He Can't Talk About Elfland

I'm about halfway through The King of Elfland's Daughter, a 1924 novel by Lord Dunsany. It's good. Like a lot of great fantasy literature, its author shows good instincts for what he should linger on and what he should breeze through quickly.

Alveric, essentially the protagonist, is a young man tasked with marrying the Elfland King's daughter of the title. A lot of time is spent describing his visit to a cottage on the edge of Elfland and the old man who deals there but is peculiarly unwilling to acknowledge the existence of Elfland. Comparatively little time is spent on Lirazel, the title character, herself. She kind of comes off as a jerk, actually. She willingly goes off with Alveric, has his child, but after decades can't be bothered to honour any of the most benign human customs. The intention may have been to make her seem like an innocent child of indigenous people but she comes off more like a rich woman who married a poor man who never understands why she can't buy expensive clothes anymore.

More interesting are the humans trying to comprehend the mysteries of Elfland. And that old man, a leather worker, is a really intriguing character and I like how Dunsany draws out the old man's silence on the topic of Elfland.

And Alveric pondered on many reasons for this. Had the old man been to Elfland in his youth and seen something he greatly feared, perhaps barely escaping from death or an age-long love? Was Elfland a mystery too great to be troubled by human voices? Did these folk dwelling there at the edge of our world know well the unearthly beauty of all the glories of Elfland, and fear that even to speak of them might be a lure to draw them whither their resolution, barely perhaps, held them back? Or might a word said of the magical land bring it nearer, to make fantastic and elvish the fields we know? To all these ponderings of Alveric there was no answer.