SO: we all have a lot of time these days. Patrick Stuart of False Machine once did a review of E. R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroborous. And a decent podcast on the same topic with Tom Fitzgerald of Middenmurk.
After The Worm Ouroborous came The Zimiamvian Trilogy. The first of these is Mistress of Mistresses. This is nominally connected by a passing reference by a character to Zimiamvia as a land, somewhere else on the planet of Mercury. Further, there is a character called Lessingham who appears briefly at the beginning of Ouroborous; the prologue has Lessingham referred to upon earth (a narrator comes to his house after his death/disappearance and has a mystical experience). Then we go to Zimiamvia proper. And Lessingham is there also, but makes no reference to his life on Earth. A little like the framing device in A Princess of Mars, perhaps.
Of course, it shares other similarities with Ouroborous. There is a war of aristocrats, with Renaissance mannerism. There are the long lists, detailing the dress of the main characters. The vast gemstone-studded palaces re-appear. The prose isn't perhaps quite as Jacobean as Ouroborous, but that element of it is there. Here's Brandoch Daha being described in Ouroborous:
"His gait was delicate, as of some lithe beast of prey newly awakened out of slumber, and he greeted with lazy grace the many friends who hailed his entrance. Very tall was that lord, and slender of build, like a girl. His tunic was of silk coloured like the wild rose, and embroidered in gold with representations of flowers and thunderbolts. Jewels glittered on his left hand and on the golden bracelets of his arms, and on the fillet twined among the golden curls of his hair, set with plumes of the king-bird of Paradise. His horns were dyed with saffron, and inlaid with filigree work of gold, His buskins were laced with gold, and from his belt hung a sword, narrow of blade and keen, the hilt rough with beryls and black diamonds. Strangely light and delicate was his frame and seeming, yet with a sense of slumbering power beneath, as the delicate peak of a snow mountain seen afar in the low red rays of morning. His face was beautiful to look on and softly coloured like a girls face, and his expression one of gentle melancholy, mixed with some distain; but fiery glints awoke at intervals in his eyes, and the lines of swift determination hovered round the mouth below his curled moustachios."
Here's Barganax, Duke of Zayana being described in Mistress.
"His kirtle was of corded silk, rose-coloured, slashed with velvet of a darker hue, and gathered about the waist with a belt of sea-horse hide lapped at the edge with thread of gold and bossed with balas rubies and cat's-eye chyrsoberyls; he had thick-woven silken hose of the like rose colour, and a long grey cloak of dark grey brocaded silk lined with cloth of silver; the collar of the cloak was of black cormorants' feathers cunningly sewn and fitted to make an even smoothness, cross-striped at every span by lines of rubies and fastened with golden clasps. Yet all this was but shadows in water beside the man himself. For, alike in his wide tall frame and in his carraiage noble and debonair and of a cat-like elegance this Duke was beautiful to look upon beyond the example of men; his skin marvellous fair and smooth, his hair the colour of burnished copper, short and curly, his nose clean cut and straight, his brow wide, his eyebrows sleek and thick and with a scarcely to be seen upward slant, that cast a quality of somewhat pensive and of somewhat faun-like across his face; his shaven chin delicate but strong, his mouth a little large, firm-lipped under daintily upcurled moustachios, sensitive , apt for sudden modulations of mood and passion; his eyes brown, contemplative, and with profound obscurities of pulsing fire."
Here's a specimen of the dialogue, that does something similar to
Ouroborous, though perhaps a little less formal.
