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A Voyage to Arcturus
A Voyage to Arcturus is a remarkable work of science fiction that has inspired, mesmerised, and unnerved readers for decades. It is an epic voyage over one of the strangest and most beautifully imagined alien planets ever imagined, a profoundly affecting exploration of the philosophical centre of the cosmos, and a startlingly personal adventure into what makes us human and special.
A guy from Earth named Maskull wakes up alone and burned by the suns of the double star Arcturus on the planet Tormance after an odd intergalactic adventure. As he travels north, led by a drumbeat, he encounters a world and its people unlike any other, where gender is a victory won at great cost, where landscape and emotion are drawn into a cursed dance, where heroes are killed, reborn, and renamed, and where the cosmological lures of Shaping, who may be God, torment Maskull in his incredible journey. A terrible secret and an astonishing surprise are waiting for him at the end of his difficult and more mysterious quest.
David Lindsay (1878–1945) published his first book, A Voyage to Arcturus, which is now regarded as a masterpiece of science fiction.
A guy from Earth named Maskull wakes up alone and burned by the suns of the double star Arcturus on the planet Tormance after an odd intergalactic adventure. As he travels north, led by a drumbeat, he encounters a world and its people unlike any other, where gender is a victory won at great cost, where landscape and emotion are drawn into a cursed dance, where heroes are killed, reborn, and renamed, and where the cosmological lures of Shaping, who may be God, torment Maskull in his incredible journey. A terrible secret and an astonishing surprise are waiting for him at the end of his difficult and more mysterious quest.
David Lindsay (1878–1945) published his first book, A Voyage to Arcturus, which is now regarded as a masterpiece of science fiction.
370 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1920
644 people are currently reading
9115 people want to read
About the author
David Lindsay
36 books96 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
David Lindsay was a Scottish author now most famous for the philosophical science fiction novel A Voyage to Arcturus.
Lindsay was born into a middle-class Scottish Calvinist family who had moved to London, tho growing up he spent much time in Jedburgh, where his family was from. Altho awarded a university scholarship, he was forced by poverty to enter business, becoming a Lloyd's of London insurance clerk. He was very successful but, after serving in WWI, at age forty, he moved to Cornwall with his young wife, Jacqueline Silver, to become a full-time writer. He published A Voyage to Arcturus in 1920. It sold 596 copies before being remaindered. This extremely strange work was not obviously influenced by anyone, but further reading shows links with other Scottish fantasists (e.g., Geo. MacDonald). It was in its turn a central influence on C. S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet.
Lindsay attempted to write more commercially with his next work The Haunted Woman (1922), but this was barely more successful than Voyage. He continued writing novels, including the humorous potboiler The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly, but after Devil's Tor in 1932 he found publication increasingly difficult and spent much time on his last work The Witch, published posthumously.
He and his wife opened a Brighton boarding house. They did not prosper and their marriage underwent considerable strain. The house was damaged by the first bomb to fall on Brighton in WWII. In his bath at the time, Lindsay never recovered from the shock. His death from infection caused by a tooth abscess was unrelated to the bomb.
A Voyage to Arcturus has been described as the major underground novel of the 20th century. The secret of Lindsay's apparent strangeness lies in his metaphysical assumptions. A gnostic, he viewed the "real" world as an illusion which must be rejected in order to perceive genuine truth. In The Haunted Woman, the two main characters discover a room which exists only some of the time. Together there they see more clearly and express themselves honestly. In The Violet Apple, the fruit is that eaten by Adam and Eve. The description of its effects is a startling, lyrical episode in a novel otherwise concerned with ordinary matters.
Lindsay's austere vision of reality may have been influenced by Scandinavian mythology. After being out of print for decades, his work has become increasingly available. He is now seen as being a major Scottish fantasist of the 20th century, the missing link between George Macdonald and modern writers such as Alasdair Gray who have also used surrealism and magic realism.
Arcturus was produced as a 35mm feature film by William J. Holloway in 1971. It was the first film funded by a National Endowment for the Arts and has recently been re-released.
Harold Bloom has also been interested, even obsessed, with Lindsay's life and career, going as far as to publish The Flight to Lucifer, which he thought of as a Bloomian misprision, an homage and deep revision of Arcturus,/i>. Bloom admits his late-comer imitation is overwhelmed by Lindsay's great original.
