Or 'presents,' actually--there have been a few of them, and we expect more, not to mention the fictional ones
Some discussion has occurred lately concerning the nature of magic, its limitations, and its history, in fantasy literature--old and new (and perhaps yet to be created):
http://doomthatcame.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/places-of-power/
Some have suggested (in the comments section to the blog above) that: " If you want to have the fantasy universe bear a strong resemblance to
the real pre-industrial Earth, that requires that the available magic be
sharply limited" (Doom goes on to explain that this leads him to write magic as a clandestine activity, with problems of associated sinisterness).
I think there are other ways of viewing magic, in literature we read and that we create, and that perhaps some of the other angles have actually been more successful. Specifically, I think another way of approaching the limitations in magic is to adopt the medieval (pagan) way of viewing such things: we have all sorts of legends, and many phenomena which are outside human control, yet the present day we see around us is rather clearly devoid of obvious magic. Combining that with their creation and other myths, it becomes natural to write as if many magical elements have passed out of the world or become more secret, replaced by a more prosaic age of man, with magical knowledge lost as well. Yet, there's a sense among those who put their thoughts down on paper that, especially as you travel farther back in time, and get into times which are part-legend and part-history, you're more likely to credit (and write down) perfectly reasonable assertions such as that Egil Skallagrimsson, the ninth century viking, came from a family who were werewolves or berserks on one side (it's not clear to what extent those two concepts overlapped in Germanic lore and custom; there is evidence of both for Egil's grandfather, and Berserk means 'bear shirt,' but the historical memory of them by 1200 [i.e. the age of sagas] seems to be rather dim). Another (huge) man who features early in that story--his name is Bjorgolf, and he's a northern local lord in Norway--has 'hill-giant blood' in his family. All this, including a later companion of Egil's, strong and doughty, of whom it's said 'people were of two minds over whether he was a shape-changer' comes from a text probably written just after 1200, but it's clear from other texts that Norwegians and Icelanders widely regarded a certain queen Gunnhild, wife of Eirik Bloodaxe (son of Harald Fine-hair) to have been skilled in witchcraft.
As for wizards, there's a sense in 'Egil's Saga' (obviously the one I've looked into most recently) of knowledge fading; an attempt at love-runes succeeds only in making its target ill, until the story's hero destroys them and makes a new set of runes. It's even suggested that Eirik was driven out of Norway by his brother Hakon due to a rune-stick planted against him by Egil (after King Eirik refused to give Egil justice in a legal matter), though it's deliberately left ambiguous whether there's any causality there.
If you take this idea to its logical extension, and assume that this Saga, like 'Sagas of Norwegian Kings' (which includes important legendary and mythic material at the beginning, some of it translated from myth into quasi-mortal legend) and 'The Prose Edda,' were all indeed 'put together' by Snorri Sturluson, then one can see a pretty clear line from a Cosmogony and age of As and other gods, and great works of creation, down through an age of (more active) gods and giants and a Midgard (i.e. our world) filled with heroes, wizards, and artifacts like the sword gram ('angry'), sharp enough to cut out a dragon's heart or slice apart a piece of willow fluff floating downstream toward its edge (and whose poetic material and brilliant 'Volsunga Saga' may be based on distant, 5th century Burgundian (a German tribe) characters...to the more proximate age of vikings (say, Egil's ninth century), when some magic was still remembered, a troll still found in the mountains here and there and Berserks (who may have been warriors who either used drugs or animal-god rituals to whip themselves into a frenzy fearful in battle, or else have had some other connection to bear and wolf spirits or gods--though I'd add Kveldulf's ['evening wolf') example of falling weak and ill after a battle, a phenomenon makes clear was known among Berserks, may suggest some sort of drug hangover in the days after a battle--still surrounded Norway's founding king, even if the texts no longer seem to remember quite what they were, and the occasional troll can still be found hiding up in the hills.