" 'Imprimis' said the Duke 'whose turn should it serve to yerk me one under the fifth rib? Not old Jeronimy's, not theirs that stand with him: it should raise a cloud of wasps about their ears should in three days time sweep 'em out of Meszria. Not yet our discontented lords: they for action, and that were a strange road, to murder me: by my soul, they can look to none other to lead 'em. The King's? True, there's some coldness betwixt us, but I'll not suspect him of things myself would not soil my hands withal. But indeed I do know all these men. Pew! I am not to begin Duke.' "
Interestingly, when a letter or text appears in Mistress, it reads somewhat like as follows:
" 'As touching my sayde kingdom of Mezria, save and exept the sayde apponage of Zayjana as heerin befoare prouided, I do point my wel beloued faythfull sarvante the Lord Hy Amerall IERONIMY to re-will all the londe as Regent therof during my sed Systers minorite and thereafter as Shee shall of Hir roiall wylle and pleasure determine of. And who some ere shall neglect contempne or syde any dyspousicion of this My Testment, lat his life haue an erly a suddant and an euill endingeand lat the Angre of the Goddes rest vpon him. Giuen under my roial seall and under myne hande in my pauylyoun bisyde Hornmeere in Rerec this fourt day of Aprelle in the yeere of my raighne I.' "
Aside from the antique orthography, it strikes me as odd that I don't see the difference between narration and in-universe spelling more - aside from jokes about a character's bad spelling, or text speak. 'Rerec' above is a constituent part of Zimiamvia - spelt as Rerek everywhere else.
The plot
As the above will may suggest, the plot starts with the land of Zimiamvia: three lands - Fingiswold, Rerek and Mezria - united into one body by Mezentius. He has died, leaving his young son Styllis on the throne. He promptly dies off-screen and civil war (of a brief and sporadic type) ensues. Styllis's sister Queen Antiope takes over, with a regency until she comes of age at 21.
[It occurs to me that we don't get many civil war stories in speculative fiction that make the participants look similar, despite the fact that they are from the same polity, (presumably) have the same customs, &c. I'm tempted to blame
Star Wars for this, but this may be due to visual media more generally and besides, stereotypes of Cavaliers and Roundheads are a deal older. All the same, remember that it took a while for the New Model Army to be brought together and uniformed, and that not everyone belongs to a particular subculture even if they are on that subculture's side.
Either way, one doesn't get a sense of the different sides having looking dramatically dissimilar in
Mistress.]
It's rather Shakespearean in this sense, or like something on the stage. We enter the action a little late, and we don't get to see some of the inciting incidents; the leading lady is shipwrecked on the shores of Illyria or Otello arrives in Cyprus (as in the opera by Verdi).
The major players in this war are Barganax, the Duke of Zayana (bastard son of Mezentius) and Horius Parry, Lord of Lamiak and Vicar of Rerek.
[Vicar is used in the sense of deputy; when the Pope is referred to as the Vicar of Christ it is not because he is meant to be Jesus's parish priest.]
Barganax is a sort of stereotype of an artist - devoting himself to long projects, burning finished canvases depicting his muse, the Lady Fiorinda because they aren't good enough. But he is still an aristocrat with all the pride of his station and a keen duellist. In all this, he certainly resembles the protagonists of
Ouroborous.
Parry - often known as the Vicar - is lively and fierce, a burly fellow. He has a character rather like Macbeth - his main redeeming feature being his ferocity in war and his resolve. Fierce, red-bearded and vigorous, we first meet him at his home where he is washing a pack of vicious dogs; he appears to be the only one who can control them. Now, this is might look fine when in a redbrick Tudor courtyard but this is an Eddison book, and so everything is covered in gemstones the size of porpoises. So there is this disconnect between the courtly customs of Zimiamvia and the oversized and thuggish but astute Vicar.
***
The Vicar of Rerek and his dogs
"Busy-tailed prick-eared heavy-chested long-fanged slaver-mouthed beasts were they all, a dozen or more, some red, some black, some yellow, as big as wolves and most wolfish to look upon. Each as his turn came the Vicar seized by the scruff of the neck and by the loose skin about the haunches and, lifting it as it had been a kitten, set it in the bath. He was a huge, heavy, ugly man, nigh, about fifty years of age, not as tall besides tall men, but great-thewed and broad of chest and shoulder, his neck as thick as a common's man thigh, his skin fair and full of freckons, his hair fiery red, stiff like wires and growing far down on his neck behind; he wore it trimmed short, and it has this quality that it stood upright on his head like a savage dog's if he was angry. His ears were strangely small and fine shaped, but set low; his jaw great and wide; his mouth wide with pale thin lips; his nose jutting forth with mighty side-pitched nostrils, and high and spreading in the wings; his forehead high-domed, smooth and broad, and with a kind of noble serenity that sorted oddly with the ruffianly lines of his nose and jaw; his beard and moustachios close-trimmed and bristly; his eyebrows sparse, his eyelids heavy, not deep set. He had delicate lively hazel eyes, like the eyes of an adder."
