentioned is given in parenthesis after his or her name.
MAP 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 Mistresses
The Mezentian Gate
Dedication
To you, madonna mia,
WINIFRED GRACE EDDISON
and to my mother,
HELEN LOUISA EDDISON
and to my friends,
JOHN AND ALICE REYNOLDS
and to
HARRY PIRIE-GORDON
a fellow explorer in whom (as in Lessingham)
I find that rare mixture of man of action and
connoisseur of strangeness and beauty in their
protean manifestations, who laughs where I laugh
and likes the salt that I like, and to whom I owe
my acquaintance (through the Orkneyinga Saga)
with the earthly ancestress
of my Lady Rosma Parry
I dedicate this book.
E. R. E.
Proper names the reader will no doubt pronounce as he chooses. But perhaps, to please me, he will 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 the ai in Laimak, Kaima, etc., and the ay in Krestenaya – like the ai in ‘aisle’; keep the g soft in Fingiswold: let Memison echo ‘denizen’ except for the m: accent the first syllable in Rerek and make it rhyme with ‘year’: pronounce the first syllable of Reisma ‘rays’; remember that Fiorinda is in origin an Italian name, Amaury, Amalie, and Beroald French, and Antiope, Zenianthe, and a good many others, Greek: last, regard the sz in Meszria as ornamental, and not be deterred from pronouncing it as plain ‘Mezria’.
Let me not to the marriage of true mindes
Admit impediments, love is not love
Which alters when it alteration findes,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no, it is an ever fixed marke
That lookes on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandring barke,
Whose worths unknowns, although his higth be taken.
Love’s not Times foole, though rosie lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickles compasse come,
Love alters not with his breefe houres and weekes,
But beares it out even to the edge of doome:
If this be error, and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
SHAKESPEARE
And ride in triumph through Persepolis!
Is it not brave to be a King, Techelles?
Usumcasane and Theridamas,
Is it not passing brave to be a King,
And ride in triumph through Persepolis?
MARLOWE
I cannot conceive any beginning of such love as I have for you but Beauty. There may be a sort of love for which, without the least sneer at it, I have the highest respect and can admire it in others: but it has not the richness, the bloom, the full form, the enchantment of love after my own heart.
KEATS
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction by Paul Edmund Thomas
Prefatory Note by Colin Rücker Eddison
LETTER OF INTRODUCTION
PRAELUDIUM: LESS
INGHAM ON THE RAFTSUND
BOOK ONE: FOUNDATIONS
I. Foundations in Rerek
II. Foundations in Fingiswold
III. Nigra Sylva, where the Devils Dance
IV. The Bolted Doors
V. Princess Marescia
VI. Prospect North from Argyanna
BOOK TWO: UPRISING OF KING MEZENTIUS
VII. Zeus Terpsikeraunos
VIII. The Prince Protector
IX. Lady Rosma in Acrozayana
X. Stirring of the Eumenides
XI. Commodity of Nephews
XII. Another Fair Moonshiny Night
BOOK THREE: THE AFFAIR OF REREK
XIII. The Devil’s Quilted Anvil
XIV. Lord Emmius Parry
BOOK FOUR: THE AFFAIR OF MESZRIA
XV. Queen Rosma
XVI. Lady of Presence
XVII. Akkama Brought into the Dowry
XVIII. The She-Wolf Tamed to Hand
XIX. The Duchess of Memison
BOOK FIVE: THE TRIPLE KINGDOM
XX. Dura Papilla Lupae
XXI. Anguring Combust
XXII. Pax Mezentiana
XXIII. The Two Dukes
XXIV. Prince Valero
XXV. Lornra Zombremar
XXVI. Rebellion in the Marches
XXVII. Third War with Akkama
BOOK SIX: LA ROSE NOIRE
XXVIII. Anadyomene
XXIX. Astarte
XXX. Laughter-loving Aphrodite
XXXI. The Beast of Laimak
XXXII. Then, Gentle Cheater
XXXIII. Aphrodite Helikoblepharos
The Fish Dinner: Transitional Note
BOOK SEVEN: TO KNOW OR NOT TO KNOW
XXXIV. The Fish Dinner: First Digestion
XXXV. Diet a Cause
XXXVI. Rosa Mundorum
XXXVII. Testament of Energeia
XXXVIII. Call of the Night-Raven
XXXIX. Omega and Alpha in Sestola
GENEALOGICAL TABLES
MAP OF THE THREE KINGDOMS
Footnote
Also by E. R. Eddison
INTRODUCTION
BY PAUL EDMUND THOMAS
