A Melting Pot of Tastes

[zozotroll]

Things should be judged by what they where meant for. Howard did not write to win liturature awards, or get a peace prize. He wrote to tell a story. More specificly a whacking good adventure story. In that I feel he was damned sucessful.

I wonder what he would think of all this that we discuss about his works. I bet some things we consider very important, he just tossed off. And things he thought where deeply meaningful, we dont think about at all.

All storys are made out of words. But just as many tools are made of steel, they all dont work the same. A pistol makes a poor hammer. And adventure storys perhaps do not stand to close off examination.

Of course I am just as bad or worse than most about this detailed exam. And I really wonder what he would make of this odd bunch of middleaged adolesents that play make belive in his storys, particularly those of us that play with toy figures.. Perhaps he would think we are great, and perhaps not.

 

[PrinceYyrkoon]

Things should be judged by what they where meant for. Howard did not write to win liturature awards, or get a peace prize. He wrote to tell a story. More specificly a whacking good adventure story. In that I feel he was damned sucessful.

I wonder what he would think of all this that we discuss about his works. I bet some things we consider very important, he just tossed off. And things he thought where deeply meaningful, we dont think about at all.

All storys are made out of words. But just as many tools are made of steel, they all dont work the same. A pistol makes a poor hammer. And adventure storys perhaps do not stand to close off examination.

Of course I am just as bad or worse than most about this detailed exam. And I really wonder what he would make of this odd bunch of middleaged adolesents that play make belive in his storys, particularly those of us that play with toy figures.. Perhaps he would think we are great, and perhaps not.

I think, if he was somehow made aware of his value almost a 100 years later, in whatever capacity, games, reprintings, anthologies, films, he would have been flattered, and maybe not desperate enough to take his own life.

 

[Demetrio]

And adventure storys perhaps do not stand to close off examination.

There's no reason why they shouldn't stand up as well as 'more serious' fiction. Many 'literary novels' have plots that collapse under close scrutiny. All sorts of novels have unexpected strengths and flaws.

As well though this discussion isn't so much of the stories as of the background world. Something that tends to be relevant only to fantasy, sci-fi, and historical fiction. As Howard went to the trouble of writing an essay about his world, it was clearly someting important to him.

 

[Spongly]

We really have to keep in mind when Howard was writing though. The history of his imaginary world may not look realistic to us, but if you read a history book from Howard's day you will likely be taken aback by how outrageously ludicrous a lot of it sounds, with races linked heavily to culture, no change in culture without mass-migration and invasion by successive waves of different groups indentified by their pottery or metal working etc. Our ideas of archaeology and history are hugely different now than they were in Howard's day

So while Aesir and Vanir don't hold up to scrutiny as Vikings, that is because our understanding of vikings has changed dramatically since Howard was writing. In actual fact, with the notable exception of not being a nautical culture, the Aesir and Vanir look quite a lot like an early 20th century conception of Vikings, complete with horned helmets.

But at the end of the day, this is fantasy - these cultures are meant to provide a backdrop for exciting stories, not to be wholly realistic. Even JRR Tolkien, who went to much greater lengths to create the world for his novels, didn't even come close to acheiving a fully realistic world. Howard's Hyborian Age Picts may well be supposed to eventually become the "historical Picts" (as they were understood in the 1920s), but that's after a great cataclysm - in the stories they feature in, which are primarily frontier stories in the style of Last of the Mohicans, they serve the role of "Injuns" - emerging from the forests with tomahawks to threaten settlers in log cabins. They even scalp people and wear buckskins for heavens sakes! In the Hyborian Age tales, they really bear no perceptible resemblance to historical Picts.

 

[Supplement Four]

In the Hyborian Age tales, they really bear no perceptible resemblance to historical Picts.

As much as my non-illuminated butt hates to admit it*, I think I'm siding with the Prince on this one. Howard did a lot of mxing and matching. He picked from history what he liked.

I think the Picts in the Hyborian Age are based on the historical Picts. Howard, himself, had Irish blood in his veins, and he clearly read a lot of that part of history.

