Editor's note. In 1998 I began a correspondence with Beatriz Vegh, a professor at Montevideo University in Uruguay. I see that this continued through early 2000, and I have gathered the various notes we made, more as a keepsake than for any academic purpose. It was a wonderful experience, and it is still fun for me to re-read what we came up with.
9 February 1998
I found your name, Beatriz, in an Internet search for information about Lord Dunsany. You had written to some list in search of such information. I don't see an answer, but then the message from you might be out of context.
Anyway. I encountered
Dunsany while in training at a military base in
My interest has remained, although I have not read much of Dunsany's “fantastic” literature, that for which he is best known (and published) in this modern age.
What interests me at the moment, and I am currently trying to obtain a copy, is a book I read more than 20 years ago, and want to read again. It is no longer available. Modeled on Cervantes' Don Quixote, it is called The Chronicles of Rodrigues. I remember it being described as a bitter, pessimistic novel much influenced by Dunsany's experiences in World War I.
The book exists in libraries (it was published in 1922, I believe), and I will inevitably find a copy. I was struck by the coincidence of my interest in this book and by the fact that you, a native Spanish speaker, have also an interest in Dunsany. Do you know it?
By the way. To add
coincidence upon coincidence, as I look out my window I see the Embassy of
Uruguay, here in
Nice meeting you...
Michael Broschat
19 February 1998
Thanks, Michael, for your interest. Sorry for this delayed answer. I am in vacation time, it's summertime here, so schedules are rather loose...
Yes, I was searching some information about Dunsany. I got just one answer (from Everdell I think) to my question about the presence in one way or another of Lord Dunsany in Anglo-Saxon Modernism. Everdell remembered having taken part in a play by Dunsany written in the frame of the Celtic Twilight movement.
[mrb] Anyway. I
encountered Dunsany while in training at a military base in
If you find the one-sentence story title, would you mind
passing it on via email? [ed, 2010: turned out to be more than one sentence.] I have a book of collected short stories (in Spanish)
and maybe I can find it there. My problem is that I can[not] get here any
Dunsany in English in the libraries. I tried to order (amazon.com) some of his books but they are
out of print. I wrote a short essay
connecting Faulkner's “
In the Spanish-speaking literatures he seems to have left a
deeper mark than in Anglo-American ones. Curious. Inspired by Dunsany's
[mrb] My encounter with Dunsany interest has remained, although I have not read much of Dunsany's “fantastic” literature, that for which he is best known (and published) in this modern age.
In fact, I just read some of Dunsany's Dreamer's Tale,
particularly “
[mrb] >What interests me at the moment, and I am currently trying to obtain a copy, is a book I read more than 20 years ago, and want to read again. It is no longer available. Modeled on Cervantes' Don Quixote, it is called The Chronicles of Rodrigues. I remember it being described as a bitter, pessimistic novel much influenced by Dunsany's experiences in World War I.
>The book exists in libraries (it was published in 1922, I believe), and I will inevitably find a copy. I was struck by the coincidence of my interest in this book and by the fact that you, a native Spanish speaker, have also an interest in Dunsany. Do you know it?
What a coincidence! When I was putting together some
documents to work on the interrelation among Dunsany–Garcia Lorca–Faulkner two months ago I went for a
couple of days to
[mrb]>By the way.
To add coincidence upon coincidence, as I look out my window I see the Embassy of Uruguay, here in
[bv] I know very well Alvaro Dies, the Ambassador, and
Beatriz—my
‘tocaya’: how do you say in English when two persons have the same Christian
name?, his wife. In December they were here and we dined together to celebrate
the birthday of a common friend. And you don't live very far from Susana, my
sister-in-law (she lives in
[mrb]>Nice meeting you...
I am also very glad of this meeting.
Beatriz Vegh
24 February 1998
Beatriz, I've received my first copy of the Don Rodrigues
book, and have begun scanning it (to make it electronic—a plan from way back). I hope
to make it available to a couple other people, who might then join us in
reading it, as you suggest. It's going to reward a close effort, I think,
as the first page alone takes a bit of work to get through. In the
English version, as you'll see, he adopts what appears to be King James
English, at least for dialogue.
Anyway, as I scan, I will run into the odd problem. The first, if you would be so kind, involves a word 'Morano'. The 'a' has a level mark over it. At first, I thought it was some kind of sign for the Spanish n, but 'senor' appears properly elsewhere in the book. My Melissa suggests that it is used for an accent, 'acute' she thinks. Your opinion, please...
Broschat
25 February 1998
Excellent idea! Thanks in advance for your work.
…the
name of Rodrigo's servant is just Morano. No accent, no other diacritic mark in
Spanish. I checked in the Spanish translation (
Best, Beatriz
26 February 1998
Subject: Re: The first Chronicle
>Thanks, Michael. I printed the first Chronicle. How do you plan to organize the reading?
>Next Monday I will be again available on my screen!
>Best, Beatriz.
I don't know, what do you think? Shall we just offer any comments that occur to us? Have you done anything like this before?
How about a chapter a week? It takes a bit of time to scan each section, mostly due to proof-reading.
I
know I'd be interested in anything you know about any Spanish-related
stuff. Although you're in
Some of the dialog, especially on page 1, is so “old” I can't imagine a non-native reader being able to pick it up. Then again, one of my favorite books is John Barth's Sotweed Factor, which is written entirely in Elizabethan English, and a Korean immigrant I know read and loved it, so who can tell what's hard to anyone else.
Broschat
1 March 1998
Beatriz, here is a page of Don Rodriquez. I've encountered yet another of the marks I'm interpreting as accent marks, but again it is in a place where you and other native Spanish readers don't see as possible/necessary/advisable. I'm confused.
This page is nice, because it contains, perhaps, all “accented” words in the text. I looked up Sathanas on the Internet, and it is used (besides hundreds of references in heavy metal rock music pages and some “Evil Practices” pages) in the “old Spanish” version of the Bible, the spelling being slightly different in the Latin and modern Spanish versions. No version includes an accent.
How quirky can accents be? Are they written in stone (dictionaries), or are they more flexible than that?
Here 'tis:
3 March 1998
At 10:31 26/02/98 -0500, you wrote:
>I don't know, what do you think? Shall we just offer any comments that occur to us?
Let us start in this way—any comment that occur to us, for the first chapter if you want. Then we can choose some topics, keys words, literary devices, viewpoints... more specific.
>Have you done anything like this before?
No, never.
>How about a chapter a week?
Fine. And maybe seven chapters (1-3-5-7-9-11-12) out of the twelve the book contains. We can read the five others on our own (I can read them in Spanish, so no need to scan them. You save scanning time). Of course, feel free to change whatever you want in this selection made at random. The reading could take us about six weeks starting on Tuesday 10 or Thursday 12. What to do you think?
>I
know I'd be interested in anything you know about any Spanish-related
stuff. Although you're in
Not much more. But I can take this Spanish perspective. And I will keep in mind for my comments the link you mention between proper nouns and fantasy.
>Some of the dialog, especially on page 1, is so “old” I can't imagine a non-native reader being able to pick it up. Then again, one of my favorite books is John Barth's Sotweed Factor
This parallel (Dunsany's don Rodigo/Barth's Sotweed Factor--I don't read it but would like to) may be interesting for me if you comment on. As well as every remark on the specific use of English language and idiom made by Dunsany.
Michael, impossible to retrieve in readable form your second attachment…. Don't know why! The first chapter pass on without problem. I will make tomorrow another attempt. Was it the whole chronicle 2? On my screen I get pages and pages of little squares...
Best, Beatriz
3 March 1998
Yes, your schedule sounds
just fine. I'll continue to scan all the
book, because I've long had this dream of publishing it someday. It's quite easy, actually.
Soon...
9 March 1998
Beatriz, here is my “homework.” Until we adopt some other form, I've made notes on the first chapter, and submit them to you. If this works for you, perhaps you'll make your own notes, and pass them to me. Then, we can look at what each has said, and take it from there in email.
Take your time, and send whatever you have only when you have time to do so...
Broschat
Reading Dunsany, Don Rodriquez, “The First Chronicle.”
Overall impressions. I've read this chapter three times and more (parts), and have always enjoyed each reading, finding new things each time. To contrast with other books I'm reading these days (mostly, thrillers/mysteries), once the plot has become known to me, rereading is not enjoyable, because the purpose of the writing is to advance the plot. Dunsany adds plot to his writing as an extra spice—a direction for it, if you will. His writing is prose poetry, and stands well enough alone in such units as needed to make sense. We sense that there is indeed an overall purpose, and one that might well be revealed to us at some point, but in the meantime we can enjoy the ride, taking in both what passes before our mind's eye, and also what gets filled in by what is created therein by those passages.
Voice. We are being told a story. That the narrator is with us, standing somewhat apart from the “action,” seems important to the effect of the writing. We continually observe action (and thought) within the story, but always at a distance that seems to allow us to join with the narrator in reflecting on what we see as we see it.
I wonder how important this voice is to whatever characterizes the genre of fantasy. Does not the extraordinary detail that is so much a part of modern fiction put the reader too much into the action to allow for the component of imagination that might be necessary for fantasy?
This narration suggests, guides. It does not specify.
Obscure names. I remember from reading H.P. Lovecraft years ago that a strong part of his fiction (probably called 'horror' as often as 'fantasy') was the constant reference to certain ancient names—people, books, places, names that had no reality outside his own fiction. Dunsany throws out many proper nouns I don't know. After an attempt to find some reference to them in whatever resources I have at hand, I've come to the conclusion that most are not recoverable, and are simply intended to add that aspect of “authority” that this genre requires.
As Rodriquez' father dies, we are told that he can be read of in such classics as the Black Book of Spain, the Garden Stories, the Book of Maidens, and the Gardens of Spain. I presume that these books “are real,” to quote Garrison Keillor, “so long as you don't go looking for them.”
Contributing to the unreality of this narrative are the opening passages where a dying father leaves his property to his less favored son, reserving for his favorite son only his sword. The message would appear to be: it is only in the act that value lies, not in its consequences.
I love the lines that note the passing of the old man:
I
take my leave of him, happy, I trust, in Paradise, for he had himself the
accomplishments that he held needful in a Christian, skill with the sword and a
way with the mandolin; and if there be some harder, better way to salvation
than to follow that which we believe to be good, then are we all damned.
The poetry. “And indeed there was room for darkness in that chamber…”
Rodriguez
demanded what the meat was. “Unicorn's tongue,” said the servant, and Rodriguez
bade him set the dish before him, and he set to well content, though I fear the
unicorn's tongue was only horse: it was a credulous age, as all ages are.
The attitude of this last paragraph is what characterizes the writing of the authors I most admire: Mark Twain, Steven Leacock, Garrison Keillor. That tongue-in-cheek, innocent exposition of fact, so laden with extra meaning that the reader is encouraged to supply.