Bibliography:
A Voyage to Arcturus, 1920
The Haunted Woman, 1922
Sphinx, 1923
The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly, 1926
Devil's Tor, 1932
The Violet Apple & The Witch, 1976
A Christmas Play, 2003
Further reading:
The Strange Genius of David Lindsay: An Appreciation by J. B. Pick, E. H. Visiak & Colin Wilson, 1970
The Life & Works of David Lindsay by Bernard Sellin, 1983
David Lindsay's Vision by David Power, 2005
David Lindsay was a Scottish author now most famous for the philosophical science fiction novel A Voyage to Arcturus.
Lindsay was born into a middle-class Scottish Calvinist family who had moved to London, tho growing up he spent much time in Jedburgh, where his family was from. Altho awarded a university scholarship, he was forced by poverty to enter business, becoming a Lloyd's of London insurance clerk. He was very successful but, after serving in WWI, at age forty, he moved to Cornwall with his young wife, Jacqueline Silver, to become a full-time writer. He published A Voyage to Arcturus in 1920. It sold 596 copies before being remaindered. This extremely strange work was not obviously influenced by anyone, but further reading shows links with other Scottish fantasists (e.g., Geo. MacDonald). It was in its turn a central influence on C. S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet.
Lindsay attempted to write more commercially with his next work The Haunted Woman (1922), but this was barely more successful than Voyage. He continued writing novels, including the humorous potboiler The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly, but after Devil's Tor in 1932 he found publication increasingly difficult and spent much time on his last work The Witch, published posthumously.
He and his wife opened a Brighton boarding house. They did not prosper and their marriage underwent considerable strain. The house was damaged by the first bomb to fall on Brighton in WWII. In his bath at the time, Lindsay never recovered from the shock. His death from infection caused by a tooth abscess was unrelated to the bomb.
A Voyage to Arcturus has been described as the major underground novel of the 20th century. The secret of Lindsay's apparent strangeness lies in his metaphysical assumptions. A gnostic, he viewed the "real" world as an illusion which must be rejected in order to perceive genuine truth. In The Haunted Woman, the two main characters discover a room which exists only some of the time. Together there they see more clearly and express themselves honestly. In The Violet Apple, the fruit is that eaten by Adam and Eve. The description of its effects is a startling, lyrical episode in a novel otherwise concerned with ordinary matters.
Lindsay's austere vision of reality may have been influenced by Scandinavian mythology. After being out of print for decades, his work has become increasingly available. He is now seen as being a major Scottish fantasist of the 20th century, the missing link between George Macdonald and modern writers such as Alasdair Gray who have also used surrealism and magic realism.
Arcturus was produced as a 35mm feature film by William J. Holloway in 1971. It was the first film funded by a National Endowment for the Arts and has recently been re-released.
Harold Bloom has also been interested, even obsessed, with Lindsay's life and career, going as far as to publish The Flight to Lucifer, which he thought of as a Bloomian misprision, an homage and deep revision of Arcturus,/i>. Bloom admits his late-comer imitation is overwhelmed by Lindsay's great original.
Bibliography:
A Voyage to Arcturus, 1920
The Haunted Woman, 1922
Sphinx, 1923
The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly, 1926
Devil's Tor, 1932
The Violet Apple & The Witch, 1976
A Christmas Play, 2003
Further reading:
The Strange Genius of David Lindsay: An Appreciation by J. B. Pick, E. H. Visiak & Colin Wilson, 1970
The Life & Works of David Lindsay by Bernard Sellin, 1983
David Lindsay's Vision by David Power, 2005
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November 3, 2022
[Original review, Dec 10 2008]
Apparently David Lindsay said once that he would never be famous, but that as long as our civilisation endured, at least one person a year would read him. I think he was probably right. This is not a well-written book, and there is very little character development - but it is full of amazing, larger-than-life ideas, and some of it will stick in your mind for ever. At least it has in mine, and looking at the other reviews I think a fair number of other people felt similarly. When I read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials earlier this year, I had a feeling that it reminded me of Voyage... and after poking about on Google for a bit, I was interested to find an interview where Pullman said Lindsay was indeed one of the people who had influenced him most. So if you like Pullman, that might be a reason to check this out.