I also think one of the reasons the Picts, in the Hyborian Age, become the eventual mass conquerors is so that they can be the historical Picts once men begin recording history after the second cataclysm.

Now, after setting up the Picts, Howard gets an itch to tell a tale resembling one set on the American frontier in the 17-1800's, he looks at where to place that, thinking, logically, is "Indians" are closest to the Picts. Thus, he sets it there.

I think it's as simple as that.



*I don't hate admitting that I'm siding with the Prince. I'm just reluctant to post since I know I've got more to learn about this aspect of Howard.

 

[Spongly]

I think Howard based his Picts partially on what people in his own day thought of the historical Picts. Thus this may be a reasonable picture of a pair of Picts, albeit with captured metal weapons:

However, using the "historical Picts" as we now understand them as a visual and cultural reference for the Pictish Wilderness is probably incorrect - I don't think Howard's Picts look particularly like these guys:

 

[PrinceYyrkoon]

:lol: Nobody likes to side with me!

Well, this is what I think today, it may be different from yesterday, and it may be different tomorrow, but, here goes.

Yes, I think Howard originally wrote about historical Picts like VD says, then, when he wanted to write about specifics, or to write about something with a bit of a Wild West favour, he sort of filled in his vague details with stuff he knew about. So, when he writes generally about cultutres, he uses a broad brush, but when he writes about specifics, he has to fill in details that werent strictly historical, either through his ignorance of the subject, or for flavour. I think he probably did a bit of both, and we have to remember, he needed to sell these things he wrote.

He was a bit naughty with writers licence, I know theres anachronistic inconsistencies all over the place with the Hyborian Age, medieval culture next to bronze age culture, that kind of thing. But the guy took the biscuit when it comes to the Picts. Tomahawks? North American Indian culture?Man, it doesnt hold up to close scrutiny, when you try to apply consistency. Or any kind of geographical anthropology. Or any kind of meaningful cultural questions, (they arent 'real' North American Indians, just guys that look like them).

Then, we are supposed to accept, after the age of Conan, the Picts return to a European culture, (as indicated by such things as the name Gorm, the cairn detail, the ancestry they are supposed to sire, which leads to the historical tribes of Brythons, the fact that he wrote lots of stories about pseudo-historical Pict-types, Bran Mak Morn, Cormac Mak Art, etc.).

I'd say overall, for consistency, Howards Picts had to be pseudo-historical Picts, but the guy did use them for other (not so sensible) things, in various stories. Im not sure I like what he did either, which explains my reticence to accept it. Why he couldnt use them as a mysterious, barbaric, generic, subhuman, fantasy race consistently mystifies me. Im not thrilled with the log cabin analogies, and I dont think they have literary merit either. And, to me, American Indians dont have any place in a pseudo-European history. The guy frustrates me becasue of this. Why couldnt he see his invention needed internal consistency? Its like he invented the wheel and made a coffee table out if it.

He should have wrote those stories as Wild West adventure, they dont belong in the Hyborian Age.

 

[Krushnak]

The Picts that are in the pictish wilderness are the remnants of a colony from the Pictish empire which was around at the time of Kull and Atlantis. When the cataclysm that sunk Atlantis and Lemuria occured it cut off this colony(as well as an Atlantian one) and the Picts reverted from what civilized aspects they had acquired and went to back to what they knew best, savagery.

During the Hyborian age these picts eventually and grudgingly mingle with outside cultures and this ends with them bursting out of their forests and taking over most of the hyborian kingdoms. while all this is happening, on the 'lost' western isles which are formed the mountain ranges of america there are other groups of picts who survived the cataclysm and eventually become the indians of the americas. The picts we know on the Thurian continent have something like 30 thousand years to turn(not return) into the picts we know in the british isles.

Why couldnt he see his invention needed internal consistency?

But it does have a consistency, if you read the Kull and Bran mac morn stories along side the Conan ones you get to see the picts in their varying stages of development and culture over tens of thousands of years.

 

[VincentDarlage]

Why couldnt he see his invention needed internal consistency? Its like he invented the wheel and made a coffee table out if it.

