syrupwit

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. . . why, I seem to see only the strivings of an ape reft of his tail, and grown rusty at climbing, who has reeled blunderingly from mystery to mystery, with pathetic makeshifts, not understanding anything, greedy in all desires, and always honeycombed with poltroonery.

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classicists will make the ugliest least functional website in the history of html and it will contain the entire library of fragmentary papyri of the works of aeschylus. for free

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Scattered, developing thoughts on the Biography of the Life of Manuel, now that I've finally finished Figures of Earth (1921).

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To an extent, I agree with JRR Tolkien's reported dismissal of Cabell's books as "quite boring." The entries in the Biography are all variations of the same story -- usually a fairly cruel, sad, and futile-feeling story, where the author's considerable skill in creating lovely and wonderful things is employed mostly so that they can be summarized and then directed offstage.

Misogyny is consistent, pervasive, and impoverishing across the work (the 18 volumes of the Biography are supposedly one work). Female characters exist to nag; be murdered; provide obscured sexual dalliances; be idolized and then climb down unappealingly from their pedestals; be just as cynical as the protagonist, but also be victimized and end up betrayed by him; and, in the case of Melicent in Figures of Earth, appear briefly as an ordinary and lovable child. Occasional narrative suppositions that a wife or sex partner might have a complex inner life that is inaccessible to the protagonist are, I think, part of this and not an antidote to it. (I am interested to see what specific strain of Cabellian misogyny permeates The Cream of the Jest (1917), where a wife character plays a major role.)

I am not familiar enough with literary, philosophical, or religious traditions to argue for placing Cabell somewhere, although I did read an article from 1969 yesterday asserting that his work fits into an 18th-century, mostly-French "Enlightener" tradition skeptically challenging orthodox (not Orthodox) Christianity.

Only reading a little of his stuff might make it hard to believe that it was some kind of big influence on Terry Pratchett / Discworld. However, reading more of it makes this easy to believe. The falling angel / rising ape conversation in Hogfather (1996), for example, is way Cabellian, if you ignore that Death is having it with Susan.

I haven't read his later, non-Biography works yet, but if the Nightmare Trilogy (1934-1937) duplicates the worldview of his earlier books with even more cynicism and nastiness, oooohhhh gosh... what am I going to do with you cabs.

I say all this and like... I read Beyond Life (1921), which no one would have any reason to read unless they were a massive fan of the author. I read The Music from Behind the Moon (1926), and rage-quit for a bit because it was so deeply and hatefully misogynistic. I actually felt a little betrayed about it -- but I had no reason to be, because there's nothing else to expect from him, except it feels like there should be. I read The High Place (1921), which a bunch of people say is especially nasty, and it really emotionally affected me. Every story in the Biography is a repetition of and variation on the other stories. The repetitiveness lets a lot of charming and beautiful and intriguing details slip in, a lot of wit and clever phrases and quotable editorializing, as Cabell varies his scenery for the only human drama that he seems to feel is worth depicting.

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Figures of Earth is incredibly sad, but I found it comforting when I wasn't getting mad at it.

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oh fuck you cabell

Manuel raised from looking at the water just the handsome and florid young face which Manuel had seen reflected in the water. As his memories vanished, the tall boy incuriously wondered who might be the snub-nosed stranger that was waiting there with the miller’s pigs, and was pointing, as if in mild surprise, toward the two stones overgrown with moss and supporting a cross of old worm-eaten wood. For the stranger pointed at the unfinished, unsatisfying image which stood beside the pool of Haranton, wherein, they say, strange dreams engender.⁠ ⁠… “What is that thing?” the stranger was asking, yet again.⁠ ⁠… “It is the figure of a man,” said Manuel, “which I have modeled and remodeled, and cannot get exactly to my liking. So it is necessary that I keep laboring at it, until the figure is to my thinking and my desire.” Thus it was in the old days.

