The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison (nonfiction book recommendations TXT) đź“•
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The Worm Ouroboros is considered to be one of the foundational texts of the high fantasy genre, influencing later authors like J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Ursula K. Leguin, and James Branch Cabell. It is most frequently compared to The Lord of the Rings in its epic scope set against a medieval, magic-laced backdrop—a world called “Middle Earth” by Eddison, thirty-two years before Tolkien’s—and in its almost mythical portrayal of larger-than-life heroes and villains.
The plot begins simply enough: The Lords of Demonland, a group of heroic warriors enjoying a strained peace, are called upon by an emissary of the warlock king of Witchland, Gorice XI. The emissary demands that Demonland submit to the King of Witchland—but the proud Demons refuse, setting off an epic war that spans their entire world. The heroic struggles of the Demons and their allies against the Witches reflect the circular nature of human history: the snake eating its own tail of the title.
The novel is written in a purposefully archaic, almost Jacobean style. The rich, surprising vocabulary and unusual spelling are testaments to Eddison’s expertise at reading and translating medieval-era texts. To this day, it remains perhaps unique in fantasy literature in the accuracy and precision of its highly affected prose style, perhaps matched only by the out-of-time strangeness of the prose in Hodgson’s The Night Land. But where critics often find The Night Land’s prose obtuse and difficult, they have nothing but praise for Eddison’s beautiful, quotable style.
Eddison had already imagined the story and its heroes as a child, and drawings he made as a youth of events in the book are preserved in the Bodleian library. While the novel is without a doubt the work of a mature and skilled writer, and while some of the events and characters are portrayed differently in the novel than they were in his youthful sketches, the names of many of the characters and places remain unchanged. Some of his contemporaries, like Tolkien, wondered about the strange naming style; others criticized it as taking away from the more serious subject matter.
The Worm Ouroboros remains one of the most influential works in the high fantasy genre to this day, and traces of the foundation it laid can be still be found in genre books a century after its publication.
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- Author: E. R. Eddison
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It was high noon when the Lord Gro came to his senses in that chamber. The strong spring sunshine poured through the southern window, lighting up the wreckage of the night. The tables were cast down and the floor strewn and splashed with costly essences and earths spilt from shattered phials and jars and caskets: aphroselmia, shell of gold, saffron of gold, asem, amianth, stypteria of Melos, confounded with mandragora, vinum ardens, sal armoniack, devouring aqua regia, little pools and scattered globules of quicksilver, poisonous decoctions of toadstools and of yewberries, monkshood, thornapple, wolf’s bane and black hellebore, quintessences of dragon’s blood and serpent’s bile; and with these, splashed together and wasted, elixirs that wise men have died a-dreaming of: spiritus mundi, and that sovereign alkahest which dissolveth every substance dipped therein, and that aurum potabile which being itself perfect induceth perfection in the living frame. And in this welter of spoiled treasure were the great conjuring books hurled amid the ruin of retorts and aludels of glass and lead and silver, sand-baths, matrasses, spatulae, athanors, and other instruments innumerable of rare design, tossed and broken on the chamber floor. The King’s chair was thrown against the furnace, and huddled against the table lay the King, his head thrown back, his black beard pointing skyward, showing his sinewy hairy throat. Gro looked narrowly at him; saw that he seemed unhurt and slept deep; and so, knowing well that sleep is a present remedy for every ill, watched by the King in silence all day till supper time, for all he was sore an-hungered.
When at length the King awoke, he looked about him in amaze. “Methought I tripped at the last step of last night’s journey,” he said. “And truly strange riot hath left its footprints in my chamber.”
Gro answered, “Lord, sorely was I tried; yet fulfilled I your behest.”
The King laughed as one whose soul is at ease, and standing upon his feet said unto Gro, “Take up the crown of Witchland and crown me. And that high honour shalt thou have, because I do love thee for this night gone by.”
Now without were the lords of Witchland assembled in the courtyard, being bound for the great banqueting hall to eat and drink, unto whom the King came forth from the gate below the keep, robed in his conjuring robe. Wondrous bright sparkled the gems of the iron crown of Witchland above the heavy brow and cheekbones and the fierce disdainful lip of the King, as he stood there in his majesty, and Gro with the guard of honour stood in the shadow of the gate. And the King said, “My lords Corund and Corsus and Corinius and Gallandus, and ye sons of Corsus and of Corund, and ye other Witches, behold your King, the twelfth Gorice, crowned with this crown in Carcë to be King of Witchland and of Demonland. And all countries of the world and the rulers thereof, so many as the sun doth spread his beams over, shall do me obeisance, and call me King and Lord.”
All they shouted assent, praising the King and bowing down before him.
Then said the King, “Imagine not that oaths sworn unto the Demons by Gorice XI of memory ever glorious bind me any whit. I will not be at peace with this Juss and his brethren, but do account them all mine enemies. And this night have I made a sending to take them on the waste of waters as they sail homeward to many-mountained Demonland.”
Corund said, “Lord, your words are as wine unto us. And well we guessed that the principalities of darkness were afoot last night, seeing all Carcë rocked and the foundations thereof rose and fell as the breast of the large earth a-breathing.”
When they were come into the banqueting hall, the King said, “Gro shall sit at my right hand this night, since manfully hath he served me.” And when they scowled at this, and spake each in the other’s ear, the King said, “Whoso among you shall so serve me and so water the growth of this Witchland as hath Gro in this night gone by, unto him will I do like honour.” But unto Gro he said, “I will bring thee home to Goblinland in triumph, that wentest forth an exile. I will pluck Gaslark from his throne, and make thee king in Zajë Zaculo, and all Goblinland shalt thou hold for me in fee, exercising dominion over it.”
V King Gorice’s SendingOf King Gaslark, and of the coming of the sending upon the demons on the high seas; with how the Lord Juss by the egging on of his companions was persuaded to an unadvised rashness.
The next morning following that night when King Gorice XII sat crowned in Carcë as is aforesaid, was Gaslark a-sailing on the middle sea, homeward from the east. Seven ships of war he had, and they steered in column southwestward close hauled on the starboard tack. Greatest and fairest among them was she who led the line, a great dragon of war painted azure of the summer sea with towering head of a worm, plated with gold and wrought with overlapping scales, gaping defiance from her bows, and a worm’s tail erect at the poop. Seventy and five picked men of Goblinland sailed on that ship, clad in gay kirtles and byrnies of mail and armed with axes, spears,
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