The Mezentian Gate. E. Eddison R.
Читать онлайн.| Название | The Mezentian Gate |
|---|---|
| Автор произведения | E. Eddison R. |
| Жанр | Сказки |
| Серия | |
| Издательство | Сказки |
| Год выпуска | 0 |
| isbn | 9780007578184 |
III. Nigra Sylva, where the Devils Dance
VI. Prospect North from Argyanna
BOOK TWO: UPRISING OF KING MEZENTIUS
XII. Another Fair Moonshiny Night
BOOK THREE: THE AFFAIR OF REREK
XIII. The Devil’s Quilted Anvil
BOOK FOUR: THE AFFAIR OF MESZRIA
XVII. Akkama Brought into the Dowry
XVIII. The She-Wolf Tamed to Hand
XXVI. Rebellion in the Marches
XXX. Laughter-loving Aphrodite
XXXIII. Aphrodite Helikoblepharos
The Fish Dinner: Transitional Note
BOOK SEVEN: TO KNOW OR NOT TO KNOW
XXXIV. The Fish Dinner: First Digestion
XXXVIII. Call of the Night-Raven
XXXIX. Omega and Alpha in Sestola
THE twelfth chapter of E. R. Eddison’s first novel, The Worm Ouroboros, contains a curious episode extraneous to the main plot. Having spent nearly all their strength in climbing Koshtra Pivrarcha, the highest mountain pinnacle on waterish Mercury, the Lords Juss and Brandoch Daha stand idly enjoying the glory of their singular achievement atop the frozen wind-whipped summit, and they gaze away southward into a mysterious land never before seen:
Juss looked southward where the blue land stretched in fold upon fold of rolling country, soft and misty, till it melted in the sky. ‘Thou and I,’ said he, ‘first of the children of men, now behold with living eyes the fabled land of Zimiamvia. Is that true, thinkest thou, which philosophers tell us of that fortunate land: that no mortal foot may tread it, but the blessed souls do inhabit it of the dead that be departed, even they that were great upon earth and did great deeds when they were living, that scorned not earth and the delights and the glories thereof, and yet did justly and were not dastards nor yet oppressors?’
‘Who knoweth?’ said Brandoch Daha, resting his chin in his hand and gazing south as in a dream. ‘Who shall say he knoweth?’
The land of Zimiamvia probably held only a fleeting and evanescent place in the minds of Eddison’s readers in 1922, because this, the first and last mentioning of Zimiamvia in Ouroboros, flits quickly past the reader, and though it has a local habitation and a name, it does not have a place in the story. Yet in the author’s mind, the name rooted itself so deeply