THE twelfth chapter of E. R. Eddison’s first novel, The Worm Ouroboros, contains a curious episode extraneous to the main plot. Having spent nearly all their strength in climbing Koshtra Pivrarcha, the highest mountain pinnacle on waterish Mercury, the Lords Juss and Brandoch Daha stand idly enjoying the glory of their singular achievement atop the frozen wind-whipped summit, and they gaze away southward into a mysterious land never before seen:
Juss looked southward where the blue land stretched in fold upon fold of rolling country, soft and misty, till it melted in the sky. ‘Thou and I,’ said he, ‘first of the children of men, now behold with living eyes the fabled land of Zimiamvia. Is that true, thinkest thou, which philosophers tell us of that fortunate land: that no mortal foot may tread it, but the blessed souls do inhabit it of the dead that be departed, even they that were great upon earth and did great deeds when they were living, that scorned not earth and the delights and the glories thereof, and yet did justly and were not dastards nor yet oppressors?’
‘Who knoweth?’ said Brandoch Daha, resting his chin in his hand and gazing south as in a dream. ‘Who shall say he knoweth?’
The land of Zimiamvia probably held only a fleeting and evanescent place in the minds of Eddison’s readers in 1922, because this, the first and last mentioning of Zimiamvia in Ouroboros, flits quickly past the reader, and though it has a local habitation and a name, it does not have a place in the story. Yet in the author’s mind, the name rooted itself so deeply that its engendering and growth cannot be clearly traced. Where did this name and this land come from? How and when was Zimiamvia born? How, while writing Ouroboros in 1921, did Eddison come to think of including this extraneous description of a land inconsequential to the story? Why did he include it?
Who knows? Who shall say he knows? No living person can answer these questions with certainty. What is certain is that Zimiamvia existed in Eddison’s imagination for at least twenty-three years and that he spent much of the rare leisure time of his last fifteen years writing three novels to give tangible shape to that misty land whose existence the Lords Juss and Brandoch Daha ponder and question in those moments on the ice-clad jagged peak of Koshtra Pivrarcha.
When he finished Ouroboros in 1922, Eddison did not ride the hippogriff-chariot through the heavens to Zimiamvian shores directly. Instead he remained firmly earth-bound and wrote Styrbiorn the Strong, a historical romance based on the life of the Swedish prince Styrbiorn Starki, the son of King Olaf, who died in 983 in an attempt to usurp the kingdom from his uncle, King Eric the Victorious. Eddison finished this novel in December 1925, and on 3 January 1926, during a vacation to Devonshire, he found himself desiring to pay homage to the Icelandic sagas that had inspired so many aspects of Ouroboros and Styrbiorn the Strong: ‘Walking in a gale over High Peak Sidmouth … I thought suddenly that my next job should be a big saga translation, and that should be Egil.’ After noting his decision, he justified it: ‘This may pay back some of my debt to the sagas, to which I owe more than can ever be counted.’ Resolved on this project, he steeped himself for five years in the literary and historical scholarship requisite for translating a thirteenth-century Icelandic text into English. It was not until 1930, after Egil’s Saga had been finished and dispatched to the Cambridge University Press, that Eddison focused his attention on the new world that had lain nearly dormant in his mind since at least 1921. Eddison finished the first Zimiamvian novel, Mistress of Mistresses, in 1935. Faber & Faber published it in England; E. P. Dutton published it in America. Eddison says Mistress of Mistresses did not explore ‘the relations between that other world and our present here and now’, and so his ideas of those relations propelled him to write a second novel setting some scenes in Zimiamvia and others in modern Europe. Eddison finished this second novel, A Fish Dinner in Memison, in 1940, but the wartime paper shortage prevented Faber & Faber from publishing it, yet E. P. Dutton published it for American readers in 1941. Eddison says that writing this second novel made him ‘fall in love with Zimiamvia’, and since ‘love has a searching curiosity which can never be wholly satisfied’, the new ideas sprouting from his love grew into The Mezentian Gate.
