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| Art: James Cawthorn, unused drawing for "The Dreaming City" (redesigned for Hawkwind, Live Chronicles (booklet) 1994) |
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| Monsieur Zenith in 1933 |
“Part of “The Flame Bringers” was originally written as a non-Elric story, and I drew an illustration of the central character. Mike then changed this to Elric by rubbing out the pupils of the eyes, so that they were blank like the Elves’ eyes in (Poul) Anderson’s The Broken Sword.”In 1960 Moorcock was given an opportunity to write a Conan pastiche for L. Sprague de Camp’s ‘Fantastic Universe’, but the magazine folded before Moorcock completed anything more than some sketches. However, in August of that year he was invited to submit some sword and sorcery stories to E. John “Ted” Carnell’s ‘Science Fantasy’ magazine, just to test the waters to see if this kind of “vintage” pulp fiction still had any kind of an audience with Science Fantasy's readership. When Moorcock offered up the Conan story sketches left over from the abandoned ‘Fantastic Universe’ magazine, Carnell informed Moorcock that he wasn’t interested in a Conan story per se, just something in that vein. With this in mind, Moorcock revived the Monsieur Zenith ideas from 1959 as part of the conception for Elric, the outlawed albino ruler of sorcery-steeped Melniboné.
- James Cawthorn, Interview from “The Jewel in the Skull” 1979 graphic novel
“Influenced by the old gentleman adventurer crooks, like Hornung’s Raffles and Skene’s Monsieur Zenith, he would not battle against sorcery but embrace it, not shun aristocratic decadence but be part of it. There was a dash of Shakespeare’s Richard III in there, too!”Lots of Books
- “Elric: Swords and Roses”, Introduction
Beyond Conan and Zenith, Moorcock has also cited many (many!) other books which had influenced him at that time to a greater or lesser degree: Fletcher Pratt’s Well of the Unicorn (1948), James Branch Cabell’s Jurgen (1919), Fritz Leiber’s "Fahfrd & Gray Mouser" series (1939-88), Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions (1953) and The Broken Sword (1954), Horace Walpole’s genre-defining Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto (1764), Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1819), Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone, Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan, the dreamlike landscapes of Lord Dunsany, etc... Moorcock has also cited the more contemporary work of Leigh Brackett, Ray Bradbury, William Faulkner, Mark Twain and Sinclair Lewis.
By this time having moved to Ladbroke Grove (then a hub of alternative culture in northwest London), he was also enthused by the psychological complexity found in the writings of Joseph Conrad, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf and moderns like Elizabeth Bowen, Angus Wilson, Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, Boris Vian, Blaise Cendrars and William Burroughs. A year earlier he had published adult fiction in 'New Worlds Science Fiction' (“Peace on Earth" with Barrington J. Bayley, 1960) and was already beginning to volley ideas back and forth with J.G. Ballard, Brian Aldiss and Bayley about what would later become 'New Worlds' under Moorcock’s provocative editorship.
As yet another insight into Moorcock’s state of mind during Elric’s early years, it’s worth noting that Moorcock was simultaneously writing a study of the 19th century Gothic novel and its effect on the psychological themes (Freud, Jung, swords, etc) surfacing in contemporary fantasy. This series, “Aspects of Fantasy” would eventually be published in 1963 (Science Fantasy #61-64) alongside the serialization of the Elric novel Stormbringer.
All of these factors combined with a probably mischievous intention to consciously subvert as many heroic fantasy tropes as possible (and still satisfy Carnell’s marketing test requirements) resulted in “The Dreaming City”, the first appearance of Elric, the Last Emperor of Melniboné and traitor to his own people.
"His tragedy and his tragic story was directly in contrast to Tolkien, and his contemplative qualities, his intellectualism, were deliberately in contrast to Howard."