Notes in a Cathedral is a cute example of this. It is a fictitious book of a type not unknown
in Dunsany's day and earlier that managed to convey erotic (or even
pornographic) literature in the pseudo guise of innocence—in this case, a
record of the supposed confession of a young woman. [These days, we don't bother with any
pretence.] Our hero (and I have no trouble
seeing him in that light) often read this at night, and “. Sometimes some little matter escaped
Rodriguez's memory and then he longed to rise up and look at his dear book…”
One last piece of
poetry:
…you
could turn from the spider's shadow to the spider and see that it was for the
most part a fancy of the candle half crazed by the draughts, but to turn from
mine host's shadow to himself and to see his wicked eyes was to say that the
candle's wildest fears were true.
Some notes on the
English used. I'm not expert, but I
presume that Dunsany adopts a version of English strongly influenced by the
King James version of the Bible. The
point is simply to place the book deep in the past. Although there is no need for the narrator
himself to take on such an age (because it is the story that is old, not
necessarily the telling of it), the effect on the English reader (who is able
to understand this writing—not every literate person
today will be able to) is to add to the antiquity of the entire effect.
“…and how this be so God knoweth only, for they are vain and variable, yet it is surely so:..”
=Only God knows how this
is so, because [women] are vain and variable, as we can all see.
“…And so he addressed
him when he was come to his chamber,..”
=When [the son] had
arrived at his chamber, he said to him…”
The use of “was come” is
truly strange to my eye, but I'm not well versed in the Bible, anyway.
“Master,” he said, “do
you draw your sword of a night?”
=Do you keep your sword
ready at night….
Enough. If anything seems odd to you, as you read the
English version, please mention it. I'm
getting so used to it now that it doesn't seem as odd as when I started
reading.
Broschat
18 March 1998
At 10:51 17/03/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Beatriz, we were away for a few days, and just got around to checking email today. Did you get my “homework” last week? Still up for reading Rodriquez? If not, I won't bother to send the remaining chapters in English (or, will anyway, if you so request).
>Hope all is well...
>Broschat
Michael,
all is well with me but not with my computer. For the first time a virus
appeared in my PC last week (I could not open it) after having received a
couple of emails, your “homework” and another attachment coming from
Yes, I am still up for reading Rodriguez. Just a week late. The virus's fault! I have read--and very much enjoyed!--both first and second chapters and have comments to send you.
Sorry for this inconvenience.
Best, Beatriz.
19 March 1998
Thanks a lot for your reassuring message regarding the virus problem! Today somebody will come to install a McCafee anti-virus. I hope this is enough to protect software.
Next Thursday (chapters 3 and 4?) I will send you my weekly page on attachment. I must confess that I have forgot to do it on a separate message and you will find it just below.
Michael: as you can easily see, my English is far from elementary correctness. May I dare to ask you to mark at least the most striking errors? I would be extremely obliged if you do so.
All best, Beatriz.
The First Chronicle - The Second Chronicle
---Overall impressions.
My only prior and very much enjoyed readings
of Dunsany have been some short stories from A Dreamer's Tale (“The Idle City” “Idle Days in the Yann” “Poltarnees, Beholder
of Ocean” “
--- Novel or Romance?
In
the first paragraph, the term “romance” appears (mandolin...balconies... maidens...moonlight...romance)
as referring to something the Lord's son must seek. A desire. A search. A
quest. In The Second Chronicle the term
returns with that same meaing: “And so our company of one going northward
through
---Self-reliance on our perception
This “self-reliance” on our perceptions seems to be present on every line of the text. The detection story that The First Chronicle includes (Rodrigo discovers the criminal) is based on this self-reliance. Following Rodrigo's--and the narrator's--example we are gradually trained to listen to small sounds, to smell faint scents, to see a lot of forms that our reason normally prevents us to perceive (“every shadow...every mournful draught... every rustle...unintelligible warnings” in The Second Chronicle). I have been very much striked by this trait of Dunsany's writing. Being a passionate Proustian reader, this trait reminded me of what Proust tells us about the famous “madeleine” Marcel dips in a tea cup: we have to deepen the perception (for Marcel the taste of the madeleine) to discover a whole world. But this is our task. Writers like Proust and Dunsany seem to learn us to do so.
---Narrator, narratee. Shaping a new language.
The narrator is, as you say, “somewhat apart from the action”. Moreover, we sense that gradually the text outlines for us a profile of this distant narrator. The narrator seems to be sick of “our depraved and decadent language of today”. We can then infer that his travel to other times and other spaces is provoked by his desire of a purer language. The narratee has his own profile (“Pardon me, reader, but at Morano's remark you may perhaps have exclaimed.....”). So both narrator and narratee will share the responsibility of shaping that pure language.
---”Obscurity is darkness rendered verbal”
These words by Joyce regarding Finnegans Wake may be helpful to deal with Dunsany's use of names. I didn't find any “real” reference for Arguento Harez...But I will continue my search...in the wake of Rodrigo and Morano....
Beatriz.
20 March 1998
Here's number 4. By the way, the name 'Argola' that occurs within is in no reference I have, but an Internet search turned up several hits in, mostly, Brazilian sources. Does the name mean anything to you?
22 March 1998
Beatriz, I'm going to get to suggestions on English before Melissa does, so I'll put comments at appropriate places in your message below. I'll probably comment on the content, as well...
> The First Chronicle - The Second Chronicle
>---Overall impressions.
> My only prior and very much enjoyed readings of Dunsany…
[mrb] Beautifully written, and an excellent thought. I do think that 'story' is valid, though. For my part (appealing to no literary theory), a story is as much an experience of the telling (in whatever mode) as it is anything “architectural.” I could well imagine my favorite [vocal] story teller (Garrison Keillor) telling a “story” for hours, and I not being able to retell it afterward because nothing actually happens apart from the activity of the story teller.
>In comparison
with the tales I mentioned, the shift from short fiction to novel
seems to have led Dunsany to fashion characters and settings more in
keeping with a “real” setting (
[mrb] Again, beautifully written. And, I like your idea of Dunsany's use of the novel form to accomplish a particular purpose. He was, as you know better than I, a well-respected writer of short fiction (and plays, I'm intrigued to know). I cannot comment upon anything other than the present work, though, as it has been too, too many years since I read the single short story I mentioned some time ago.
>--- Novel or Romance?
>In the first paragraph, the term “romance” appears …
[mrb] Curious. Why is his name changed from 'Rodriquez' to 'Rodrigo'?
>---Self-reliance on our perception
>This “self-reliance” on our perceptions seems to be present on every
[mrb] 'Teach' us to do so, you mean?
>---Narrator, narratee. Shaping a new language.
>The narrator is, as you say, “somewhat apart from the action”.
[mrb] Incidentally, both Melissa and I are a bit bothered by his use of “contemporary” language. Whether this is clear to you or not, I don't know, but to us the “contemporary” language is so dated as to be painful. If I were to realize my dream of republishing this book, I'd almost have to consider changing his slang to something more modern. That would be tampering with text, of course, and is not thinkable at the moment. For us, the effect of reading those words, however, is not pleasant.
>---”Obscurity is darkness rendered verbal”
>These words by Joyce regarding Finnegans Wake may be helpful to deal
[mrb] Goodness, Beatriz--you are something. I cannot claim to be as well-read in my own language as you are in it. Thankfully, I have you for a guide. My one attempt at Finnegan's Wake led to darkness, indeed. Obscurity might have been there, too, but I couldn't see well enough.
We
run into a names problem in chapters 3/4, where it is essential for the reader
to understand that the names are real and historical (especially, historical),
or Dunsany's intention/effect is lost.
Although I have done my own research on unknown (to me) words, I'm not
sure that a responsible future edition of this work shouldn't include notes to
explain things to a modern reader that Dunsany could presume for his
readership. For example, his viewing of
a battlefield of WWI includes names that mean nothing to most people today but
that could have been confidently used for their evocative effects in his own
day. We must understand that not only
was he in WWI but that he fought in the battle of the
Thank you for the comments. Your involvement in the world of English literature has been and will continue to be a pleasant aid to reflecting upon this truly remarkable work...
25 March 1998
Here are my comments for chapter 3
Reading Chapter 3 “The Boys are Off…”
The episode of the donkey-drivers, where Morano is upset because they are so happy—proof that there are no wars nearby. This is faintly amusing, but on the third or so reading, knowing what I now do about what happens at the magician's house, I suspect that Dunsany is less amused than is a reader who has not seen war as he has seen. The professor exists as a medium or catalyst, at least in the 3rd chapter. He is not inherently evil, I think, but is the agent through which Rodriquez sees the future.
Again, Morano's fascination with war is intended to represent the “common” view of same, where war is a game between the good guys and the bad. Rodriquez unexpected view of future wars must be seen in terms of Dunsany's own experiences and, perhaps, his purpose in writing this book. It is a profoundly pessimistic view. “Never had man [before Rodriquez] pried before so shamelessly upon History, or found her such a liar.” “…Rodriquez saw Man make a new ally, an ally who was only cruel and strong and had no purpose but killing…Rodriquez saw the machine.”
I believe that Dunsany's war experience is so important to understanding
something of what he's doing in Rodriquez that I've included some materials
from Brittanica about WWI.
Dunsany served in this war, most probably as the captain that stares
back at Rodriguez at one point in this chapter, and probably participated in
the
First Battle of the Somme
(July 1-Nov. 13, 1916), costly and largely unsuccessful Allied offensive on the Western Front during World War I.
The Germans were securely entrenched and strategically
located when the British and French launched their frontal attack on a 21-mile
(34-kilometre) front north of the
Although the figures have been much disputed, the casualties
from the First Battle of the
[Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica]
Second Battle of the Somme
also called BATTLE OF SAINT-QUENTIN (March 21-April 5, 1918), partially successful German offensive against Allied forces on the Western Front during the later part of World War I.
The German commander, General Erich Ludendorff,
believed that it was essential for
[Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica]
KILLED, WOUNDED, AND MISSING
The casualties suffered by the participants in World War I
dwarfed those of previous wars: some 8,500,000 soldiers died as a result of
wounds and/or disease. The greatest number of casualties and wounds were
inflicted by artillery, followed by small arms, and then by poison gas. The
bayonet, which was relied on by the prewar French Army as the decisive weapon,
actually produced few casualties. War was increasingly mechanized from 1914 and
produced casualties even when nothing important was happening. On even a quiet
day on the Western Front, many hundreds of Allied and German soldiers died. The
heaviest loss of life for a single day occurred on July 1, 1916, during the
Sir Winston Churchill once described the battles of the
Somme and
This kind of war made it difficult to prepare accurate casualty lists. There were revolutions in four of the warring countries in 1918, and the attention of the new governments was shifted away from the grim problem of war losses. A completely accurate table of losses may never be compiled...
