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Catherynne M. Valente is always difficult to review. She is a poet of a prose author, and her writing is dense and baroque- sometimes excessively so. The writing of Under in the Mere (2009) has a dream-like surreal quality which makes it difficult to come to certain conclusions about how the novella is to read.
Is Under in the Mere good? The answer is certainly a yes. The imagery is astounding; the combination of Arthurian myth and Californian deserts resonate at a perfect- well, I’m not sure of the metaphor. It works. The illustrations are brilliant, pen-and-ink images of Death playing chess, Galahad slumped in a cheap bar. The simplicity of James A. Owen and Jeremy Owen’s work serves as the perfect foil to Valente’s sometimes labyrinthine prose.
The novella itself is divided into chapters/short stories, each focusing on an individual in King Arthur’s court. It has been a while since I read any of the Matter of Britain, but these are not the same as the tales my father read to me as a child. Lancelot is broken; Kay is a hollow thing, driven by his love of Arthur; Mordred is… oh, Mordred. And poor, poor Dagonet, whose story will break your heart as it did mine. There is a thread of continuity throughout -sometimes invisible, ever present- as each of the knights Quests in the name of Arthur, while the Lady ever seeks the King.
This is not a fantasy, a novel in the regular sense. The plot is hidden in layers of metaphor and poetic prose. It is not easy reading. I’faith, it took me longer to read than a far longer book due to sheer exhaustion. If one has a taste for the wrought -and I do- then it is enjoyable, but it is never relaxing.
If there is a real weakness to the novel, then this is it. The characters Valente paints with her wordbrush sound much the same. Rendered into complex, dreaming prose-verse, characterisation is difficult to discern. Lancelot is not Galahad, and their stories sound and feel and remember differently, yet the style is distinct. It is not unpleasant, but I cannot imagine that all would enjoy it.
I am an unabashed fan of reinterpretations of Arthurian myth. I love words for the sheer sake of words, and writing that glories in being gilded, ornate and glowing without cause. Under in the Mere is rich and excessive like the very best of dark chocolate.
Read it with a glass of port.
(concluding from last week…)
Þrymskviða
…Senn váru hafrar heim um reknir,
skyndir at skǫklum, skyldu vel renna.
Bjǫrg brotnuðu, brann jǫrð loga,
ók Óðins sonr í Jǫtunheima.
Þá kvað þat Þrymr, þursa dróttinn:
‘Standið upp, jǫtnar, ok stráið bekki,
nú fœrið mér Freyju at kván
Njarðar dóttur ór Nóatúnum.
Ganga hér at garði gullhyrndar kýr,
øxn alsvartir jǫtni at gamni;
fjǫlð á ek meiðma, fjǫlð á ek menja,
einnar mér Freyju ávant þykkir.’
Var þar at kveldi um komit snimma
ok fyr jǫtna ǫl fram borit;
einn át oxa, átta laxa,
krásir allar, þær er konur skyldu,
drakk Sifjar verr sáld þrjú mjaðar.
Þá kvat þat Þrymr, þursa dróttinn:
‘Hvar sáttu brúðir bíta hvassara?
Sáka ek brúðir bíta in breiðara,
né inn meira mjǫð mey um drekka.’
Sat in alsnotra ambótt fyrir,
er orð um fann við jǫtuns máli:
‘Át vætr Freyja átta nóttum,
svá var hon óðfús í Jǫtunheima.’
Laut und línu, lysti at kyssa,
en hann útan stǫkk endlangan sal:
‘Hví eru ǫndótt augu Freyju?
Þykki mér ór augum eldr of brenna.’
Sat in alsnotra ambótt fyrir,
er orð of fann við jǫtuns máli:
‘Svaf vætr Freyja átta nóttum,
svá var hon óðfús í Jǫtunheima.’
