The creation of a self-coherent universe was the perfect solution to Howard’s needs and aspirations. His decision to people his Hyborian Age with Cimmerians, Vanirs, Nemedians and Afghulis, thinly-disguised names borrowed from history or legendry, was never really understood. Years later, Lovecraft would take Howard to task for this: “the only flaw in this stuff is R.E.H.’s incurable tendancy to devise names too closely resembling actual names – names which, for us, have a very different set of associations.” Lovecraft, and a host of others after him, couldn’t see that Howard never intended to create a universe removed from our own, as he had done when writing the Kull stories and as so many writers of epic fantasy have done since. By carefully choosing names that resembled those found in our history and legendry, Howard wanted to ensure that no reader would be left wondering what a Turanian looked like, or be unaware that his Vanir and AEsir lived in the northern parts of the world. By telescoping history and geography to create a universe that was new and yet familiar, Howard was deliberately striving for efficacy and stereotype, a technique that allowed him to create an exotic background with a minimum of description. He was at the same time answering his own need to have an “accurate and realistic” background for the series, while creating a method for writing (pseudo-)historical tales without the risk of anachronism or factual errors. The first three Conan stories, completed before The Hyborian Age was written, may be seen as experimental efforts, before Howard had a firm grasp of his character’s environment and of the new series’ potential. It was with his fourth and fifth offerings – The Tower of the Elephant and The Scarlet Citadel – that Howard added this epic and (pseudo-)historical dimension to his new series. From this point onward, the Conan stories became something more than the adventures of a barbarian adventurer in an imaginary kingdom, as had been the case with the Kull stories. From story to story, Conan could be a king in Medieval Europe (The Scarlet Citadel), a general in an antique Assyria torn with rivalries between city-states (Black Colossus), or a member of the wild kozaks – the term is transparent enough – of the East. As Howard once wrote: “My study of history has been a continual search for newer barbarians, from age to age.” With the creation of the Hyborian Age, he had offered himself a universe where all those barbarian peoples could co-exist in the same time-frame, and in Conan the Cimmerian the perfect vehicle to express his views on barbarism and civilization.
In many of these stories, the Cimmerian finds himself in one of the borderlands of the Hyborian Age where barbarism and civilization clash on an epic scale, with armies numbering in the tens of thousands. These large-scale battles find an echo in incidents of a more private order, often providing the stories with memorable scenes and lines of dialogue, such as Conan’s recounting his trial in Queen of the Black Coast: “I choked my ire and held my peace, and the judge squalled that I had shown contempt for the court, and that I should be hurled into a dungeon to rot until I betrayed my friend. So then, seeing they were all mad, I drew my sword and cleft the judge’s skull”; or Howard’s acerbic aside in The Tower of the Elephant: “Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.”
Manifestly, the majority of Howard’s work – and the Conan tales in particular – can be read as an exploration of the theme of “Barbarism versus Civilization,” with Howard standing firmly on the barbarians’ side. This deep-rooted interest fueled Howard’s writings from the beginning and became the major theme of discussion in the Texan’s correspondence with Lovecraft, initiated in 1930. Confronted by the erudite writer from Providence, Howard found himself forced to back his opinions with historical and political data; consequently the Conan tales quite often echo ideas expressed in the correspondence and vice-versa. More aware than anyone else of Howard’s positions and convictions, Lovecraft was in a privileged position to fully appreciate the Conan tales and their subtext. Shortly after Howard’s death, Lovecraft thus wrote: “It is hard to describe precisely what made Mr. Howard’s stories stand out so sharply; but the real secret is that he himself is in every one of them.” The perceptive author here touched upon a major key to the Conan series – explaining at the same time the “internal force and sincerity” of the tales, and the reason no Conan pastiche could ever hope to attain the level of the original stories. If Howard’s Conan tales make for particularly well-crafted escapist fiction, providing the reader with colorful high-adventure stories, the best of them deliver much more. A grim undercurrent pervades the whole series, often leaving the reader with mixed emotions, the sensation of having experienced something at once exhilarating and depressing. Howard’s best Conan stories – we may cite The Tower of the Elephant, Queen of the Black Coast, Beyond the Black River and Red Nails – are also those that have a sad ending: dark undercurrents flow beneath the veneer of this “escapist” fiction.
Conan’s philosophy is best expressed in one passage from Queen of the Black Coast: “In this world men struggle and suffer vainly, finding pleasure only in the bright madness of battle … Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.”
