Artistically,
BWS’s Pre-Raphaelite style prints are a very good illustration of throwing down
the odd vanishing point in a basically disordered universe (Cosmic Curmudgeon)
The Book of
Samothrace is
interesting because the flaming book seems to have created a mirror image of
the maiden on the gracefully curving bench, which is drawn with perspective
accuracy. I don’t suppose he meant to imply that order – the sun or flaming
book – and perspective illusion go together, but that is one interpretation of
the mirror image!
Certainly, in
prints such as The Ram and the Peacock, BWS is at pains to employ
imagery of that type (a sundial, a prism that refracts light into rainbow
colours). That type of imagery is also representative of science; since an
illusion of the sun is very convincing
to the ordered mind (see “Pets” Hyborian Bridge 56) it can overwhelm physical reality – the sequence of events we
see on the Earth as it turns in the cosmos under the stars above.
Already it
was dark and cold. The stars were out and very clear with a crisp crackling
silvery winter shiver in the light.. Down the western shore of the great False
Bay, past the Naval Base just clear of a faint mountain line, the Southern
Cross was sinking to the sea like Arthur’s sword returning to the waters of
Avalon. (Laurens van der
Post, Flamingo Feather, Penguin 1955 page 59)
The physical
universe is strong and provides a source of myth (psyche.) Stories that you could think
of as sequences, traditions that have origins. Children learn them and the
early and ancient come together (Hyborian
Bridge 61 part2).
The physical reality then has a type of psychic strength in the young who
are taught tribal myths. The relation between the physical and the psyche goes
much deeper than simply origins and tales. Whereas an illusion is a sort of
trick of the head, the physical universe provides the senses with evidence of primordial
reality.
The night was without a moon, clear and very still, and the sky was as packed with great, flashing stars as the purple Umangoni shade with freesias in the spring. Here and there in the valley the night fires were lit, and as I got further away from the main road they spread on the clean air that lovely scent of burning African wood and coals of dry animal dung which I would not exchange for all the perfume of Paris. (page 85)
The sense of ease van der Post feels is the ease of a man-of-action, his mood matching what he sees, hears, smells. In the land of action strength reigns, and it is a strength which cleanses. In our world of hygiene, these types of sweet and woody smells are almost a thing of the past. They are pungent and pleasing because there is a natural cleansing process at work. For that there has to be dirt present. The two cannot be separated; like Fulling where two strong processes come together to create one pristine product (woven wool Hyborian Bridge 60)
The night was without a moon, clear and very still, and the sky was as packed with great, flashing stars as the purple Umangoni shade with freesias in the spring. Here and there in the valley the night fires were lit, and as I got further away from the main road they spread on the clean air that lovely scent of burning African wood and coals of dry animal dung which I would not exchange for all the perfume of Paris. (page 85)
The sense of ease van der Post feels is the ease of a man-of-action, his mood matching what he sees, hears, smells. In the land of action strength reigns, and it is a strength which cleanses. In our world of hygiene, these types of sweet and woody smells are almost a thing of the past. They are pungent and pleasing because there is a natural cleansing process at work. For that there has to be dirt present. The two cannot be separated; like Fulling where two strong processes come together to create one pristine product (woven wool Hyborian Bridge 60)
All this takes place in the world of action where Man hunts under the
stars in wide open spaces, the physical place where the Earth is turning and
there are no illusions of the mind. It’s a simpler world, and many things are
simple. Music to be musical has to be simple since it’s defined by rhythms and
tempo.
Then, hearing music in the street I crossed slowly over to the window and
saw a Zulu walking easily under the palms by the road.. a guitar slung from his
shoulder like that of some medieval minstrel, he strummed as he went a little
tune of his own invention, five urgent bars only, played over and over again,
faint, soft, loud, louder, loudest, up down, down up. (page 72
GHOST WORLD
The simplicity of
music echoes the simplicity of our sense of physical recurrence as the Earth
circles and things come around again. Animals have this ritualistic sense of
ease at familiar watering holes and places of repose.
At its feet, the
water had long since spread a wide cloak of fine white drift sand beyond which
lay an oval pool, black, smooth and filled with untroubled water. By the edge
of the glassy water, like a bundle of oriental silk, lay a young male cheetah, his
ardent life glowing within him, lighting a flame to the shadowy
water. (page 166)
Howard evoked this
eternal ritual of musical refrain in the character of Ridondo in By This Axe
I Rule.
Kull
shook his lion head. “No, Brule, he is beyond my reach. A great poet is greater
than any king. He hates me, yet I would have his friendship. His songs are
mightier than my sceptre, for time and again he has near torn the heart from my
breast when he chose to sing for me. I will die and be forgotten, his songs will
live forever.”
Beyond the Black River is the Howard tale which most recalls van der Post's descriptions of trailing through the last vestiges of the primal bush, in the hunt for "the dark impersonal forces" (of the wormdollar?) which care only for gain. In both, Fenimore Cooper woodcraft is pitted against demons to whom the forest is but a staging post to the overwhelming of primeval reality by dragons of hellfire.
Then Balthus forgot his exasperation as his ears were outraged by the most frightful cry he had ever heard. It was not human, this one; it was a demoniacal caterwauling of hideous triumph that seemed to exult over fallen humanity and find echo in black gulfs beyond human ken.
The view looked guileless enough. There were no dragon's wings, no vampire dactyllos or prehistoric apparitions of evil hanging over it to warn the trusting earth. The only sign of hidden activity was a long line of hunters and their bearers carrying loads on their heads.. (page 185)
Beyond the Black River is the Howard tale which most recalls van der Post's descriptions of trailing through the last vestiges of the primal bush, in the hunt for "the dark impersonal forces" (of the wormdollar?) which care only for gain. In both, Fenimore Cooper woodcraft is pitted against demons to whom the forest is but a staging post to the overwhelming of primeval reality by dragons of hellfire.
Then Balthus forgot his exasperation as his ears were outraged by the most frightful cry he had ever heard. It was not human, this one; it was a demoniacal caterwauling of hideous triumph that seemed to exult over fallen humanity and find echo in black gulfs beyond human ken.
The view looked guileless enough. There were no dragon's wings, no vampire dactyllos or prehistoric apparitions of evil hanging over it to warn the trusting earth. The only sign of hidden activity was a long line of hunters and their bearers carrying loads on their heads.. (page 185)