...And from there down to the present day, i.e. the 'present' of 1150 or 1250, when the sagas were written, or else the 'present' of a fantasy world with echoes of more powerful or active gods and sages in previous days. People might still go to an old woman for runes bearing Othin's wisdom (and, crucially, his name and deeds), but Christianity was otherwise central to the culture, and everyone could look around them and tell that if magic really had once been so pervasive as it was in the age of Sigurd, or Egil, or Woland--or Cuchulainn and Conall Cernach and Oisin; or Rama and Lakshman (and Hanuman); or Moses--then it had rather clearly faded. The Christian priest had control of the society's most important mystic powers (including over your soul), and no one quite seemed to know if Maponos had originally been a great hero...or the Sun God himself.
The main problem with this viewpoint, of course, this way of rendering and dealing with magic, is that our friend JRR has beaten this horse half to death in his latter work, 'The Lord of the Rings,' so filled with echoes of a past so much greater (why didn't he just write about that, if it was so much more goddamn magical? huh?). And writers influenced by him have since then beaten the horse another quarter of the way to oblivion. So one does need to be careful.
For an alternative, authored by the most influential fantasy author of the first half of the 20th century ('The Hobbit' may have been published before the war, but its influence wasn't felt until at least the 1950s), and quite possibly of the whole thing (hint: probably no Tolkien without him), I put forth 'The King of Elfland's Daughter':
http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780345431912-10
It's Edward Plunkett, Lord Dunsany's almost-masterwork, and its influence is clear in the writing of Michael Moorcock, among many others. And whoever buys this copy gets to support the world's greatest bookstore, which is a positive good to humanity (and which has a truly impressive selection of old and new books at reasonable prices). As for the plot?: 'we would be ruled by a magic lord' (further hint: be careful what you wish for...).
(PS - I'm sure Amazon has copies, too. Just search for 'elfland's daughter')
I have to go write some pages of my own, now, which, not coincidentally, include my own version of a search for magic. So Happy Easter (named for Eoster, presumed to be a West-Germanic fertility goddess, probably associated with the dawn. And bunnies, obviously) for 2013 (or whenever you're reading this), everyone.
-Randall (Anglosaxon for 'noble wolf')
why only Dunsay's "almost-masterwork" (without going into too much detail)?
ReplyDeleteHmm. Well, first just 'cause one doesn't want to exaggerate: how many works are really masterpieces? I also don't want to short 'The Gods of Pegana' and 'The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth'
DeleteAlso because, for all its virtues, some of the narrative elements (plot and character: basics) are a little weak. They may not be the point, but they matter.
I think the belief that, if magic is real, it was stronger at some time in the past, is the natural state of existence for most or all cultures. In the real world, there may be unexplained things, like lightning and earthquakes, which gods are invented to explain. However, there are quite obviously none of the personal interactions with such gods that tend to be included in myths. Nor are there any other personal magics, no witchcraft and wizardry. If you believe the tales of gods walking the Earth, it is an almost ineluctable conclusion that such events were more common in the past. So developing a fantasy world in which the past was much more mystical is exactly in keeping with a standard cultural view about how magic works. It creates verisimilitude by licensing people in the fictional world to think about magic in decline, the same way real people long did. And that is, to me, a pretty good reason on its own to write about an age long after the grand age of magic.
ReplyDelete"However, there are quite obviously none of the personal interactions with such gods that tend to be included in myths. Nor are there any other personal magics, no witchcraft and wizardry."
DeleteThe first part I believe I said. The latter part is untrue; there are millenia of sorcery in human history, up through the scientist John Dee and after.
Your reply elides a huge difference between fantasy fiction and the situation I've outlined: in reality, this was a false way of understanding man's relationship to reality and his past. In fiction, though, it's usually implied to be the truth.
You provide no evidence of any 'standard cultural views,' and you're not actually talking about how magic 'works.' Rather, you're talking about history.