Like Pullman, Lindsay is interested in the really Big Ideas. Who are we, what is the point of life, is there a god, does he care about us? That sort of thing. He presents his very unusual take on it in the form of an allegory, a sort of Pilgrim's Progress on acid. Here's how it starts. The hero arrives on a planet which I think is supposed to be orbiting the star Arcturus, but this is where any pretense at mainstream science-fiction is abandoned. He finds he's grown a tentacle-like thing, which sprouts out of his chest, and is capable of spreading warm, fuzzy feelings towards anyone it touches. If I remember right, it's called a magn (like "magnanimous", I suppose). But if you now think that Lindsay's message is all sweetness and light, you are about as wrong as it's possible to be. Next thing we know, his magn has become a tough third arm, which can reach out towards other people and suck the life from their bodies. And the book's barely got warmed up yet.
It's uneven, and some bits make more sense than others, but no one else has written anything quite like it. And even if you don't agree at all with the ending, it's extremely memorable. Is that what life's really about? Damned if I know. But Lindsay's answer makes at least as much sense as most of the mainstream ones, and it's refreshingly simple.
_____________________________
[Update, Nov 2 2022]
Rereading this directly after Proust was painful, but it was also very useful. Proust is utterly convincing when he explains that style is everything. Lindsay seems to have no style and not care how ugly his prose is. But all the same, many people agree that his book is strangely fascinating.
Enough clues, figure it out for yourself!
_____________________________
[Update, Nov 3 2022]
I couldn't resist the temptation to check out the 1971 movie, which redefines my idea of zero-budget and combines elements from, inter alia, One Million Years B.C., The Revenge of Fu Manchu and The Seventh Seal. Watch at own risk.
Apparently David Lindsay said once that he would never be famous, but that as long as our civilisation endured, at least one person a year would read him. I think he was probably right. This is not a well-written book, and there is very little character development - but it is full of amazing, larger-than-life ideas, and some of it will stick in your mind for ever. At least it has in mine, and looking at the other reviews I think a fair number of other people felt similarly. When I read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials earlier this year, I had a feeling that it reminded me of Voyage... and after poking about on Google for a bit, I was interested to find an interview where Pullman said Lindsay was indeed one of the people who had influenced him most. So if you like Pullman, that might be a reason to check this out.
Like Pullman, Lindsay is interested in the really Big Ideas. Who are we, what is the point of life, is there a god, does he care about us? That sort of thing. He presents his very unusual take on it in the form of an allegory, a sort of Pilgrim's Progress on acid. Here's how it starts. The hero arrives on a planet which I think is supposed to be orbiting the star Arcturus, but this is where any pretense at mainstream science-fiction is abandoned. He finds he's grown a tentacle-like thing, which sprouts out of his chest, and is capable of spreading warm, fuzzy feelings towards anyone it touches. If I remember right, it's called a magn (like "magnanimous", I suppose). But if you now think that Lindsay's message is all sweetness and light, you are about as wrong as it's possible to be. Next thing we know, his magn has become a tough third arm, which can reach out towards other people and suck the life from their bodies. And the book's barely got warmed up yet.
It's uneven, and some bits make more sense than others, but no one else has written anything quite like it. And even if you don't agree at all with the ending, it's extremely memorable. Is that what life's really about? Damned if I know. But Lindsay's answer makes at least as much sense as most of the mainstream ones, and it's refreshingly simple.
_____________________________
[Update, Nov 2 2022]
Rereading this directly after Proust was painful, but it was also very useful. Proust is utterly convincing when he explains that style is everything. Lindsay seems to have no style and not care how ugly his prose is. But all the same, many people agree that his book is strangely fascinating.
Enough clues, figure it out for yourself!
_____________________________
[Update, Nov 3 2022]
I couldn't resist the temptation to check out the 1971 movie, which redefines my idea of zero-budget and combines elements from, inter alia, One Million Years B.C., The Revenge of Fu Manchu and The Seventh Seal. Watch at own risk.
Read
August 2, 2024
A Voyage to Arcturus - a one-of-a-kind hallucinogenic trippy combination of epic, myth, science fiction, fantasy, Gnostic cosmology and metaphysical speculation written not in the swinging sixties but in 1920 by a British author traumatized by trench warfare during World War 1.