Inn kom in arma jǫtna systir,
hin er brúðfjár biðja þorði:
‘Láttu þér af hǫndum hringa rauða,
ef þú ǫðlask vill ástir mínar,
ástir mínar, alla hylli.’
Þá kvað þat Þrymr, þursa dróttinn:
‘Berið inn hamar brúði at vígja,
leggið Mjǫllni í meyjar kné,
vígið okkr saman Várar hendi.’
Hló Hlórriða hugr í brjósti
er harðhugaðr hamar um þekkði;
Þrym drap hann fyrstan, þursa dróttin,
ok ætt jǫtuns alla lamði.
Drap hann ina ǫldnu jǫtna systur,
hin er brúðfjár of beðit hafði;
hon skell um hlaut fyr skillinga
en hǫgg hamars fyr hringa fjǫlð.
Svá kom Óðins sonr endr at hamri…
Stenkvista runestone in Södermanland, Sweden; depicts Thor's hammer.
…The Lay of Thrym
Straightaway were billy-goats driven into the dwelling,
hastened at the harness, they should run well.
Rocks were shattered, the earth burned with fire;
and Óðin’s son came into Giantsholme.
Then said Þrymr, lord of giants:
‘Arise, giants, and strew the benches!
Now bring for me Freyka as wife,
Njǫrðr’s daughter from the field of ships.
Walk beside this courtyard of golden-horned cows,
all-black oxen for the giant’s pleasure;
I own a multitude of treasures, I own an abundance of neck-rings;
it seems to me I lack only Freyja.’
It was the time when evening soon comes,
and ale was brought forth before the giants;
the husband of Sif ate an ox,
eight salmon, all the delicacies a woman should;
and drank three casks of mead.
Then said Þrymr, lord of giants:
‘Where have you seen a bride bite more keenly?
I have not seen a bride bite more broadly,
nor a maiden drink more in mead.’
The all-clever handmaid sat in there,
who found words against the giant’s speech:
‘Freyja ate nothing for eight nights,
so madly eager was she to come to Giantsholme.’
He bent under the head-dress, desired a kiss;
then he sprang back the whole length of the hall.
‘Why are they eyes of Freyja piercing?
It seems to me fire burns forth from her eyes.’
The all-clever handmaid sat in there,
who found words against the giant’s speech:
‘Freyja slept not for eight nights,
so madly eager was she to come to Giantsholme.’
In came the wretched giant’s sister,
she who dared to ask for the bride-free.
‘Give over the red rings from your hands,
if you wish to gain for yourself my affections,
my affections and all favours.’
Then said Þrymr, lord of giants:
‘Bring in the hammer to bless the bride;
lay Mjǫllnir on the maiden’s knees;
so that by the hand of Vár our togetherness is blessed.’
The heart of Hlórriða laughed in his breast
when the hard-minded one recognised his hammer.
Þrymr he slew first, lord of giants,
and all the race of giants he battered.
He slew the old sister of the giant,
she who had begged fr the bride-fee;
she suffered a strike for shillings;
the blow of the hammer for many rings.
Thus came Óðin’s son to his hammer again.
There is a particular tendency in European history to try and pin down the ethnic statistics of a given area in a given time. Within my own field, the interest is in how much of Anglo-Saxo England was populated by ‘genuine’ Anglo-Saxons? Were there Celtic holdovers? Classicists and Celticists alike wrestle with questions such as ‘What is a Celt, anyway?’ ‘How widely spread across Eurasia were they?’ Tracking the movements of pre-literate peoples is difficult, and it is tempting to combine genetic evidence with archaeological.
I don’t really object to this sort of thing in principle. After all our sources describe ‘Saxons’ or the ‘Jutes’ or what have you, and it is pretty apparent that a ‘Celt’ -whatever that may be- is a very different thing from a ‘Roman’- whatever that may be, particularly in the late Empire. Celtic scholars still quibble (rage is a bit strong a word) over how to define Celticness; should it be linguistically defined? Should it be defined on the basis of material culture? Which groups/artistic techniques are ‘Celtic’? Defining an Anglo-Saxon is almost as difficult. The primary sources list three tribes of people, and there is archaeological evidence for some others, but it is all a bit higgledy piggledy and scholars are only human: we want solid, reliable facts.
