"The Icelandic sagas...have another quality which they share only with a few of the great literary masterpieces of the world: the quality of vivid, unstaled and undauntable life."
-quoted in Poul Anderson, Hrolf Kraki's Saga (New York, 1973), p. i.
I have argued that "Anderson celebrates life." See here.
From Eddison's statement that the sagas share the quality of vivid life only with a few great literary masterpieces and from my argument that Anderson celebrates life, it follows that Anderson's works are among those few great literary masterpieces! Of course, I do not need to deduce a conclusion from premises written by Eddison and myself. I experience the greatness of Anderson's literary achievements by rereading and appreciating his works - and it is appropriate that those works include the retelling of Hrolf Kraki's Saga.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I agree with what Eddison said about the sagas being fully comparable to the works of great authors and how you included Poul Anderson among them.
Alas, I've tried to read Eddison's THE WORM OUROBOROS and soon gave up. I'm sure the fault is mine and I should try again.
Sir H. Rider Haggard's also tried his hand at writing sagas, such as ERIC BRIGHTEYES, which I read twice, so much did it please me.
Sean
Sean:
I strongly recommend reading *The Worm Ouroboros*.
HOWEVER....
My reaction to *Worm*, at least at the end, reminds me of Sir Roger de Tourneville remarking that someone needed to give the Wersgorix a taste of the Jacquerie. (You see ... I CAN bring this back to Poul Anderson!)
L. Sprague de Camp, in *Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers*, had the following assessment:
"Evidently, the Demon lords--the Good Guys of this novel--fight more for the fun of whacking off arms, legs, and heads than for any humanly rational objective. As for the countless casualties of this ever-recurrent war, nobody gives them a thought.
"To Eddison, apparently, war was a romantic adventure...."
And de Camp adds:
"In short, Eddison's 'great men,' even the best of them, are cruel, arrogant bullies. One may admire, in the abstract, the indomitable courage, energy, and ability of such rampant egotists. In the concrete, however, they are like the larger carnivora, best admired with a set of stout bars between them and the viewer."
Rather like the Draka....
Hi, David!
VERY interesting, these comments of yours about Eddison's THE WORM OUROBOROS. And I appreciated the Andersonian allusion!
I still have my copy of Eddison's book. And I will try again to read it. And L. Sprague De Camp does seem to make very sensible remarks about WORM. Esp. the bits about the pointless use of force and how his "great men" were too much like the Draka.
Sean
Sean:
Well, the specific comparison to the Draka was MY interpolation. de Camp wrote his comments in 1974.
Hi, David!
Oops! That was my mistake. I should have more clearly differentiated between you and De Camp. You made the analogy to the Draka, not him.
Sean
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