David Lindsay writes in a style having more in common with tales of gods and heroes from Greek mythology or the Norse epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer than Anthony Trollope or H.G. Wells (understatement) but this strange novel has been admired by and has influenced an entire list of authors, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis among their number. This to say, if you enjoy tales that stretch your imagination, A Voyage to Arcturus is most definitely your book.
Following oddball events during a séance and weird space travel (the softest of soft sf), a giant burly man named Maskull finds himself alone on the distant planet of Tormance. Earthing Maskull retains his full identity from beginning to end but, as he moves from land to land, region to region in Tormance, his body and even his mind will undergo stunning changes, beginning with a curious knob on his forehead, two larger knobs on each side of his neck, and a thin, soft, flexible tentacle the size of his arm in the middle of his chest.
And deep into his journey, once in another land, we read: “Maskull found that his new organs had no independent function of their own, but only intensified and altered his other senses. When he used his eyes, ears, or nostrils, the same objects presented themselves to him, but his judgment concerning them was different. Previously all external things had existed for him; now he existed for them. According to whether they served his purpose or were in harmony with his nature, or otherwise, they had been pleasant or painful. Now these words “pleasure” and “pain” simply had no meaning.”
Again, Maskull is always Maskull, however the basic way he views himself and this new world will alter in significant, sometimes eerie, ways. Certainly among the most captivating aspects of the novel.
Tormance is one weird planet orbiting Arcturus, a binary star with two suns, smaller blue Alppain and the scorching rays of giant white Branchspell. If you like bizarre flora and fauna peppering your speculative fiction, you're in for an especially treat. The first land Maskull encounters features sand the color of scarlet, bushes with black stems and purple leaves, a cup-shaped mountain, and small trees in various freakish shapes bearing hard, bright blue, apple-sized fruit. Further on, in another land, Mascall joins his guide at the time, one of a string of guides during his outer space odyssey, riding a shrowk, a bright blue flying creature with a long, snakelike body and ten reptilian legs terminating in yellow fins which act as wings.
And there's more, much more – to list several: a vast expanse where crags and mountains constantly sink down or shoot up thousands of feet at a time, a valley so overflowing with energy that new forms of plant and animal life pop into existence as fully formed adults, a sea whose water varies in density (in some spots Maskull must swim and some others where he can walk on the water's surface).
Yet David Lindsey's novel is hardly a mere pulp adventure yarn. We're face to face with the big questions: What is the nature of reality? Is what I'm experiencing an authentic world or a lesser, flawed version of some purer, truer realm? How should we act? What is the nature of evil? How pervasive is the power of love? What constitutes beauty? Where does life come from and where is life going? How do we know what we know?
Such questions are laced throughout A Voyage to Arcturus. As we travel forth with Maskull and other of Lindsay's characters, we're given a deeper appreciation of what it can mean to be alive, to be a human wrestling with Eros and Thanatos, love and death, no matter in what body or on what planet.
---------
Coda: This surely is one of the most complex, convoluted novels of the 20th century - in many ways possessing similarities to those Gnostic gospels found in Nag Hammadi in 1945. My sense is Voyage is an expression of what Europe went through in WWI, forever changing the culture and the character of experience. Just think, not that long before 1920, Anthony Trollope wrote Barchester Towers in 1857. With a bit of humor, I can just imagine what would happen if Mr Septimus Harding or Archdeacon Grantly or Mr. Slope found themselves on the distant planet of Tormance. The question of who will be chosen to be Warden of Hiram's Hospital would be many worlds away.
July 7, 2014
This is one of the most incredibly eccentric, surprising and challenging philosophical fantasy novels ever written!
The Scottish writer David Lindsay died in 1945. He is usually regarded as a fantasy writer. While he wrote a great deal, most of his works have been hard to find, out-of-print, neglected. Voyage to Arcturus is the exception, having become a bit of a cult classic and reprinted again and again in paperback editions.
The title suggests science fiction. It is not. Arcturus is a device, a metaphysical stage, arrived at through mediumship, not spacecraft. The book is a modern Pilgrim's Progress, a moral parable, a snare and, until the last few pages, a deception.
