Click to Subscribe
A Victory of Essence over Mechanics
The Internally Triumphant Conclusion of the Worm Ouroboros, Chapters 26-33
© 2018 James LaFond
AUG/3/18
I would like to conclude these impressions of The Worm Ouroboros by stating that Eddison achieved a rare work of anti-modern, anti-materialistic, heroic fiction, a work which to this man’s mind rivals the Iliad, the Odyssey and Beowulf in its own definitive way, a story promoting a hope of mass psychic healing in the wake of what had been the worst cataclysm of modern times, The great War, a war which maimed the heroic ideal and made man into a cipher in an engine designed to eat his soul.
The central message of the final acts of the Worm Ouroboros is that our enemies define us, suffer a like us and fall to the same terrible fates they attempted to visit upon us and which we visited on them, and that to hate them, to make them inhuman, to build the foundation of our society on the bones of their defeat, is to erect a house of hate without a firm foundation. After a great victory, there is even a call from a goddess [Britannia?] that the victors not mourn their enemies but war on lesser folk in a bid for global dominion down to the most humbly detailed locality.
Eddison says it best, beginning with the malefactoring person of Gorice, the Witch King, eternity-knowledge symbol, in the form of the Worm Ouroboros, on his finger:
“Gorice the King sat silent. One lean hand rested on the iron serpent-head of his chair’s arm, the other, with finger outstretched against the jutting cheekbone, supported his chin. Only in the deep shadow of his eye-sockets a lambent light moved.”
And, in regard to the prospect of vanquishing even such a formidable—or perhaps due to the foe defining quality of this enemy—as Gorice, one of Eddison’s chief heroes of the people residing in the place called Demonland, but whom are most human, says:
“A grave is a rotten foundation.”
E. R. Eddison left us a masterpiece.
“These wretched eminent things
Leave no more fame behind ‘em than should one
Fall in a frost, and leave his print in snow;
As soon as the sun shines, it ever melts
Both form and matter."
Ire and Ice: Winter and A White Christmas
‘This Valley of Quiet Night’
book reviews
‘They Prey on Us’
eBook
broken dance
eBook
solo boxing
eBook
songs of aryas
eBook
all-power-fighting
eBook
let the world fend for itself
eBook
sons of aryas
eBook
beasts of aryas
eBook
taboo you
eBook
the gods of boxing
eBook
by the wine dark sea
eBook
the fighting edge
eBook
menthol rampage
eBook
hate
eBook
the year the world took the z-pill
eBook
z-pill forever
eBook
winter of a fighting life
eBook
masculine axis
eBook
night city
eBook
orphan nation
eBook
within leviathan’s craw
eBook
under the god of things
eBook
the greatest boxer
eBook
barbarism versus civilization
eBook
sorcerer!
eBook
logic of steel
eBook
ranger?
eBook
on combat
eBook
america the brutal
eBook
thriving in bad places
eBook
on the overton railroad
eBook
fanatic
eBook
fate
eBook
the lesser angels of our nature
eBook
time & cosmos
eBook
cracker-boy
eBook
into leviathan’s maw
eBook
the sunset saga complete
eBook
honor among men
eBook
the combat space
eBook
your trojan whorse
eBook
song of the secret gardener
eBook
fiction anthology one
eBook
when you're food
eBook
uncle satan
eBook
advent america
eBook
the first boxers
eBook
son of a lesser god
eBook
wife—
eBook
the greatest lie ever sold
eBook
predation
eBook
logic of force
eBook
blue eyed daughter of zeus
eBook
triumph
eBook
book of nightmares
eBook
dark, distant futures
  Add a new comment below:
Name
Email
Message