Similar uncertainties exist about the number of civilian
deaths attributable to the war. There were no agencies established to keep
records of these fatalities, but it is clear that the displacement of peoples
through the movement of the war in Europe and in
[Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica]
…By October 1914 all the plans had unraveled. After the German defeat in the Battle of the Marne, the Western Front stabilized into an uninterrupted line for 466 miles from Nieuwpoort on the Belgian coast south to Bapaume, then southeast past Soissons, Verdun, Nancy, and so to the Swiss frontier. Both sides dug in, elaborated their trench systems over time, and condemned themselves to four years of hellish stalemate on the Western Front.
…Meanwhile, the French had retaken Montdidier and were thrusting toward Lassigny (between Roye and Noyon); and on August 17 they began a new drive from the Compiègne salient south of Noyon. Then, in the fourth week of August, two more British armies went into action on the Arras-Albert sector of the front, the one advancing directly eastward on Bapaume, the other operating farther to the north. From then on Foch delivered a series of hammer blows along the length of the German front, launching a series of rapid attacks at different points, each broken off as soon as its initial impetus waned, and all close enough in time to attract German reserves, which consequently were unavailable to defend against the next Allied attack along a different part of the front. By the early days of September the Germans were back where they had been before March 1918--behind the Hindenburg Line.
…Allied generals responded with longer and denser artillery bombardments…Such tactics turned western battlefields into seas of wreckage, with a “storm of steel” raging above, and condemned hundreds of thousands of men for the sake of a few thousand yards of no-man's-land.
…After a preliminary step backward on February 23 [1917], a massive withdrawal of all German troops from the westernmost bulges of the great salient to the new and shorter line was smoothly and quickly made on March 16. The major towns within the areas evacuated by the Germans (i.e., Bapaume, Péronne, Roye, Noyon, Chauny, and Coucy) were abandoned to the Allies, but the area was left as a desert, with roads mined, trees cut down, wells fouled, and houses demolished, the ruins being strewn with explosive booby traps.
27 March 1998
Comments to The Third Chronicle
--Michael, contrary to what I have proposed, I was unable in my first homework to comment on Chronicle I without making some references to Chronicle II. It is the same here regarding III and IV. Sorry for these inconsistencies.
NAMES PROBLEM: “la Garda”
I think there is probably here a typographic error since “la Garda” refers to “la Guardia” (“the Guard”) in the Spanish sense of la Guardia Civil, that is a security corps devoted to control public order in rural areas, roads, borders, railways. Until very recent times it was a sort of military police very much feared by common people because of their violent and arbitrary punishments. Still today Spanish people ironically names la Guardia Civil “la Bienemerita” (good, full of merits)....There is a celebrated poem by Federico Garcia Lorca dealing with the tense relations between la Guardia Civil and the gitans in Jerez de la Frontera (_Romancero gitano_ 1924-27) entitled “Romance de la Guardia Civil española” (Langston Hughes translated some works by Lorca but I don't know if this poem is translated by him). The relationships between “la Garda” and Morano is something of this kind, like a fox pursuing and haunting chickens in the night (III: “the scent of a fox,” “he [Morano] knew the ways of la Garda, that having arrested two men upon this road, they would now arrest two men each on all the other roads, in order to show the impartiality of the Law...,” “I want not always to wander roads with la Garda behind”). But what does “la Garda” means in this novel? maybe another figure of the violent relationships linking men, in war or in peace. Another argument to see in the book as you say “a profoundly pessimistic view.”
ILICES and OAKS - A QUERY
In contrast with the “menacing,” “careworn,” and “sinister” --personified--mountains that surround the magician's house and create the plausibility of the fantastic and cosmic adventure (III and IV), there is, in the priest's house Rodrigo and Morano quit, a “small grove of ilices.” I never met this word in my readings and, of course, never heard it mentioned or see such a tree. In the Spanish version it is translated as “encinas” (the tree that gives acorns), a very common tree. I don't think that the suggestions are the same. What does an ilice evoke for an English-speaking person and why do you think Dunsany choose precisely this tree for the priest's sequence?
“WONDERING SPECULATION” - “DEWS OF AMAZEMENT” - “ASTOUNDING JOURNEY”
My interest in Dunsany is closely linked to my interest in Borges and in Latin American reception (especially in the River Plate area) of British and US literature (Borges wrote on Dunsany in the 30s, included Dunsany's A Night at an Inn in his 1940 _Anthology of the Fantastic Literature_ and promoted German, Italian and Spanish editions of Dunsany's short fictions in the early 80s, short before he died; a really longlife interest). So, I am probably somewhat biased in my Dunsany's reading by his “dialogue” with Borges. For instance, I was very much attracted by the whole magician sequence (III-IV). And at some moments I read it as a counterpoint to Borges's short story “The Aleph” when Borges, the protagonist, goes down to the basement (compared to a well) of his friend's house and “saw” the whole universe in a certain point, the aleph--Dunsany's “great blue glass”--, with all its esoteric and cabalistic references. As you say, the magician (Borges's friend in “The Aleph”) exists as a medium or catalyst, an agent through which Rodrigo sees the future, or simply and absolutely “sees”. Narrative would be a “theoretical magic” and the narrator confesses that he has some “smatterings” of “the secrets of magic.” (III)
It
was in that area and at that time that Catholics, Muslims, Jews and Gentiles
lived peacefully together. A sort of Golden Age in the history of humanity.
Raimundo Lulio would be the thinker who best represent this sort of
conciliatory encompassing way of thinking. Could Dunsany have been thinking at
that when he chose
Thanks in advance for Melissa's comments on my English!
All best, Beatriz
Michael,
I think I forgot to THANK YOU for the extra-work of commenting on my English language failings. It is something immensely helpful for me. I often teach English (British or US) literature; students and teacher read the works in their original English version but my teaching and the exchanges with the group are held in Spanish, so my English is a very literary and written English and lacks fluency and colloquiality.
I wrote somewhere in my homework “Catholics”. No, I mean of course “Christians” (XIIIth century).
Have a nice week-end!
Beatriz.
27 March 1998
'Ilices' bother me, too, until I finally figured out what he meant.
'ilices’ would be the plural of 'ilex', which, my dictionary tells me, is simply the common holly and its like...
We'll correct the misspelling of “la Guardia” in the digital version.
Thanks.
By the way, we ran into a retired professor of Spanish literature at our gym, and have passed some chapters of Rodriquez to her hoping to get some input from someone who knows Don Quixote well. You've not mentioned that work, and you appear to be centering on English literature, so perhaps she'll have an insight or two.
No problem with the “extra chapters.” I read them as much as the others. Chapter Six is especially interesting, I think...
30 March 1998
Thanks for illices as the plural of ‘ilex’. My dictionary says also “ilex = same as holm oak” Maybe that's why the Spanish version gives “encina”, a variety of oak (by the way, “encinas” are trees often mentioned in Don Quixote and it would be excellent to have some insights on the parallel Rodrigo/Quixote coming from a Spanish literature professor).
So next “homework” Chronicles 5 and 6...
Best, Beatriz
30 March 1998
What does an ilice evoke for an English-speaking person and why do you think Dunsany choose precisely this tree for the priest's sequence?
As I mentioned before, 'ilices' is the plural of 'ilex', so the question becomes: what of the ilex to the English speaking world. Well, nothing—to this generation, I assure you!
Here's Britannica on ilex (which, by itself, it defines as “holly”):
...The
mountains of the northern Meseta and the Iberian and Baetic cordilleras carry
deciduous Portuguese oak; those of the central
So,
we seem to have a conflict between the genus and the species. The 'oak' interpretation takes 'ilex' as the
specie, while the 'holly' interpretation would see it as 'holly'. Whether holly exists (as described) in
You have asked for corrections of your English, and I'll continue to offer some, in those rare cases where there seem to be any!
“...short before he died...” We always say (and write) “...shortly before...”
Thank you for the Borges information. Your description of the “Aleph” story certainly makes it sound as if our story served as stimulus.
Comments on 7-8 come tomorrow or later. The text follows in the next two messages...
Michael
31 March 1998
Not much to say, but here 'tis:
Reading Don Rodriguez, 3
Chapters 5,6
I loved these chapters. I suppose, because they are (so far) the most romantic.
They start with a wonderful set of sentences, the kind of thing you want always at hand:
“Master,”
said Morano, “shall we have more adventures today?”
“I
trust so,” said Rodriguez. “We have far to go, and it will be dull journeying
without them.”
Romance
In a description of Don Quixote I found recently, it was said that that book had been written in reaction to the many romances that appeared at that time in history. It is amusing, then, to see a subsequent passage:
“There,
master,” he said, “where our road runs through a wood, will our adventure be
there, think you? Or there, perhaps,” and he waved his hand widely farther.
“No,”
said Rodriguez, “we pass that in bright daylight.”
“Is
that not good for adventure?” said Morano.
“The
romances teach,” said Rodriguez, “that twilight or night are better. The shade
of deep woods is favourable, but there are no such woods on this plain. When we
come to evening we shall doubtless meet some adventure, far over there.”
And, when they have bound the members of la Guardia [I'll change the digital version, when we decide what else to change—spellings, etc.]:
“Morano,”
Rodriguez said, “I remember ten ways in the books of romance whereby bound men
untie themselves; and doubtless one or two more I have read and forgot; and
there may be other ways in the books that I have not read, besides any way that
there be of which no books tell. And in addition to these ways, one of them may
draw a comrade's sword with his teeth and thus . . .”
“Shall
I pull out their teeth?” said Morano.
“Ride,”
said Rodriguez…
The boys
By now, we have a good feeling for the relationship between Rodriquez and Morano. It is much tested in these chapters, and our attachment to it greatly exploited as chapter 7 begins. Here, early in chapter 5, Dunsany calls them “refugees escaping from peace.”
A later passage throws more light on the nature of this relationship (and its attraction for us, I dare say):
And
in spite of all discomforts he gaily followed Rodriguez. In a thousand days at
the
Chapter 7 tells us, if we didn't already know, that Rodriquez gets as much from Morano as vice versa.
The encounter with the king of Shadow
Valley
I've read through chapter 8 now, and this character has yet to be identified. While all signs point to his being the oft-spoken king, I'm rather hoping it's never resolved. That would be in keeping with the positively mysterious presence he does (or does not) maintain thus far! And, he says he was shopping—for what?
The encounter with …?
Chapter 6 has the sword fight, and the funny, funny interference by Morano. That interference not only tells us about the love Morano feels for his master, but also underlines another theme of this book: the wonderful naïveté of Rodriguez. Is this necessary in order to have (or, at least, to seek out) a vision? His purity is so charming, and is brought down to reality (most often by Morano) every now and again, only serving somehow to make it all the more charming.
