The Worm Ouroboros: War goes ever, ever on

Warning--spoilers ahead

E.R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros is not an easy read. You cannot drink it whole and entire in a single draught; it must be sipped and savored like a complex wine, and (to continue the metaphor) its taste is an acquired one. But it is a marvel of fantasy, one of the all-time classics, and if you're a fan at all of the genre you owe it to yourself to at least give it a try. It has fallen in and out of print over the years, although you can buy it on Amazon (I myself have the 1967 Ballantine Books edition, pictured here).

I recently re-read The Worm Ouroboros for this review after a space of a few years, and, as was the case before, I had to slowly break my way into it. It's written with beautiful and ornate language from a bygone era, which has its charms and its drawbacks. More than once I had to go back and re-read archaic words and opaque sentences and paragraphs. But it's never ponderous, and once you have a feel for the language it becomes part of the journey, a wonderful tool of immersion into Eddison's act of creation.

And Eddison uses that language to fashion wonders. The Worm Ouroboros delivers you into a world of bright color and thunder, of larger than life landscapes, and of heroes and deeds beyond the abilities of ordinary men. Here are soaring mountains that blot out the sky; noble hippogriffs and savage mantichores; achingly lovely princesses; and heroes of epic proportions and heroic hearts. And, above all, here is war, full-scale bloody battles of annihilation on land and sea.

And yet The Worm Ouroboros has far more to offer than (a great) story. Eddison had a message to say and while it's not readily apparent, it is there, beneath the surface, revealed in its suggestive title, by its deliberate structure, and through the actions of one of its central characters--Lord Gro.

The story
The Worm Ouroboros tells the story of a great war between the Demons--the good guys, not actually "demons," but noble and and heroic men--and the Witches (not actual broomstick-riding women, but men, evil and warlike). Through the use of a powerful and dangerous spell, the King of Witchland (Gorice XII) ensnares Goldry Blusczo, the Demons' mighty champion, and imprisons him in a magical fortress. Two of the Demon lords embark on an epic quest to find him and bring him back, while the Witches use this opportunity to launch a full-scale war against Demonland. War and epic quest are intermingled.

Along the way we're treated to a number of memorable events and scenes. A handful of my favorites include:

Conjuring in the Iron Tower. Evil witch-king Gorice XII uses the black arts to summon a mighty spell and capture Goldry Blusczo. This is magic as I like it: Not safe and predictable, but wild and dangerous and chaotic. I don't think I've ever encountered a description of a summoning more dark and evocative than that in The Worm Ouroboros:

But the King pronounced not yet those words, pointing only to them in the book, for whoso speaketh those words in vain and out of season is lost. And now when the retorts and beakers with their several necks and tubes and the appurtenances thereof were set in order, and the unhallowed processes of fixation, conjunction, deflagration, putrefaction, and rubefication were nearing maturity, and the baleful star Antares standing by the astrolabe within a little of the meridian signified the instant approach of midnight, the King described on the floor with his conjuring rod three pentacles inclosed within a seven-pointed star, with the signs of Cancer and of Scorpio joined by certain runes. And in the midst of the star he limned the image of a green crab eating of the sun. And turning to the seventy-third page of his great black grammarie the King recited in a mighty voice words of hidden meaning, calling on the name that it is a sin to utter.

The battle with the mantichore. Two of the Demons greatest champions, Brandoch Daha and Lord Juss, do battle with a mantichore on the cliffs of the great mountain Koshtra Pivrarcha. And what a beast it is:

The shape of it was as a lion, but bigger and taller, the colour a dull red, and it had prickles lancing out behind, as of a porcupine; its face a man's face, if aught so hideous might be conceived of human kind, with staring eyeballs, low wrinkled brow, elephant ears, some wispy mangy likeness of a lion's mane, huge bony chaps, brown blood-stained gubber-tushes grinning betwixt bristly lips.

The Battle of Krothering Side. I'm a sucker for big battle scenes and this is a great one. Here's but a small sample of this epic clash between Demon and Witch, as told through the eyes of a survivor:

I scarce know what way the battle went, father. 'Twas like a meeting of streams in spate. I think they opened to us right and left to ease the shock. They that were before us went down like standing corn under a hailstorm. We wheeled both ways, some 'gainst their right that was thrown back toward the camp, the more part with my Lord Brandoch Daha to our own right. I was with these in the main battle. His highness rode a hot stirring horse very fierce and dogged; knee to knee with him went Styrkmir of Blackwood o' the one side and Tharmrod o' the other. Neither man nor horse might stand up before 'em, and they faring as in a maze now this way now that, amid the thrumbling and thrasting o' the footmen, heads and arms smitten off, men hewn in sunder from crown to belly, ay, to the saddle, riderless horses maddened, blood splashed up from the ground like the slush from a marsh.

The wrestling match of Goldry Bluszco and Gorice XI. Forget the WWF--within the pages of The Worm Ouroboros is a wrestling match to the death between the two strongest men alive. Eddison paints the match in words that bring to life the crash of the muscular bodies, the teetering balance as each strives to overthrow the other, the terrible strain and the brushes with death.