Reasons NOT to write about a 'grand age of magic' from the past are:
1) It's boring, providing fodder for endless pages of bad elvish poetry.
2) It highlights the washed out, washed-up-edness of the present day world. Tolkien's echoes and shadows of previous greatness are far less exciting than the cyclical return of magic's strength in the latter books of 'A Song of Ice and Fire.' That's the type of thing that keeps people reading after a ridiculous five-thousand pages, not endless blabbering about how much more awesome the olde heroes were, and how the magic trees used to be just the right height before they got their lamps stolen and the dragon industry was taken over by the tyrannical government and, oh, the bailouts!
There is no verisimilitude implied in 'licensing people in the fictional world to think about magic in decline,' because it implies that magic IS in decline, when in fact that latter bit is entirely up to the author, who is creating his own reality.
Well, since magic isn't real, history and legend are the two main sources of inspiration for fantasy authors. Often times there is some degree of overlap between the two, ala the Volsunga saga or Exodus.
DeleteIn history and legend, people generally look back on earlier times and being more magical. This postulate can be applied to space, as well as time. In Europe, the far east and Africa were exotic mystical places, and the zeitgeist was that shamans and witches and occult magic were actively at work in these places.
I am inclined to agree with Doom. The further removed one is from where and when magic is happening, the more believable it becomes, both to people living in the 10th century and modern readers. In a sense, it is the natural way for humans to think about such things.
I don't think this tendency is justification for modern authors to lazily write about how much more magical everything in their fictional world was 1000 years ago, but I do understand why it would be a commonly taken approach.
"The further removed one is from where and when magic is happening, the more believable it becomes, both to people living in the 10th century and modern readers."
DeleteIndeeed--a very interesting observation--and quite germane and concise, almost an aphorism on the subject.
As for the rest...I guess I'm a little confused about the nature of this comment thread. I sort of feel like I said almost everything that's being jawed over here right up at the beginning in my post, and I'm not quite clear what we're adding to that. Maybe I'm missing something?
I guess that I'm unsure what proposition you are arguing for here.
DeleteI don't know that there's anything much controversial I'm suggesting, beyond what I think we all agree on already--that the feel of magic as a thing that used to be greater in the past comes naturally out of historical views. I suppose I'm pointing out that the view within the modern fantasy genre is descended rather directly from northern European medieval literature, and that you can trace that lineage (a little speculatively, but not much, considering the authors involved and their obvious influences) from Snorri and 'Le Morte D'Arthur' through Tolkien to everyone else...so it's not *just* based on mankind's more general tendency about these things in this way. But all that seems to me rather uncontroversial--I just enjoyed laying out the connection between modern fantasy and the Prose Edda and Kveldulf or King Harald Shaggy's Berserks, 'who were men who steel could not touch,' even if it's not clear how much berserks were connected to Sigurd the Volsung's (and his father and brother Sinfjotli shapechanging through wolf-skins, early in their career), either in the mind of 12th century writers or thinkers in the 8th, which we'll never actually know for certain about.
DeleteSo, there--that's a bit of a proposition being argued for. LeGuin can make Ged brown-skinned all she wants, and bravo to her, but it doesn't erase the fact that her genre and this sense of magic and its past comes from people like the poet, socialist writer and organizer, and wall-paper specialist William Morris, and his attempts at 'Romance' in the 19th century--and similar people--with all the direct hearkening back to medieval worlds and literature that implies.
Is there an alternative way to deal with magic? Sure. To an extent, Scott Bakker's grand philosophical reimagining of Tolkien and Frank Herbert in the same book (with added demon sex replacing Herbert's sinister homophobia) includes a different way of doing things, his metaphysics replete with contemporary magic schools and disciplines and gnosis and jumping into moments in probability. But, again, none of that erases the history from men like Morris and Dunsany and Lewis that's so broadly influential. Is there anything to argue over, there, really?