Masterful sci-fi and western

Still working on Pharsalia, Hyperion, and some other stuff. Pharsalia is slow going because it is both old poetry and unfamiliar history and geography. I'm getting something out of it but i'm not ready to write about it yet.

Hyperion is an amazing book masterfully written. It is basically Canterbury Tales in space, told from the points of view of several pilgrims on a journey that only one is expected to survive. each of the stories is almost novella length and each gets tedious in the middle (especially the poet's tale) but it is the kind of tedius that you still can't stop reading. And then in the end of each tale there is a twist that reveals part of the connection of that pilgrim to the main tale and makes you invest emotionally in that pilgrim. So, basically everyone is the main character in which the reader is invested and who the author cannot rightly kill off - but you know all but one has to die by the conditions of the pilgrimage. Aargh!

I also read a really cool short by Zane Grey, Tappan's Burro, that has changed how I think about the western genere. Until now, for my whole life, 'western' has been synonymous with Louis Lamour. Lamour is western and the west is lamour and there is no other - simply because I'd read no other. Well, Grey was a dentist who basically lived as a kept man off his wife's inheritence in order to pursue his ambition as a writer. The story I read was wholly different from Lamour. Different language. Different archetypal characters. Really cool.

You know who else I'm going to have to go back to is Jack London...

Blood and guts!

Having found his enemy fled, Caesar returns to Rome and finds the city quivering in its boots. here Lucan gives us a couple of military proverbs worthy of Machievelli.

Then arms he laid aside, in guise of peace
Seeking the people's favour; skilled to know
How to arouse their ire, and how to gain
The popular love by corn in plenty given.
For famine only makes a city free;
By gifts of food the tyrant buys a crowd
To cringe before him: but a people starved
Is fearless ever.

When men bow to power Freedom of speech is only Freedom's bane (That is, speaking freely and harshly to the tyrant can spoil the last few liberties that the subjugated populace retains.)

Anyway, Caesar tires of peace - particularly since Pompey is still at large and the world has begun choosing up sides. So Caesar quits Rome and lays a seige at Marseille, while one of his commanders, Decimus Brutus, conducts a gruesome naval battle against some Gallic Pompey sympathizers at the illes de Hyeres bear Toulon. Similar to passages in Homer's epics, Lucan describes the naval battle in horrific detail.

Full many wondrous deaths, with fates diverse,
Upon the sea in that day's fight befell.
Caught by a grappling-hook that missed the side,
Had Lysidas been whelmed in middle deep;
But by his feet his comrades dragged him back,
And rent in twain he hung; nor slowly flowed
As from a wound the blood; but all his veins
Were torn asunder and the stream of life
Gushed o'er his limbs till lost amid the deep.
From no man dying has the vital breath
Rushed by so wide a path; the lower trunk
Succumbed to death, but with the lungs and heart
Long strove the fates, and hardly won the whole...

One who haply swam
Amid the battle, chanced upon a death
Strange and unheard of; for two meeting prows
Transfixed his body. At the double stroke
Wide yawned his chest; blood issued from his mouth
With flesh commingled; and the brazen beaks
Resounding clashed together, by the bones
Unhindered: now they part and through the gap
Swift pours the sea and drags the corse below...

Tyrrhenus high Upon the bulwarks of his ship was struck
By leaden bolt from Balearic sling
Of Lygdamus; straight through his temples passed
The fated missile; and in streams of blood
Forced from their seats his trembling eyeballs fell.
Plunged in a darkness as of night, he thought
That life had left him; yet ere long he knew
The living rigour of his limbs; and cried,
"Place me, O friends, as some machine of war
Straight facing towards the foe; then shall my darts
Strike as of old; and thou, Tyrrhenus, spend
Thy latest breath, still left, upon the fight:
So shalt thou play, not wholly dead, the part
That fits a soldier, and the spear that strikes
Thy frame, shall miss the living."

Nought, Rome, shall tear thee from me...

So, having made note of all the supernatural warnings of impending doom, the old men of Rome lie around and whine. One of these men says that Caesar reminds him of two previous tyrants, Marius and Sulla, each of whom ravaged the country murdering foes as well as anyone else that might have stood in their way or who might have even had the opportunity of standing in the way. Sulla is estimated to have murdered between 1500 and 9000 men, women, and children.

At this point we meet Brutus, who has a remarkable conversation with Cato. Brutus tells Cato that he thinks that both Pompey and Caesar are on the way to becoming tyrant and that he plans to insinuate himself into the confidence of the victor and kill him before he can become tyrant. Cato replies in a stirring monologue:

...Who has strength
To gaze unawed upon a toppling world?
When stars and sky fall headlong, and when earth
Slips from her base, who sits with folded hands?
Shall unknown nations, touched by western strife,
And monarchs born beneath another clime
Brave the dividing seas to join the war?
Shall Scythian tribes desert their distant north,
And Getae haste to view the fall of Rome,
And I look idly on?

...Nought, Rome, shall tear thee from me, till I hold
Thy form in death embraced; and Freedom's name,
Shade though it be, I'll follow to the grave.

The scene shifts to Pompey attempting to rally his troops to battle after having fled from Rome southward to Capua. Even after his best rhetoric they remain obviously half-hearted at the prospect of fighting Caesar, so they flee to Brundisium (the heel of the boot of Italy) ahead of Caesar's army.

No loud acclaim received his words, nor shout
Asked for the promised battle: and the chief
Drew back the standards, for the soldier's fears
Were in his soul alike; nor dared he trust
An army, vanquished by the fame alone
Of Caesar's powers, to fight for such a prize...

Thus Magnus, yielding to a stronger foe,
Gave up Italia, and sought in flight
Brundusium's sheltering battlements...

Then were the gates [of Capua] thrown wide; for with the fates
The city turned to Caesar: and the foe,
Seizing the town, rushed onward by the pier
That circled in the harbour; then they knew
With shame and sorrow that the fleet was gone
And held the open: and Pompeius' flight
Gave a poor triumph.

Real wrath-of-God type stuff

Here's how Lucan describes the panic and social upheval that accompanied the beginning of the Civil War. Pompey had fled or was fleeing and Caesar had crossed the Rubicon and was poised to invade Rome itself (The center of the world.) Lucan describes the upheval in terms of supernatural omens of doom...

Nor found they room for hope; for nature gave
Unerring portents of worse ills to come.
The angry gods filled earth and air and sea
With frequent prodigies; in darkest nights
Strange constellations sparkled through the gloom:
The pole was all afire, and torches flew
Across the depths of heaven; with horrid hair
A blazing comet stretched from east to west
And threatened change to kingdoms. From the blue
Pale lightning flashed, and in the murky air
The fire took divers shapes...

...and the orbed moon,
Hid by the shade of earth, grew pale and wan.
The sun himself, when poised in mid career,
Shrouded his burning car in blackest gloom
And plunged the world in darkness...

The jaws of Etna were agape with flame
That rose not heavenwards, but headlong fell
In smoking stream upon the Italian flank.
Then black Charybdis, from her boundless depth,
Threw up a gory sea. In piteous tones
Howled the wild dogs; the Vestal fire was snatched
From off the altar; and the flame that crowned
The Latin festival was split in twain,
As on the Theban pyre, in ancient days;
Earth tottered on its base: the mighty Alps
From off their summits shook th' eternal snow.
In huge upheaval Ocean raised his waves...

...Foul birds defiled the day; beasts left the woods
And made their lair among the streets of Rome.
All this we hear; nay more: dumb oxen spake;
Monsters were brought to birth and mothers shrieked
At their own offspring; words of dire import...