Siardath
Sometimes she will come to me out of the stillness of the night,
and she will whisper to me out of all the ages secrets unknown to mortal men
in naked syllables strayed from illimitable gulfs.
And the tidings that she brings are shadows and insinuations of
the eternal heights and depths, messages splendid and at the same time awful
which awake in me the ancient spells of love and lust and grief and fear.
And I can remember but little of what she says,
but know that of the fleeting gold it has kindled – and which I know that all my days
I have been seeking and for which my longing knows no name – I can never truly share.
Nor is it lawful to call upon her, as neither to supplication nor to prayer
will she answer, nor be moved. But she will come in her own hour,
and in some unlooked for moment will suddenly be revealed to me
who will never find her should I seek; then gone again as through a door into the night.
And at such times will also pass from beyond that door strains of music
as heard within a dream, strange chords, faultless and alluring,
a wandering music, a far-off music that is one moment there and then is lost again.
A music that is not of this world; a music which can never be recaptured,
nor in all the years, once heard, will the cadence of it ever leave the mind at ease.
And in the light of day, in the quiet places, the distant, skirling strains of it
have come to me, fitful and disjointed – and I have heard it in the treetops,
and in running water, and in the whisper of the wind.
And I would awaken from this dream with naught recalled
except that it was of her, and of a deep attendant anguish. And I see, now, that
all the exiled ones whose minds are ever set upon a mystery
will at few and precious moments be gifted with an elusive echo of her
in what is beautiful and marvellous in the world – and that they must grasp at these
pale shadows so that they will be to them as brilliant jewels in their works.
Forbidden then am I to ever see her face, or to gain her side, and I am left
at the last disconsolate, and know anew that in the set paths of the world
will I never find contentment – but know that even so, in her name have I searched
the byways of cities of hewn stone, and bled a road through desolations of towering
thorns, and traversed the highways of crumbling empires.
I know not where she leads me, nor in her name what kings have quested,
what loves been lost and found, what farers braved the dubious ways, or sailed
the shifting seas. Still will I utter unto her the secrets of my soul,
she who I will never in my life behold, nor ever can forget.
(From ‘Of Poetry and Song’ )
Note: Pronunciation – The initial ‘Si’ of ‘Siardath’ is a digraph, as in Welsh, and pronounced as the English ‘sh’ sound, giving ‘Shardath’, whether the medial ‘r’ is rolled as in Welsh or elided as in English.
First in the ‘Manifestations of the Muse’ series was ‘Ceridwen’s Candle’ (Feb-Apr 2020). Due to its inherent difficulties the second has to date not been written. Third was ‘Island of Lesbos… ‘ (May-Jul 2021). This fourth and last in the series has waited a long time since its composition – until there came the satisfaction that its sentiments could be found to be wholly compatible with what is – in my mind – this Muse’s undiscovered name. Significant elements of the lady are found in other prose-poems, notably ‘Dialogues without Words’ (4) and (5) (Feb-Apr 2022 and May-Jul 2022 respectively). Traces are also found elsewhere, in ‘Song of the Shulamite Maid’ (May-Jul 2021)’ and in other poems.