- Quantum Muse interview, Readercon 12At the time of its publication, Moorcock merely regarded this commission as a one-time experiment, practically a last burst of sword and sorcery nostalgia before moving on to more “high-brow” literature. However, despite some scattered fanzine reviewers critical of its “ironic” tone, its popular response in 'Science Fantasy' prompted many more stories to come (which amazingly continue to be produced almost 60 years later!).
The Dreaming City
The narrative of “The Dreaming City” can be summed up as follows: The exiled Melnibonéan albino Elric helps a fleet of Young Kingdom reavers raid and plunder his home, the capitol city of Imrryr. Elric eventually slays his nemesis (and cousin) Yyrkoon in single combat, but in the process loses a part of himself he can never regain. Later, when surviving Melnibonéan ships and dragons launch a counter-attack on the escaping reaver fleet, Elric must choose between the welfare of his allies or himself.
A detailed synopsis follows:
Introduction
The sorcerer kingdom of Melniboné dominates the world for 10,000 years, but decay and rot eventually set in. Now, Elric is its Emperor, and he is fated to be its last.
Chapter 1
Count Smiorgan Baldhead of the Purple Towns joins a gathering of Young Kingdom sea lords at an inn. They await the arrival of the mysterious Melnibonéan Emperor-in-exile, Elric, who has promised to help them sack Imrryr, the dreaming, last city of the once-mighty Melnibonéan empire. Elric eventually arrives, clad in gaudy “local” attire and bearing his forbidding, black runeblade Stormbringer. He tells the Young Kingdom sea lords that the invasion will start in three days, but he first must visit Imrryr alone. After conjuring a sorcerous mist to hide the sea lords’ invasion fleet before the attack, he departs. The next morning, Elric summonses wind elementals to propel his small boat to Imrryr at supernatural speed.
Chapter 2
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| Art: James Cawthorn (unused drawing for "The Dreaming City") |
Chapter 3
Days later, with Elric aboard Smiorgan’s ship, the sea lords’ reaver fleet reaches the outer perimeter of Imrryr. The fleet uses catapults and archers against the sea wall towers and breaches the wooden gate. Despite attacks from hidden Melnibonéan archers, Elric successfully leads the fleet through the next barrier, a Melnibonéan sea maze. As the reavers reach the inner harbour, hand-to-hand battle erupts. Disengaging from the melee, Elric eventually makes his way to the Tower of D’a’rputna, hoping to find Tanglebones and Cymoril at a prearranged rendezvous point. He finds a dying Tanglebones and learns that Yyrkoon has taken Cymoril to the Tower of B’aal’nezbett. At B’aal’nezbett, Elric is momentarily halted by a sorcerous black crystal barrier, but is eventually able to recall the arcane password necessary to dispel it (cited in the story's original appearance as “Hsheegroiyrwnaz!”, but omitted in later revised editions). As he ascends the stairs towards Yyrkoon (who he sees is now wielding Stormbringer’s brother runeblade Mournblade), Elric’s senses are assaulted by weird flames, lava and music. Nonetheless, the two engage in battle, each armed and artificially-vitalized by their runeswords. When Cymoril awakens and tries to stop the fight, Yyrkoon throws her onto the point of Stormbringer, killing her immediately. Upon Yyrkoon’s subsequent death, the flames, lava and music surrounding the scene disappear. Alone, Elric moans in distress and guilt.
Chapter 4
The sea lords’ reaver fleet heads away from the now-smoking Dreaming City, but while navigating the sea maze it is intercepted by gigantic Melnibonéan battle barges. The Young Kingdoms’ fleet doesn’t stand a chance against the behemoths, so Elric conjures wind elementals to propel the fleet’s most vital ships away from danger. Unfortunately, these survivors are next attacked by the airborne, flame-spitting dragons of Melniboné, led by Dragon Lord Dyvim Tvar. Elric redirects the sorcerous wind so that all of its force is used to propel only Elric’s ship to safety, while Smiorgan and the rest of the reaver fleet are abandoned to their fiery fates. Later, off the coast of Pan Tang, a guilt-ridden Elric tries to throw Stormbringer overboard, but when the battleblade hits the water it refuses to sink. A resigned Elric abandons his ship and swims after it, eventually heading towards the shore.