Because he didn't realize his invention would survive much past a few issues. Most authors who wrote for the pulps (and the slicks for that matter) are forgotten today. No one collects their work. No one reads their work. He expected to be part of that crowd. Internal consistency didn't matter. The current story mattered. That was the story people were reading.

You can see this failure of consistency in his stories based around the Vilayet also - even a look at his hand-drawn maps shows he changed the scale part way through the series.

I think he would be utterly stunned to know his work is still being read today. In his day, novels were more remarked on and seen as permanent. This is one reason often given that the plots to The Hour of the Dragon and The Scarlet Citadel are so similar: He didn't think anyone would either remember the first story, or that novel readers would have read the magazine story in the first place.

Overall, I agree with your last post, Prince Yyrkoon.

 

[kintire]

He was a bit naughty with writers licence, I know theres anachronistic inconsistencies all over the place with the Hyborian Age, medieval culture next to bronze age culture, that kind of thing. But the guy took the biscuit when it comes to the Picts. Tomahawks? North American Indian culture?Man, it doesnt hold up to close scrutiny, when you try to apply consistency. Or any kind of geographical anthropology. Or any kind of meaningful cultural questions, (they arent 'real' North American Indians, just guys that look like them).

I think you are missing the point of the Hyborian Age here. Howard was a writer of several types of stories, but one of his specialities was the historical adventure, with wierd touches as needed. He wrote a whole cycle of tales about Islam vs the West, starting with the fall of Edessa and on down to the repulse of Suleiman from the walls of Vienna. He wrote stories set in Viking plagued Ireland, mesopotamia, the North West Frontier of the British raj... all sorts. But they all had to have different heroes, and he couldn't have the contests come out the way he wanted them to, because of timelines and history.

So he invented a background that allowed him to tell all his historical adventures, and his fantasy tales, all in one with one continuing hero. The whole point of the Hyborian Age is that it is all the best times and places for adventure rolled into one: It is Medieval Europe, and Ottoman Turkey, and the Spanish Main, and Darkest Africa, and Viking lands, and the Khyber Pass, and the Italian City states, and lawless Mexico, yes, and the American West against the Indians. It has a life of its own, too, of course as does Conan himself.

But its absurd to claim the American Indians "don't fit". they are a potential adventure site: so they fit! The fact the Picts have an Amerindian culture is no more absurd than that the Aquilonians have a medieval one. And I think it fits quite well. Given we are having to strenuously claim convergent evolution, the Pict/Indian match works pretty well (yes the forest Indians: they didn't all hunt buffalo and live in tipis). Aquilonia is a fairly new kingdom in its current borders, Poitain for one still remembers independence, and it proably hasn't bothered with Pictland before. And, of course, the Picts are actually from America, transplanted by the Valusian culture as mercenaries...

Then, we are supposed to accept, after the age of Conan, the Picts return to a European culture, (as indicated by such things as the name Gorm, the cairn detail, the ancestry they are supposed to sire, which leads to the historical tribes of Brythons, the fact that he wrote lots of stories about pseudo-historical Pict-types, Bran Mak Morn, Cormac Mak Art, etc.).

At a conservative estimate, ten thousand years seperate Conan and the historical Picts. You are objecting to the fact that their culture and racial type have changed a bit over ten thousand years? ten thousand years ago the modern Europeans, Iranians and (subcontinental) Indians were all one Indo-European race, and would be for milennia yet. I don't think the changes in the Pictas are too unreasonable!

 

[VincentDarlage]

Well said, Kintire!

 

[Scorpion13]

RE: The Picts.

You know, I always thought that the Hyborian age Picts would eventually become the Worms of The Earth all those thousands of years later. IIRC, that was what was kind implied.

 

[VincentDarlage]

RE: The Picts.

You know, I always thought that the Hyborian age Picts would eventually become the Worms of The Earth all those thousands of years later. IIRC, that was what was kind implied.

I don't think so. Bran Mac Morn claims that his people (the Picts) drove the brutish ancestors of the Worms of the Earth "before them like chaff before the storm!"

Of course, in The Little People, Howard does indeed imply this, but two years later, when he writes The Children of the Night, he changes his mind and the people who eventually become the Worms of the Earth are a Mongoloid people who inhabited the islands before the coming of the Picts.