‘Siardath’ is the summation of many years, a lifetime I would say, of unavoidably encroaching conscious and subconscious thought and experience – of emotions, instincts, intuitions, presentiments too, and of comparisons with like conclusions disclosed and identified in literature. Of the latter, the foremost, those with led to crystallization, were found in the work of two writers I admire greatly, namely, James Branch Cabell (1879-1958) and Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961). The backgrounds of the two could not be more different; Cabell, well-educated, urbane, comfortably off scion of an old established and well connected Virginian family; Smith, self-educated, impoverished, isolated. [* I have introduced Cabell in a rather humorous fashion in ‘In Praise of Ale’ (Nov 2021-Jan 2022) and more thoroughly in ‘Brush with an Artist’, long-time written but yet to make an appearance]. But for a small personal reason, as will be seen, I would like to add here something more about Smith:
Clark Ashton Smith lived for fifty years in a small cabin, which as a boy, he had helped his father build in the arid hills scattered with old mine-workings above the town of Auburn, northern California. Following the passing of his parents, his years there were ones of much loneliness and hardship. Occasionally, he found casual manual work ‘down below’; during one such absence, and I particularly mention this, he returned to find his cabin ransacked by vandalistic hoof-tramps. Anyway, it was there in those wild surroundings that his imagination gave release to stories and poems, paintings, and in later days sculptures carved from the soft mountainside stone. He produced many translations, too, the great majority being of French poetry – and this is where my one small, but personal and treasured, affinity with CAS comes in. In the introduction to the 3rd volume of their 2008 ‘Clark Ashton Smith: The Complete Poetry and Translations’, Joshi and Schultz relate that around 1919/1920 Smith had in his possession Bithell’s 1912 ‘Contemporary French Poetry’. Now this very copy they mention (it is a little somewhat bumped and bruised, but not exceptionally so, clothbound green duodecimo volume) I have in front of me – were I not two-finger typing I could say holding in my hand – at this very moment. I have it, Smith’s book, here, now, on my desk, as I type! On the flyleaf is lightly pencilled, in the man’s casually flowing signature, ‘Clark Ashton Smith’. Needless to say, book lovers, I am smiling as I look at it, and will now replace it in its brown-paper wrap and then within a light vinyl bag to protect it from dust and Formosa’s humidity and insect book-devourers. Yes, it gives me a warm feeling and elicits a smile to think that this is the very book which stood on the shelf in CAS’s lone cabin high on the ridge above Auburn, and further, to think of how many times he reached for it, and took it down to leaf through. The reason I made mention above of the wayward vandals who broke into the cabin is because – well, at least they left my book alone! How did I come by it, you ask? Well, it was a gift from my son, Huw, who was presented with it following his contribution to a film about CAS. Huw, I will add, maintains many contacts with today’s leading authors of the supernatural / fantasy genre. In fact it was he who introduced me, more years ago than I can remember, to its past and present masters, from Hoffmann and other of the 18th and 19th century writers, through CAS’s and Cabell’s contemporaries, to today’s exponents. And why did I not simply take a photo of CAS’s little book to show you right here? Because I don’t have an iPhone, and can only do the most elementary things on a computer. Here, you are assured, is a mechanical moron, a world class technical dunce. All my posts on The Ig-Og are handled by my son, Ceri, a true computer marvel and a high-end, international award-winning graphic artist and designer. Unfortunately we don’t see each other all that often, and he is always ultra-busy. I send my articles to him, and there’s a bit of back and fore stuff involved in the checking process. That’s why the site is so black-and-white basic at present, while many people’s ‘blogs’ are up to the hilt in technicolour. So I’ve previously asked Ceri to only post the very few photos you’ll already see here. We will be close neighbours in the coming months, though, and then we can get our heads together regarding some illustrations here and there.
Now back to the spirit of Siardath and the influence of Cabell and Smith. Most of what is expressed and the way in which it is expressed in the prose-poem was derived from Cabell. The elusive feminine ideal is evident throughout his work. For Cabell, this Muse, if I may call her that without insinuation, is named Ettarre, to whom he gives central place in a series of three novellas brought together in ‘The Witch Woman: A Trilogy About Her’. Witch Woman is indeed a suitable title for this lady, neither terrestrial nor mortal, who wanders through the ages, for like all goddesses, she reveals herself in many aspects, not all of which are beneficent to man, and in this respect she can be equated with the physical world, with Nature, which can be both giving and taking – but always impassive. The words of another prose-poem of mine, the bracketed words of which I have here changed to suit Siardath, have it thus: ‘For [She] grants no favours unto man, / nor is [She] mindful of him, / even as the earth upon which man dwells is mindful of his coming and his going; / neither the sea nor the storm respect him, / and the mountain knows naught of his good nor of his evil’. It is the case of the torturer’s horse. I have read and re-read Cabell over many years, making at odd times notes, now very much scattered, as well as thoughts, also scattered over time, which have been brought together to fashion ‘Siardath’. How nearly Siardath might relate to Cabell’s ‘Witch Woman’ may be seen in brief in Cabell’s own ‘Note as to Ettarre’, which precedes his novella-trilogy:
‘All the young men everywhere that were poets have had their glimpse of the witch-woman’s loveliness; they have heard a cadence or two of that troubling music which accompanies the passing of Ettarre; and they have made, and they will make forever, their brave and passionate stories about the witch-woman, so long as youth endures among mankind and April returns punctually into the fine world which young people inhabit’.