In Frank Capra's brilliant film of 1947—It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey's heroism is all the more powerful because he wants no part of it. He struggles against it. There's not an ounce of intentionality about it—he just can't help it.
Morano rescues Rodriguez from his higher plane, thus saving his life. The exchange between them in chapter 8, where Rodriguez explains how Morano must never interfere in his activities within that higher plane, is priceless, considering the conclusions that must be drawn from the principles that Rodriguez outlines. But, we're not there yet.
3 April 1998
Michael, I enjoyed very much reading all four chapters. So, a few comments on them.
Subject: Chronicles 5-8
Chronicles 5-8
The man to be hanged in DR (Chronicle 5) and the galley slaves in DQ (I,22)
If we read _Don Rodrigo_ (or _Don Rodriguez_), at least partly, as a Dunsanian remake of _Don Quixote_ ,The Fifth Chronicle would be a variation on the story of Don Quixote and the galley slaves (First Part, chapter 22). The plot is basically the same: Don Quixote and Sancho meet a group of shackled and chained men condemned to serve the king on the galleys. Don Quixote reacts in the way he always does, that is, he follows the exemples of Amadis de Gaula, Tirant le Blanc and other heroes of the tales of chivalry that govern his mind and his life. Since his mission in this world is to help wretched men and undo wrongs (“desfacer entuertos”), he discharges (set free?) the prisoners. Rodriguez replaces DQ, Morano replaces Sancho, the man to be hanged replaces the galley slaves, the exemplary romances and their lovers replace the exemplary tales of chivalry and their heroes. But the end of the story differs. As usually, Don Quixote is defeated in a rather humiliating way: the prisoners who had recovered their freedom thanks to him eventually beat him and throw stones at him and Sancho (DQ wants them to go to El Toboso render homage to his Lady, Dulcinea and they refuse to go).
GARDA/GUARDA: “Una de sus guardas le dijo” “los que iban en su guarda” (DQ, I, 22)
A detail in wording, again about “Garda” spelling! In this Chap. XXII of DQ, the prisoners are guarded by four “guardas”. So apparently “guardias” is a more recent word in Spanish, and in your edition, to keep DQ--and Spanish literature of the Golden Century--as a clear precursor of DR, it would be probably better to spell “Guarda”.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Chivalry tale, romance, mystic poetry, new language
I especially loved and enjoyed Dunsany's way of creating a sort of mystic atmosphere towards the end of Chronicle 5 by means of his description of sunset. There he shifts from the chivalry tale and also I think from Cervantes. In Spanish literature we would think perhaps in San Juan de la Cruz, the mystic poet who celebrates “la noche oscura del alma”, “the dark night of the soul”:
“Rodriguez, perhaps a little weary too, drew from the sunset a more somber feeling, as sensitive minds do: he responded to its farewell, he felt its beauty, and as little winds turned cool and the shine of blades of grass faded, marking all the plain dimmer, he heard, or believe he heard, further off than he could see, sounds on the plain beyond ridges, in hollows, behind clumps of bushes; as though small creatures all unknown to his learning played instruments cut from reeds upon unmapped streams.”
The text would celebrate a sort of dark night of the perception, with its intensity, its vibration (both words appear somewhere in those chapters), its discoveries. For the reader it is a welcome lesson of strangeness.
Also a way toward a new and purer language:
“in those few moments men would have known their language”.
--------------------------
Tabitharina (Ch. 5), the name of Rodriguez's cat: what can it mean, suggest, point at?
--------------------------
Striking adjectives.-
“waiting journey” (5) - “rambling quest” (5): there is something very striking (and convincing) for me in Dunsany's unusual choice and use of adjectifs. Often they create almost an oxymoron that unveils an uncommon reality.
Rodriguez's and Morano's quest is “crazy” (Ch.8), it is a “fantastic quest” (Ch. 8), a strange journey: “the unknown waits at the end of all strange journeys”.
----------------------------
Casual tone of the narrator to address his readers or to speak of them:
(Ch. 8): “what material have I left with which to make a story with glitter enough to hold my readers' eyes to the page: for know that mere dreams and idle fancies, and all amorous, lyrical, unsubstantial things, are all that we writers have of which to make a tale, as they are all that the Dim Ones have to make the story of man”
Could you Michael expand on the parallel “writers”/”Dim Ones”? It sounds interesting.
------------------------------
Chronicle VII: page 3, it is written “they...wore leaf-green bats” instead of, I think, “green hats”.
Chronicle VII: page 8, it is written “To-morrow morning, señors?” instead of “To-morrow morning, señores?” (plural “res” and not “rs”.
-------------------------------
If I receive your “homework” before Wednesday, I 'll send you then my next message on Wednesday on Chronicles 9-10.
Best, Beatriz.
6 April 1998
Might I ask an Irish question of you, please?
I'm reading Lord Dunsany's Don Rodriguez with a couple friends (via the Internet), and an odd question has arisen. At times in the story, our heroes encounter what in Spanish is apparently known as “la Guardia Civil,” and it refers to a police force (of some kind), which, shall we say, does not have a good reputation.
Dunsany renders this group as “la Garda.”
The two Spanish speakers find this failure to render the word correctly as inexcusable. One of them said, “Why, as it's spelled, it's an Irish group!”
She did not know that Dunsany was Irish.
Anyway,
are you aware of such a group in
Sorry to bother you, but nothing else has yielded any result...
Broschat
-----Original Message-----
From: Cathach Books
Dear Mr. Broschat,
The
police force in
Hope this helps.
Regards,
David Cunningham.
6 April 1998
One of Georgetown Beatrice's comments upon reading the first part of Don Rodriguez was how absurd such spellings as “la Garda” are (being such incorrect Spanish and all). She said, “Why, 'la Garda' is an Irish phrase!”
She did not know, I think, that Dunsany was Irish.
Anyway,
having recently ordered a book on
By the way, not only do you and Georgetown Beatrice share the same name, but our Lord Dunsany's wife also had that name!
7 April 1998
Another thing that has bothered Georgetown Bea (and you, if I read your comments correctly) is Dunsany's use of 'Rodriguez' as a first name.
After ranting about this for quite some time, GBea was shocked to report to me that she found “Doña Rodriguez” in Don Quixote! She admits that it was the English version, and when I last saw her, she was going to try to find her Spanish edition to check on this.
Interesting, eh?
8 April 1998
Michael,
thinking over about names (persons/places - Doña Rodríguez/Saragosse) in Dunsany's novel as a way for him to rewrite his own--Irish, English speaking--Don Quixote, maybe we could then assume 1) that Don Rodríguez is a Dunsany's play on Doña Rodriguez, yes, a character appearing in DQ for the first time in the second part. This detail could be revealing since it is in this second part that DQ and Sancho meet the readers of the book which contains their adventures as they are told in the first part of “our” book. Thus, Doña Rodriguez confronts the Don Quixote she personally meets with the Don Quixote of her book; her masters the Dukes, who luxuriously receives Don Quixote in their home, do the same.
Dunsany's Don Rodríguez in some way or other does the same.
Does it make sens, Michael? The Spanish translation would be then a wrong one, at least from this point of view. It would have been better to keep Don Rodríguez as a male version of Cervantes's Doña Rodríguez. More about Doña Rodríguez in the next message...
2) Saragosse is many, many times mentioned in _DQ_ , but always and only in the last and third “salida” that is, when DQ leaves his home for the third time in search of adventures. It is then considered by DQ as the final aim of his pilgrimage and of their voyage. He says to everybody that he is going to Saragosse to participate in a “justa” (joust? a kind of duel, on horse) that is going to take place at a certain date and in which he wants to gain a harness. But at the end of the second part, when DQ meets one more “reader” of his adventures and this reader tells him that he knows--from the book--that he is heading with Sancho to Saragosse to arrive in time for the “justas”, DQ (who considers that the book is a fake and his author a liar) gets very angry and tells him that he is wrong: he is going to Barcelona...Saragosse is not mentioned any more.
It is also in Saragosse that takes place (DQ, second part) the beautiful story of Don Gaiferos rescuing Melisendra (a stepdaughter of Charlemagne) from the Moors, as staged by the puppets of Maese Pedro (a false name for Gines de Pasamontes, the slave galley set free by DQ in the first part) in an Inn where DQ and Sancho had stopped. (Incidentally, Manuel de Falla set in music this episode in a most celebrated score “El retablo de Maese Pedro”)
Just in case it may be useful for further comments.
One more thing: So, after your reasearch “Garda” is perfectly correct since it is the Irish name for “la Guardia” (modern word in Spanish) or “la Guarda” (in Cervantes's _DQ_). Is this so?
All best, Beatriz.
8 April 1998
Goodness, Beatriz. You are your country's national treasure.
So many things seem to be falling into place, as we move through this piece.
First, in answer to your previous question, I don't know anything about “the Dim Ones,” and took it as “the gods,” when I first read it.
The point about 'la Garda', I think, is that we can't really be sure what he intended. If there is any reason to think he might have been satirizing the Irish police, then we must preserve that possibility.
One
difficulty in doing that is that An Garda Siochana did not appear _officially_
until
Thank you, so, so much for the information you relayed today. I had been coming to the conclusion that one cannot understand the whole of Dunsany's intent until the parallels with Don Quixote are clear. You are, perhaps, the only one who can do that at present (GBea hasn't read further than about Chapter 6, I think). The methodology would seem to me:
- determine what Dunsany is “copying” from DQ, which then tells us what he does not necessarily _mean_.
- determine what structural elements do not occur in DQ, and therefore deduce what Dunsany _means_.
My
idea here is that an author only puts something “new” into a story when he
intends something by it. If Dunsany
completely structured DR upon DQ, then what he would be saying would be _apart
from the events of the story_. When, as we know, he models it upon DQ in some
parts, but not in others, then he is adding structural elements for some
reason. A simple example would be: why
go to
I will study your comments more today.
Sorry, I've been late in my homework. I'm distracted by another project. Hope to make amends soon...
13 April 1998
Beatriz, here are some notes on the final four chapters. Although I'm sad that the reading's over, I am so pleased--one, that we did it, and two, that each time I reread this book I find it as 'new' as the first. I think it's his language that does it. I have since learned that the Bible (King James, in his case) was his first major literary influence, and that confirms my suspicion (shared at the beginning of this project) that his language is much affected by that book.
I don't know how much I'll continue working on this. My interest in Dunsany has been much stimulated by our work here, and I will certainly continue that. I would appreciate, surely, reference to any English language version of the articles you have mentioned (Borges), and will look for same.
Judging by the Web sites one can easily find, there is intense interest in Dunsany, at least on the part of a few people. That few, if any, of his books are still in print is evidence, however, that his time appears to have passed, a feeling he had strongly at the end of his life (I have obtained a “memoir” of contact a “society matron” in California had with him over the last 4-5 years of his life, and although much of what she writes is about herself, and silly, there are many letters and quotations from Dunsany himself, and his disappointment in the “modern” failure to appreciate his work was evident).
