Part 1 (2/2)

At the time the December 1932 issue of Weird Tales went on sale, Hoas becoazine had published the Texan's first professional story, Spear and Fang, in July 1925, and over the years his tales had been appearing with increasing frequency between its covers He had won his first cover with Wolfshead in the April 1926 issue and had introduced the fan-favorite character Soloain featured on the cover A year later Howard had won the admiration and respect of his peers, most notably Howard Phillips Lovecraft, with his two stories about Kull of Atlantis, The Shadow Kingdoust and September 1929 issues

It can be said that Robert E Howard had been a protege of Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright Wright nurtured the young Texan's burgeoning talent and would later describe hienius” and a ”friend” Wright was indeed an unusual editor In a world of forazines, Weird Tales often lived up to its subtitle, ”The Unique Magazine,” walking a fine line between the ht's literary inclinations While Lovecraft would often have his tales rejected, unable or unwilling to subestions, Hoashis editors' needs, he had no probleeht Stories or Action Stories On the other hand the Texan had genuine literary leanings, most evident in his poetry, but for which there was no viablewriter This atypical e number of Howard's poems as well as the cream of his fiction: the tales of Solomon Kane, Kull, Bran Mak Morn and Conan the Cimmerian Not coincidentally, of all his rather numerous characters, Horote poems about only those four (if we accept Cimmeria as a poem about Conan's ho Conan tales than he riting for nificant to note that the first Conan story was a rewrite of a Kull story, By This Axe I10Rule!, completed in 1929 Like the Conan tales, the Kull stories were centered around the exploits of a barbarian adventurer in exotic countries of Earth's mythical past, but there ends the similarity: between 1929 and 1932, Howard had developed new ambitions for his fantasy stories He had, first of all, succeeded in selling soave him the occasion to write on the epic scale Howard infused those stories with an intensity that has been rarely equaled, delivering me the slow decay of the once-powerful e under internal divisions and external attacks, a prevalent the historical fiction on a regular basis, however, proved to be an arduous task Of his interest in the genre and difficulties in the market Horote in 1933 : ”There is no literary work, to uise of fiction I wish I was able to devote the rest ofwriting such things, though; the markets are too scanty, with require to complete one I try to write as true to the actual facts as possible, at least, I try to coround and setting as accurate and realistic as I can, with e; if I twist facts too much, alter dates as so with my impressions of the time and place, I loseand vital things; and my stories center entirely on my conceptions of ht as well tear up what I have written”

All these elements were probably at the back of Howard's mind in February 1932 when he transformed By This Axe I Rule! into The Phoenix on the Sword By dropping the love-interest of the for a weird touch to his revision, Howard knehat he was doing: unlike his previous series, the first Conan tale was tailored specifically tocontrol of thein check the creative forces that brought the barbarian character to life was another entirely: ”the row up in my mind without much labor on my part and immediately a stream of stories flowed off my pen or rather, off my typewriter al, but rather relating events that had occurred Episode crowded on episode so fast that I could scarcely keep up with the but write of the adventures of Conan The character took co else in the way of story-writing”

With a first story featuring Conan as thebarbarian in the northern fringes of the world and a third as a young barbarian thief in the civilized city of Numalia, different periods of the character's life and widely scattered geographic locations in each case, Hoas running the risk of losing himself in this character and his universe This had happened with the Kull stories, in which the loss of Howard's ”sense of reality” is discernible He thus decided to have his ”background and settingaccurate and realistic”11

The creation of a self-coherent universe was the perfect solution to Howard's needs and aspirations His decision to people his Hyborian Age with Ciuised naendry, was never really understood Years later, Lovecraft would take Howard to task for this: ”the only flaw in this stuff is REH's incurable tendancy to devise na actual names names which, for us, have a very different set of associations” Lovecraft, and a host of others after him, couldn't see that Howard never intended to create a universe re the Kull stories and as so many writers of epic fantasy have done since By carefully choosing naendry, Hoanted to ensure that no reader would be left wondering what a Turanian looked like, or be unaware that his Vanir and aesir lived in the northern parts of the world By telescoping history and geography to create a universe that was new and yet fa for efficacy and stereotype, a technique that allowed hiround with ahis own need to have an ”accurate and realistic” background for the series, while creating a(pseudo-)historical tales without the risk of anachronism or factual errors The first three Conan stories, coe ritten, may be seen as experirasp of his character's environment and of the new series' potential It ith his fourth and fifth offerings The Tower of the Elephant and The Scarlet Citadel that Howard added this epic and (pseudo-)historical dimension to his new series Fro inary kingdom, as had been the case with the Kull stories Fro in Medieval Europe (The Scarlet Citadel), a general in an antique assyria torn with rivalries between city-states (Black Colossus), or a h of the East As Howard once wrote: ”My study of history has been a continual search for newer barbarians, froe, he had offered himself a universe where all those barbarian peoples could co-exist in the same time-frame, and in Conan the Cimmerian the perfect vehicle to express his views on barbarism and civilization

In many of these stories, the Cimmerian finds hie where barbarism and civilization clash on an epic scale, with are-scale battles find an echo in incidents of athe stories with ue, such as Conan's recounting his trial in Queen of the Black Coast: ”I choked e squalled that I had shown conteeon to rot until I betrayedthey were all e's skull”; or Howard's acerbic aside in The Tower of the Elephant: ”Civilized es because they know they can be i”

