"May Be My Treasure or the Price I Have to Pay"

Now that I've read the magnificent original novel, the 1965 adaptation of She is even more frustrating. But it wouldn't be frustrating if there weren't things I like about it and top of the list is Peter Cushing and Bernard Cribbins.

All three of the male leads are well cast, actually, and could've been excellent playing closer to the original characters. Cushing as Holly isn't as brawny or as ugly as the character in the book is said to be but I think a little weight lifting and some makeup could've fixed that. There's not a thing wrong with Cribbins as Job the valet. John Richardson is bland and handsome but so was his character, Leo Vincey, in the book.

Strange echoes of their original relationship are retained in the film. In the book, Holly was a professor and foster father of Leo, who was bequeathed to him by a colleague along with mysterious artefacts. Job was Holly's servant. In the movie, the story has been moved to 1918, at the end of World War I (the book was published in 1887). Holly, Leo, and Job are soldiers, deciding how to return to civilian life. Job announces his intention to be a valet, Holly wants to go back to being a professor. The three in no way seem like soldiers, despite Peter Cushing's amusing attempt to be rowdy with a few topless dancers.

This also deviates from Holly in the book who's terribly awkward around women and whose lifelong unrequited romantic needs are an important part of the book's subtext. Cushing could've played that beautifully, alas, but he and Cribbins are wonderful as a sort of Frodo and Sam in the desert.

JOB: "I'm glad I'm not an educated man, sir, if that's what makes you go off on a damn fool search for lost cities."

HOLLY: "Isn't that exactly what you're doing, Job?"

JOB: "Well, yes, sir, but I'm too ignorant to know any better."

The changes were obviously made in the interest of condensing the story. They weren't good decisions, not just for putting the characters in roles they don't act like they're in anyway. It also loses a lot of the novel's mysterious build-up. Worse is the fact that Leo meets Ayesha, the She of the title, almost immediately, in a house in Palestine where she gives him a ring and a map to her hidden kingdom of Kuma. In addition to losing the mystery, it also doesn't make much sense for her to ask him to come find her when she's standing right in front of him.

Ursula Andress is appropriately beautiful though she wants an air of authority. One of the extraordinary things about the novel is how Ayesha came off as truly brilliant, capable of considering strategy and adept at judging character. Andress just seems like a petulant teenager.

Christopher Lee and Andre Morell are fine in supporting roles. Rosenda Monteros as Ustane, Ayesha's unexpected rival for Leo's affections, is perfectly fine, though Ayesha's treatment of her is another thing that lacks the nuance of the novel.

As flawed as it is, I can still see myself watching this movie again. I'm amazed it's so hard to find and it appears never to have had a blu-ray release, despite having been one of Hammer's greater box office successes.

Twitter Sonnet #1720

Evaluations sever glitter ties.
Misfortune chopped the business man to meat.
Reduction cost the bull a dream of lies.
The people's prank deflowered Mary's seat.
Some thirsty desert troops have wrecked the bar.
For phantom queen, the golden cub embarks.
Her sweaty dream was near but miles far.
His train assays a list of vain remarks.
Emerged again, the floating damsel paints.
We walk to wharves without the grace of paws.
And look, the lonesome lady quickly faints.
In beauty's sky were eyes and feudal laws.
With brazen praise, the goddess lines the cliff.
The beach below belongs beyond an "if".

One Good Quatermain Deserves a Half

I finished reading Allan Quatermain (1887) yesterday, H. Rider Haggard's sequel to his own King Solomon's Mines. I think Alan Moore had the right idea when he essentially painted this second book as partially fabricated by the "real" Quatermain of King Solomon's Mines. This second book is a sometimes engaging, occasionally thrilling, but ultimately light adventure compared to the complex wonder at work in the first book.

As I wrote in an earlier entry, when I was about a third of the way through the book, the best part is the beginning when Quatermain and his friends, Curtis and Good, are just setting off into the wilds of Africa. Their skirmishes with a group of deadly Masai hunters are genuinely enthralling. But the book loses momentum it never quite regains after the silly kidnapping plot--I thought of it again watching The Mandalorian last week in which the plot around an alien dinosaur absconding with a child was remarkably similar. At least in Allan Quatermain, it really was a kidnapping for ransom.

