Musings on The Silver Stallion

ForumThe Rabble Discuss Cabell: James Branch Cabell &c

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Musings on The Silver Stallion

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1elenchus
Bearbeitet: Apr. 27, 2010, 1:23 pm

Recently finished The Silver Stallion, and I'm working on a review, inter alia, but have some thoughts & questions I couldn't pose anywhere but here (and expect any recognition, anyway).

I noticed Cabell's use of Fellowship to describe Manuel's "round table", and wondered: did Tolkien borrow it? Is it a resurrected term from Middle English? I speculate it was not a common term, even in fantastic literature, until Tolkien used it -- but perhaps writers such as Pyle used it.

Cabell's placenames and character names are fascinating. I read somewhere that Poictesme is supposedly situated around (present-day) France and Germany. If true, it would explain the blending of French, English, Spanish, Italian. And I don't know, but it seems as if Cabell's using Old French, Old English, etc. Any ideas on this? I find it utterly fascinating, especially after the scads of 20c. authors "making up" entirely different languages, and for the most part, falling on their collective petard.

Just how is Poictesme pronounced, anyway?

The quotations from the Bible are also endlessly fascinating. Not so much the specific quotes, but how he turns them on their head, that they would be used at all, that characters are Christian and know the Saints. Cabell makes one reference to a campaign against the pagan creatures of "unorthodox mythologies" (p 248 in my 1926 McBride edition), which reference gave me pause. Does he explore this part of "history" in other works?

Also noticed some unorthodox words I've not encountered elsewhere: untimelily (used at least twice), discomfortable. Were these word choices retained in later editions? Would be a shame if not.

2paradoxosalpha
Apr. 27, 2010, 8:26 pm

Pwah-temm, I believe.

3Crypto-Willobie
Apr. 29, 2010, 1:14 am

> 1

I’m no Tolkien expert but I have read around a bit in Tolkien biography and scholarship and I haven’t found any indication that Tolkien read Cabell or even was aware of his works. Almost exceptions to this general statement are that there were some Cabell books in C S Lewis’s library (see his LT Legacy Liberry); that in 1968 JRRT was solicited to be a founding member of the newly founded Cabell Society, but declined; and that Tolkien’s Earendil and Cabell’s Horvendile both ultimately derive (though at several removes and in different ways) from the same early Germanic legendary figure.

‘Fellowship’ in the Of the Ring/Silver Stallion sense just seems to be a resonantly archaic way of saying ‘company,’ a companionate group; for its use in Malory, see pp.142-3 here: http://books.google.com/books?id=U4cq6Gq9LyoC&pg=PP1&dq=gentry+context+f...

Cabell entered William and Mary at 15 and in a couple years was teaching French and Latin to his classmates. He was fascinated with Provencal poetry – I tend to think of Poictesme as a sort of alternative Provence, though the name was made by combining Angoulesme and Poictiers. He was especially influenced by Jean d’Arras’s Melusine, by Sabine Baring-Gould’s Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, and by Russian, Scandinavian and Old Testament mythology, though he was widely and deeply read in various “unorthodox mythologies”. Dethroned and defunct gods and myths reappear in Jurgen, High Place and Figures of Earth (providing at least some inspiration for Neil Gaiman’s American Gods) but I don’t recall a specific campaign of extermination if that’s the history you’re looking for. There are some good articles in those defunct journals “Kalki” and “The Cabellian” discussing his use of sources and the subject is touched on in Joe Lee Davis’s book on Cabell in the Twayne series and in Edgar MacDonald’s biography, both pretty good books.

Cabell was conversant with his unorthodox mythologies long before he became a full-blown ‘fantasy’ writer. He very early on drafted but destroyed a novel about the Melusine legend; Melusine, a Lilith-like figure, later appears as a character in both Soul of Melicent/Domnei and in The High Place, And in 1909’s The Cords of Vanity, a modern Virginian social novel we find this surprisingly full-blown fantasy-in-small inset as the supposed work of John Charteris: (pp. 6-10 of this googlebooks file) http://books.google.com/books?id=V5RFAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq=scha...

As to unorthodox words and word-forms and locutions, Cabell loved ‘em. They adorn (or blight, depending on your outlook) all of his books to a greater or lesser degree…I doubt if he revised away your examples. What pages? I can check the Storisende.

Did you read Figures of Earth before Silver Stallion?

4anglemark
Apr. 29, 2010, 4:53 am

I have a distinct but possibly erroneous recollection of Tolkien having written somewhere that he had read but not enjoyed Cabell. I wonder where I read that or if I'm misremembering.

Yes, I read Figures of Earth before The Silver Stallion.

5elenchus
Bearbeitet: Apr. 29, 2010, 4:49 pm

I've not yet read Figures ... in fact, I've only read The Cream of the Jest and then The Silver Stallion, and I'm not sure which title I'll pick next: Jurgen or Figures of Earth. I'm limited (by convenience, I must admit) to those titles inherited from my grandfather's library, though I have at least 3 more to read, I think.

Crypto-Willobie, as usual your remarks are much appreciated. I'll follow up on your citations. Think I'll have to pick up a Cabell biography at some point, I can see I'm appreciating the author as much as his work.

edited to fix HTML

6paradoxosalpha
Bearbeitet: Apr. 29, 2010, 6:38 pm

If you liked Cream of the Jest better, go for Jurgen. If you preferred The Silver Stallion, you'll like both, but you should probably read Figures of Earth next.

7elenchus
Bearbeitet: Apr. 30, 2010, 4:42 pm

paradoxosalpha, that's an intriguing question: which I liked better. I find them to be very different books, so it's more a matter of which I'm in the mood for than which I prefer. But your suggestion is helpful, in that I think I'll revert to my OCD tendency to read "in order" and pick Figures of Earth for that reason.

anglemark, so interesting to think of Tolkien not liking Cabell, and also being asked to be a founding member up the Cabell Society. Of course: "not liking" is not the same as "not respecting", or even "disliking". Wonder where Tolkien fell on that spectrum. I read a few biographies of Tolkien, but well before any introduction to Cabell. Still, my portrait of Tolkien is of someone very focused on his own interests, I can easily see him dismissing Cabell primarily as the latter was not providing anything immediately relevant to Tolkien's interests.

edited to fix "Cabellian Society"

8wirkman
Jul. 23, 2010, 1:41 am

C. S. Lewis expressed an intense dislike for Cabell.

That's understandable, since his own conversion to Christianity (told in Surprised by Joy) is pre-pilloried in The Cream of the Jest.

Well, knowing that Cabell became a communicant in the same sect as Lewis, perhaps his bemused, ironic chapter on the Kennaston's conversion was not satirical, after all. Perhaps it was a confession of faith.

(For the life of me, I cannot read it so, though. And I don't think Lewis could, either.)

9paradoxosalpha
Jul. 23, 2010, 7:54 am

Ha! Another mark against that comical bigot Lewis.