Eddison never finished this third Zimiamvian novel, for he died from a massive stroke in 1945. He intended The Mezentian Gate to have thirty-nine chapters. Between 1941 and 1945, he wrote the first seven, the last four, and Chapters XXVIII and XXIX. Like many others, Eddison feared a German invasion of England, and he worried that events beyond his control would prevent his finishing The Mezentian Gate. So before November 1944, he wrote an Argument with Dates, a complete and detailed plot synopsis of all of the unwritten chapters. After completing the Argument and thus assuring himself that his novel’s story, at least, could be published as a whole even if something happened to him, Eddison went on to write drafts for several more chapters during his last year of life. In 1958 his brother Colin Eddison, his friend Sir George Rostrevor Hamilton and Sir Francis Meynell (the founder of the Nonesuch Press and son of the poet Alice Meynell) privately published this fragmentary novel at the Curwen Press in Plaistow, West Sussex. The Curwen edition included only the finished chapters and the Argument; it did not include the substantial number of preliminary drafts for unfinished chapters that Eddison composed between January and August 1945. These drafts, extant in handwritten leaves, have lain in the darkness of manuscript boxes in the underground stacks of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and they have been read by few since Eddison’s death.
In Dell’s 1992 edition, Eddison’s neglected manuscript drafts for The Mezentian Gate were finally brought into the light of print, and for the first time the three Zimiamvian novels were pressed within the covers of one volume and united under the title Zimiamvia.
The Writing of The Mezentian Gate
On 25 July 1941, E. R. Eddison wrote to Geor
ge Rostrevor Hamilton and told of the birth of The Mezentian Gate: ‘After laborious lists of dates and episodes and so on, extending over many weeks, I really think the scheme for the new Zimiamvian book crystallized suddenly at 9 p.m. last night.’ On 2 September Eddison was still excited about his progress and wrote to Hamilton again: ‘You will be glad to know that about 1500 words of the (still nameless) new Zimiamvian book are already written.’ The opening sections, the Praeludium, which he first called ‘Praeludium in Excelsis’ (literally, ‘a preface set in a high place’), and ‘Foundations in Rerek’ alternately filled the sails of his imagination, but he decided to finish the voyage to Rerek before turning his prow toward Mount Olympus, the original setting for the Praeludium. Seven months later, on 2 April 1942, another letter to Hamilton shows that Eddison’s initial swift sailing had quickly carried his imagination into the doldrums:
I am still struggling with the opening of the new book. The ‘Praeludium in Excelsis’ which I had written dissatisfies me: seems to be ornamental rather than profound. So I’m changing the mise en scene from Olympus to Lofoten, and think it will create the atmosphere I’m sniffing for. But, Lord, it comes out unwillingly and painfully.
Evidently, Eddison abandoned his resolve to finish ‘Foundations in Rerek’ first, and his imagination tacked toward Rerek and Olympus in turns, but without gaining much momentum toward either destination. Eddison eventually completed the Praeludium in July and sent it to Hamilton for a critical reading with this qualifying statement attached: ‘it has given me infinite trouble.’ He did not complete ‘Foundations in Rerek’ until 1 October 1942, fourteen months after he began it.
The two opening sections add up to about ten thousand words, and Eddison spent about 420 days composing them. On a strictly mathematical level, Eddison’s average daily rate of composition was about twenty-five words. Surely a turtle’s pace across the page. Such meticulous slowness seems to mark Eddison’s composition: he once told Edward Abbe Niles, his consulting lawyer in America, that the ten thousand words of the thickly philosophical Chapters XV and XVI of A Fish Dinner in Memison took him ten months of 1937.Yet in 1937, Eddison had little free time for writing because he was fully occupied with civil service as the Head of Empire Trades and Head of the Economic Division in the Department of Overseas Trade. One would expect that in 1942, three years into retired life, Eddison would be composing at a faster rate than during his working life, simply because he had more time for writing, but that is not the case. The explanation lies in our understanding the intrusion of World War II upon Eddison’s life and the response of his dutiful nature to the home effort in the war.