You once asked: “Tabitharina (Ch. 5), the name of Rodriguez's cat: what can it mean, suggest, point at?” A 'tabby' is a kind of cat, and I believe that the work might have been used as a name, too (not much anymore). 'Tabitharina' would simply be a Latin or Spanish version of that (in Dunsany's mind). I don't see anything more significant than that--do you?
Let's continue exchanging any comments we happen to generate on this
subject. If you end up writing something concerned with it (you have not
explicitly so stated, but I assume that you are a professional academic), I
would be more than happy to aid your research in any area you request.
Aside from the interest this engenders in me regarding Dunsany, I'm also motivated to learn more of WW I, and particularly what part Dunsany might have played in that horrible conflict. Not only did it kill millions of men, but set the stage for WW II and all that proceeded from that.
Looking forward to hearing from you...
The last four chronicles.
What to say? I've reread this, and taken several notes. But, it seems somehow different from the first part of the book, where there was so much to say.
As Rodriguez approaches the war, we run into more comments about warfare in general (in keeping, I would hold, with one of Dunsany's primary motivations for writing this book). For example, at an inn, Rodriguez' effect on the innkeeper's wife is told so:
“...and she looked wistfully at him going to the wars, for in those days wars were small and not every man went.'
“... and again the farmer's wife looked curiously at Rodriguez, as though there were something strange in a man that went to wars: for those days were not as these days.”
Another passage in the ninth chronicle brings up another point:
'“For which side will you fight, master?” said Morano in his ear.
“For the right,” said Rodriguez and strode on towards the nearest tents, never doubting that he would be guided, though not trying to comprehend how this could be.'
“...for he knew scarce more of the cause for which he had fought than History knows of it, who chooses her incidents and seems to forget so much.”
There is, to me, an interesting contradiction operating throughout this book. Rodriguez is a sterling character. Can there be anything sadder than his loss of a dream castle won through fair and superior fighting, and to a fraud? Does he kill the man who has raised his hopes so high and then brought them crashing so endingly to the ground? No. Upon receiving assurances from the fraud's family members, the child of which swears by the cross, Rodriguez considers the matter closed. Because they use his (Rodriguez') standards to answer him (whether valid or not), he accepts the response as the truth. We do not laugh at him (or them) for this--we share, instead, some of his intense sadness.
Throughout this book, Rodriguez is Good. He has no thought that considers only his own well-being. Morano, though unquestionably devoted to his master and his master's quest, thinks often of the practical side of matters (more than once saving Rodriguez from grave difficulties), and the practical side of anything takes no heed of Good or Bad.
But, Dunsany tells us often of the failure of war, and especially the histories that record them, to comply with any moral standard. Is this proven, then, by having Rodriguez comply with his highest standards, apparently to win the desired castle, and then to have it all disappear?
Was he moved to write this book, modeled on Quixote, to say that any former notion that war (and the gains therefrom) could be glorious was no longer possible, at least because the machine had taken over man's place in war?
What part does music play in this novel? I cannot find any reference to 'mandolin' in DQ, and it is so important in DR that it takes its place next to the sword given R by his father. Before the war starts, it is used to find which of the two parties is the just. Does Dunsany intend poetry to be understood as part of music? I'm not aware of evidence for this idea.
As Rodriguez' quest fails, we hurt with him. He has, I'd dare say, earned his reward by his high-minded behavior. Did he need this experience to become a better person?
“For awhile Rodriguez sat and gazed at the might-have-beens in the camp-fire...”
Romance
The romance of Rodriguez and Serafina is affecting in its purity.
“But then in that scented garden among the dim lights of late evening the ghost of that rose introduced their spirits one to the other, so that the listening flowers heard Rodriguez telling the story of his heart, and, bending over the shell-bordered path, heard Serafina's answer; and all they seemed to do was but to watch the evening, with leaves uplifted in the hope of rain.”
It is interesting to note that once the castle is lost and Serafina's love won, Rodriguez becomes helpless, essentially. There is no longer any action he can take, and his entire future and happiness lies in his faith in the King. That faith is sorely tried, once Rodriguez realizes how much depends upon the consequence of his faith being realized. That Don Alderon is so mightily affected by meeting the King prompts this reader to wonder about a religious purpose behind the telling of this story. It is never clear, however, so, like all great art, can remain within the mind of the reader.
The ending is very uplifting, and so much better than just telling us that our hero and his lady lived happily ever after. He succeeds, too, in not just telling us of this happy little story, but also of how this little story fits in with the rest of history as we ourselves know it. We are, by extension, a continuation of a story that has Rodriguez some unknown hundreds of years before us.
Reflections
Although I am quite aware of, and generally supportive of, the dictum that a work of art must be viewed away from influence of matters apart from the work itself (life of the artist, times of the artist, etc.), I look forward to encountering anything Dunsany might have said about this work. I have already proposed that a modern reader cannot appreciate his message about being in war without some external help. What else would help us understand what he means in having made this delightful tale?
As I said once before, a general comparison with DQ (regarding the architecture of the stories, at least) would be interesting. Was he using the DQ format to ridicule the romantic notions of war and quests that people have traditionally had, especially after the appearance of literature? Not much gets ridiculed, in my opinion. Satirical comments abound, but I, at least, do not feel much bitterness or anger in them.
I can find no reference to Garda/Guarda/Guardia in DQ. What part do they play in DR, then? It is the act of saving the King's life from their hands that wins him his castle (and love), but they appear before that episode, and then not at all.
Rodriguez and Morano. Ah, I hope Quixote and Sancho are so satisfying.
“...and to tell that the humble Morano found his happiness too. For he became the magnificent steward of Castle Rodriguez, the major-domo...whence he walked solemnly on proper occasions to wait upon his master. Morano, good, faithful man, come forward for but a moment out of the Golden Age and bow across all those centuries to the reader: say one farewell to him in your Spanish tongue, though the sound of it be no louder than the sound of shadows moving, and so back to the dim splendour of the past, for the Señor or Señora shall hear your name no more.”
30 April 1998
Thanks for your email laughing address!
Sorry, I am delayed in my last comments. A lot of work at home and at my university.
I
guess Borges's book in which I found two Dunsany pieces must have been
translated into English. In Spanish its title is _Textos cautivos_(_Emprisoned
texts_? It does not sound good, so the title must be different). It is a
collection of reviews and short articles written by Borges for the magazine “El
Hogar” (
The Dunsany pieces are dated April 30, 1937 (a short biography) and September 2 1938 (a review of Dunsany's _Patches of Sunlight_
More very soon.
All best, Beatriz
t 19:57 22/04/98 -0400, you wrote:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Mike Pope
>>A rather academic but not un-funny look at humor by, about, and for people with two tongues (more Spanish than any other):
>>www.literarydivision.org/laughing.htm
>>Typical:
>>¿Sabes lo que hace un pez? Nada.
30 April 1998
Dear Michael,
I am happy to come back for a while to Rodríguez and Morano after a two-week absence (a lot of work and on top of that one of my daughters has a thesis to finish before mid-May and at home the computer is never available...).
Even if I am sending here my last comments in reply to your last ones, I hope that we can continue exchanging any comments regarding this book and Dunsany in general, as you suggest in your message. As I must have told you in an earlier message I am interested (it is my field of studies) in the reception of British and American writers by Latin American—or, more generally, Spanish-speaking—readers. Given that more than one major writer (García Lorca, Borges, probably others) had been struck in one way or another by Dunsany's works, that he has been widely translated and published in Spanish American countries (and that I very much enjoy reading his narratives) I will be always willing to read and work on anything related to him and his imaginative storytellings.
Thanks for your explanation about Tabitharina (I had not related this word to “tabby”). Once more we can see how D. loved using Latin and Spanish forms within his English writing.
Michael, this is from a Modernism list,:
>> I want to draw on your collective wisdom...what might be your suggestions for the best—and most comprehensive - books on the cultural meaning of the first world war?
>I'd start with Paul Fussell's “The Great War and Modern Memory”
>paul fussell's _the great war and modern memory_ with its thesis that irony is the dominant trope of grat war literature is probably the critical standard;
Do you agree about the lister choice of Fussell's book as a good one on this subject you are relating to _Rodríguez_?
Below some comments on the last two “Chronicles”
I will be looking forward to your reply!
Beatriz.
Chronicles 11 and 12
A telling mandolin versus “his (Rodríguez') poor words” (11). The troubadour as an exemplary figure?
>From
the beginning the music plays a major part in the book. The mandolin is maybe
just an Italian (Latin) version of the Spanish string instruments in the Old
Days: harp, luth, “vihuela” (a sort of luth), that is, the troubadour's instruments. Although, as
you observed, there is probably no mention of mandolins in DQ, one of the models of behavior for Don Quixote
is the Provençal troubadour, as he says for instance to Sancho in I, 23: “all
Erring Knights in the past ages were great troubadours and great musicians”.
Don't you think that the choice of
“He had played his mandolin. It had uttered to the solemn hush of the understanding evening all it was able to tell: and after that cry, grown piteous with so many human longings, for it was an old mandolin, Rodríguez felt there was nothing left for his poor words to say...the voice of the mandolin...no words to match with the mandolin's high mood...” (11)
And the references to songs and singing are I think equally frequent throughout the book, evoked sometimes through ancient (Latin, French, Provençal) words to evoke ancient songs, maybe troubadour songs as in the next to last paragraph of the book when Rodriguez wanders about the forest in Spring:
“Spring found him...finding in the chaunt of the myriad birds a stirring of memories, a beckoning towards past days...”
“chaunt” = cantare, chanter, cantar, so Latin, Provençal (I assume) French, Spanish. _Rodríguez_ is decidedly a Latin romance!
Troubadour age versus WW1 - the wondrous versus the odious?
I just read (referring to John Cage's music and thinking) about the nine “permanent emotions” of Indian philosophy: four “white” (heroism, eroticism, humor, and the wondrous), four black (anger, sorrow, fear, and the odious) and the balance between them is tranquillity. And I immediately thought about “our” book and your focusing on WW1 as a starter for the book. Could WWI (wars, “History” in the novel) represent the odious, a “black” emotion, that might well be neutralized by a “white” emotion, the wondrous?
An anti-Voltaire, an anti-Enlightenment story?
At the end of Voltaire's “Candide,” after all his travels throughout the world and all his adventures, the title-character (a candid man, a good man, like Rodríguez) returns home because “il faut cultiver son jardin” (gardening one's garden?). It strikes me that Dunsany titled his Eleventh Chronicle “How he turned to gardening...). But if there is any reference to “Candide” it is probably ironically. And many words that might well be key words or at least meaningful words in _Rodríguez_ points to darkness, murkiness. The writers are “the Dim Ones” (I enjoyed very much that expression). Serafina's place is Lowlight and in the last passage you quoted (12) about Morano, he goes back “to the dim splendour of the past.” There seems to be a sort of mistrust regarding light, reason--the “reasons to make wars,” etc.-- As we read the book, we learn to see in the forest, after sunset, in the dark .