I shall also mention that one of his dogs is called Pyewacket.
The banner of Lamiak and hence the Vicar is a black owl with red talons and beak on gold. His motto is
Noctus noxiis noceo - Nightly I pray upon vermin.
***
Back to the plot. In the midst of these tension, Lessingham, cousin of the Vicar, rises high in the ranks of the nobility and seeks to make a lasting peace, whilst pursuing love. This is not a world of constant battle; there is room for philosophy lessons, hunting, courtly entertainments and love-affairs in jewelled pavilions during mystic nights. Said love affairs have a terrifying quality; however wonderful or voluptuous they may be, the participants seem to be drawn into wider archetypes of he-lover and she-lover. There is a loss of personality, not just into a wider divine archetype, but into other lovers as well. Beyond everything, there is the seemingly unshakable Lady Fiorinda, lover of Barganax, who seems to tap into an eternal well of the feminine and mystical.
Zimiamvia
Unlike, say the British Isles in the mid-seventeenth century, we get no especial sense that these are different nations with different customs. There appears to be no overall government - just a personal union, as Stuart England and Scotland before the Act of Union.
There are frequent references to European culture and religion - philosophers like Apollonius, Classical myth, the Iliad, the Eddas, Christian festivals like Michaelmas and religious figures such as God the Father and Satan, quotes in French, Latin or Greek. Sappho, Homer, Shakespeare and Webster, among others, are quoted. The Gods are invoked more often than any given God.
Renaissance as all of this sounds, there is no gunpowder; arms and armour seem quite medieval. Months are as the Gregorian Calendar, but years a
re dated from the foundation of the city of Zayana; Mistress takes place in anno Zayanae conditiae 777.
A few notes on place names: the first syllable in Rerek is accented like Year, and the third syllable in Zimiamiva is accented; the I's are short. The names are taken from a variety of sources, as we are told in a brief afterword. '
Fiorinda is in origin Italian,
Amaury and
Beroald French;
Antiope,
Zenianthe and many others Greek'. There's to my ear a likeness to C.S. Lewis's
Telmarine Names. Eddison was a peripheral member of the Inklings, and my Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks editions of
Ouroborous and
Mistress quote him on the back cover. I may do a list of names elsewhere.
Of course, all this is perhaps explained by the Prologue, in which speaks thus:
"...the fabled land of ZIMIAMVIA. Is it true, will you think, which poets tell us of that fortunate land: that no mortal foot may tread it, but the blessed souls do inhabit it of the dead that be departed; of them that were great upon earth and did great deeds when they were living, that scorned not earth and the delights and glories of earth and yet did justly and were not dastards nor yet oppressors?"
So people in the Prologue, apparently in the real world, know of Zimiamvia, and consider it a form of afterlife. Wicked and Worldly = Hell, Wicked and Unworldly = Hell (?), Good and Unworldly = Heaven, Good and Worldly = Zimiamvia?
I suppose an apt point of reference here is HP Lovecraft's Dreamlands. Fantastical, yet accessible to the poets and visionaries.
This perhaps explains the relative morality of the characters in Mistress. There is no-one quite as hateful as some of the Witchlanders in
Ouroborous; whilst Lessingham is perhaps the most sympathetic or least flawed, no-one seems outright villainous or tyrannous. The Vicar of Rerek is commanding and moody, but has not the qualities of Caligula or (the literary) Richard III. One wonders what sort of men became the spear-carriers and bit parts in Mistress.
Also, nobody seems to act as if they are in the afterlife. So, have they all drunk of Lethe or is it a vast game? If so, it's a game they take seriously.
Conclusion, of a sort
If
Ouroborous was Eddison revisiting childhood stories, what is
Mistress, which sits in so similar a fashion? A chance to go back, perhaps, once the need to tell one type of story is done. A slower, less epic story. Lessingham's glory in peacemaking may be seen in comparison to the finale (if it can be called a finale) of
Ouroborous. The spirit is sometimes more limpid, though I doubt anyone who read
Ouroborous and enjoyed it necessarily wants a limpid version of it. Nevertheless, I stuck with it to the end, and enjoyed it, Hymns to Aphrodite and all.
