Both fans and scholars of Robert E. Howard will find two documents of interest: Etchings in Ivory (1928) and The Hyborian Age (1936). Howard may not originally have intended to publish the first of these; it appeared posthumously in 1968 in the form of a slim booklet, of which only 268 were produced. The second appeared in Phantagraph as a three part serial, apparently forwarded to that publication by none other than Howard’s epistolary friend, H.P. Lovecraft. In a letter accompanying the submission, Lovecraft praised Howard, saying
…Howard
has the most magnificent sense of the drama of “History” of anyone I know. He possesses a panoramic vision which takes
in the evolution and interaction of races and nations over vast periods of time…
Etchings in Ivory and The Hyborian Age provide fascinating insight into the author’s creation
of characters and settings that appeared in his horror fiction and fantasy. The earlier text is a series of sketches
framed as a dream or series of dreams. There
is a single narrator, but he—and she
at one point—take different points of view as settings and situations change. The device strongly implies a kind of
reincarnation of heroic individuals throughout history, a theme that occurs in
many of Howard’s stories, (see for example A
Subterranean Déjà vu and Blood Will
Out). Nearly all of the vignettes
involve the experience of death, depicted as a kind of relaxation into a
colorful and sensual oblivion.
Etchings in Ivory opens with a disclaimer:
Here
let no man seek the trend of reality, nor any plan or plot running like a silver
cord through the fire-limned portraits here envisioned…and as my dreams have
leaped into my brain full-grown, without beginning and without end, so have I,
with gold and sapphire tools, etched them in topaz and opal against a curtain
of ivory.
Five sections
follow, entitled “Flaming Marble”, “Skulls and Orchids”, “Medallions in the
Moon”, “The Gods that Men Forget”, and “Bloodstones and Ebony”. There is a preoccupation in all of these with
marble, stone, gemstones and semi-precious stones, as if Howard was
constructing a world out of its most valuable natural resources. Glenn Lord, in his interesting two volume
anthology The Book of Robert E. Howard (1976) notes that Etchings in Ivory was written at time in Howard’s career when he
was experimenting with different forms of fiction.
The
first two sections contain the germs of two stories. In “Flaming Marble”, a Conan-like barbarian
makes violently passionate love—it amounts to a rape—to his upper class
mistress, but then is immediately assassinated. “Skulls and Orchids” depicts a
love triangle resulting in two violent deaths, as told by the female victim
just before she dies. The remaining
sections more closely resemble prose poems; “The Gods that Men Forget” in
particular seems strongly influenced by the early work of Lord Dunsany.
“Skulls
and Orchids” is especially interesting, since its content is remarkably transgressive
for the time period. Set in “decadent
Athens”, it involves a female narrator named Astaihh, an Athenian noble woman
who has given up her citizenship and reputation to become the consort of a
Spartan, the treacherous Demetrius, whom she adores. Pleading for his attention, she criticizes Demetrius
and his fellow Spartans:
So
the Spartan in his barren land persuades himself that he is exalted above all
men in his stupid self-denial, rejoices in his slaying prowess only, and boasts
of the slavery he names freedom! But let
him taste the joys of other, brighter, and more cultured lands, and he
forswears all the trials of the camp for the silken couch and the wine—and even
forswears natural delights. [Emphasis mine.]
Regrettably,
Demetrius adores his young male lover, and kisses him in front of Astaihh. While Demetrius is out of the room, she stabs
him to death. Enraged, Demetrius kills
her—she dies in the arms of the man who really did love her, the Greek comedic dramatist Menander. I do not know if this vignette eventually
appeared in any of the work Howard published in his lifetime—I have not yet
read much of his historical fiction—but the content and female point of view
seem pretty daring relative to the work of Howard’s contemporaries.
The Hyborian Age is Howard’s working out of the history
and geographical settings of his sword-and-sorcery tales. In his opening remarks he states that
developed this piece when he began writing the Conan stories “in order to lend
him and his sagas a greater aspect of realness.” Howard followed the historical text he had
developed “as closely as the historical-fiction writer follows the lines of
actual history.” Much of it is tedious
inventorying of various barbarian struggles to control land areas, and the
progress of numerous nascent civilizations before the beginning of history as
we know it:
Five
hundred years later the kingdoms of the world are clearly defined. The kingdoms of the Hyborians—Aquilonia,
Nemedia, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Koth, Ophir—dominate the western world…Far to
the south sleeps Stygia, untouched by foreign invasion, but the peoples of Shem
have exchanged the Stygian yoke for the less galling one of Koth…North of
Aquilonia, the westernmost Hyborian kingdom are the Cimmerians, ferocious
savages, untamed by the invaders but advancing rapidly…
And so
on for several pages. However, there is
an interesting germ of a story about midway through this historical survey. Arus, a Nemedian priest, attempts to convert
the vulgar Picts to the teachings of Mitra, (that is Mithra, an actual historical precursor to Christianity), but with
unforeseen consequences. H.P. Lovecraft
was critical of Howard for melding actual ancient history with his fictional
creations, an “incurable tendency to devise names too closely resembling actual
names of ancient history—names which, for us, have a very different set of
associations.”
However,
on occasion Howard was very effective in doing just this, connecting his
prehistoric fantasies with our understanding of ancient history. (See for example “…do
not offend the djinn!” ) What
is striking about The Hyborian Age is
its preoccupation with racial and ethnic differences, and the consequences of
intermingling these for the growth of culture and civilization. In his broad and fatalistic view of human history,
Howard seems to see only the likelihood of endless violent struggle, involving
the reincarnation of heroic figures in every age.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for your interest in The R'lyeh Tribune! Comments and suggestions are always welcome.