Aptly, he begins the next paragraph with: ‘But we who are not young any longer… must behold Ettarre… with the eyes which time has given us… ‘. [* Cabell was far from a sapling when he wrote that, just as I now find myself in the same boat. Jestingly, however, I will venture to distance myself slightly from these words (even as I suspect Cabell would) and go along with Goethe where he says: (Faust, Book II Part II, I believe, the ‘Graecian Walpurgisnacht’) ‘My rusting-up is not complete. / The female form is still a treat’ or similar. Praise be that those miracles walk among us]. She has, to return to seriousness, been with us throughout the ages, from the Mother figurines of the Palaeolithic through Tyche, Rhea, Demeter, Isis, Hecate, Athena… Mary Magdalene so unjustly reviled and her namesake exalted (in Pauline-Constantiinian religio-political dogma to be imperially installed as Divine Protectress of Constantinople). Along with Babylon the Whore, the Pythoness of Delphi… and let us include earthly outsider manifestations real and imaginary: She is to be seen in such subsidiaries as Circe, Helen of Troy, Dido, Cleopatra, Jean d’Arc. In the pantheons of the East, there is Kali the Destroyer in India, and in China Kuanyin, Goddess of Mercy, although the characters of both are not as clear-cut as in this brief mention. In all they are indicative of everything that lies between Mother and Temptress.
With Smith my impressions came from various allusions in his poetry, but essentially lay in one only – his superb prose-poem ‘The Muse of Hyperborea’, or ‘The Muse of the North’, written three days before Christmas,1929. I have classified it as a prose-poem with no hesitation whatsoever, but it does not appear in Smith’s ‘Selected Poems’, nor in Joshi and Schultz’ ‘Complete Poems’ mentioned above (this seems to be because it made its appearance as an item in his long-time-in-the-making cycle of ‘Hyperborean’ tales, being presented there as more or less a very short chapter). I imagine that Donald Sydney-Fryer must have included it in ‘Poems in Prose’, his volume on Smith’s prose-poems (one of the few CAS books I haven’t got); Steve Behrends certainly classified it as such in his 1990 literary biography of Smith. ‘The Muse of Hyperborea’ was first published in ‘The Fantasy Fan’, June, 1934, and I see that Will Murray does not mention it in the copyrighted list of other tales in his edition of his 1996 “The Book of Hyperborea’. So hoping that I’m making no infringement, here are some selected lines from the poem. The central association and the correspondence of feelings, it may be seen, are conveyed in ‘Siardath’.
‘Too far away is her wan and mortal face, and too remote are the lethal snows of her unimaginable breast, for mine eyes to behold them ever. But at whiles her whisper comes to me… And she speaks to me in a tongue I have never heard, but have always known; and she tells of deathly things and of things beautiful beyond the ecstatic desires of love… and her kiss, if one should ever attain it, would wither and slay like the kiss of lightning… And in some dawn of the desperate years, I shall go forth and follow where she calls…
Smith wrote it as a block of prose, with no special linear arrangement that would indicate verse. Although the theme is so much a presence throughout Cabell and has served, for me, as such a catalyst, his Witch Woman and her ‘music from behind the moon’ are so very powerfully distilled and epitomized in Smith’s ‘Muse…’
Postscript: For pressing reasons, I have not been able to post new poems and articles for many months. I trust that my regular readers are still out there and if they are on the ‘subscribers’ ‘ list will look in on this new poem. For anyone who is not aware, simply making a single comment on any of the poems will place you on the mailing list, and you will receive notice each time a new poem appears. Thank you, all!
I’d like to leave a personal message of apology to Paul B. Williams, who, after reading the notes to ‘The View from the top of the Mountain’ , sent me a query about the Felinfoel Mill(s). So sorry it’s taken so long – I eventually found what I was looking for among old papers packed away in a box (we’re in the middle of a big family move, here, which is why I haven’t posted anything new for such a long time). I’ll get down to replying as soon as I can, hoping that won’t be too long. As far as I can see, Paul, your email address which accompanied your comment initially seems no longer to be there, so I’ll send my reply as an additional comment to ‘The View from the Top of the Mountain’, hoping it won’t take me long. I did try searching Facebook for your name, but wasn’t sure on that count. Thanks again for your comment on the Hughes’ and ‘Y felin foel’.