The bulk of the novel, the main plot, concerns a lost civilisation of white people somewhere in Africa called the Zu Vendi. This story is somewhat reminiscent of She, particularly since the Zu Vendi are ruled by Queens--two Queens, unlike She. But the Zu Vendi, aside from the fact that all the women normally wear clothing that exposes one breast, aren't nearly as interesting as the Amahaggar and the relationship between the two Queens with the Zu Vendi is not nearly as fascinating as the one between Ayesha and the Amahagger. She presents really thoughtful scenarios exploring methods of rulership, which is one reason the character of Ayesha comes off as so complex. The Zu Vendi are mainly civilised and the two Queens are neatly divided into a Good Queen and an Evil Queen.

Quatermain's friends, Curtis and Good, are also less interesting than they are in King Solomon's Mines. Though Good is occasionally entertaining due to his vanity in Allan Quatermain, though the fact that he's able to change into a full naval dress uniform after the group has gone through a perilous boat ride through lava heated caverns was a bit silly.

The only really interesting character is Umslopogaas, the Zulu warrior with the peculiar axe, who made any scene better whenever he was involved. Haggard knew what he had, I think, because he made Umslopogaas the hero of the book's satisfying climax.

A Hunter's Return

I've started reading Allan Quatermain, H. Rider Haggard's 1887 sequel to his King Solomon's Mines. So far I'm finding Allan Quatermain to be a pulpier fare but not bad.

The book begins with Allan mourning the death of his son. He's joined by his old friends from King Solomon's Mines, John Good and Sir Henry Curtis, who entice him to go on an adventure seeking a lost civilisation in Africa. So far, the best parts of the novel were the scenes following Quatermain and his companions through the wilderness as they're stalked by Masai warriors. Following this, Quatermain and his friends find a lavish, European style home run by a Scottish missionary called McKenzie. The comforts Quatermain finds there, along with a cowardly French cook, feel a bit disappointingly cartoonish. We meet McKenzie's perfect, innocent teenage daughter, Flossie, who in short order becomes a hostage of the Masai, mainly to provide an excuse for a great, bloody battle sequence.

Surely one of the most distinguished features of the novel is the introduction of Umslopogaas, Quartermain's friend and deadly Zulu prince. The description of Umslopogaas' axe is memorable in itself.

By a piece of grim humour, he had named this axe “Inkosi-kaas”, which is the Zulu word for chieftainess. For a long while I could not make out why he gave it such a name, and at last I asked him, when he informed me that the axe was very evidently feminine, because of her womanly habit of prying very deep into things, and that she was clearly a chieftainess because all men fell down before her, struck dumb at the sight of her beauty and power. In the same way he would consult “Inkosi-kaas” if in any dilemma; and when I asked him why he did so, he informed me it was because she must needs be wise, having “looked into so many people’s brains”.

I took up the axe and closely examined this formidable weapon. It was, as I have said, of the nature of a pole-axe. The haft, made out of an enormous rhinoceros horn, was three feet three inches long, about an inch and a quarter thick, and with a knob at the end as large as a Maltese orange, left there to prevent the hand from slipping. This horn haft, though so massive, was as flexible as cane, and practically unbreakable; but, to make assurance doubly sure, it was whipped round at intervals of a few inches with copper wire—all the parts where the hands grip being thus treated. Just above where the haft entered the head were scored a number of little nicks, each nick representing a man killed in battle with the weapon. The axe itself was made of the most beautiful steel, and apparently of European manufacture, though Umslopogaas did not know where it came from, having taken it from the hand of a chief he had killed in battle many years before. It was not very heavy, the head weighing two and a half pounds, as nearly as I could judge. The cutting part was slightly concave in shape—not convex, as is generally the case with savage battle-axes—and sharp as a razor, measuring five and three-quarter inches across the widest part. From the back of the axe sprang a stout spike four inches long, for the last two of which it was hollow, and shaped like a leather punch, with an opening for anything forced into the hollow at the punch end to be pushed out above—in fact, in this respect it exactly resembled a butcher’s pole-axe. It was with this punch end, as we afterwards discovered, that Umslopogaas usually struck when fighting, driving a neat round hole in his adversary’s skull, and only using the broad cutting edge for a circular sweep, or sometimes in a mêlée. I think he considered the punch a neater and more sportsmanlike tool, and it was from his habit of pecking at his enemy with it that he got his name of “Woodpecker”. Certainly in his hands it was a terribly efficient one.

