August '23 Miscellany - and a Notion Entertained

A few things to flag up for you, largely unrelated to recent posts - as well as brief section once again Entertaining a Notion.

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A Return to Saxherm: if you hadn't already encountered it, HCK over at Grand Commodore has recently posted an audio version of his story 'The Crimes of Jack Daw', set in my own Saxherm, which was created using his city-state creator. (Check the comments of that post for a series of people drawing up their own cities, and perhaps make your own!)

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I enjoy the work of Tim Powers, and so when I saw a paperback by his fellow Ashbless scholar James P. Blaylock, I decided to pick it up. That was The Stone Giant, and it rather left me cold. The obliviousness of its main character mixed oddly with the very directly fantastical elements. 

But seeing a copy of The Last Coin, I decided to try again.

This is more like his pal Powers. Set in Seal Beach, California (part of the greater Los Angeles area; I assumed reading it that it was a pastiche of somewhere rather than a real place), contemporary with the book's publication (1988) it is about the assembly of the Thirty Pieces of Silver paid to Judas Iscariot by an old man called Pennyman. But most of it is told from the point of view of Andrew Vanbergan, who is trying to open an inn, and deal with aged relatives, and get the right kind of breakfast cereal, and...

There is the perennial comment about how stupid people in horror films are, how they ought long ago to have gone down to the basement, and sat there with a shotgun pointed at the door. Vanbergan is, like the lead of The Stone Giant, oblivious and fussy and caught up with his own mundane troubles - and this is exactly as he should be. It is a wild leap for a man in 1988 to work out that someone is gathering thirty very particular pieces of silver, even if we know it from the prologue or the blurb. Watching someone not quite notice and not quite understand what is going on is exactly how this should be going. 

The grubby, furtive - petty, even - Vanbergan is an unlikely paladin (not that he ever really becomes one). Compare Indiana Jones, who is supposed to be somewhat ruthless and morally compromised, another unlikely saviour - but who has a handsome jawline and good suits and a winning smile, and eventually becomes another Hollywood icon. Obviously this man rescues the Holy Grail: that's just what he does. (Cf. Bond: 4/5 of his assignments were meant to be run of the mill, and lots of the books start with him grousing about paperwork. Fleming even intended his name to be boring! But a decade or so of movies and...) Anyway, Blaylock gets a portion of Grade-A kudos for maintaining the unlikeliness of his unlikely hero. 

The best book of its kind I've read? By no means. But the midpoint mix of obscure signs and obliviousness, mundanity and creeping horror is quite good. If I knew more about David Lynch, perhaps I'd call it Lynchian.

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The Pantographia of Edmund Fry. A 1799 work collecting as many alphabets, scripts and writing systems as the author could get his hands on. It may be found here at the Internet Archive.

Rather lovely in its broad sweep and unique collection of printed scripts. Good to flip through, even if online. Fry does not quite distinguish continually between a script and an alphabet (e.g, on one page we have both the Gothic script found in High Medieval manuscripts and the alphabet of the Goths); likewise Danish is produced in the Latin Alphabet. Things like the Philosophic language of John Wilkins, Bishop of Chester are included - Cf. The Search for the Perfect Language, Umberto Eco. (Pantographia is at least of the spirit of TRoAPW).

Using it as a reference, it would irritate me that English and Saxon are distinguished - especially when one entry under English reproduces something by Alfred the Great. See also the entries for both High Dutch and German, or Ancient British and Celtic. The Pantographia reproduces languages from across the globe, some of them from quite far off and quite recent discoveries to Fry and his audience: see entries under 'Nootka Sound' or 'Friendly Isles'.

The colonial and imperial aspects are baked in, of course: the entry for New England (sandwiched between [pre-Rosetta Stone] Egyptian and English) does not appear to be in a dialect of the Pilgrims, but is possibly Wampanoag (see also Virginia and New Zealand). This practice is not consistent - see Ecclemach. The specimen text for many languages is the Lord's Prayer, be it Siamic, Orcadian, Formosan or Mohawk.

Terms are also unfamiliar - Esthonian, Esquimaux, Ethiopic, Sclavonian, Manks, Saracen (as well as Arabic), Servian, Thibetan. I am unable so far to identify 'Molqueeren'; it looks like Dutch and is perhaps a sort of Frisian. 

Fry also introduces as Welch the 'Bardic Alphabet' of Edward Williams. There's something of a collision in this between the Romanticism (and Nationalism) of the late 18th and 19th centuries and the (mid-18th) Enlightenment project of encyclopaedias and catalogues: see also Ossian. It's tempting to view this as a narrative of Romantic-Nationalist passions and obsessions colliding with Enlightenment naïve benevolence - but that's perhaps a little too neat. Cf. the 'alphabet of Charlemagne'.

Anyway, none of those last few paragraphs should prevent you from at least leafing through this online. An interesting work and I would very much like to see an annotated version.