3 May 1998
So glad to hear from you again. A few comments below, but will in general store your wisdom for reference as I continue this study of a remarkable text (and environs).
I
like the Fussel reference. I used his
book on rhyme and meter, for my dissertation years ago. He became a “political creature” after/during
We
really do forget. Melissa and I attended
a very moving memorial for
I'm reading Don Quixote now, and enjoying it very much. The differences, already, are dramatic. DQ is a fool, right from the beginning. Our Rodriguez is no fool. There is one mention in DR about a work of chivalry, if I recall correctly, but the ideal of chivalry is very much a moral law by which he lives. He holds it above all else. When he takes his lady as his love, he does so very much with her permission, and he will not do so until his notion of his chivalric status is satisfied. As readers, we are not given this chivalric ideal as something to laugh at, but rather as something that we all understand and accept, although something that few of us attempt to incorporate into our lives.
My operating hypothesis right now is that Dunsany's message is: give us back chivalry--please. Even if it never existed, please, please, please--give it to us. It is so preferable to what really exists.
Morano serves for Rodriguez as a hand to keep him gently on earth, when spiritual things threaten to obscure where his feet stand. Sancho works that way for us, the readers. DQ is beyond hope (at least, in so far as I have read).
I appreciate your comments on the music of DR. It remains something of a mystery that needs to be resolved, __if DQ does not have the same thing__.
I
have obtained the book on DQ I mentioned
some time ago--Ronald Paulson's Don Quixote in
To that end, as well, I am gathering a couple books by Dunsany, both fiction and also autobiography (to the extent he engaged in such an activity). I need to see whether he wrote anything about DR or the war specifically. I've also found a couple of his books of fiction from immediately after the war (and before he wrote DR).
I expect to work on understanding DR for quite some time. I don't think I would bother, except that it is so rewarding as a read in itself. As I've mentioned before, I can read any part of the book, though I've read it over and over again, and be pleased by the experience. He was an excellent writer, because he was foremost a poet.
Glad to hear you'll still be interested in exchanging the occasional observation...
With regard and appreciation,
Michael
**Note
on “the wondrous.” I think you'll agree
that, other than the episode with the professor of
13 May 1998
Dear Michael,
I enjoyed very much your last comments.
After reading your helpful description of Fussel's literary and political background I think I am going to order his book (from amazon.com...) as a reference book on this subject (WW1 and Modernism) that is related in so many ways to so many literary works, be they British, US or Spanish American. So, thanks. I think it will be also a way for me to be able to better appreciate your current study on Dunsany's DR.
And then, I am very happy to know that you are reading DQ. I like very much and very especially:
a)
what you say about DR as a DQ who “becomes Everyman, a chivalric stance for
everybody.” Is this maybe expressed, at least partly, by the name shifting from
DQ to DR? In Dunsany's DR, in addition to the common family name of “Rodríguez”
chosen for the protagonist I found also mentioned somewhere, in different episodes
of the novel, other equally common and widespread Spanish family names:
“Fernández,” “González,” “Pérez.” Having kept this in mind, it stroke me that
in Cervantes's DQ (II, 31) when Sancho meets Doña Rodríguez for the first time
(it is also her first apparition in the novel), he addresses her as “Señora
González” (“Señora González o
b) the (very interesting) difference you point out between “noting” facts of the heroism and deaths of that time (WW1) and “remembering” them. I am not sure to have correctly decoded your words. I read them in this way: Dunsany's work would be a work of remembrance, that is, of reflection upon a (terrible) past. Remembering (as the opposite of noting, of just quoting) would always imply a certain distance, a healthy reflexivity and thoughtfulness leading (in DR at least) to equally healthy ethical proposals.I like this reading. Does it make sense?
I will be looking forward to future exchanges about Dunsany and his storytellings...
All best,
Beatriz.
13 May 1998
I did, in fact, order Fussell's book, and am enjoying it quite a bit. He even quotes Dunsany at one point, although not favorably, I think. My feeling now is that DR stands some distance from WWI for Dunsany. It is, then, the period of reflection not a period of “reporting.” I have now obtained a couple collections of Dunsany “stories” done during and perhaps just after the war. They have little to offer us today. It was one of these that Fussell quotes in his book. WWI is important to understand DR, but it would be wrong, I'm sure you'll agree to maintain that it is _only_ about WWI. I was pleased to find, by the way, an account (they're not really stories) that expands upon the scene of the captain in an abandoned house (remember--when the Professor is showing DR the future?). I can envision an “interactive” version of DR that would jump to that story if the reader so requests.
Anyway, I think you'll enjoy Fussell's book. It's a serious work by someone who is both
academic and a veteran (of WWII). We
might argue that one point Fussell makes in his book is that the experience of
war can only be understood by those who've lived through it (these need not be
soldiers, of course). That is my own
feeling (from my
As always, I'm grateful for your comments stemming from the “Spanishness” of DR (your notes below).
Back to reading Fussell…
22 May 1998
I have been looking over Dunsany’s first autobiographical
work, one he ends with the end of WWI.
He was wounded only once, and that was in
This disturbance is not mentioned in any of the WWI materials I’ve encountered, and, I suppose, with good reason. It has to do with Irish history more than the history of WWI.
What is important for us, perhaps, is that it shows the very
serious nature of the conflict between Irish factions and the British power,
and that it was very active in the years just before the establishment of an
independent
Hoping you’re well…
31 May 1998
Beatriz, Paul Fussell (in The Great War) notes that William Morris’ book (here referenced) was a strong factor in influencing the way British soldiers viewed their war experiences. I thought it worth investigating, to see if it might also have affect Don Rodriguez. Absolutely!
Not only does it start with a king’s son going out into the world, but a mysterious forest (with good bad men) is introduced, and the young hero is given a magic necklace to ease his way in this travels. And, that’s only up through chapter two!
Thought you should know, and it was nice to find it on the Web. The language is quite painfully archaic (part of the effect he’s looking for, I’m sure), so don’t be distracted by its difficulty. The many old words seem easy enough to guess, which suffices for a general reading…
5 June 1998
Thanks for your two last Dunsanian messages! I hope you will excuse me for replying here to both of them...
I am curious to know in which short story there is an account that expands the distressing and very telling scene of the captain in the abandoned house at Péronne. In its reference to Péronne the Omnis (Larousse Encyclopedia) states: “destroyed during WWI”, and this is not stated in its references to the three other cities of the Somme department mentioned in this passage (Albert, Bapaume, Arras), so Péronne seems to have been historically very carefully chosen to embody war destruction.
I have (in Spanish) a volume of selected short stories (1905-1919). From the war period there are two from Fifty-One Tales (1914), seven from Tales of Wonder (1916) and four from Tales of Three Hemisperes (1919). So maybe the one you are referring to is included there. I would very much like reading it.
Thinking
about DR from your WWI perspective,
Thinking also about your “interactive” vision I would like to “click” when R plays on his mandolin and listen for instance a composition for vihuela (the Spanish ancestor of the guitar, with the sound of a luth) by Luis de Milán, a composer from the 16th century. May Dunsany have known this sort of Spanish music? I enjoyed very much last week listening to a CD (Vergin Classics) titled “Vihuela Music of the Spanish Renaissance” with Christopher Wilson, vihuela, and I immediately imagined our Rodríguez. I like being somehow haunted by a book.
More soon (especially about William Morris reference that I very much appreciated).
Have a nice week-end!
All best, Beatriz
5 June 1998
I will send, in a few hours, the short story you (and I) refer to, as well as a lovely poem that dedicates one of his volumes. The story is not among the collections you refer but is, rather, in a book called Unhappy Far-Off Things. ‘Stories’ is a difficult word to use for much of Dunsany’s war writings, because they are often first-hand reports. However, he is above all a poet, and he does not hesitate to make his account third person, if it suits his mood. There is, usually, rather too much of a “patriotic and propagandistic” tone to these pieces to allow them to stand today. They belong to the literature of the time. DR, I hold, is something for the ages.
I’ve read much along these lines since we last
communicated. Not so much by Dunsany
himself (although, I have finished his second autobiography, the one told from
the point of view of WWII looking back as far as 1918). I’ve wanted to understand more of who, and
what, he was, before I can feel that I understand what he’s doing with his
writing. One very important thing is
that he belonged to the English aristocracy, but his “feudal lands” were (and
are) within
His friend Rudyard Kipling belonged to the same group. When I read in Fussel that Kipling had written a history of the Irish Guards in WWI, I quickly obtained same, and read it through, hoping to find reference to Dunsany. For, I feel I need to know more about the role he played in the war. He was, unfortunately for me, in a completely different division of the army, so is not mentioned. What I learned of WWI warfare, however, made the read well worth the time.
I had bought Morris’ Well at the End of the World before finding it in electronic form. It is little exaggeration to say that I haven’t been able to put it down. It does, indeed, keep getting in the way of things I’m supposed to be doing. Fussell dismisses it rather derisively, as I recall, but he’s a fool to do so. It could stand today, for those who have the patience to read the intentionally archaic language. It is, I’d guess, the quintessential “boy’s book,” which would have accounted for its extreme popularily among those who became troops in WWI. There is much violence, much chivalry, much sex (although all details are left to the imagination, and there is no more vivid imagination than that of a boy), and much love. It is so politically incorrect that few bookstores could even stock it (I say with tongue in cheek), if they knew what they had (I got my copy, of course, through Amazon).
DR is heavily indebted to this book. The influence of DQ, as we have been discussing, is also quite clear. Is there something else? What, for example, accounts for the common use of music (as you discuss in your note), especially as neither of the two influences we’ve found have anything at all to do with music, and I have no reason to believe that Dunsany was a musician (although he knew Edward Elgar personally, and can be presumed to have had an educated appreciation of music). Is there some other “chivalric” book that Dunsany had in mind as he wrote his own lovely work?
Anyway, when I get the scanner going, I’ll send along the pieces I mention. Thanks for the notes about vihuela. Something more to know!!!
Broschat
A DIRGE OF VICTORY
Lift not thy trumpet, Victory,
to the sky,
Nor through battalions nor by
batteries blow,
But over hollows full of old
wire go,
Where among dregs of war the
long-dead lie
With wasted iron that the
guns passed by
When they went eastwards like
a tide at flow;
There blow thy trumpet that
the dead may know,
Who waited for thy coming,
Victory.
It is not we that have
deserved thy wreath,
They waited there among the
towering weeds
The deep mud burned under the
thermite's breath,
And winter cracked the bones
that no man heeds
Hundreds of nights flamed by:
the seasons passed.