Such was Umslopogaas’ axe, Inkosi-kaas, the most remarkable and fatal hand-to-hand weapon that I ever saw, and one which he cherished as much as his own life. It scarcely ever left his hand except when he was eating, and then he always sat with it under his leg.

I still can't upload files to my webspace so here's Dizzy Gillepsie:

On the Way to the Mines

Allan Quatermain calls himself timid and even a coward but that's somewhat contradicted by the fact that he leads the expedition of 1885's King Solomon's Mines across impassible deserts, through a lost civilisation, and finally into those dark and ancient mines of the title. It's a terrific and obviously influential adventure.

I'd heard it influenced Tolkien and it's very easy to see. Quatermain and his companions hire a man in Africa who turns out to secretly be the rightful king in exile of the secret Kukuana people, hidden across the desert. Allan and his companions receive indestructible chain mail shirts similar to the one of mithril Bilbo and Frodo wear. Of course, this all makes it sound a lot like Black Panther, too.

Like She, a big part of what makes King Solomon's Mines work is the narrator, in this case Allan Quatermain. He's natural and flawed, an unreliable narrator, at least in estimating himself. Author H. Rider Haggard never overplays it, though, allowing Allan to say something nice about himself now and then, as when he describes being able to go toe to toe with an enemy combatant in war before being knocked out like Bilbo in the battle at the end of The Hobbit.

Haggard does a masterful job building suspense around the politics of Kukuana and its sinister, imposter King Twala. When civil war erupts, Haggard's poetic language, and choice to make the Kukuana language translate as old-fashioned, courtly English, really gives it all a sense of epic proportions.

“Ah, these are men, indeed; they will conquer again,” called out Ignosi, who was grinding his teeth with excitement at my side. “See, it is done!”

Suddenly, like puffs of smoke from the mouth of a cannon, the attacking regiment broke away in flying groups, their white head-dresses streaming behind them in the wind, and left their opponents victors, indeed, but, alas! no more a regiment. Of the gallant triple line, which forty minutes before had gone into action three thousand strong, there remained at most some six hundred blood-spattered men; the rest were under foot. And yet they cheered and waved their spears in triumph, and then, instead of falling back upon us as we expected, they ran forward, for a hundred yards or so, after the flying groups of foemen, took possession of a rising knoll of ground, and, resuming their triple formation, formed a threefold ring around its base. And there, thanks be to Heaven, standing on the top of the mound for a minute, I saw Sir Henry, apparently unharmed, and with him our old friend Infadoos. Then Twala’s regiments rolled down upon the doomed band, and once more the battle closed in.

The Inexorable Fire of the World

An ugly, middle aged man and his handsome ward journey into Africa, ultimately encountering the beautiful and powerful She. This is H. Rider Haggard's astonishing and brilliant 1887 novel.

Earlier this year, I bought a 1928 collection of Haggard's novels that includes Cleopatra (1889), She (1887), King Solomon's Mines (1885), and Allan Quatermain (1887), for some reason in that order, not in order of first publication. I wasn't aware of this when I dived right into Cleopatra, which I found to be mostly disappointing. Aside from a few descriptions that conjure a Lovecraftian sense of the sinister and ineffable, the meat of the book is a silly love triangle between Cleopatra, a handmaiden, and the attractive male protagonist they both have the hots for. I assumed She was written after Haggard had analysed all the problems inherent in Cleopatra because She also has a love triangle between a powerful queen, a maiden among her subjects, and an improbably attractive young man. Only, in She, it's brilliant. Imagine my surprise when I learned Cleopatra was actually published two years later.