This is indeed one of the major characteristics of the Cimmerian. He lives for the moment, savoring each instant, not caring about the past, nor about the future. Yesterday a kozak, today a king, tomorrow a thief. It is in that sense that the Conan stories are escapist literature: their appeal seems universal, transcending generations and cultures. As Howard once confided: “A man reading [a] story about Conan, then, would feel again in the depth of his being those barbaric impulses; consequently, Conan acted as they felt they would act in similar circumstances.” What sets the Conan stories apart, however, is the distinct sensation that the thrill of adventure in these stories is but a mask, that it is in fact never really possible to forget the grim realities of the world. Conan’s Hyborian Age began with a cataclysm and ended with another cataclysm. Whatever the Hyborians – and Conan – can accomplish, has no meaning at all in the final analysis, and is eventually bound to destruction and oblivion. Human life and empires are equally transient in Howard. Civilization is not the final phase of human development; it may be an “inevitable consequence” of that development, but it is a transitory state: civilizations are bound to wither and decay, eventually to be swept over by conquering hordes of savages or barbarians who will themselves, after a time, become civilized....
In this cycle, it was with the state of barbarism that Howard recognized his kinship. This was not a case, as some commentators have argued, of belief in the superiority of barbarism over civilization or of a conception of the barbarian as a “Noble Savage”: “I have no idyllic view of barbarism – as near as I can learn it’s a grim, bloody, ferocious and loveless condition. I have no patience with the depiction of the barbarian of any race as a stately, god-like child of Nature, endowed with strange wisdom and speaking in measured and sonorous phrases.” Probably the best metaphor of barbaric life as envisioned by Howard is found in Beyond the Black River, where the protagonists are caught between hammer and anvil: beyond their settlement and the Black River dwell the savage Picts, ready to attack them at any moment; behind it and Thunder River are the forces of civilization, too decadent and divided among themselves to ensure their own survival, much less that of their frontiers. The tale carries this grim predicament to its logical conclusion and Conan, the only one of the characters born into barbarism rather than civilization, is the sole survivor. The civilizing process had severed Conan’s allies from their instincts, and not having this elemental aspect, inborn in the Cimmerian, they could not hope to prevail. The tale’s concludin
g lines – without a doubt Howard’s most quoted statement – attest to that: “Barbarism is the natural state of mankind… Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.” The civilizing process bears in itself the seeds of its own destruction by removing itself from what is natural. What is “unnatural” cannot endure: it will either succumb to “natural” forces, as described in Beyond the Black River, or it will slowly decay and destroy itself in a horrible fashion, as exemplified in Xuthal of the Dusk and Red Nails. The reasons behind Howard’s fascination with the theme of decaying civilizations, which may very well be at the root of his interest in barbaric life, were probably very complex. Much more than in the evolutionist theories of the time which the stories sometimes echo, it is probably in Howard’s biography and psychology that the answer resides. There is indeed something intensely personal in these convictions, which transcends the stories and contributes to much of their strength.
There is no denying that not all the Conan stories are on the same level as those we have mentioned. In a time of financial difficulties, it soon became easy enough for Howard to make of Conan his meal ticket. Most of the more routine Conan stories – systematically featuring semi-naked ladies, which had been entirely absent from the series until then – were indeed composed between November 1932 and March 1933, at a time when Howard was in dire need of money. (Incidentally, the fact that most Conan pastiches found their “inspiration” in such stories, and not Red Nails or Queen of the Black Coast, is a testimony to the critical eye of their authors.) Most of these stories have something genuinely Howardian in them – as Lovecraft once wrote, Howard “was greater than any money-making policy he could adopt” – but they are clearly exploiting a formula calculated to win the cover illustration.
With the tales of Conan of Cimmeria, Howard was out for more than pulpish fare. While he could have turned out story after story of the adventures of a Cimmerian killing monsters and lusting after scantily-clad damsels in distress, assuring himself a regular income, Howard decided not to turn his Cimmerian into an industry. The mark of the true author, he didn’t hesitate to experiment with new types of stories, to take risks at a time when their sale and commercial success would have been assured otherwise. If the true work of art is something that at once attracts and disturbs, then the Conan stories are something special, an epic painted in bright colors, featuring heroic deeds and larger-than-life characters in fabled lands, but with something darker lying beneath.
Scratch the veneer at your own risk.
Patrice Louinet
2002
Cimmeria
Written in Mission, Texas, February, 1932; suggested by the memory of the hill-country above Fredericksburg seen in a mist of winter rain.
Robert E. Howard
Cimmeria
I remember
The dark woods, masking slopes of sombre hills;
The grey clouds’ leaden everlasting arch;
The dusky streams that flowed without a sound,
And the lone winds that whispered down the passes.
Vista on vista marching, hills on hills,
Slope beyond slope, each dark with sullen trees,
Our gaunt land lay. So when a man climbed up
A rugged peak and gazed, his shaded eye
Saw but the endless vista – hill on hill,
Slope beyond slope, each hooded like its brothers.
