Jurgen (25)
By:
August 31, 2015
James Branch Cabell’s 1919 ironic fantasy novel Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice, the protagonist of which seduces women everywhere he travels — including into Arthurian legend and Hell itself — is (according to Aleister Crowley) one of the “epoch-making masterpieces of philosophy.” Cabell’s sardonic inversion of romantic fantasy was postmodernist avant la lettre. HiLoBooks is pleased to serialize Jurgen here at HILOBROW. Enjoy!
Thus Jurgen abode for a little over two months in Cocaigne, and complied with the customs of that country. Nothing altered in Cocaigne: but in the world wherein Jurgen was reared, he knew, it would by this time be September, with the leaves flaring gloriously, and the birds flocking southward, and the hearts of Jurgen’s fellows turning to not unpleasant regrets. But in Cocaigne there was no regret and no variability, but only an interminable flow of curious pleasures, illumined by the wandering star of Venus Mechanitis.
“Why is it, then, that I am not content?” said Jurgen. “And what thing is this which I desire? It seems to me there is some injustice being perpetrated upon Jurgen, somewhere.”
Meanwhile he lived with Anaïtis the Sun’s daughter very much as he had lived with Lisa, who was daughter to a pawnbroker. Anaïtis displayed upon the whole a milder temper: in part because she could confidently look forward to several centuries more of life before being explained away by the Philologists, and so had less need than Dame Lisa to worry over temporal matters; and in part because there was less to ruin one’s disposition in two months than in ten years of Jurgen’s company. Anaïtis nagged and sulked for a while when her Prince Consort slackened in the pursuit of strange delights, as he did very soon, with frank confession that his tastes were simple and that these outlandish refinements bored him. Later Anaïtis seemed to despair of his ever becoming proficient in curious pleasures, and she permitted Jurgen to lead a comparatively normal life, with only an occasional and half-hearted remonstrance.
What puzzled Jurgen was that she did not seem to tire of him: and he would often wonder what this lovely myth, so skilled and potent in arts wherein he was the merest bungler, could find to care for in Jurgen. For now they lived together like any other humdrum married couple, and their occasional exchange of endearments was as much a matter of course as their meals, and hardly more exciting.
“Poor dear, I believe it is simply because I am a monstrous clever fellow. She distrusts my cleverness, she very often disapproves of it, and yet she values it as queer, as a sort of curiosity. Well, but who can deny that cleverness is truly a curiosity in Cocaigne?”
So Anaïtis petted and pampered her Prince Consort, and took such open pride in his queerness as very nearly embarrassed him sometimes. She could not understand his attitude of polite amusement toward his associates and the events which befell him, and even toward his own doings and traits. Whatever happened, Jurgen shrugged, and, delicately avoiding actual laughter, evinced amusement. Anaïtis could not understand this at all, of course, since Asian myths are remarkably destitute of humor. To Jurgen in private she protested that he ought to be ashamed of his levity: but none the less, she would draw him out, when among the bestial and grim nature myths, and she would glow visibly with fond pride in Jurgen’s queerness.
“She mothers me,” reflected Jurgen. “Upon my word, I believe that in the end this is the only way in which females are capable of loving. And she is a dear and lovely creature, of whom I am sincerely fond. What is this thing, then, that I desire? Why do I feel life is not treating me quite justly?”
So the summer had passed; and Anaïtis travelled a great deal, being a popular myth in every land. Her sense of duty was so strong that she endeavored to grace in person all the peculiar festivals held in her honor, and this, now the harvest season was at hand, left her with hardly a moment disengaged. Then, too, the mission of Anaïtis was to divert; and there were so many people whom she had personally to visit — so many notable ascetics who were advancing straight toward canonization, and whom her underlings were unable to divert, — that Anaïtis was compelled to pass night after night in unwholesomely comfortless surroundings, in monasteries and in the cells and caves of hermits.
“You are wearing yourself out, my darling,” Jurgen would say: “and does it not seem, after all, a game that is hardly worth the candle? I know that, for my part, before I would travel so many miles into a desert, and then climb a hundred-foot pillar, just to whisper diverting notions into an anchorite’s very dirty ear, I would let the gaunt rascal go to Heaven. But you associate so much with saintly persons that you have contracted their incapacity for seeing the humorous side of things. Well, you are a dear, even so. Here is a kiss for you: and do you come back to your adoring husband as soon as you conveniently can without neglecting your duty.”
“They report that this Stylites is very far gone in rectitude,” said Anaïtis, absent-mindedly, as she prepared for the journey, “but I have hopes for him.”