Gods and Runeblades
This initial story of the Elric saga is essentially a triangular struggle between Elric, his lover Cymoril, and their nemesis Yyrkoon. However, at the same time this drama is magnified to operatic proportions by first pitting the Young Kingdoms against the might of ancient Melniboné, and then later Stormbringer against its sibling runeblade Mournblade. It's this controlled escalation of personal, geopolitical and mythic forces that makes "The Dreaming City" such a thrilling read. However, what makes this story such an outstanding one is Moorcock's psycho-historical manipulation of conventional heroic fantasy archetypes and tropes.
Melniboné
(Regarding Britain after WW II): "...ruins for as far as the eye could see. We didn’t know it, but we felt it—the end of Empire. Elric’s experience, if you like. As a very early anti-monarchist and anti-imperialist I wasn’t sad to see the institutions crumbling, but at the same time it is your culture that’s crumbling, so it doesn’t necessarily feel that good to you as an ordinary individual."Although apparently meant to evoke an image of the British Empire in decline, I personally perceive the "Bright Empire" of Melniboné more as China during the Yuan or Qing Dynasties (Qing even means "bright" in Chinese). Like China during Marco Polo's time, Melniboné regards all other cultures outside its walls as "uncultured barbarians", and instead seeks to cultivate their own intellectual pursuits rather than engage in conquest. Of course I suppose Melniboné here could really stand in for any great empire on the wane...
- Moorcock, "Elric is Me", The Dreamthief's Daughter
More significant is the fact that the concept and general physical appearance of the Melnibonéan race will ultimately reoccur in Moorcock's multiverse echoed as a cultural archetype - a kind of "Eternal Elder Race", I guess. The first incarnation of this elder race archetype may have been the mysterious "guardians of the balance" Jephraim Tallow meets in Chapter 14 of The Golden Barge (Tallow also visits the city of Melibone, but these inhabitants are apparently not related to the other-dimensional guardians - but one never knows...). The Eldren of "The Eternal Champion" are also revealed in that story to be representatives of antiquity and progressive thought. In later Moorcock series, many cultures and races will be described as being similar to (or related to) the Melnibonéans in both appearance and culture, from Corum's Vadhagh race to the Off-Moo (Mu-Oorians) of the Moonbeams Roads trilogy.
Elric
Beyond Elric’s striking white skin, red eyes and sickly constitution, he also stands out from your average Cimmerian barbarian/rustic Hobbit for being closely allied with essentially malevolent sorcery. Two of his greatest allies are his runesword Stormbringer and his patron "Duke of Hell", Arioch (later aligned ideologically with Chaos). Several times during this introductory narrative, Elric regards both Stormbringer and the amorphous Arioch with revulsion and disgust. His use of sorcery typically leaves him in a pathetically weakened physical state. In contrast to a typical heroic fantasy where the protagonist saves his lover, regains his throne, and forms new friendships, Elric instead slays his beloved, razes his city, and ends up threatening the rest of humanity with his black runesword (which shows signs of demonic possession). In Elric's world, there are no white wizards or sagacious talking lions anywhere in sight.
Stormbringer
Elric's runeblade starts out as being a reiteration of Erekosë’s radioactive Kanajana (it kills virtually on contact), but it is soon revealed that the sword makes “howling” noises, glows with a black radiance and imbues Elric with vitality (later revealed more explicitly as a vampiric siphoning of the souls of Stormbringer’s victims). In a hint to Stormbringer’s tantalizing mythic origins, the final psychedelic duel between Elric and his cousin Yyrkoon features the appearance of Stormbringer’s “brother blade” Mournblade, which seems to have a similarly nefarious nature. Before the end, Stormbringer reveals itself as an independent sentient entity, able to force its wielder’s arm against his will and to “stand” on water, although this bit probably serves the allegorical narrative more than the immediate story.