Manifestly, the majority of Howard's work and the Conan tales in particular can be read as12an exploration of the the firmly on the barbarians' side This deep-rooted interest fueled Howard's writings fro and became the major theme of discussion in the Texan's correspondence with Lovecraft, initiated in 1930 Confronted by the erudite writer from Providence, Howard found himself forced to back his opinions with historical and political data; consequently the Conan tales quite often echo ideas expressed in the correspondence and vice-versa More aware than anyone else of Howard's positions and convictions, Lovecraft was in a privileged position to fully appreciate the Conan tales and their subtext Shortly after Howard's death, Lovecraft thus wrote: ”It is hard to describe precisely what made Mr Howard's stories stand out so sharply; but the real secret is that he himself is in every one of them” The perceptive author here touched upon aat the same time the ”internal force and sincerity” of the tales, and the reason no Conan pastiche could ever hope to attain the level of the original stories If Howard's Conan talesthe reader with colorful high-adventure stories, the best of theri the reader withat once exhilarating and depressing

Howard's best Conan stories we may cite The Tower of the Elephant, Queen of the Black Coast, Beyond the Black River and Red Nails are also those that have a sad ending: dark undercurrents flow beneath the veneer of this ”escapist” fiction

Conan's philosophy is best expressed in one passage frole and suffer vainly, finding pleasure only in the bright madness of battle

Let me live deep while I live; letwine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion I know this: if life is illusion, then I a thus, the illusion is real to me I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content”

This is indeed one of the major characteristics of the Ci each instant, not caring about the past, nor about the future Yesterday a kozak, today a king, tomorrow a thief It is in that sense that the Conan stories are escapist literature: their appeal seeenerations and cultures As Howard once confided: ”A ain in the depth of his being those barbaric impulses; consequently, Conan acted as they felt they would act in similar circumstances” What sets the Conan stories apart, however, is the distinct sensation that the thrill of adventure in these stories is but a rian with a cataclysm and ended with another cataclysm Whatever the Hyborians and Conan can acco at all in the final analysis, and is eventually bound to destruction and oblivion Human life and empires are equally transient in Howard Civilization is not the final phase of human development; it may be an ”inevitable consequence” of that development, but it is a transitory state: civilizations are bound to wither and decay, eventually to be swept over by conquering13hordes of savages or barbarians ill themselves, after a time, become civilized

In this cycle, it ith the state of barbarisnized his kinshi+p This was not a case, as soued, of belief in the superiority of barbarism over civilization or of a conception of the barbarian as a ”noble Savage”: ”I have no idyllic view of barbarisrim, bloody, ferocious and loveless condition I have no patience with the depiction of the barbarian of any race as a stately, God-like child of Nature, endoith strange wisdo in measured and sonorous phrases”

Probably the best metaphor of barbaric life as envisioned by Howard is found in Beyond the Black River, where the protagonists are caught between hammer and anvil: beyond their settlee Picts, ready to attack them at any moment; behind it and Thunder River are the forces of civilization, too decadent and divided a themselves to ensure their own survival, riical conclusion and Conan, the only one of the characters born into barbarism rather than civilization, is the sole survivor The civilizing process had severed Conan's allies fro this elemental aspect, inborn in the Ci lines without a doubt Howard's most quoted statement attest to that: ”Barbarism is the natural state of mankind

Civilization is unnatural It is a whim of circumstance And barbaris process bears in itself the seeds of its own destruction by re itself from what is natural What is ”unnatural” cannot endure: it will either succumb to ”natural” forces, as described in Beyond the Black River, or it will slowly decay and destroy itself in a horrible fashi+on, as exemplified in Xuthal of the Dusk and Red Nails The reasons behind Howard's fascination with the the civilizations, which may very well be at the root of his interest in barbaric life, were probably very complex Much more than in the evolutionist theories of the time which the stories soraphy and psychology that the answer resides There is indeed so intensely personal in these convictions, which transcends the stories and contributes tothat not all the Conan stories are on the same level as those we have mentioned In a tih for Howard to make of Conan his meal ticket Most of thesemi-naked ladies, which had been entirely absent from the series until then were indeed composed between November 1932 and March 1933, at a time when Hoas in dire need of money (Incidentally, the fact that most Conan pastiches found their ”inspiration” in such stories, and not Red Nails or Queen of the Black Coast, is a testimony to the critical eye of their authors) Most of these stories have soenuinely Howardian in thereater than anypolicy he could adopt” but they are clearly exploiting a formula calculated to win the cover illustration

With the tales of Conan of Cimmeria, Hoas out for more than pulpish fare While he14could have turned out story after story of the adventures of a Ci after scantily-clad daular income, Howard decided not to turn his Cimmerian into an industry The mark of the true author, he didn't hesitate to experiment with new types of stories, to take risks at a time when their sale and commercial success would have been assured otherwise If the true work of art is so that at once attracts and disturbs, then the Conan stories are so heroic deeds and larger-than-life characters in fabled lands, but with so beneath

Scratch the veneer at your own risk

Patrice Louinet 200215Ciested by theseen in a mist of winter rain

Robert E Howard

Ci slopes of so arch; The dusky streams that floithout a sound, And the lone winds that whispered down the passesVista on vista , hills on hills, Slope beyond slope, each dark with sullen trees, Our gaunt land lay So when a azed, his shaded eye Saw but the endless vista hill on hill, Slope beyond slope, each hooded like its brothersIt was a gloomy land that seemed to hold All winds and clouds and drea in the loneso over all, Not even lightened by the rare dim sun Which made squat shadows out of htIt was so long ago and far away I have forgot the very name men called me

The axe and flint-tipped spear are like a dream, And hunts and wars are shadows I recall Only the stillness of that sombre land; The clouds that piled forever on the hills, The di woods

CihtOh, soul of hosts that shun the sun, How e which wraps hosts? I search ht17

The Phoenix on the Sword