Then Anaïtis put purple powder on her hair, and hastily got together a few beguiling devices, and went into the Thebaid. Jurgen went back to the Library, and the System of Worshipping a Girl, and the unique manuscripts of Astyanassa and Elephantis and Sotadês, and the Dionysiac Formulae, and the Chart of Postures, and the Litany of the Centre of Delight, and the Spintrian Treatises, and the Thirty-two Gratifications, and innumerable other volumes which he found instructive.
The Library was a vaulted chamber, having its walls painted with the twelve Asan of Cyrenê; the ceiling was frescoed with the arched body of a woman, whose toes rested upon the cornice of the east wall, and whose out-stretched finger-tips touched the cornice of the western wall. The clothing of this painted woman was remarkable: and to Jurgen her face was not unfamiliar.
“Who is that?” he inquired, of Anaïtis.
Looking a little troubled, Anaïtis told him this was Æsred.
“Well, I have heard her called otherwise: and I have seen her in quite other clothing.”
“You have seen Æsred!”
“Yes, with a kitchen towel about her head, and otherwise unostentatiously appareled — but very becomingly, I can assure you!” Here Jurgen glanced sidewise at his shadow, and he cleared his throat. “Oh, and a most charming and a most estimable old lady I found this Æsred to be, I can assure you also.”
“I would prefer to know nothing about it,” said Anaïtis, hastily, “I would prefer, for both our sakes, that you say no more of Æsred.” Jurgen shrugged.
Now in the Library of Cocaigne was garnered a record of all that the nature myths had invented in the way of pleasure. And here, with no companion save his queer shadow, and with Æsred arched above and bleakly regarding him, Jurgen spent most of his time, rather agreeably, in investigating and meditating upon the more curious of these recreations. The painted Asan were, in all conscience, food for wonder: but over and above these dozen surprising pastimes, the books of Anaïtis revealed to Jurgen, without disguise or reticence, every other far-fetched frolic of heathenry. Hitherto unheard-of forms of diversion were unveiled to him, and every recreation which ingenuity had been able to contrive, for the gratifying of the most subtle and the most strong-stomached tastes. No possible sort of amusement would seem to have been omitted, in running the quaint gamut of refinements upon nature which Anaïtis and her cousins had at odd moments invented, to satiate their desire for some more suave or more strange or more sanguinary pleasure. Yet the deeper Jurgen investigated, and the longer he meditated, the more certain it seemed to him that all such employment was a peculiarly unimaginative pursuit of happiness.
“I am willing to taste any drink once. So I must give diversion a fair trial. But I am afraid these are the games of mental childhood. Well, that reminds me I promised the children to play with them for a while before supper.”
So he came out, and presently, brave in the shirt of Nessus, and mimicked in every action by that incongruous shadow, Prince Jurgen was playing tag with the three little Eumenidês, the daughters of Anaïtis by her former marriage with Acheron, the King of Midnight.
Anaïtis and the dark potentate had parted by mutual consent. “Acheron meant well,” she would say, with a forgiving sigh, “and that in the Moon’s absence he occasionally diverted travellers, I do not deny. But he did not understand me.”
And Jurgen agreed that this tragedy sometimes befell even the irreproachably diverting.
The three Eumenidês at this period were half-grown girls, whom their mother was carefully tutoring to drive guilty persons mad by the stings of conscience: and very quaint it was to see the young Furies at practise in the schoolroom, black-robed, and waving lighted torches, and crowned each with her garland of pet serpents. They became attached to Jurgen, who was always fond of children, and who had frequently regretted that Dame Lisa had borne him none.
“It is enough to get the poor dear a name for eccentricity,” he had been used to say.
So Jurgen now made much of his step-children: and indeed he found their innocent prattle quite as intelligent, in essentials, as the talk of the full-grown nature myths who infested the palace of Anaïtis. And the four of them — Jurgen, and critical Alecto, and grave Tisiphonê, and fairy-like little Megæra, — would take long walks, and play with their dolls (though Alecto was a trifle condescending toward dolls), and romp together in the eternal evening of Cocaigne; and discuss what sort of dresses and trinkets Mother would probably bring them when she came back from Ecbatana or Lesbos, and would generally enjoy themselves.
Rather pathetically earnest and unimaginative little lasses, Jurgen found the young Eumenidês: they inherited much of their mother’s narrow-mindedness, if not their father’s brooding and gloomy tendencies; but in them narrow-mindedness showed merely as amusing. And Jurgen loved them, and would often reflect what a pity it was that these dear little girls were destined when they reached maturity, to spend the rest of their lives in haunting criminals and adulterers and parricides and, generally, such persons as must inevitably tarnish the girls’ outlook upon life, and lead them to see too much of the worst side of human nature.