Or, at least, as close as we can get to such things.
I sympathise when historians and archaeologists turn to the apparently-reliable ghoul of genetics to identify the ‘ethnicity’ of a particular corpse. Tell us if this is a Welshman, we might say. Or an Anglo-Saxon. Or a Roman rather than a Frank or a Goth or an Alamann or a Saxon or a… wait. What IS the difference between an Alamann and a Saxon, anyway? They are both German, after all. Both spoke similar languages, and seem to have had similar material cultures. What makes genetic evidence so sure-fire?
Obviously we can’t go with linguistic evidence. For one thing, skeletons don’t speak dead languages any better than living ones. For another, languages are memetic, and memes don’t rely on ethnicity to travel. The more important reason is that people subordinated and/or neighbouring another tend to learn the language of the other guy. This is pretty obvious, but it means that a dead guy speaking Greek in Egypt during the reign of Justinian is not necessarily a Greek. The Germanic invaders of Italy adopted Latin as their language, and it has evolved into Italian.
Material culture is similar. The richness of early modern Irish and Anglo-Saxon art seems pretty closely intertwined; pottery techniques can and are mimicked, and so forth. Archaeologists have been long aware of this. The basic problem is that a given corpse may well be clad in the jewellery and robes (and language?) of Ethnic Group A, but ‘genetically’ belongs to Ethnic Group B.
So, we use genetics to prove things one way or the other and hurrah! now we know.
Except. Do we? I am incredibly suspicious of genetic evidence. If a guy wears the clothes, carries the spear, and speaks the language of the Old English, does it matter that much of his DNA is Celtic? Clearly he did not belong to that social group in any meaningful sense. It could mean that he rose above his station, or was a hostage fighting alongside his captors, or any number of situations which would mean that he did belong to his ‘genetic’ group. It could mean that he no longer considered himself part of his ‘genetic’ tribe. Women tend to be taken by invading groups, after all. The colonisers of Iceland stopped off at Ireland to collect some wives- would anyone then claim via genetics that an Icelandic corpse is Irish? It would be silly.
Humans are not our DNA. We are as whatever we identify ourselves. In early medieval France, different peoples retained their own laws, but there was no genetic test. While I am sure there are examples of individuals straddling boundaries, so far as I am aware it was simply based on an individual declaring himself of a given people- or obviously being so, thanks to his parentage. He, or she, would have been identified based on those pesky things I just dismissed for being too flexible: material culture and language.
I have yet to say anything new here. Scholars who like to play with genetic evidence know all this. It is obvious if you think about it; of course genetic evidence must be taken with extreme caution.
Research from the latter half of last year sheds doubt on the very existence of ethnicities. I suspect the journalist may be overstating it slightly, but nonetheless it seems clear that ethnicity has more to do with social boundaries than with genetic disparity:
The boundaries used by individuals to distinguish themselves from members of other ethnic groups are generally cultural, linguistic, economic, religious and political. Heyer and her colleagues confirm the absence of common ancestry in a specific ethnic group; there were on average more differences between members of the same ethnic group than there were between groups.
Ethnic groups are not based on genetics. They are based on human interaction with one another.
Human interactiona do not leave much in the way of evidence. This is inconvenient, and genetics offers us an easy way out, a means of identifying ethnic groups over the long years of history. If this article is followed by others of its kind, then we must discard genetic evidence. At the very least, we must approach such evidence with new scepticism, and be prepared to ask questions of the relevancy to a particular find.
Frankly this can only be a good thing. If ‘Celt’ is a linguistic term as some -as I- think it is, why were we using genetics to find specimens anyway?