 

[Scorpion13]

RE: The Picts.

You know, I always thought that the Hyborian age Picts would eventually become the Worms of The Earth all those thousands of years later. IIRC, that was what was kind implied.

I don't think so. Bran Mac Morn claims that his people (the Picts) drove the brutish ancestors of the Worms of the Earth "before them like chaff before the storm!"

I dont follow. That doesnt mean that the Worms arent the end result of the Hyborian Age Picts (Just like the Hyborian Age Picts are the end result of the Thurian Age Picts of Kull's Era).

Not official by any means, but it is in my games, and to be honest, it makes perfect sense to me.

 

[VincentDarlage]

Now Culturally, while Howard may have latter given the Pict some Native American cultural traits, this could very well be because he didn't know all that much about historical Picts.

Research has indicated that Howard probably got his first knowledge of historical Picts from The Romance of Early British Life: From the Earliest Times to the Coming of the Danes, by G.F. Scott Elliot (London: Seeley and Co. Ltd., 1909).

Howard wrote to Lovecraft: "My interest in the Picts was always mixed witha bit of fantasy - that is I never felt the realistic placement with them that I did with the Irish and Highland Scotch."

He believed the Picts were a Mediterranean race which came north and conquered Britain, driving the Children of the Night underground. In Men of the Shadows, Howard reinforces a connection between America, Atlantis and the Picts by using symbolism common to the American Mound-Builders and ascribing them to the Picts (yet another Indian connection).

 

[VincentDarlage]

I dont follow. That doesnt mean that the Worms arent the end result of the Hyborian Age Picts (Just like the Hyborian Age Picts are the end result of the Thurian Age Picts of Kull's Era).

Well, if one decides Kull's Picts become Conan's Picts, which then become Bran Mak Morn's Picts, then those Picts conquered the lands of the Little People, who became the Worms of the Earth after being driven underground by the Picts.

The Worms of the Earth do not seem to like Picts all that much to judge from the story of that name.

 

[VincentDarlage]

Then, we are supposed to accept, after the age of Conan, the Picts return to a European culture, (as indicated by such things as the name Gorm, the cairn detail, the ancestry they are supposed to sire, which leads to the historical tribes of Brythons, the fact that he wrote lots of stories about pseudo-historical Pict-types, Bran Mak Morn, Cormac Mak Art, etc.).

Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet suggest in their essay, Robert E. Howard, Bran Mak Morn and the Picts, that Howard had lost touch with the Picts after he wrote Worms of the Earth and before he wrote Beyond the Black River, Wolves Beyond the Border and the Black Stranger. This suggestion comes after an analysis of how Howard named his Picts. Other than the Hyborian age Picts, they either follow a B/R or G/R pattern (Bran, Brule, Berula, Dulborn, Brogar, Brulla, Grom, Gorm, Gonar, Grok and Grulk).

However, he abandoned that after Worms of the Earth. Although in a draft version of Wolves Beyond the Border, a Pict was originally named Garogh, which follows the pattern, he changed it to Teyanoga, and started using other naming patterns, suggesting he no longer felt personally invested in his Picts at this point.

However, they also suggest Howard long made a case for an American link to the Picts via Atlantis, then to Europe.

 

[Scorpion13]

I love Howard's interpretation of how evolution works. He had to make it more exciting. Ape monsters and neaderthals in a few thousand years!

 

[Supplement Four]

That doesnt mean that the Worms arent the end result of the Hyborian Age Picts (Just like the Hyborian Age Picts are the end result of the Thurian Age Picts of Kull's Era).

Wait. Wait. Wait.

No, I haven't been following this thread closely.

Yes, I'm thinking that Kull's Picts become Conan's Picts, and those become the real Picts.

The hell you say!

Yes, to hell, I do say it.

Are you guys trying to say that simple progression ain't what Howard meant?

 

[Scorpion13]

I dunno. It just seemed to fit to me that the PIcts would eventually degenerate into the Worms. It just seemed...more Howardian to me. Just my thoughts. Im no super-Howard-scholar like Vinnie D.