There are a few, underlying reasons why She works and Cleopatra doesn't. The most important is the protagonist, Horace Holly, the ugly man. That's not my opinion, it's his, and the several other characters who comment on his appearance, including the eponymous She, Ayesha. In lost the tribe of humans with yellow skin and European features, descended from a long lost, mighty civilisation, Holly earns the nickname of "baboon". The novel starts off with a description of Holly and how, "at the wrong side of forty," he's comfortable having given up on women, even jovially calling himself a proud misogynist. He's clearly not entirely serious about this from the way he describes specific women in the story, always with courtesy and respect, except for the one who tries to murder his servant. He's not merely the opposite of the simplistically strong, handsome priest in Cleopatra, he has ambiguities that come off as complex instead of insubstantial. I suspect this is due to Haggard's writing the novel in six weeks, "in a white heat, almost without rest." Here's a demonstration of why Kerouac was onto something when he advocated spontaneous writing. One result is that Haggard's philosophical, scientific, and political opinions are rendered those of Holly, subject to being challenged organically by circumstances, rather than being forced as a controlling hand on the narrative.

Holly describes a brief philosophical debate between himself and Ayesha.

“Ah!” she said; “I see—two new religions! I have known so many, and doubtless there have been many more since I knew aught beyond these caves of Kôr. Mankind asks ever of the skies to vision out what lies behind them. It is terror for the end, and but a subtler form of selfishness—this it is that breeds religions. Mark, my Holly, each religion claims the future for its followers; or, at least, the good thereof. The evil is for those benighted ones who will have none of it; seeing the light the true believers worship, as the fishes see the stars, but dimly. The religions come and the religions pass, and the civilisations come and pass, and naught endures but the world and human nature. Ah! if man would but see that hope is from within and not from without—that he himself must work out his own salvation! He is there, and within him is the breath of life and a knowledge of good and evil as good and evil is to him. Thereon let him build and stand erect, and not cast himself before the image of some unknown God, modelled like his poor self, but with a bigger brain to think the evil thing, and a longer arm to do it.”

I thought to myself, which shows how old such reasoning is, being, indeed, one of the recurring qualities of theological discussion, that her argument sounded very like some that I have heard in the nineteenth century, and in other places than the caves of Kôr, and with which, by the way, I totally disagree, but I did not care to try and discuss the question with her. To begin with, my mind was too weary with all the emotions through which I had passed, and, in the second place, I knew that I should get the worst of it. It is weary work enough to argue with an ordinary materialist, who hurls statistics and whole strata of geological facts at your head, whilst you can only buffet him with deductions and instincts and the snowflakes of faith, that are, alas! so apt to melt in the hot embers of our troubles. How little chance, then, should I have against one whose brain was supernaturally sharpened, and who had two thousand years of experience, besides all manner of knowledge of the secrets of Nature at her command! Feeling that she would be more likely to convert me than I should to convert her, I thought it best to leave the matter alone, and so sat silent. Many a time since then have I bitterly regretted that I did so, for thereby I lost the only opportunity I can remember having had of ascertaining what Ayesha really believed, and what her “philosophy” was.

Haggard also was evidently in disagreement with her but he presents her argument as perfectly rational, he gives it justice, and doesn't waste time trying to mount an argument against it that's beyond his ability. Three great things are happening here:

1) Holly functions in this story, and for this story, extremely well because he's "down-to-earth". Just as the humanity of Indiana Jones contrasts with and emphasises the effect of the supernatural. In She, this is again and again a virtue, and the wonders that would have become dull through the eyes of Cleopatra's narrator remain wonders when seen through his eyes.

2) Haggard is chewing on the same problem as Dostoevsky and Herman Melville and countless other great 19th century writers--the conflict between the amoral, rational, Napoleonic strongman, and good old, self-sacrificing, Christian virtue.

3) Unlike the silly teenager Haggard turned Cleopatra into, Ayesha genuinely seems possessed of great wisdom and intellectual acumen. She has wrestled with, and continues to wrestle with, difficult questions.

Before the climax of the novel, I tried to forget that I've seen the Hammer film version (which I fondly remember but doesn't compare to the book). I asked myself, what fate can Ayesha get away with? Does she have to die? She does commit murder from purely selfish motives, a remarkable thing contrasted with other parts of the book where she muses on the value of ruling without passion. But when you really think about the circumstances surrounding the woman she kills, the harder it is not to sympathise with Ayesha. She waited two thousand years for her lover to return, only for him to marry a girl almost immediately after meeting her. The story thereby becomes a true tragedy--she's responsible for her doom, but we can take no pleasure in it being meted out.

