Review: The Worm Ouroboros, by E.R. Eddison (1922)

One occasionally runs into the question of what J.R.R. Tolkien would have thought of George R.R. Martin. For years, I had a go-to online answer: we could use a stand-in. Tolkien’s thoughts on E.R. Eddison – that he appreciated the invented world, but thought the invented names were silly, and that the author delighted a bit much in cruelty – felt like a valid Tolkienian criticism of A Song of Ice and Fire. I myself had encountered Eddison’s work back in the early 2000s, and while it felt a monumental achievement at the time, I managed to finish The Worm Ouroboros.

Over time, my memory grew hazy, but I could recall certain things. The Taming of the Shrew-style framing device, which Eddison just forgets about. A trek up a mountain. A certain sex scene (which I have wheeled out before on this blog). The political scheming. The characterisation of Lord Gro, cursed with an attraction to the losing side. This month, I figured it was time for a re-read, and, well, having just finished that re-read, I realise my opinions on the text stood in dire need of adjustment. Two decades can play with your memory, and extra literary experience allows you to see things with fresh eyes.

The Worm Ouroboros might be more Martinian than other old-school works like George MacDonald, William Morris, or Lord Dunsany. It is genuine Epic Fantasy, rather than just Quest or High Fantasy, and the internal machinations of political scheming are pretty notable for pre-Tolkien fantasy. But it omits one key part of the equation. A Song of Ice and Fire is heavily deconstructive in nature. There is nothing deconstructive about The Worm Ouroboros, a text that wears its (occasionally misplaced) sincerity on its sleeve.

Forget Martin. The closest analogy I can concoct is that The Worm Ouroboros is a D&D session played between Friedrich Nietzsche and Christopher Marlowe, as written up by Marlowe in the form of a five-hundred page novel. The setting – in theory – is Mercury, and the plot follows the warring lords of Demonland and Witchland, as they fight for honour and domination. The Demons, our protagonists, love themselves a good battle, and are honest to a fault, whereas the Witches, our antagonists, also love a good battle, but some of them are a good deal sneakier.

Some background is probably necessary. Eddison (like Morris) translated Old Norse literature in addition to writing fantasy novels, and like Morris, was fond of writing in archaic prose. In fact, he does it rather better, but we shall get to that. But unlike the Marxist Morris or the Catholic Tolkien, Eddison seems to have become overly fond of the Übermensch concept.

When Eddison writes his fantasy characters, he does not instill them with any sort of pseudo-Christian morality. These are people who subscribe to something more Homeric, in terms of heroism – a glory in arms and masculine achievement, tempered only by a chivalric respect for a rival well-fought. The characters openly reference the Greek pantheon, while the ending (hinted at in the novel’s title) invites comparison with the Norse Valhalla. The Worm Ouroboros would be closer to Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian, except that Eddison presents us with a world of Conans.

(Not just that. Eddison’s text also occasionally leans towards a fantasy-take on British Boarding School Jolly Adventures. Demonland versus Witchland can be seen as Gryffindor versus Slytherin, only with swords and bloody battle, and a better treatment of Slytherin. That said, that last point is important. Unlike Rowling, Eddison presents us with antagonists capable of being decent people, and Gro is a magnificent character).

I mentioned the prose. In a very real sense, Eddison’s prose simultaneously raises The Worm Ouroboros to the status of memorable fantasy classic, while also making the thing damned heavy reading. You see, Eddison writes the thing in impeccable Jacobean English, and unlike Morris’ pastiche of Malory, Eddison does it well. There are some genuinely beautiful passages here, of the variety that you simply do not see in later fantasy, and lush descriptions that seem to sing with poetry.

Alas, this also means that a modern reader has to adapt themselves to a very different reading experience. You are not just dealing with characters who think in non-modern fashion, but who also express themselves in a non-modern fashion. And not content with writing in the style of 1600, Eddison includes three letters between characters, where he uses Early Modern Spelling – which in my case, led me to reading them aloud, so as to make better sense of them.

And then there are the names. Eddison’s naming conventions can only be described as mad. Demons and Witches and Goblins and Pixies are running around, but they are all fundamentally human – the Demons supposedly have horns, but that is a throw-away idea never mentioned again. Individual characters are given names like Zigg and Spitfire and Fax Fay Faz, in an Epic Jacobean-Styled Fantasy Novel. Small wonder Tolkien criticised this.

There are also three major Witchland characters, with the easily-confusable names Corund, Corinus, and Corsus. Each have a distinct personality – Corund is the honourable antagonist, Corinus is reckless and lecherous, but an excellent fighter, and Corsus is just a shit-weasel. Alas, until you have these characters properly identified, keeping track of which-is-which is damned hard. The Worm Ouroboros is not light reading.

In rounding off my discussion of Eddison, I should mention I have used this text as a discussion point before, specifically regarding Eddison’s handling of sex: https://phuulishfellow.wordpress.com/2021/06/10/daniel-greene-and-the-mechanics-of-writing-sex-scenes/

Having re-read the entire novel, I found it interesting to compare the wider handling of sex. Because Brandoch Daha’s fling is not the only example of this 1920s fantasy author going certain places. We have this, from a soon-to-fade-to-black scene involving the arch-villain of the story, King Gorice XII of Witchland:

“Lord,” she whispered, “I would not have come to you in this deep and dead time of the night but that I knew you noble and the great King, and no amorous surfeiter that should deal falsely with me.”

Her body breathed spices: soft warm scents to make the senses reel: perfume of malabathrum bruised in wine, essences of sulphur-coloured lilies planted in Aphrodite’s garden. The King drew her to him. She cast her arms about his neck, saying close to his ear, “Lord, I may not sleep till you tell me they must sail, and Corsus must be their captain.”

The King held her gathered up like a child in his embrace. He kissed her on the mouth, a long deep kiss. Then he sprang to his feet, set her down like a doll before him upon the table by the lamp, and so sat back in his own chair again and sat regarding her with a strange and disturbing smile.

Eddison switches to describing smells as an effective way of setting the mood… and yet, he then turns around and successfully kills the mood, because, well, Gorice is the chief villain. The doll reference, and the “strange and disturbing smile” evokes just the appropriate level of creepiness. I think it’s an honestly impressive piece of writing.

(And then there’s Corinus, who has an appalling attitude, and an infamous reputation, but thankfully never gets a scene more risqué than a woman sitting on his lap. Implication can work very effectively, without the in-your-face treatment of more recent writers).

**

So yeah. The Worm Ouroboros, a fantasy classic from 1922. A supremely strange and uninviting book, but the sort of work that feels like a genuine accomplishment, as well as being genuinely memorable through the sheer power of its prose. Though not without its flaws, I am inclined to regard it as my favourite pre-Tolkien fantasy novel, assuming you mean pre-Hobbit and not just pre-Lord of the Rings. Eddison wrote other fantasy novels too, the Zimiamvian Trilogy, but I have yet to try those.

• June 17, 2024
• Fantasy Genre, Reading, Reviews
• 6 Comments