The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison

I made it through and I found the last two-thirds progressed much more quickly, and were more involving, than the first 150 or so pages. I'm sure this has a lot to do with the fact that after ambling lazily until that point, I finished the rest in only a couple of sittings.

It also helped that the book moved from its lengthy scene setting, through a protracted and vaguely pointless quest sequence, and onto the real warfare and battles. I found myself very caught up in these later scenes, genuinely wanting the Demons to kick the Witches the hell out Demonland. I was quite upset when Brandoch Daha's palace at Krothering was comprehensibly trashed by the drunken, objectionable Witches, and I almost cheered when Lady Mevrian escaped the foul attentions of Lord Corinius. In order to describe one of the huge battles, Eddison employs a literary device of delayed narrative, and introduces a couple of humble, country folk to be the recipient of the story. These are, I think, the only non-noble characters who get an identity and a purpose other than being slain in combat.

Eddison is straightforward in his characterisation. Although the Witches are described in just such gorgeous detail as the Demons, they are just a little less perfect all around, and a little too ready to intrigue. The Demon court stands for all that is civilised, august, just, honourable, virtuous, beautiful, chivalrous, lofty, intelligent, benevolent etc, and its lords are correspondingly inhumanly good. They are not much individualised, although Brandoch Daha has a good line in cynical, drawling wit, like a knightly Scarlet Pimpernel. The Witches, in contrast, backstab, fight, scheme, drink and womanise, and are almost indistinguishable from each other. Corvus drinks but Corvinius doesn't, or perhaps it's the other way round? They may temporarily get the upper hand, but this is just to allow them the opportunity to prove their unworthiness by acts of rapine and looting, thereby rendering their eventual defeat and destruction all the more satisfactory.

I think no one should come to The Worm Ouroboros expecting there to be a point to it. There is none and some of the plot devices are so obvious you can hear them creaking. The quest, for example, exists solely to get the Demon lords out of the way so the Witches can invade, and to set up the ending, yet it occupies about two years of the overall timeline of the book. And at the end of it, the heroes find they have to return home! In some ways, the story is stitched together from a series of one-off incidents that exist solely to move that part of the story along and then are never returned to or mentioned again.

Yet, somehow, when by all rights it should collapse, the whole thing works. The story exists for the sake of the story alone, for what seems to me the author's fascination with the language, culture, dress, habits of some fabulous golden age. The setting is incredibly well maintained; Eddison's invention never falters, there was never (at least to my ear) a wrong note sounded. The book is true to itself, if that makes any sense, and within that self-contained universe Eddison somehow holds it all together: the layer upon layer of adjectives, the lengthy similes, the involved sentence structure and unusual verb placement, the bravery and chivalry that are almost frivolous in their extremes. I get the impression that the author took his work very seriously, and at the same time took care slyly to undercut his own bombast.

It is not to everyone's taste, I'll warrant, but to those that are minded for a folly, 'tis a sweet one.

The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison

E R Eddison was an English civil servant who wrote Ouroboros in 1922. My 1952 copy of the book was published by Dutton in a series called The Xanadu Library, 'A new series of paperback classics of imaginative writing...' and includes an introduction by Orville Prescott. His introduction, which is excerpted for the blurb, puts the novel in the ranks of Homer, Icelandic sagas and the Morte d'Arthur. A quick Google search revealed that Mr Prescott was, at the time, a reviewer for the New York Times and for Time magazine, and thus presumably lends an air of literary validity to the reprint of Ouroboros. There must surely be a reprint in the works with a foreword by Neil Gaiman.

I'm just under half way into the book, and I feel I've settled into its rhythms now. It is not a book that I can pick up and put down, because I don't find the romantic epic style immediately accessible. The language repays careful, wakeful reading of the sort that has been a little at a premium lately, so I'm making slow progress.

The action of Ouroboros takes place on the planet Mercury, which is inhabited by warring peoples called Witches and Demons, along with Ghouls, Goblins and Imps, but Eddison uses only the names and none of their usual accompanying characteristics. That in itself muddies the waters; the Demons are the good guys, for example, and the Witches are the bad guys, with the Goblins in an uncertain position as unhappy underlings to the Witches, which makes then unreliable allies to the Demons. The theme of the story is the epic struggle between the Demons and the Witches. The Demon lord Goldry Bluszco won a one-on-one 'wrastling' match with the Witch king Gorice XI, which was supposed to settle the whole affair but Witchy treachery ensued. As the Demons sailed home victorious, the mighty worm Ouroboros, sent at the bidding of Gorice's successor (helpfully named Gorice XII), blasted the fleet and stole away Goldry Bluszco who is now held in durance vile somewhere in Impland. The Demon lords have already suffered one failed campaign against Witchland, and are now questing in Impland to recover Goldry Bluszco, their forces severely diminished by the truly Homeric shipwreck that beset them on the way. It's not that either side is fielding thousands of men, but in fact, if after the shipwreck only 3,000 are left from 30,000, the figures seem much more imaginable and therefore affecting. So far, all the heroes have made it but I wouldn't be surprised if there is some Achillean-style tragedy ahead.

Eddison delights in description, and takes the opportunity to lard his prose even more than usual. This is his description of the Demon Lord Juss, one of the heroes:

Turn thy gaze first on him who walks in majesty in the midst, his tunic of olive-green velvet ornamented with devices of hidden meaning in thread of gold and beads of chrysolite. Mark how the buskins, clasping his stalwart calves, glitter with gold and amber. Mark the dusky cloak streamed with gold and lined with blood-red silk:a charmed cloak, made by the sylphs in forgotten days, and bringing good hap to the wearer, so he be true of heart and no dastard. Mark him that weareth it, his sweet dark countenance, the violet fire in his eyes, the sombre warmth of his smile, like autumn woods in late sunshine. This is Lord Juss, lord of this age-remembering castle, than whom none hath more worship in wide Demonland

I love that simile '...his smile, like autumn woods in late sunshine', and that compound adjective 'age-remembering', and there have been plenty of other examples that have made me smile. Like this one: 'I can see pat up his nostrils a summer's day journey into his head'. Eddison took obvious delight in the world and the characters he created, and the novel is saved from collapsing under the weight of its over-stately prose by that sense of joy and the leavening of humour that run through it.

That said, I can completely see why it fell out of favour. It's almost a literary folly, I think, and I get the impression that Eddison wrote it to please himself above all, perhaps to cheer himself up after a long day of pushing dry papers around his desk.