[I would also like to point readers to this post at A Corner of Tenth Century Europe as being relevant to the discussion.]
While researching religion as I wandered down the path from ‘nonbeliever admiring faith’ to ‘militant atheist marching the world to doom’, I stumbled over Satanism. It was inevitable, I suppose, given my propensity for wearing black, my taste in music; my boundless love for Paradise Lost.
Contrary to popular opinion, Satanism does not involve murdering kittens on inverted altars beneath bloodstained crosses at midnight in an overgrown cemetery. Leastaways, not any of the Satanists I encountered followed any such belief system. If that sort of thing is out there, it would be illegal, immoral and profoundly disgusting to the Satanists I’ve encountered in my day.
‘Satanism’, like every other ‘-ism’ in the world, has a plethora of flavours. Without going into intricacies, there are two broad categories: Theistic and Non-theistic. Each are rather self-explanatory, although complications exist when you delve deeper. Of course.
Theistic Satanists the first I encountered, and revere Satan as an actual religious figure. There are supplicatory prayers, incense burning, magical ritual; that sort of thing. They also fall into two rough categories. There are those following a sort of dark Wiccan pantheist blending of ritual magic, New Age chanting and the like. It is difficult to tell these apart from other New Age movements, although the focus tends to be on selfishness as morality and opposition to the slavery of Christianity.
I was drawn to Luciferianism, the other group of theistic Satanists, mostly because of Paradise Lost. Here, Satan/Lucifer is a symbol of the desire for wisdom; the Lightbringer. It is all sorts of gnostic, incorporating aspects of various Christian heresies, meditation, philosophy, and the absence of hard rules a feature of all Satanisms. It blends around the edges into the former group, and also into non-theistic Satanism.
Non-theistic Satanists are probably better known; the Satanism founded by Anton LaVey is of this kind. After investigating theistic worship of the devil, and rejecting it as a mere inversion of Christianity -and as congruent with reality- I was drawn to LaVeyan Satanism.
The beliefs of LaVey are tempting, especially to a young man looking for direction. Focusing solely upon the individual, the adherent exercises self-control, individualism and a sort of ‘moral selfishness’ akin to the credo of Ayn Rand. In essence, LaVeyan Satanism is a magical form of Libertarianism. Except there is also magic. Satan himself does not exist except as a metaphor for rebellion against controlling agents (‘God’) and religions that deny human nature (such as Christianity’s hatred of sexuality). The combination of this is quite heady: one need not believe in gods, and certainly not worship them; one may do as one wills -vengeance to enemies, love to friends!- and also there is magic.
It was tempting, and I enjoyed looking into it and reading up about it. Eventually my natural skepticism reigned in my desire for magic to be real and I started poking the holes in the philosophy. Namely: what magic? Why use Satan as a metaphor for anything? If one is an atheist, just say so. If one is an individualist, develop one’s own individualism. Why follow what is, in essence, a cult just to demonstrate these two facts?
The whole exercise seemed increasingly foolish. I greatly enjoy Christian mythology; I love using Lucifer in my own writing or seeing him in others. I simply could not see the need to make him more than that. I sympathise with non-theistic Satanists, as the religion looks like a lot of fun, but I simply can not believe.
And so, another religion fell to the repeated blows of reason.
I am an unabashed dork. This fact cannot be denied by any who know me- indeed, many would rush to back up this assertion, their heads frantically nodding. One particular aspect of this is my fascination with languages, dead and living, old and new. I am a Tolkein fanboy, and have always wanted to peer into the constructed languages of Middle Earth. Somewhat more embarrassing is my love of Star Trek, although I have no intention of learning any Klingon. Personally I find the more interesting of Star Trek’s cultures to be the Romulans, closely followed by the Vulcans.