Lord Gro
Like the Norse sagas from which it derives inspiration, Eddison portrays his characters using their actions and words, not their thoughts or motivations. They are mythical heroes, larger than life, and not conflicted with doubts and uncertainties, but driven by great passions, honor, and warrior spirit. In other words, if you're looking for character studies, look elsewhere.

And yet The Worm Ouroboros also features the conflicted, philosophical, and thoroughly modern Lord Gro, an exile from another country who casts his lot in with the Witches, later defects to the Demons, then rejoins the Witches at story's end. I can't help but think that Gro=Eddison, or at least is the individual with whom Eddision most readily identifies, since he is the most fully realized character in the novel. In the midst of all the savage warfare, Gro in a memorable passage steps back and questions the entire conflict--and the very nature of competition itself:

"Surely," he said, "the great mountains of the world are a present remedy if men did but know it against our modern discontent and ambitions. In the hills is wisdom's font. They are deep in time. They know the ways of the sun and the wind, the lightning's fiery feet, the frost that shattereth, the rain that shroudeth, the snow that putteth about their nakedness a softer coverlet than fine lawn: which if their large philosophy question not if it be a bridal sheet or a shroud, hath not this unpolicied calm his justification ever in the returning year, and is it not an instance to laugh our carefulness out of fashion? of us, little children of the dust, children of a day, who with so many burdens do burden us with taking thought and with fears and desires and devious schemings of the mind, so that we wax old before our time and fall weary ere the brief day be spent and one reaping-hook gather us home at last for all our pains."

Notably it is Gro, the anti-soldier, who sees the clearest.

War as glory and horror
Eddison wrote The Worm Ouroboros in 1922, just four years after the bloody conclusion of World War I. Unlike the stories of his contemporary J.R.R. Tolkien, Eddison glorifies war as a grand stage upon which heroes achieve great deeds and carve out their legacies.

But underneath this simple portayal lurks a more conflicted reality of war. After the great Battle of Krothering Side in which the Demons drive the Witches out of Demonland and the tide of war turns, Arnod, a warrior who fought with the Demons, tells the story of the battle to his family in the gorgeous rays of the setting sun. Eddison, who uses the landscape of his world to convey moods, drops the image of an ugly cloud that looks like a battered sword into the midst of the glorious sunset (emphasis mine). It's a subtle but important reminder of the ugliness and monstrosity that is war:

A faint breeze rippled the foliage of the oakwoods of Tivarandardale. The sun was down behind the stately Thornbacks, and the whole sky from bourne to bourne was alight with the sunset glory. Dappled clouds, with sky showing here and there between, covered the heavens, save in the west where a great archway of clear air opened between clouds and earth: air of an azure that seemed to burn, so pure it was, so deep, so charged with warmth: not the harsh blue of noon-day nor the sumptuous deep eastern blue of approaching night, but a bright heavenly blue bordering on green, deep, tender, and delicate as the spirit of evening. Athwart the midst of that window of the west a blade of cloud, hard-edged and jagged with teeth coloured as of live coals and dead, fiery and iron-dark in turn, stretched like a battered sword. The clouds above the arch were pale rose: the zenith like black opal, dark blue and thunderous gray dappled with fire.

The Worm Ouroboros
Eddison's book derives its curious title from a mythical, culture-spanning serpent/dragon named Ouroboros that swallows its own tail. Ouroboros appears in Norse mythology in the form of the serpent Jormungandr, a monstrous creature that circles the world and grasps its own tail in its teeth. In the Norse myths Thor kills Jormungandr during the last great battle (Ragnarok), but is himself slain by the venom spewing from the great wound. Ragnarok is the ultimate expression of this cyclical pattern, as it results in the destruction of the norse gods, their enemies, and the world itself, followed by a rebirth. Thus, the worm is both a symbol of the pattern of life and death and rebirth, or, in this case, eternal warfare.

The much-discussed ending of The Worm Ouroboros conforms to and continues that pattern. The Demons have achieved complete victory with their foes, the Witches, all slain. But instead of thanking the Gods for the great triumph and its promise of peace, the Demons instead long for the return of their vanquished and slain opponents. Lord Juss of the Demons is granted a wish from the magical Queen Sophonisba, and asks of the Gods:

Would they might give us our good gift, that should be youth for ever, and war; and unwaning strength and skill in arms. Would they might but give us our great enemies alive and whole again. For better it were we should run hazard again of utter destruction, than thus live out our lives like cattle fattening for the slaughter, or like silly garden plants.

Eddison does not pronounce any judgements upon the Demons, so we do not know whether this endless cycle of war continues because men desire it due to pride, or foolishness, or vainglory, or because warfare is inherent in our nature. All that is known is that the gods grant the Demons' wish and the cycle begins again: the worm has swallowed its tail, the other tale continues, and the war--the great war--will go on and on.

I have included a few passages of Eddison's unique prose, but should you wish to sample more you can actually read The Worm Ouroboros in its entirety here: http://www.sacred-texts.com/ring/two/index.htm