And thou hast come to them at
last, at last.
Lord Dunsany, 1918
IN AN OLD DRAWING-ROOM
There was one house with a
roof on it in Péronne. And there an officer came by moonlight on his way back
from leave. He was looking for his battalion which had moved and was now
somewhere in the desolation out in front of Péronne, or else was marching
there-no one quite knew. Someone said he had seen it marching through Tincourt;
the R.T.O. said Brie. Those who did not know were always ready to help, they
made suggestions and even pulled out maps. Why should they not? They were
giving away no secret, because they did not know, and so they followed a
soldier's natural inclination to give all the help they could to another
soldier. Therefore they offered their suggestions like old friends. They had
never met before, might never meet again; but La France introduces you, and
five minutes' acquaintance in a place like Péronne, where things may change so
profoundly in one night, and where all is so tense by the strange background of
ruin that little portions of time seem very valuable, five minutes there seem
quite a long time. And so they are, for what may not happen in five minutes any
day now in
Those that knew where the
battalion was that the wandering officer looked for were not many; these were
reserved and spoke like one that has a murder on his conscience, not freely and
openly: for of one thing no one speaks in
And in the end it seemed
better to that officer to obey the R.T.O. and to go by his train to Brie that
left in the morning, and that question settled, there remained only food and
sleep.
Down in the basement of the
big house with a roof there was a kitchen, in fact there was everything that a
house should have; and the more that one saw of simple household things,
tables, chairs, the fire in the kitchen, pieces of carpet, floors, ceilings, and
even windows, the more one wondered; it did not seem natural in Péronne.
Picture to yourself a fine drawing-room with
high ornamental walls and all the air about it of dignity, peace and ease, that
were so recently gone; only just, as it might have been, stepped through the
double doorway; skirts, as it were, of ladies only just trailed out of sight;
and then turn in fancy to that great town streaming with moonlight, full of the
mystery that moonlight always brings, but without the light of it; all black,
dark as caverns of earth where no light ever came, blacker for the moonlight
than if no moon were there; somber, mourning and accursed, each house in the
great streets sheltering darkness amongst its windowless walls, as though it
nursed disaster, having no other children left, and would not let the moon peer
in on its grief or see the monstrous orphan that it fondled.
In the old drawing-room with
twenty others, the wandering officer lay down to sleep on the floor, and
thought of old wars that came to the cities of
He had a bit of carpet to lie on. A few more officers came in in the early part of the night, and talked a little and lay down. A few candles were stuck on tables here and there. Midnight would have struck from the towers had any clock been left to strike in Péronne. Still talk went on in low voices here and there. The candles burned low and were fewer. Big shadows floated along those old high walls. Then the talk ceased and everyone was still nothing stirred but the shadows. An officer muttered in sleep of things 'far thence, and was silent. Far away shells thumped faintly. The shadows, left to themselves, went round and round the room, searching in every corner for something that was lost. Over walls and ceiling they went and could not find it. The last candle was failing. It flared and guttered. The shadows raced over the room from corner to corner. Lost, and they could not find it. They hurried desperately in those last few moments. Great shadows searching for some little thing. In the smallest nook they sought for it. Then the last candle died. As the flame went up with the smoke from the fallen wick all the great shadows turned and mournfully trailed away.
26 June 1998
Thanks a lot Michael for sending me “In an Old Drawing-Room.”
As you say, it is an uncategorizable text, and not really a “story” as the ones I knew from the selections I have at home and I referred to in my last message. If one knows about his war experience in WWI, the biographical and historical approach seems here stronger than in DR's episode in the abandoned house. But the ghostly reality of the war (of all reality?) and the wandering and orphaned figure of men engaged in it and attempting to build an ethical behavior out of it are very poetically expressed in the “Old....” and I like very much Dunsany's rather unique way of recurrently rendering both these aspects through his writings. It is precisely, I think, something related to both these aspects that Borges seems to have appreciated in LD and worked in his turn, in his own way. in his storytellings and poems. As I must have told you, it was through Borges that I have been led to reading Dunsany. And Borges was also a “fan” of William Morris. That's why I was striked by your parallel between LD and Morris and your comments about the latter. Another thread worth following!
All best, Beatriz.
27 June 1998
A couple things. I’ve written to the estate of Lord Dunsany, to see what copyright restrictions still apply, as well as introduce myself as someone interested in his writings. We’ll see whether they respond.
I’m thinking that DR is somehow at the end of a chain that
begins with DQ and extends through Well at the World’s End. How much it is to be seen as part of the
movement that produced in
We were recently in
A small world, I think…
9 July 1998
…We
were in
6 August 1998
Michael, hope all is going well with you. My delayed thanks for your last message with “technical advice” for working W. Morris's text on my PC.
I enjoyed very much your comments on the NY exhibit on Burne-Jones, about the presence of Morriss's wife on one of his paintings. I like his paintings very much as well as some of his friends' from the Pre-Raphaelite group. I remember having spent some wonderful moments last year (when I was lucky enough to be able to visit the Tate Gallery) watching Burne-Jones' The King and the Beggar Maid and some splendid Rossettis. I think Rossetti was fascinated by Morriss' wife, Jane, and has painted her many times, once as a stunningly beautiful “Persephona” if my memory of a postcard reproduction is still good. So it is interesting now, as you say, to relate all this rich visual field to DR and Dunsany's work. I am really happy of having made this shared reading and I owe you this happiness. So, thanks...
You must be enjoying summertime! Here it's wintry although it's never very cold.
All best, Beatriz
11 August 1998
Hello Michael, thanks for your message with news from the editors who seem reluctant to launch out into any Dunsany adventure... It's regrettable. And yet, he is a popular writer. Just the other day I happened to find (by chance, on the shelves of a friend) a story by him, “The Ghosts,” in a cheap pocket edition of The 75 best short stories in world literature-a Bantam book I think. In the same volume there was a story by Horacio Quiroga, one of the very few great Uruguayan writers. It was pleased with that unexpected literary encounter. Not so unexpected since Quiroga read Poe as I suppose Dunsany did.
By the way, did you see the film “The Wings of the Dove”? I saw it last week (it was running here for the first time with at least a two-year delay) and found many allusions to pre-raphaelite paintings and atmosphere (there is even somebody who gives Milly, the protagonist, as a gift, a box with a drowned woman carried by the river painted on its lid, as in a well-known pre-raphaelite painting but somebody whose name I don't remember). Was Henry James also a Morriss's fan or a Jane Morriss's admirer? Or I'm simply inventing?
I am
leaving
All best, Beatriz.
28 October 1998
On Thu, 10 Sep 1998, Diana York Blaine wrote:
Also we know Darl was a veteran of WWI through a brief mention of it in _As I Lay Dying_. As I note in my _Mississippi Quarterly_ article on the novel (Summer 1994), this important fact is often (always?) overlooked by critics when considering what has contributed to his pathological character.
Diana
I Never noticed this! and _As I Lay Dying_ has a special place in my heart. It was the first Faulkner novel I ever read, and I couldn't stop reading and re-reading it. I destroyed the book. I was a first year undergrad and had never been exposed to such a thing. “My mother is a fish.” I couldn't believe it. And Darl intrigued me.
Anyway, I find the WWI content fascinating. I'm always looking for allusions to the Great Wars in Faulkner's texts... to his amazement about violence on that scale and what it means to 'humanity' and about humanity. I've written (just recently in my diss.) about Faulkner's comparison of the blood spurting out of Joe Christmas's crotch to “a rising rocket.” A big image in the context of military technology's rapid expansion.
Dana
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 12:21:51 -0500 (CDT)
From: Jay Watson
To: Faulkner discussion group
Subject: faulkner> AILD and WWI
Those of you interested in WWI as a relevant context for *As I Lay Dying* may want to take a look at John Limon's chapter on the novel in his book, *Writing After War* (Oxford UP, somewhere around 1994-95). It's a really audacious, brilliant reading to complement/supplement Diana York Blaine's *MQ* article.
Jay Watson
28 October 1998
As I told Melissa in
So I just tell you here that the day after our meeting at the Ramada in Wilkes-Barre I followed Melissa's advice, left my luggage at the bus station and enjoyed a four-hour visit at the Moma (open on Mondays as you told me, thanks again...) before going to JFK airport to fly back to France. The Moma collection plus an excellent Bonnard exhibit!! I hope you enjoyed in turn the huge Van Gogh display at your National Gallery one or two weeks ago.
The stay in
When I got back home a lot of work was waiting for me at the University and at home so the first days were not easy at all. But now everything is going well again...
Michael, I started reading Morriss' The Well... (just finished Book I) and like the text. Same atmosphere of pervading strangeness and a kind of intriguing and “natural” supernatural than in Don Rodríguez, among other similarities. No doubt it must bave been a precursor of DR. as you say in your last email. It was nice to find that Borges. in two 1932 essays (“The postulation of reality” and more especially in “Narrative Art and Magic--both in his 1932_Discussion_, a collection of essays), discusses works by Morris to show that very often verisimilitude in literature is not what conforms exactly to the real but what gives more feeling, or expresses more reality by following the procedures of magic and presenting the extraordinary as normal. (He cites and quotes from _The Life and Death of JAson__by Morris, a novel in verse, but it seems also true for _The Well..._ ) What I haven't seen yet is how this novel could have been “a strong factor in influencing the way British soldiers viewed their war experiences” as Fussell states in his book. But I am going to reflect about it after finishing my reading!
When I returned from Wilkes-Barre and Scranton to Laval I checked on the screen (my daughter had the British Encyclopedia) Houdini's article because I remembered that the first of Melissa's suggestions was to visit a Houdini's Museum somewhere nearby and thought that he could be related in some way or another to Pennsylvania. There I learned that his wife was always by his side at his exhibitions as a helpful partner ant that her name was Beatriz... So, another Beatriz for your already long list...
I will be looking forward to hearing from you both!
All best, Beatriz.
Wonderful to hear you’re back safely. We, too, greatly enjoyed our visit with you,
and have some nice pictures. When we get
back from our
Fussell’s point after the influence of World’s End is that the young men who became soldiers in 1914-1918 had grown up reading that book (and other similar titles). He proposes that it had much to do with generating their idea of what war would be like. Adventure, women, heroism, etc. The reality of _modern_ warfare caused a big change in 20th Century thinking, he maintains. It was so horrible that it dissolved the romantic and chivalric illusions such young people brought into their adult lives.
In DR, Dunsany makes several comments to the effect: “Let’s forget what real war is like; let’s pretend it only involves swords, love, and high principle.”