I recently learned that there are folks working on constructing languages for these two cultures, through people who also lack the usually requisite nerd-shame. This is fantastic! For all that Klingons are a fierce warrior people, &c. &c., the Vulcan obsession with logic is far more interesting to me as a scholar. Romulans are even more interesting; somewhat mysterious, Paramount has not done much with the race beyond their use as vaguely treacherous and yet occasionally honourable bad guys who are nonetheless widely despised. Also, they are passionate Space pseudo-Romans. Learning that there are folk willing to expand out these tidbits into an artificial language or two warms the cold recesses of my heart.
It is an often overlooked fact in SF world-building that planets -continents! island chains!- are rarely monolingual. Europe is a pretty small area on the global scale and yet has dozens (hundreds?) of languages and dialects covering the continent in a patchwork. A throwaway line justifying multiple fan iterations of ‘Vulcan’ by pointing this out got me thinking. At present, the various Romulan and Vulcan projects appear to be disconnected, with no linguistic similarity between them at all. Furthermore, each is concentrating, rightly enough, on a single dialect of each language. I thought, ‘Wow, wouldn’t it be fun to design an entire family tree for these languages?’ After all, the Romulan and Vulcan peoples share a common ancestor- surely their languages must do the same. The saner parts of my brain tried to shout me down but alas! my insanity will not be denied.
If we look at a single language group within the Indo-European (IE) family, that of the Romance languages, we can see for ourselves how quickly languages may change. From the early years of the first millenium CE to the present day, Latin has evolved into French, Spanish, Italian, and Romanian. If one were to squint and look sideways, it is possible for one to see how the languages retain a common ancestor. Using the example phrase ‘She always closes the window before dining (or having dinner)’ from Wikipedia, we can see this:
| Language | Phrase |
|---|---|
| Latin | [Illa] claudit semper fenestram antequam cenat. |
| French | Elle ferme toujours la fenêtre avant de dîner/souper. |
| Spanish | [Ella] siempre cierra la ventana antes de cenar. |
| Italian | [Lei/Ella] chiude sempre la finestra prima di cenare. |
| Romanian | Ea închide totdeauna fereastra înainte de cină. |
Going further back, one may compare entire language groups. As an example, take Old English (a Germanic language) and place it alongside Old Irish (Celtic) and Latin (Italic) to clearly see that all three are closely related IE languages. Below are a handful of words which mostly serve to demonstrate the sound changes that have occured since Proto-Indo-European:
| Latin | Old Irish | Old English | Modern English |
|---|---|---|---|
| pater | athair | fæder | father |
| tres | trí | þrīe | three |
| dentis | dēt | tōđ | tooth |
Indo-European Family Tree; Wikipedia
Yet, particularly in the case of Old Irish, each is definitely distinct from the others. Special enough to satisfy the most energetic and enthusiastic creator of conlangs, and yet unified enough for the family tree idea I propose here.
In Vulcan ‘history’, around the 4thC CE on Terra occurred an event known as the Time of Awakening. The Vulcans as we see them on Star Trek -logical, dispassionate- were transformed into such by the teachings of Surak, a scientist-philosopher. The teachings are not entirely relevant to this discussion (not that they are detailed anyway), save to note their emphasis on pure logic in opposition to excessive emotion. Several factions resisted these teachings, and eventually left Vulcan. One such group would eventually settle on Romulus and become the Romulans. This split would also drive language diversity, but in the case of the Time of Awakening/Romulan diaspora there are politically motivated linguistic splits.
Let us call, for convenience, the language spoken by Surak at the Time of Awakening ‘Middle Vulcan’ (MV). It is from this language that modern Vulcan (MnV) dialects descended. We shall all the ancestor of this language ‘Old High Vulcan’ (OHV), which itself descended from older roots. This is vastly simplifying matters, of course, but I hope this is sufficient to demonstrate my point.