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Tales of the Alhambra: a collection of stories and essays by Washington Irving of Sleepy Hollow and Old Christmas fame, written while mixing travel and diplomatic work in Europe, published in 1832. It is set in and around (surprisingly) the palace of the Alhambra in Granada. This was a chance find and an interesting one. My edition was enhanced by a variety of colour plates: the publisher has not identified the artists, and the internet is little help. I have identified some, but others are made more troublesome to find, especially when they appear mirrored and differently coloured on image sites. (And yet still they lack the name of an artist! Pah!)

Tales is in part a description of the Alhambra and the countryside around it, together with sketches of its inhabitants. It is not as such uncharitable, but it is through the lens of a Protestant republican American observing the customs of a Catholic kingdom in the Old World. I would call it benignly disposed next to  The Monk or Browning's 'Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister', but they share certain elements. 

Anyway, Irving's Alhambra is full of earthy peasants, genteel poverty, Royal officials, guitars being played, chaperoned maidens in mantilla and basquiña, muleteers, maimed veterans and roguish contrabandistas. It's a more colourful account than that Sackville-West gives - in part perhaps because of the relative climates of Avila and Granada.

The other portion of Tales is stories, dealing either with the distant past or the present inhabitants of the Alhambra. In many of these, the presence of Moorish Spain makes itself felt - though of course Irving has already spent much time describing the architecture of the Alhambra . Sometimes honest peasants are shown the way to stashes of buried treasure in the ruins, or enchanted caves. This is frequently the work of ghosts. In others, the story is set during the Middle Ages and the conflict of the Emirate of Granada and the Kingdom of Castille. Some of this, with the presence of astrologers, gallant princes, talking birds and flying carpets shows the hand of the Thousand and One Nights. 

Other pieces, such as the chapter 'Mementos of Boabdil' (Muhammed XII), display a more grounded approach, with Irving ruminating on the history of the Moors in Spain towards the end of the Reconquista. This is, of course, not colourless: 'the splendid drama of the Moslem domination in Spain', 'if it be a true representation of the man, he may have been wavering and uncertain, but there is nothing of cruelty or unkindness in his aspect'. Likewise, there are some stories of intrigues between the Governor of the Alhambra and the Captain-General of Granada.

[That is, Captain-General of the Kingdom of Granada: united with much of modern Spain under the Crown of Castile but de jure separate until the 19th century. English Wikipedia will guide you inevitably towards the Captains-General of the Spanish Empire in the New World or modern high-ranking officers.]

All that aside, reading this made me entertain a certain notion. I have of late been marinading in Tolkien. My mind went to a great citadel, of the country and yet not of the culture, once a chief stronghold of the enemy, ruined and upon a time glorious, in strange relation to its neighbours...

"The Tower of the Moon" by Ted Nasmith

Let us look to Minas Morgul.

Once Minas Ithil, tower of the moon, renamed after its conquest to the tower of sorcery. Counterpart to Minas Tirith. Aragon II, King of Gondor and Arnor, commanded that it would be destroyed and that none would dwell there (The Return of the King, Ch. 15, 'The Steward and the King'). Ithilien, the land East of the Anduin that was once its territory became the domain of Faramir, Prince of Ithilien.

But even King Elessar would in time die, and pass the crown to his heirs: likewise the children of Faramir and Eowyn would take up the title of Prince. And how readily may a city be utterly erased? Minas Morgul would endure a time.

Generations on, none is meant to dwell in the ruins of Minas Morgul. But a watch is kept on the land once called Mordor, and this means that a guard must be kept in the Morgul Vale, as a principal pass through the Mountains of Shadow. So there is a garrison in Minas Morgul. And where there are soldiers, there must be armourers, and farriers, and cooks. And with settled non-combatants, there are families. And all must be fed, so suppliers and procurators and traders come and go.

But they must not dwell there: all say, and all are told, that they will one day leave and never return. However, in the meantime there they pause, and tell tales of the ancient decorated halls: of stashes of coin and precious gems found in the walls, of ancient yet keen-edged weapons of strange make, of charms and enchantments in flowing scripts. 

Yet it is firm law that Minas Morgul will not be occupied: if any go there, it is by the King's authority alone. So the Castellan of the Morgul Vale is directly appointed, unlike his near neighbour the Prince of Ithilien, who inherited his title. But even if Prince and Castellan get along quite happily, the men under each will clash, and claims of jurisdiction must be judged. Furthermore, any Castellan would rather be the Castellan of Minas Ithil, rather than bear the infamous name of Morgul - though any Prince would have none of it. 

Who comes and - pauses - in Minas Morgul, in the ruins from which all shadows have been chased? The regular soldiery of Minas Tirith. Detachments from the Fiefdoms, serving their term: archers of the Blackroot Vale, hillmen from Lamedon, Lossarnach fighters with great axes. Men of Dol Amroth, who wished to leave their homes, but would not be sailors. Work crews, that must one day be road menders or masons and one day be sappers and eidoloclasts. The Castellan, and such of his household as he cared to take into Morgul. Couriers and rangers of the Prince of Ithilien. Opportunistic traders of Near Harad, or from the Kingdom of Dale and the Lonely Mountain. Elves from the Gardens in Ithilien (see Appendix A of LotR).

Anyway, were I forced to create a Tolkien-derived fantasy dungeon, that's perhaps what it would look like.