More, upon our return from
17 February 1999
[Dunsany, writing on his childhood]
And then one day, imagination came to the rescue, and I made unto myself gods, and having made gods I had to make people to worship them and cities for them to live in and kings to rule over them, and then there had to be names for the kings and cities and great plausible names for the huge rivers that I saw sweeping down through kingdoms by night…
22 May 1999
Beatriz, I just ran across my reading notes for Dunsany’s Curse of the Wise Woman (said to be his most autobiographical novel). I thought I’d share them with you…
Dunsany, as the next generation of Pre-Raphaelites
Marlin has gone into the bog, dying of cirrhosis.
P 236 “We’ll find your son for you, m’am,” said one of them. “Don’t you worry.”
But she looked fiercely at him, and only answered: “Do you know the way to World’s End?”
“I expect we could find it, m’am,” was all he said to her.
Her eyes were blazing, and then she burst into laughter. “And you’ll only be half way to him then,” she said.
P 250 Man is the enemy of many an animal, but so they are of each other, and still there is room for all; it is only when he makes an ally of steam and the Pluto-like iron machine that the terrible alliance sweeps all before it; mystery flies away, solitude with it; and quiet is gone with the rest…”
10 June 1999
How nice to resume the Dunsany's talk!
Reading your reading notes for the Curse of the Wise Woman I realize to what extent _Rodriguez_ is central to Dunsany's work since in _The Curse_ (P 236) he comes back again and again to the “World's end notion” displayed in _Rodríguez_ , an earlier novel. He seems (p 250) to insist once again upon an anti-war humanism as well.
In my turn I came across one of the many attempts of definition of what modernism means (in literature) and would like to know your opinion about it having in mind all you know about Dunsany. I read only a few of his tales and know practically nothing about his life. Here it is:
“ the modernist writing is both an anticipation and a reaction to the First World War (often figured as a tragic dissolution not only of the 19th century absolutes but of everything that had sustained the human species in its Western form), in the sense that the war demonstrated mass technological power over the individual... and led intellectuals to a radical reconsideration of what the next (potentially apocalyptic) “evolutionary step might be in sexual, political and cultural relationships.” In some way_Don Rodrigo_ and some of his tales seem to gravitate within those lines. But I can be wrong in my approach...
Do you think Dunsany's novels (other than _Rodríguez_) may be related to this way of thinking?
Just wondering...
All best, Beatriz.
10 June 1999
Yes, back to the literary pursuit!
First, I want to caution you against an “anti-war humanism.” I firmly believe that Dunsany had nothing at all against war. He was a “militant” person, and one of his few disappointments in life, it would seem, was the delay getting into WWI. His biography makes it clear that he spent no more than about 6 months on active duty, and was present during the Allied occupation of the losing European territory.
Now, that being said, that he saw and was profoundly affected by the devastation of that war is unquestionable. Your quoted definition of “modernism” is wonderful. Remember that the real kind of war he approved of is featured in Rodriquez, when our hero fights against the unnamed enemy (made enemy only because he had chosen the other side). There is virtually no bloodshed, and he wins “fair and square,” without hurting his opponent. Dunsany was an avid sportsman, and as I write this note, I suspect that the reason he did not clarify the “good guys” and “bad guys” in that just mentioned war is because he believed it didn’t really matter. War is sometimes necessary, he would have argued, and as long as both sides play fair, may the best man win.
He is a very difficult character to appreciate today. We have a different feeling about what he considered “sport.” Now, we call it “blood sport.” He killed thousands of animals, in his lifetime, and was proud of it. He seemed genuinely to feel justified in doing so, both for the purposes of food and also for the spirit of sport, which he inherited with his title. If you had said to him, “What if everyone killed thousands of animals—there wouldn’t be any left!”, he would have said, “But there are only a few of us aristocracy, so that won’t happen.”
To appreciate him, I think, we must understand his feelings in this regard, and respect them, even if we cannot embrace them. He is precisely an example of what your definition refers to: “…a tragic dissolution not only of the 19th century absolutes but of everything that had sustained the human species in its Western form.” His own life is a marvelous mirror of that change. Half of it was spent within the “old times,” a brief part during the change (represented not only by the Great War but also by the Easter Rebellion, during which he was captured), and the last half during what we know as the modern age. It is that fact that so attracts me to him. It is almost as if by knowing him (and his work?), we could know that time (so near to our own).
I think that Dunsany was asexual, apolitical, and, perhaps, acultural. His idea of culture was that which he had known, that to which he had been born. He did not hesitate to ridicule poetry that did not rhyme, for example. He usually chose American poets, but could have pick more than a few British ones, as well.
He was, as I hope my earlier message suggested, part of William Morris’ movement, which definitely had its origins long before Morris. Despite its strong conservative component (throughout history), my country has not had influential people who felt the way Morris and Dunsany did. For one thing, we never had the history upon which they so depend. I think this makes it even harder to appreciate him.
But, I try. I try because I love his art. His writing touches me, and that means something in him shares something in me.
Melissa tells me she’s thinking of a trip to
Your message appears to have lost some characters. You mention Borges’ centennial. Are you going to write something for this? If so, I’d love to see it (even in Spanish!).
Til later…
Michael
1 September 1999
Lieutenant A.
Angel, 214th
Most of my boys were young Londoners, just eighteen or nineteen, and a lot of them were going into a fight for the first time. Regularly during the night I crawled round to check on my scattered sections, having a word here and there and trying to keep their spirits up. The stench was horrible, for the bodies were not corpses in the normal sense. With all the shell-fire and bombardments they'd been continually disturbed, and the whole place was a mess of filth and slime and bones and decomposing bin of flesh. Everyone was on edge and as I crawled up to one shell-hole I could hear a boy sobbing and crying. He was crying for his mother. It was pathetic really, he just kept saying over and over again, 'Oh Mum! Oh Mum!' Nothing would make him shut up, and while it wasn't likely that the Germans could hear, it was quite obvious that when there were lulls in the shell-fire the men in shell-holes on either side would hear this lad and possibly be affected. Depression, even panic, can spread quite easily in a situation like that. So I crawled into the shell-hole and asked Corporal Merton what was going on. He said, “It's his first time in the line, Sir. I can't keep him quiet, and he's making the other lads jittery.” Well, the other boys in the shell-hole obviously were jittery and, as one of them put it more succinctly, “fed up with his bleedin' noise.” Then they all joined in, “Send him down the line and home to Murn”—”Give him a clout and knock him out”—”Tell him to put a sock in it, Sir.'“
I tried to reason with the boy, but the more I talked to him the more distraught he became, until he was almost screaming. “I can't stay here! Let me go! I want my Mum!” So I switched my tactics, called him a coward, threatened him with court-martial, and when that didn't work I simply pulled him towards me and slapped his face as hard as I could, several times. It had an extraordinary effect. There was absolute silence in the shell-hole and then the corporal, who was a much older man, said, “I think I can manage him now, sir.” Well, he took that boy in his arms, just as if he was a small child, and when I crawled back a little later to see if all was well, they were both lying there asleep and the corporal still had his arms round the boy—mud, accoutrements and all. At zero hour they went over together.
BEFORE ACTION
By all the glories of the day
And the cool evening's benison,
By that last sunset touch that lay
Upon
the hills when day was done,
By beauty lavishly outpoured
And
blessings carelessly received,
By all the days that I have lived
Make
me a soldier, Lord.
By all of all man's hopes and fears,
And
all the wonders poets sing,
The laughter of unclouded years,
And
every sad and lovely thing;
By the romantic ages stored
With
high endeavour that was his,
By all his mad catastrophes
Make
me a man, 0 Lord.
I, that on my familiar hill
Saw
with uncomprehending eyes
A hundred of Thy sunsets spill
Their
fresh and sanguine sacrifice,
Ere the sun swings his noonday sword
Must
say good-bye to all of this;
By all delights that I shall miss,
Help
me to die, 0 Lord.
W. N. Hodgson , Published in June 1916
7 October 1999
…But,
I've been reading Collected Fictions, anyway. Very interesting, and very
intense. An encyclopedia article I consulted said that he was virtually
unknown, even within
I
think it is easy to see his interest in the unusual, even from his earliest
writings. Of course, his spoken language was English before it was Spanish
(according to the article), so his connection to British and American
literature would naturally have been greater than for most other writers in
Spanish. His European experience came at a time of
I'm not yet to The Aleph, which I remember you as saying was very much like the Don Rodriguez chapter we read. So far, I have read A Universal History of Iniquity (1935) and The Garden of Forking Paths (1941). I am about to start Artifices (1944), and The Aleph (1949) follows that…
13 October 1999
In fact, the real event is reading Borges, so you are enjoying the real commemoration. And I absolutely agree with the term “intense” you use to define that very special feeling we experience when reading his fiction.
In -The Book of Sand_ there are two short stories that, I think, may evoke very especially our friend Dunsany: “Undr” and “The mirror and the mask”. Perhaps we'll have the opportunity to share comments about it.But it's not among his earliest works. It must be a book published in the late 1960s.
Very, very glad to know you are enjoying Borges. Many thanks to let me know it. For me, Borges, Proust and Joyce are “THE” trilogy of names that are the source of my finest joys as reader.
Enjoy Paco de Lucía!
All best, Beatriz
5 January 2000
Hello Michael. I am glad you've enjoyed your trip to the West Coast. I remember it's the land of your origins, since in Lakawanna (is it correctly spellt?) you've bought a souvenir to send to your mother, in the West.
As
for Dunsany, since you ask me if something in particular interests me I tell
you that I have looked specifically for “A Night at an
Here,
it's Summer, I have a full month vacation and just today I am going to the
beach “El Pinar”, 30 miles from
Best regards,
Beatriz
24 January 2000
First
of all, a lot of thanks for emailing “A Night at an
In “A Night...” we find also a denouement as spectacular as the one in the short story by Borges you mention (“There are more things” from _The Book of Sand_). But the two-headed ghostly snake mounting the stairs of the narrator's uncle's home to go to bed in Borges's narrative seems nearer to Lovecraft than to Dunsany!
By the way, in this same short story, “There are more things”, the one dedicated to the memory of Lovecraft, “a devoted admirer of Dunsany” as you remind me, William Morris is mentioned as “a good poet and a bad constructor” whose “solid [architectonic] rules” have been followed in Argentina to build the narrator's and his uncle's house. Amusing, isnt'it? So we have in those pages, directly or indirectly reunited, Morris, Dunsany and Borges. All three seem to be very happy, literary speaking, when they tell us stories of very ancient times and mythologies that blur our time and space limits and unsettle our habits and ways of seeing things and thinking about them. They seem to agree at least in those major narrative points. In “The Sword and the Mask”, the effect produced on the reader by the ancient royal Irish setting, history and characters is not very different, to some extent, I think, from the one produced by the _The Well at the World's End_'s remote landscape and archaic language. But Morris's setting seems to be more enchanting than perplexing. In Borges's case it is perhaps just the opposite.
My
three-week summer vacation is over but weather is fine and I enjoy it. I hope
you enjoy your new
All best, Beatriz