Postmodern Blasphemy: Deconstruction and Darkness
A previous post here consisted of a link to an essay by Leo Grin, a yodel of approval, and comment that there is an objective right and wrong, not merely in ethics, but in that part of aesthetics which touch ethics, to the degree that the imagination shapes the moral character.
An afterthought posted here draws a distinction between deconstruction (which I was criticizing) and dark, pagan, grim or melancholic fantasy (which I was not).
This is just a short follow up to those earlier posts. A reader (whose family no doubt has some blood of Liosalfar in their veins) asks:
Speaking of deconstructions, are you familiar with Poul Anderson’s “The Queen of Air and Darkness”?
I have read it, and enjoyed it. It is one of Anderson’s more famous works.
Are you offering that up as an example of deconstruction? If so, would beg to differ.
Spoiler after the cut. I give away the suprise ending. Don’t look until you’ve read the story.
And if you have not read it, hang your head in shame! Turn yourself in to the Reading Police of the World Science Fiction Guild, so your fanboy card can be ripped up, and you will be classed as a a “mundane” until you rectify the oversight.
The tale concerns an isolated star colony plagued by elfs and boggins, and a mysterious elf-queen called the Queen of Air and Darkness. An investigator prepares a special vehicle that is immune to the way cool mind powers of the elves, who turn out to be native life forms using telepathy to draw up images from the collective subconscious of the race and project them in the minds of peasants.
So it is not elf magic after all! It is outerspace aliens with telepathic psionics! Whew! What a huge difference.
The mood of the story is that of folk tales where some beautiful fairy glamor wears off, as when eyes are anointed with holy oil, and one sees the Fair Folk in all their crooked gargoyle ugliness, and sees that lovely Melusine is a snake after all. Being science fiction, it is a techno gimcrack that breaks the glamor of the eyes, not holy oil, but the mood is the same.
Poul Andersen also captures some of the fear our forefathers had for the unexplored dark and haunted forests and unbound seas where monsters sport. In his story, because Earth is remote, and obsessed with drugs and mysticism, the star colonists are as alone and isolated as any village on the bounds of the dark forest: the stars are the forest.
The leitmotif is not one of hate, but of the regret one might have for a fallen but noble foe. The investigator expresses the same note of regret (if I may make reference to another SF yarn) that Captain Kirk expresses in the episode “Who Mourns For Adonis?” when the SS Enterprise finds itself forced to phaser-blast the great god Apollo into ions. (Well, he runs out of energy and commits cosmic suicide, or something, but you know what I mean).
(Aha! I now have an flimsy excuse to post a cheesecake picture! Those of you who do not remember the episode may remember Leslie Parrish as Yeoman Daisy Mae Hotness in a draped dress of unconvincing impracticality.)
Did Vestal Virgins Actually Dress That Way?
The old gods die and something of beauty is lost to the world forever. It is Tolkein’s regret that a world of magic is passed away, a thing of the past, and the haunted forest has been felled to make room for a factory.
In “Queen of Air and Darkness”, I read something more akin to Tolkien’s sorrow, or even that of Matthew Arnold (“But now I only hear its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind…”) for the days of yore that never were, and the folk beliefs that folks never really believed.
On the other hand of the central points of ‘deconstruction’ is to reveal a sordid motivation, rooted in the desire to exploit and humiliate one’s weaker fellows, underpinning the work being deconstructed, in order that the work, and those like it, might be scorned, dismissed, and made ugly in the eyes of the deconstructors. It is the literary equivalent of putting a paper dunce cap or dressing in motley the heretic being led to the stake: to rob the things of dignity and beauty in order that they might be scorned and hated.
If you have read IRON DRAGON’S DAUGHTER, you are familiar with the type of scorn and hatred to which I refer. Perhaps I misread Mr. Swanwick’s intent, or misunderstood the book, but I did not see any regret for the passing of the twilight world of magic into the paved and hygenic world of science: all I saw were thinly-disguised eructations of scorn for the modern world and the men in it. It was bitter and ghoulish, as one would expect from deconstruction. Deconstruction is an attack on something one hates; and it is an illogical attack, an entire discipline based on argumentum ad hominem.
(I should rush to say that I have not seen this same bitterness and ghoulishness in Mr. Swanwick’s other works I have read: he is a master at his craft, and an author I do not hesitate to recommend. Nay, but by the goat-whiskers of Old Nick, I would even recommend IRON DRAGON’S DAUGHTER to any fans of Mervyn Peake or China Mieville. If you like them, you might like him. You don’t have to agree with an author to admire him.)
Nothing like that is present in ‘Queen of Air and Darkness.’
Now, you might ask yourself, what is the mythical appeal of the Elf Queen, a dangerous but alluring lady, someone mortals yearn to embrace but cannot? All I can say is that I don’t know, and the only reason I bring up the question is to have an unconvincing and flimsy excuse to post another picture of the original Queen of Air and Darkness, the alluring temptress of Gotham, the Catwoman.
The Queen of Crime and Darkness!
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