It was a gloomy land that seemed to hold
All winds and clouds and dreams that shun the sun,
With bare boughs rattling in the lonesome winds,
And the dark woodlands brooding over all,
Not even lightened by the rare dim sun
Which made squat shadows out of men; they called it
Cimmeria, land of Darkness and deep Night.
It was so long ago and far away
I have forgot the very name men called me.
The axe and flint-tipped spear are like a dream,
And hunts and wars are shadows. I recall
Only the stillness of that sombre land;
The clouds that piled forever on the hills,
The dimness of the everlasting woods.
Cimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night.
Oh, soul of mine, born out of shadowed hills,
To clouds and winds and ghosts that shun the sun,
How many deaths shall serve to break at last
This heritage which wraps me in the grey
Apparel of ghosts? I search my heart and find
Cimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night.
The Phoenix on the Sword
The Phoenix on the Sword
“Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars – Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet.”
– The Nemedian Chronicles.
Over shadowy spires and gleaming towers lay the ghostly darkness and silence that runs before dawn. Into a dim alley, one of a veritable labyrinth of mysterious winding ways, four masked figures came hurriedly from a door which a dusky hand furtively opened. They spoke not but went swiftly into the gloom, cloaks wrapped closely about them; as silently as the ghosts of murdered men they disappeared in the darkness. Behind them a sardonic countenance was framed in the partly opened door; a pair of evil eyes glittered malevolently in the gloom.
“Go into the night, creatures of the night,” a voice mocked. “Oh, fools, your doom hounds your heels like a blind dog, and you know it not.”
The speaker closed the door and bolted it, then turned and went up the corridor, candle in hand. He was a somber giant, whose dusky skin revealed his Stygian blood. He came into an inner chamber, where a tall, lean man in worn velvet lounged like a great lazy cat on a silken couch, sipping wine from a huge golden goblet.
“Well, Ascalante,” said the Stygian, setting down the candle, “your dupes have slunk into the streets like rats from their burrows. You work with strange tools.”
“Tools?” replied Ascalante. “Why, they consider me that. For months now, ever since the Rebel Four summoned me from the southern desert, I have been living in the very heart of my enemies, hiding by day in this obscure house, skulking through dark alleys and darker corridors at night. And I have accomplished what those rebellious nobles could not. Working through them, and through other agents, many of whom have never seen my face, I have honeycombed the empire with sedition and unrest. In short I, working in the shadows, have paved the downfall of the king who sits throned in the sun. By Mitra, I was a statesman before I was an outlaw.”
“And these dupes who deem themselves your masters?”
“They will continue to think that I serve them, until our present task is completed. Who are they to match wits with Ascalante? Volmana, the dwarfish count of Karaban; Gromel, the giant commander of the Black Legion; Dion, the fat baron of Attalus; Rinaldo, the hare-brained minstrel. I am the force which has welded together the steel in each, and by the clay in each, I will crush them when the time comes. But that lies in the future; tonight the king dies.”
“Days ago I saw the imperial squadrons ride from the city,” said the Stygian.
“They rode to the frontier which the heathen Picts assail – thanks to the strong liquor which I’ve smuggled over the borders to madden them. Dion’s great wealth made that possible.
And Volmana made it possible to dispose of the rest of the imperial troops which remained in the city. Through his princely kin in Nemedia, it was easy to persuade King Numa to request the presence of Count Trocero of Poitain, seneschal of Aquilonia; and of course, to do him honor, he’ll be accompanied by an imperial escort, as well as his own troops, and Prospero, King Conan’s right-hand man. That leaves only the king’s personal bodyguard in the city—besides the Black Legion. Through Gromel I’ve corrupted a spendthrift officer of that guard, and bribed him to lead his men away from the king’s door at midnight.
“Then, with sixteen desperate rogues of mine, we enter the palace by a secret tunnel. After the deed is done, even if the people do not rise to welcome us, Gromel’s Black Legion will be sufficient to hold the city and the crown.”
“And Dion thinks that crown will be given to him?”
“Yes. The fat fool claims it by reason of a trace of royal blood. Conan makes a bad mistake in letting men live who still boast descent from the old dynasty, from which he tore the crown of Aquilonia.
“Volmana wishes to be reinstated in royal favor as he was under the old regime, so that he may lift his poverty-ridden estates to their former grandeur. Gromel hates Pallantides, commander of the Black Dragons, and desires the command of the whole army, with all the stubbornness of the Bossonian. Alone of us all, Rinaldo has no personal ambition. He sees in Conan a red-handed, rough-footed barbarian who came out of the north to plunder a civilized land. He idealizes the king whom Conan killed to get the crown, remembering only that he occasionally patronized the arts, and forgetting the evils of his reign, and he is making the people forget. Already they openly sing The Lament for the King in which Rinaldo lauds the sainted villain and denounces Conan as ‘that black-hearted savage from the abyss.’ Conan laughs, but the people snarl.”