The Heads of Cerberus (part 1)

 

 

I suddenly realized this intro to Harlan Ellison’s Hornbook is intended as a homage to Claimed. There are those who see Francis Stevens, ne Bennett, ne Barrows as a pioneer of Dark Fantasy. I wonder if that’s because the late 20^th century sub-genre is oft associated with women?

As a reader solely of three or four tales I think a much more likely claim is as a pioneer of heroic fantasy with a marine bent. Of her fantasy I have read that five are set on an island; Claimed tells of an obsessive seaquest; Citadel of Fear of a lost city on a subterranean lake set with war galleys.

The heroic stuff is for sure not that feminine – apart from Friend Island.

Stern of feature, bronzed by wind and sun, her age could only be guessed, but I surmised at once that in her I beheld a survivor of the age of turbines and oil engines – a true sea-woman of that elder time when a woman’s superiority to man had not been so long recognized.

The two stories I read tell of the love of a man for a woman; a courageous and foolhardy love even unto reckless, impetuous death. Bennett writes of fighters, and

The Dusk Lady came of a warrior people. At his rough command she sprang back out of his way, and the fight was on. (Citadel of Fear page 252)

The warrior inhabits a physical universe of blood and honour, and her fantasies are really no less sorcerous than Howard’s, whether the living demon Nacoc Coatl, or the fleetly floating and fleetingly psychic remnants of archaic Atlantis.

Friend Island is a not bad thematic intro to the larger work, a sea-shantie-ish tale of a long-in-the-tooth sea-woman’s reminiscences of being stranded on an island that seemed to respond to her moods.

Somehow, living there alone my natural womanly intuition was stronger than ever before or since, and so I knowed.

The loneliness of an island is a different kind of thing to sheer mental boredom that we suffer from nowadays, and make one ponder. Is intuition a response to a state of the universe – in this case an island?

What would a friendly universe be? She first poses the question, “Is it civil or wild?” so clearly an uninhabited island is wild. A wild universe isn’t safe – a thing of blood and honour – but it also isn’t under the rule of order (civilization).

However, in days gone past civilization was not just the rule of order, it was wild and free. A very good example is the St Tropez of Bardot’s day; in Hyborian Bridge 9 she bemoans its demise

“At first, there was nothing. Then beaches appeared after the film And God Created Woman. Each was different, funny and unconventional. There was joy, it was a symbol of freedom,” she recalled.

“But with this reorganisation project, this beach will become monotone when it was so charming. It’s tragic.”

Civilization always has been a merging with nature (see Rome Hyborian Bridge 2). It cannot replace the natural cleanliness and rugged rustic pursuits of Man UNLESS it is simply an illusion. An illusion is something that is visually convincing (sun, perspective) but it has not the inarticulate grace and flow (of Bardot or a beach). We are, after all, run by words (script) as never before in the history of mankind.

Words can be useful – descriptions as in Bennett or Howard – but they can also be pure routine. If we live in a routine world, it cannot also be a free-flowing inarticulate universe. The two are incompatible.

If civilization has routines (customs, laws, edicts) it also has to have the spontaneity of free communal expression 

Raymond Depardon, Bolivia

There are two sides of reality; the order of a robot; the beauty of a wild beast. An island is a physical presence – like St Tropez used to be according to BB – providing free food, songbirds, nectar, rock pools and tidal detritus. The pleasure is of the body to express itself wholesomely in a non rule-bound sense

LA MADRAGUE

That side of civilization – that was there in the 60s from France to San Fran – that might make it barely bearable, has never been deader. The side that merges with nature, that lives like an island isolated from outside interference (Hong Kong, prev.)

It’s because civilization has become a perspective illusion that convinces the head that it has become cutoff from the physical experience of nature (cosmos) and therefore the psychic expression of freedom.

A non-physical universe suffers from physical boredom and is nevertheless trapped by its own physique. There is no escape from physique and therefore – whatever “they” tell us – that is what the universe is.

By ignoring the physical reality, we are permeated by facts of convincing rightness that only exist in the heads of acolytes, irrespective of physical desirability. This “rightness” - it has to be said – is a male thing; a compulsion – monetary, numerical, algorithmic – of the head that is indicative of physical boredom.

An island – and particularly the female island of the story – is a presence of physical desirability, bodily pleasure. Intoxicating and inarticulate reality. Now, this is exactly the sort of reality that our male politicians/acolytes of dead sorcerers are not atall convinced by, since it’s not of the head! Therefore, they continually destroy the thing that allows free-flowing imagination unencumbered by rule-bound boredom.

The more speeches you hear the more you know you are in the realm of rule-bound boredom. What is the way out of this nightmare? Every man or woman is an island. Our bodies are perfect and capable of country pursuits of yore (as well as sailing, canoeing). Cowboys – and cowboy-hippies – need to get out of their heads and onto their saddles. Yeehar!