Arioch, Elementals, Dragons
Although essentially plot devices, these supernatural entities nonetheless add some essential fantasy exoticism, deftly magnifying the romantic/political struggle at the heart of the story and teasing at a greater cosmology underneath. Although here largely impersonal, in later books the Higher Lords, elementals and Phoorn dragons will each develop expressive personalities (and voices) of their own, with Arioch in particular soon to become much more anthropomorphized as a scheming manipulator in service to the cause of Chaos.
Moorcock's Multiverse
Surprisingly, "The Dreaming City" has no overt references to the Eternal Champion, the Balance or the Struggle between Law and Order. This cosmology would only start being introduced in the sequel, "While the Gods Laugh". This is probably because Moorcock never intended for this to become a continuing series, let alone connected to his then-unpublished story "The Eternal Champion".
alle...gory
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| Moorcock, 1963 www.mark-hodder.com/blakiana/rascals.html |
“…Elric was me (the me of 1960/61 anyway) and the mingled qualities of betrayer and betrayed, the bewilderment about life in general, the search for some solution to it all, the expression of this bewilderment in terms of violence, cynicism and the need for revenge were all characteristic of mine. So when I got the chance to write “The Dreaming City,” I was identifying very closely with my hero-villain. I thought myself something of an outcast…”
"...The story was packed with personal symbols (as are all the stories, bar a couple). The “secret and terrible source” was the sword Stormbringer, which symbolized my own and others’ tendency to rely on mental and physical crutches rather than cure the weakness at source. To go further, Elric, for me, symbolized the ambivalence of mankind in general, with its love-hates, its mean-generosity, its confident-bewilderment act. Elric is a thief who believes himself robbed, a lover who hates love. In short, he cannot be sure of the truth of anything, not even of his own emotions or ambitions."
- Moorcock, "The Secret Life Of Elric Of Melniboné" (1964)(The second quote above refers to a passage in Chapter One which describes Elric as he makes his first stage appearance: “Elric, Last Lord of Melniboné, was a pure albino who drew his power from a secret and terrible source.”)
Bonus Features
"Such confidence gentlemen..."
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| Art: Brian Lewis, Elric's 1st published appearance |
Count Zodiac
In a dizzying trapeze act of literary appropriation, in recent decades Moorcock has written stories in which the true identity of Anthony Skene’s "Monsieur Zenith" is revealed to be Elric himself, incarnated on Earth through a sorcery-enabled “dreamquest”. In these stories, Monsieur Zenith sometimes takes the name Count Zodiac, and duels with Sir Seaton Begg, the “real name” of the fictional Sexton Blake. Although at first confusing to long-time Elric fans, this skillful mash-up of genres (found in the collection The Metatemporal Detective) is loads of fun once one “gets it”.
Epilogue
Even if Michael Moorcock had published “The Dreaming City” and then spent the rest of his life doing nothing but building log cabins in the wilderness, he would still rank for me as one of the most important and influential fantasists of the 20th century. This short work somehow blew the cobwebs off of a century’s worth of tropes and conventions in just 4 epic chapters distributed over a paltry 31 pages. Rereading it now even after its innovations have been absorbed into (lifted by) all forms of media (books, games, film, television) in the half-century since its introduction, it still has a frantic, “thrumming” vibrancy unmatched even in most of Moorcock’s own work to follow (although Moorcock’s later writing is brilliantly symphonic in its own many-layered, sometimes inscrutable complexity). In any case, the dynamic progress from Sojan to The Golden Barge to The Eternal Champion to "The Dreaming City" shows that Moorcock was truly evolving at dizzying speeds in these early years.
Wikipedia Entry
Wikiverse (archive entry)
Next chapter: Elric: While the Gods Laugh
(Previous Chapter: The Eternal Champion)