THE DISTANT PAST –> Old High Vulcan –> Middle Vulcan (c.400) — {reforms} –> Modern Vulcan (c.2300)
Modern Vulcan will have evolved from Middle Vulcan, but the language reforms introduced by Surak would have served to make the language more logical. Natural languages develop all sorts of weird and wonderful quirks, the most obvious of which are irregular verbs. ‘To be’ is notorious for this; so far as I am aware, ‘to be’ is irregular in all natural languages. Surak’s followers would reform their language to remove oddities such as this, as well as organising noun declensions or the like to work in a more regular pattern. Oddities similar to Latin’s domus would be streamlined. At this point, an organisation (similar to the Terran L’Académie française would be set up to monitor the language and ensure it remains logical- languages behave like living things and have a tendency to evolve in odd directions without guidance. All this would result in MnV behaving quite oddly as a language, being akin to a natural language evolved from OHV in places and yet like a conlang in others.
Naturally, there would be several dialects, possibly even languages, evolved from this. Vulcan was not completely unified during the Time of Awakening, and it is unlikely that a single language would be established as dominant very easily. Different groups interpreted Surak’s teachings in different ways and would evolve their languages from MV accordingly. Furthermore, with the eventual development of universal translators, why would one language become necessary? Logically it would be better to allow individual cultures to retain their autonomy and languages in order to further the diversity of Vulcan literature. Perhaps there is a dominant form, an international language or one used in diplomatic interactions with the Federation- or perhaps not. Star Trek is set in the 24thC CE, and two thousand years is more than sufficient time for languages to develop in a multitude of fascinating ways.
The people who became Romulans deliberately turned their backs on Surak’s logical reforms, preferring to remain an emotional and militaristic people. Diane Duane wrote several Star Trek novels centred on the Romulan people, and detailed how they developed their language. In order to differentiate themselves from their cousins on Vulcan, Romulan linguists artificially aged an older form of their language in a ‘different direction’. If we presume that what we have called OHV is the root language used, then ‘Middle Romulan’, the language developed by the reform, would differ considerably from Middle Vulcan, and yet be clearly related. MV would have a broadly similar patterns of noun declension and verb conjugation in order to be more easily learned, although artificial sound changes would lend the language an entirely different ‘feel’. The sound change from IE to proto-Germanic is a good example of how such changes could work. The problem would be constructing the language so that folk could easily adjust to it, and yet was distinct from MV.
Old High Vulcan — {artificial aging} –>Middle Romulan (c.500) –{evolution} –> Modern Romulan Dialects (c.2300)
The recent Star Trek movie (NuTrek) mentions in passing that there are three principal dialects of Romulan. I rather suspect these are languages rather than ‘dialects’ although I concede that the terms overlap to a certain extent. This is certainly reasonable, for a language family that has developed over almost two millenia (NuTrek is set in the 23rdC) almost certainly without the strictures of a language academy, but I think it would be fun to have only two of these languages be developed from MV. The other, which I shall call Low Romulan (LR) developed more directly from MV. This is the language of those who never quite adjusted to the language change of MR, although certainly words and concepts would have borrowed quite heavily from the rapidly-dominant Romulan tongue. I suspect LR would have been spoken by the lower classes, those for whom the flight from Vulcan was less a matter of choice and more of following their lords and leaders. All this gives Romulan languages quite a character and provides something for xenophilologists into which to sink their teeth.
I’m an historian, not a linguist; I can go no further with my idea than this. This proposal would require a great deal of work, requiring as it does the development of one conlang (Old High Vulcan) and then the artificial-but-seemingly-natural development for Middle Vulcan and later Modern Vulcan; the artificial Middle Romulan and then the natural development of Modern Romulan (1, 2) as well as Low Romulan. A great deal of work, particularly in dictionaries. My own study of languages enables me to pick up the basics of grammar relatively easily; it is in vocabulary that I always stumble, easily bored by repetitive chanting. Nonetheless, a project such as this would be extremely rewarding, particularly for those who -like myself- are fascinated by historical linguistics.
Who is with me?