It's easy to see why HP Lovecraft called She "remarkably good." Evocations of ancient and gigantic things are brilliantly laid down by Haggard. A fascinating encounter with an ancient statue representing Truth is both a sobering testament to human mortality, the underlying motives of all human endeavour, and another reflection of the book's exploration of unattainable sexual fulfillment.

“Who is she?” I asked, as soon as I could take my eyes off the statue.

“Canst thou not guess, oh Holly?” answered Ayesha. “Where then is thy imagination? It is Truth standing on the World, and calling to its children to unveil her face. See what is writ upon the pedestal. Without doubt it is taken from the book of Scriptures of these men of Kôr,” and she led the way to the foot of the statue, where an inscription of the usual Chinese-looking hieroglyphics was so deeply graven as to be still quite legible, at least to Ayesha. According to her translation it ran thus:—

“Is there no man that will draw my veil and look upon my face, for it is very fair? Unto him who draws my veil shall I be, and peace will I give him, and sweet children of knowledge and good works.”

And a voice cried, “Though all those who seek after thee desire thee, behold! Virgin art thou, and Virgin shalt thou go till Time be done. No man is there born of woman who may draw thy veil and live, nor shall be. By Death only can thy veil be drawn, oh Truth!”

And Truth stretched out her arms and wept, because those who sought her might not find her, nor look upon her face to face.

Carl Jung cited Ayesha as an illustration of anima, and this statue of Truth is like another step deeper into that journey. The impression of woman existing in the man's mind, and all the complicated desires and frustrations that entails, is used to illustrate the relationship between all humanity and something brilliant and unattainable, always beckoning just on the other side of an impassible gulf.

So this is one hell of a book.

Dinosaurs and Darkness

The above 1901 painting by one CRK, Charles R. Knight, is featured with the work of another CRK, Caitlin R. Kiernan, in the newest Sirenia Digest. It contains the last third of Caitlin's new story, Living a Boy's Adventure Tale. It features some nods to old adventure stories but has a more realistically untidy ending. Like the way most things in life end, it just stops.

Like the earlier portions, and much of Caitlin's fiction nowadays, it's composed of isolated, separate narrative pieces that give a sense of scope and sometimes, surprisingly, provide momentum. But my favourite part is the last fragment, taking place in a prehistoric forest. There are some wonderfully ominous descriptions of the place and the impending fate at hand.

Lately I've also been reading H. Rider Haggard's Cleopatra, a book that has a lot less to do with Cleopatra than I was expecting. She's actually much more prominent in the first part of the book even though she doesn't make an appearance but is only talked about. That at least makes her seem important, and she functions as a threatening figure in everyone's mind. But when the novel's protagonist, Harmachis, gets himself installed as her high priest, if turns into a silly harem drama, with Cleopatra and her handmaiden vying for Harmachis affection. The book is much better before that.

When Harmachis meets the goddess Isis, some of the description is Lovecraftian in its sense of scope and dread.

Soon the lights began to pale in the rolling sea of air. Great shadows shot across it, lines of darkness pierced it and rushed together on its breast, till at length I only was a shape of flame set like a star on the bosom of immeasurable night. Bursts of awful music gathered from far away. Miles and Miles away I heard them, thrilling faintly through the gloom. On they came, nearer and more near, louder and more loud, till they swept past above, below, around me, swept on rushing pinions, terrifying and enchanting me. They floated by, ever growing fainter, till they died in space. Then others came, and no two were akin. Some rattled as ten thousand sistra shaken all to tune. Some rang from the brazen throats of unnumbered clarions. Some pealed with a loud, sweet chant of voices that were more than human; and some rolled along in the slow thunder of a million drums. They passed: their notes were lost in dying echoes; and the awful silence once more pressed in upon me and overcame me.

...

Twitter Sonnet #1614

The Arctic sneaker carried cold to woods.
Escaped beyond the hedge, the clippers fight.
To tread a road of rice, request the goods.
A waxy shell can clutch nutrition tight.
The tiny 'stache was sharp as cactus spines.
Interrogated fish could only stare.
The passing seal would bark at jagged lines.
A party chose instead to suck the pear.
An answer waits across from faded locks.
Effective arrows bide the time of moons.
Enforcing sales recall the part of stocks.
The animation grants to bugs a boon.
Above the stones a sudden fight erupts.
They're old as hell but hold the tiny pups.