The Worm
Ouroboros
by Eric Rücker Eddison
***
There is no such thing as
an ugly woman in the writings of E.R. Eddison. The author of the 1922 epic
fantasy, The Worm Ouroboros, couldn’t stand to write about unlovely women any more than he could write about
cowardly men. Which doesn’t mean that either sex were morally upright. He was
willing to allow the male characters of his tales of aristocratic mayhem to be
cruel, lecherous and treacherous. And the women, beautiful though they are (and
beautifully dressed) are equally chancy, as the adventurer-hero Brandoch Daha
learned to his discomfiture.
Sometimes it makes me
wonder what Eddison’s marriage was like.
In last Friday’s post, the
mythical kingdoms of Witchland and Demonland were once again at war following
the treacherous sorcery of Witchland’s King Gorice XII that caused the
disappearance of Demonland’s warrior champion and co-ruler, Goldry Bluszco.
(For those just tuning in, Witchlanders are the bad guys and Demonlanders the
good guys, sort of. (Eddison’s odd names for his other-worldly world apparently
date back to stories he imagined as a boy, and he wasn’t able to shake himself
loose from his fixation with weird appellations until after the publication of
this first of his fantasy novels.)
Goldry’s two brothers (and
co-rulers of Demonland), Lord Juss and Spitfire, along with Demonland lord
Brandoch Daha and their various allies wage war against Witchland while also
searching for the lost Goldry.
In the course of the quest,
Juss, Spitfire and Brandoch Daha journey to the great mountain ranges of
Demonland to ask for the counsel of the semi-divine Queen Sophonisba. Along the
way, they catch a glimpse of the holy mountains of the land of Zimiamvia (which
will become the locale of Eddison’s later novels) and encounter adventures
reminiscent of the medieval tales of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round
Table (and perhaps also of the tales that unhinged the reason of that later
knight, Don Quixote). And not the least perilous of these is what Eddison
terms, “the amorous commerce of Brandoch Daha with the Lady of Ishnain
Nemartra.”
Here is a portion of
Eddison’s description that that amorous adventure, from Chapter X of Ouroboros: “They journeyed by the
southern margin of a gravelly sea, made all of sand and gravel and no drop of
water, yet ebbing and flowing always with great waves as another sea doth”
until they saw, in a barren land, “in the lustre of a late bright-shining sun a
castle of red stone. . .”
Inside the apparently
empty castle a table is spread for a feast. When they dare to eat, they are
visited by the lady of Ishnain Nemartra, who offers them the choice of a
sorely-needed night’s rest or of staying awake all night to receive any earthly
thing he may desire. Brandoch Daha takes on the adventure. When the lady visits
him after his successful completion, readers might expect him to make the
sensible choice of asking for the return of the vanished champion Goldry
Bluzsco, who they’ve come so far to rescue.
But if you expect sensible
choices, you don’t know Eddison’s heroes. Brandoch Daha demands a night of love
with the lady, although she warns him, “Of all things earthly mightiest thou have taken choose; but I am not earthly.”
(Italics mine.)
Brandoch Daha should have paid
more attention to the terms of the contract. Before their time together is
over, the lady is in love, but when Brandoch Daha insists on leaving her to
take up his quest again, she curses him with war instead of peace. And Goldry
Bluzsco is yet to be found.
(Next Friday, how it ends
– or doesn’t. And why the Worm Ouroboros chases his tail in a never-ending
cycle.)
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