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The other answered shrewdly: “Yes, you speak well, and you posture handsomely, in every respect save one. For you call me ‘friend.’ Hah, Manuel, from behind the squinting mask a sick and satiated and disappointed being spoke there, howsoever resolutely you keep up appearances.” “There spoke mere courtesy, Grandfather Death,” says Manuel, now openly laughing, “and for the rest, if you again will pardon frankness, it is less with the contents of my heart than with its continued motion that you have any proper concern.”

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. . . but at all events there is a decency in these things and an indecency, and I shall never of my own free will expose the naked soul of Manuel to anybody. No, it would be no pleasant spectacle, I think: certainly, I have never looked at it, nor did I mean to. Perhaps, as you assert, some power which is stronger than I may some day tear all masks aside: but this will not be my fault, and I shall even then reserve the right to consider that stripping as a rather vulgar bit of tyranny.

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“Why, yes, but unhappiness is not the true desire of man,” says Manuel. “I know, for I have had both happiness and unhappiness, and neither contented me.”

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. . . I dry away into stone, and this envied living is reshaping me into a complacent idol for fools to honor, and the approval of fools is converting the heart and wits of me into the stony heart and wits of an idol.

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Then in the gray dusk was revealed a face that was not human, and the round toothless mouth of it spoke feebly, saying, “I am Lubrican, and I come to guide you if you dare follow.” “I have always thought that ‘dare’ was a quaint word,” says Manuel, with the lordly swagger which he kept for company. So he climbed out of the third window of Ageus. When later he climbed back, a lock had been sheared from the side of his gray head.

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The outlook from this window was somewhat curious. Through the two other windows of Ageus, set side by side with this one, and in appearance similar to it in all respects, the view remained always unchanged, and just such as it was from the third window so long as you looked through the thick clear glass. But when the third window of Ageus was opened, all the sunlit summer world that you had seen through the thick clear glass was gone quite away, and you looked out into a limitless gray twilight wherein not anything was certainly discernible, and the air smelt of spring. It was a curious experience for Count Manuel, thus to regard through the clear glass his prospering domains and all the rewards of his famous endeavors, and then find them vanished as soon as the third window was opened. It was curious, and very interesting; but such occurrences make people dubious about things in which, as everybody knows, it is wisdom’s part to believe implicitly.

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For they say Dom Manuel could never resist her, because of that underlying poverty in the correct emotions which, as some say, Dom Manuel shared with her, and which they hid from all the world except each other.

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Nobody wants to hear about my digestion model of writing.

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@pierogipie do you want one

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the chant of light was designed specifically so you can use relevant quotes from it at the beginning of pretentious fanfic

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That in such solitude he wept is improbable, for his hard vivid eyes had forgotten this way of exercise, but it is highly probable that he remembered many things, and found not all of them to his credit.

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Thereafter Miramon did what was requisite with some acorns, and the splutterings were answered by low thunder. So came a second champion to aid them. This was a pleasant looking young fellow with an astonishingly red beard: he had a basket slung over his shoulder, and he carried a bright hammer. He rode in a chariot drawn by four goats. “Come, this is certainly a fine stalwart fighting-man,” says Manuel, “and today is a lucky day for me, and for this ruddy gentleman also, I hope.” “Today is always his day,” Miramon replied, “and do you stop interrupting me in my incantations, and hand me that flute.” So Manuel stayed as silent as that brace of monstrous allies while Miramon did yet another curious thing with a flute and a palm-branch. Thereafter came an amber-colored champion clad in dark green, and carrying a club and a noose for the souls of the dead. He rode upon a buffalo, and with him came an owl and a pigeon. “I think⁠—” said Manuel. “You do not!” said Miramon. “You only talk and fidget, because you are upset by the appearance of your allies; and such talking and fidgeting is very disturbing to an artist who is striving to reanimate the past.”

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Then Freydis went away, and the accursed beasts and her castle too went with her, as smoke passes.