The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison (nonfiction book recommendations TXT) 📕
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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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So speaking, the King was come with Gro into his great bath chamber, walled and floored with green serpentine, with dolphins carved in the same stone to belch water into the baths that were lined with white marble and sunken in the floor, both wide and deep, the hot bath on the left and the cold bath, many times greater, on the right as they entered the chamber. The King dismissed all his attendants, and made Gro sit on a bench piled with cushions above the hot bath, and drink more wine. And the King stripped off his jerkin of black cowhide and his hose and his shirt of white Beshtrian wool and went down into the steaming bath. Gro looked with wonder on the mighty limbs of Gorice the King, so lean and yet so strong to behold, as if he were built all of iron; and a great marvel it was how the King, when he had put off his raiment and royal apparel and went down stark naked into the bath, yet seemed to have put off not one whit of his kingliness and the majesty and dread which belonged to him.
So when he had plunged awhile in the swirling waters of the bath, and soaped himself from head to foot and plunged again, the King lay back luxuriously in the water and said to Gro, “Tell me of Corsus and his sons, and of Laxus and Gallandus, and of all my men west over seas, as thou shouldest tell of those whose life or death in our conceit importeth as much as that of a scarab fly. Speak and fear not, keeping nothing back nor glozing over nothing. Only that should make me dreadful to thee if thou shouldst practise to deceive me.”
Gro spake and said, “My Lord the King, you have letters, I think, from Corsus that have told you how we came to Demonland, and how we gat a victory over Volle in the sea-fight, and landed at Grunda, and fought two battles against Vizz and overthrew him in the last, and he is dead.”
“Didst thou see these letters?” asked the King.
Gro answered, “Ay.”
“Is it a true tale they tell me?”
Gro answered, “Mainly true, O King, though somewhat now and then he windeth truth to his turn, swelling overmuch his own achievement. As at Grunda, where he maketh too great the Demons’ army, that by a just computation were fewer than us, and the battle was not ours nor theirs, for while our left held them by the sea they stormed our camp on the right. And well I think ’twas to enveagle us into country that should be likelier to his purpose that Vizz fell back toward Owlswick in the night. But as touching the battle of Crossby Outsikes Corsus braggeth not too much. That was greatly fought and greatly devised by him, who also slew Vizz with his own hands in the thick of the battle, and made a great victory over them and scattered all their strength, coming upon them at unawares and taking them upon advantage.”
So saying Gro stretched forth his delicate white fingers to the goblet at his side and drank. “And now, O King,” said he, leaning forward over his knees and running his fingers through the black perfumed curls above his ears, “I am to tell you the uprising of those discontents that infected all our fortunes and confounded us all. Now came Gallandus with some few men down from Breakingdale, leaving his main force of fourteen hundred men or so to hold the Stile as was agreed upon aforetime. Now Gallandus had advertisement of Spitfire come out of the west country where he was sojourning when we came into Demonland, disporting himself in the mountains with hunting of the bears that do there inhabit, but now come hotfoot eastward and agathering of men at Galing. And on Gallandus’s urgent asking, was held a council of war three days after Crossby Outsikes, wherein Gallandus set forth his counsel that we should fare north to Galing and disperse them.
“All thought well of this counsel, save Corsus. But he took it mighty ill, being stubborn set to carry out his predetermined purpose, which was to follow up this victory of Crossby Outsikes by so many cruel murthers, rapes, and burnings, up and down the country side in Upper and Lower Tivarandardale and down by Onwardlithe and the southern seaboard, as should show those vermin he was their master whom they did require, and the scourge in your hand, O King, that must scourge them to the bare bone.
“To which Gallandus making answer that the preparations at Galing did argue something to be done and not afar off, and that ‘This were a pretty matter, if Owlswick and Drepaby shall be able to enforce us cast our eyes over our shoulders while those before us’ (meaning in Galing) ‘strike us in the brains’; Corsus answereth most unhandsomely, ‘I will not satisfy myself with this intelligence until I find it more soundly seconded.’ Nor would he listen, but said that this was his mind, and all we should abide by it or an ill thing should else befall us: that this southeastern corner of the land being gained with great terror and cruelty the neck of the wars in Demonland should then be broken, and all the others whether in Galing or otherwhere could not choose but die like dogs; that ’twas pure folly, because of the hardness and naughty ways of the country, to set upon Galing;
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