a gallimaufry

Framing Fantasy: Matthew Sangster & Brian Attebery

A couple of days ago I watched this fascinating discussion about fantasy between Dr Matthew Sangster and Professor Brian Attebery, chaired by Dr Dimitra Fimi under the auspices of the Glasgow University Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic. (By the looks of it, their YouTube channel has lots of other interesting talks on it.)

I enjoyed it a lot and was particularly taken with the idea of ‘fuzzy sets’ which they talked about as part of the vexed question of how we define fantasy. ‘Fantasy literature’ is a western construct and even within that tradition there are plenty of works which are hard to categorise. Few people would argue with The Lord of the Rings being classified as fantasy, but what about The Master and Margarita, Lolly Willowes, Nights at the Circus or Orlando? (And is it even useful to divide literature like this, unless of course you are a bookshop?)

The idea of fuzzy sets builds on the idea of there not being a binary fantasy/realist divide in fiction, but something of a continuum. You look at relationships and influences of texts upon another – and then you start creating a more interesting picture to explore. An example that they gave was Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy: an influence being Dickens’s fiction. Rather than isolating texts, you open them up.

Anyway, if you have time, then do listen… And last year I wrote about Brian Attebery’s Fantasy: How it Works for Shiny New Books if you are interested...

 

A Nocturnall upon S. Lucies day, Being the shortest day, by John Donne

(Aert van der Neer, Landscape with a mill in the moonlight, oil on canvas; found here)

’Tis the yeares midnight, and it is the dayes,
Lucies, who scarce seaven houres herself unmaskes,
         The Sunne is spent, and now his flasks
         Send forth light squibs, no constant rayes;
                The worlds whole sap is sunke:
The generall balme th’ hydroptique earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the beds-feet, life is shrunke,
Dead and enterr’d; yet all these seeme to laugh,
Compar’d with me, who am their Epitaph.

 

Study me then, you who shall lovers bee
At the next world, that is, at the next Spring:
         For I am every dead thing,
         In whom Love wrought new Alchimie.
                For his art did expresse
A quintessence even from nothingnesse,
From dull privations, and leane emptinesse;
He ruin’d mee, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darknesse, death; things which are not.

 

All others, from all things, draw all that’s good,
Life, soule, forme, spirit, whence they beeing have;
         I, by loves limbecke, am the grave
         Of all, that’s nothing. Oft a flood
                Have wee two wept, and so
Drownd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow
To be two Chaosses, when we did show
Care to ought else; and often absences
Withdrew our soules, and made us carcasses.

 

But I am by her death, (which word wrongs her)
Of the first nothing, the Elixer grown;
         Were I a man, that I were one,
         I needs must know; I should preferre,
                If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means; Yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love; All, all some properties invest;
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light, and body must be here.

 

But I am None; nor will my Sunne renew.
You lovers, for whose sake, the lesser Sunne
         At this time to the Goat is runne
         To fetch new lust, and give it you,
                Enjoy your summer all;
Since shee enjoys her long nights festivall,
Let mee prepare towards her, and let mee call
This houre her Vigill, and her Eve, since this
Both the yeares, and the dayes deep midnight is.

(From Donne: Poetical Works, ed. Herbert J.C. Grierson, OUP 1929)

(Ferdinand Keller, Böcklin’s Tomb, 1901–1902; oil on canvas; found here)

‘Bermudas’, by Andrew Marvell

Where the remote Bermudas ride
In the ocean’s bosom unespied
From a small boat, that rowed along,
The listening winds received this song.
    ‘What should we do but sing his praise
That led us through the watery maze,
Unto an isle so long unknown,
And yet far kinder than our own?
Where he the huge sea-monsters wracks,
That lift the deep upon their backs,
He lands us on a grassy stage,
Safe from the storms, and prelate’s rage,
He gave us this eternal spring,
Which here enamels everything,
And sends the fowls to us in care,
On daily visits through the air.
He hangs in shades the orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night,
And does in the pom’granates close
Jewels more rich than Ormus shows.
He makes the figs our mouths to meet,
And throws the melons at our feet,
But apples plants of such a price,
No tree could ever bear them twice.
With cedars, chosen by his hand,
From Lebanon, he stores the land.
And makes the hollow seas, that roar,
Proclaim the ambergris on shore.
He cast (of which we rather boast)
The gospel’s pearl upon our coast,
And in those rocks for us did frame
A temple, where to sound his name.
Oh let our voice his praise exalt,
Till it arrive at heaven’s vault:
Which thence (perhaps) rebounding, may
Echo beyond the Mexique Bay.’
Thus sung they, in the English boat,
A holy and a cheerful note,
And all the way, to guide their chime,
With falling oars they kept the time.

Sometimes I post poems here (though only those out of copyright!) and today I felt like posting this one. I like Marvell’s poetry and I like the fact that much of it is so ambiguous – ‘Bermudas’ is, in my opinion, no exception. At first glance it seems a hearty seventeenth-century endorsement of colonialism and of the paradisical nature of the Bermudas, which it seems had long been associated with Puritan emigrants. Marvell probably wrote it in 1653, when he was living in the house of John Oxenbridge, a Non-conformist divine and commissioner with responsibility for the Bermudas. It draws particularly on the Psalms. But there are complications. We know that the rowers are in an English boat but not who they are or where they are going (not far, presumably, since it’s a small boat). Nor is it clear at all why they are keeping time with their oars in order ‘to guide their chime’, rather than singing to help them keep time with their rowing as would seem natural.

The luxuriantly sensual nature of the imagery doesn’t seem to be quite the sort of thing that Puritans and Non-conformists fleeing England should be celebrating. There is perhaps something rather oppressive in the abundant fertility, the figs pressing themselves to ‘our mouths’ and the melons being thrown at ‘our feet’, or so it seems to me; in any case, it’s all slightly comical and over the top. It was by then known in England that the Bermudas were not at all like this and were distinctly lacking in pomegranates stuffed with jewels, so if this is supposed to be propaganda, it’s odd. And while the oarsmen celebrate the Bermudas, they are not there, only nearby, at sea, working so that they can sing.

Since Marvell’s other poetry is riddled with complications and ambiguities to the point that his own views are often obscured, I don’t think accepting this poem at face value really works. But what is it really about? Is it a sort of allegory of life and are the rowers souls seeking Heaven – but, erroneously believing that Heaven is filled with fleshly delights and riches, unable ever quite to reach it? Does that interpretation even begin to work? I really don’t know, but I love the poem.

There’s an interesting article about ‘Bermudas’ here.

(‘The Tree of Life’, embroidered canvas, British, from the first half of the seventeenth century; given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1964 by Irwin Untermeyer and found here. The Tree of Life shown here is a multi-fruiting tree which grows in the City of God and is described in Revelations; it is entwined with a vine symbolizing the Passion of Christ and the promise of eternal life. Isn’t it lovely?)