So Jurgen was content enough. But still he was not actually happy, not even among the endless pleasures of Cocaigne.
“And what is this thing that I desire?” he would ask himself, again and again.
And still he did not know: he merely felt he was not getting justice: and a dim sense of this would trouble him even while he was playing with the Eumenidês.
Footnotes from Notes on Jurgen (1928), by James P. Cover — with additional comments from the creators of this website; rewritten, in some instances, by HiLoBooks.
* Stylites — The Stylites were pillar saints, that is, hermits who made their residence on top of a small platform, perched on top of a pillar, sometimes sixty feet high. To further assure their salvation, they spent hours at a time in uncomfortable positions, or in repeating mechanical actions. The most famous pillar saints were Simeon of Syria and Daniel of Constantinople.
* Thebaid — The Thebaid was one of the three great divisions of ancient Egypt. Its capital was Thebes, and the deserts surrounding this city were the favorite dwelling places of Christian hermits.
* Astyanassa — Astyanassa is said to have been a daughter of Musaeus and a slave of Helen’s, and to have composed poems on immodest subjects. Her actual existence is very doubtful.
* Elephantis — Elephantis was the author of erotic books, and is supposed to have been a woman. Of her personality nothing is known.
* Sotadês — Sotadês was a Greek poet from Thrace, who lived in Alexandria under Ptolemy Philadelphus about 276 B.C. For some sarcastic remark about the marriage of his own sister, Arsinoë, with the king, he is said to have been drowned in the sea in a leaden chest. He composed, in Ionic dialect, malicious satires, partly on indelicate subjects. He invented a form of verse which reads forwards and backwards the same (“Lewd did I live & evil I did dwel”), and which was named after him, Sotadic.
* Spintrian Treatises — It is not difficult to guess the character of these treatises when we recall that Tiberius Caesar had at Capri a troupe of men and women, especially trained in sexual perversities, whom he called spintriae.
* Asan of Cyrenê — For an account of pictures similar to those here described, see the Terminal Essay to Burton’s edition of The Arabian Nights. Section D of Burton’s “Terminal Essay” addressed “pederasty”. Although Burton is careful to use words like “vice” and “inversion”, this essay represents one of the earliest modern efforts to collect and make known both cross-cultural and historica information about “homosexuality” (a word not used by Burton).
* Æsred — Æsred is an anagram for Sereda, the letters being transposed in the order of 6-2-1-3-4-5. In his Salammbo, Gustave Flaubert describes a similar picture of a woman, painted upon the ceiling of one of the rooms in the temple of Tanit at Carthage.
* Acheron — According to post-Homeric legend, Acheron was the son of Helios and Gaea. He was changed into the river of the lower world, bearing his name, because he had refreshed the Titans with drink, during their contest with Zeus.
* Ecbatana — This was the capital city of the empire of Media. It was founded about 710 B.C. by Dejoces, the first king of the Medes, and retained its splendor down to the Christian period.
* Lesbos — Lesbos is a large island off the coast of Asia Minor. It is famous as the home of Sappho.
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SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague | Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail (and “As Easy as A.B.C.”) | Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt | H. Rider Haggard’s When the World Shook | Edward Shanks’ The People of the Ruins | William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land | J.D. Beresford’s Goslings | E.V. Odle’s The Clockwork Man | Cicely Hamilton’s Theodore Savage | Muriel Jaeger’s The Man With Six Senses | Jack London’s “The Red One” | Philip Francis Nowlan’s Armageddon 2419 A.D. | Homer Eon Flint’s The Devolutionist | W.E.B. DuBois’s “The Comet” | Edgar Rice Burroughs’s The Moon Men | Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland | Sax Rohmer’s “The Zayat Kiss” | Eimar O’Duffy’s King Goshawk and the Birds | Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Lost Prince | Morley Roberts’s The Fugitives | Helen MacInnes’s The Unconquerable | Geoffrey Household’s Watcher in the Shadows | William Haggard’s The High Wire | Hammond Innes’s Air Bridge | James Branch Cabell’s Jurgen | John Buchan’s “No Man’s Land” | John Russell’s “The Fourth Man” | E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” | John Buchan’s Huntingtower | Arthur Conan Doyle’s When the World Screamed | Victor Bridges’ A Rogue By Compulsion | Jack London’s The Iron Heel | H. De Vere Stacpoole’s The Man Who Lost Himself | P.G. Wodehouse’s Leave It to Psmith | Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” | Houdini and Lovecraft’s “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs” | Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Sussex Vampire.”
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