Lindsay was, at best, a pedestrian writer, incapable of conrete characterization. In Voyage, however, there are no persons in any ordinary sense after the first few pages. The characters are principles, points of view. The path of the protagonist is transformative and darkly revelatory.
One is reminded of another metaphysical fiction, another modern Pilgrim's Progress, viz. C.S. Lewis' Perelandra trilogy. But while Lewis is defending the establishment, retelling the biblical tale in modern terms, Lindsay, after exploring it rather convincingly, demolishes it and replaces it with something like a Teutonic hero's gnostic saga.
When first finishing this book, I was profoundly upset, shaken to the core of my unthinking adolescent presuppositions. I very, very rarely reread a book, especially a mere fiction. This, I reread immediately and, then, again, years later.
Students of dualistic "gnostic" systems will find this book interesting as a modern, and apparently quite sincere, take on a belief system quite common in the antique and early Christian worlds.
The Scottish writer David Lindsay died in 1945. He is usually regarded as a fantasy writer. While he wrote a great deal, most of his works have been hard to find, out-of-print, neglected. Voyage to Arcturus is the exception, having become a bit of a cult classic and reprinted again and again in paperback editions.
The title suggests science fiction. It is not. Arcturus is a device, a metaphysical stage, arrived at through mediumship, not spacecraft. The book is a modern Pilgrim's Progress, a moral parable, a snare and, until the last few pages, a deception.
Lindsay was, at best, a pedestrian writer, incapable of conrete characterization. In Voyage, however, there are no persons in any ordinary sense after the first few pages. The characters are principles, points of view. The path of the protagonist is transformative and darkly revelatory.
One is reminded of another metaphysical fiction, another modern Pilgrim's Progress, viz. C.S. Lewis' Perelandra trilogy. But while Lewis is defending the establishment, retelling the biblical tale in modern terms, Lindsay, after exploring it rather convincingly, demolishes it and replaces it with something like a Teutonic hero's gnostic saga.
When first finishing this book, I was profoundly upset, shaken to the core of my unthinking adolescent presuppositions. I very, very rarely reread a book, especially a mere fiction. This, I reread immediately and, then, again, years later.
Students of dualistic "gnostic" systems will find this book interesting as a modern, and apparently quite sincere, take on a belief system quite common in the antique and early Christian worlds.
September 18, 2025
È 1920 e il sig. Lindsay manda alle stampe questo viaggio bizzarro che si pone a cavallo tra la proto fantascienza e il fantasy, periodo in cui la distinzione tra i due generi era ancora poco netta e si mischiavano senza problemi.
Un romanzo grottesco, allucinato, con dialoghi assurdi di natura morale e filosofica dove i personaggi agiscono senza una logica chiara spinti da dettami incomprensibili. Accompagnamo il protagonista in questo suo peregrinare da un luogo ad un altro, alla scoperta di questo strano mondo e dei suoi abitanti, e ci si lascia incantare delle formidabili invenzioni di Lindsay.
Capirlo però è tutto un altro discorso.
Se volete cimentarvi e provare a decriptare le funamboliche sentenze di cui si fanno portavoce i suoi personaggi, siete i benvenuti. Io mi sono limitato a scalfire solo la superficie.
"I pensieri scorrono di continuo dal volto di Faceny all'indietro. Dato che il suo volto è da tutti i lati, comunque, scorrono al suo interno. Così una corrente di pensiero scorre continuamente dal Nulla all'interno di Faceny, che è il mondo. I pensieri diventano forme, e popolano il mondo. Questo mondo esterno, pertanto, che si estende tutto attorno a noi, di fatto non è proprio fuori ma dentro. L'universo visibile è come uno stomaco gigantesco, e non vedremo mai il vero esterno del mondo."
----------------------------------
It's 1920 and Mr. Lindsay publishes this bizarre journey which straddles proto-science fiction and fantasy, a period in which the distinction between the two genres was still unclear and mixed without problems.
A grotesque, hallucinatory novel, with absurd dialogues of a moral and philosophical nature where the characters act without a clear logic driven by incomprehensible dictates. We accompany the protagonist in his wanderings from one place to another, to discover this strange world and its inhabitants, and we are enchanted by Lindsay's formidable inventions.
Understanding it, however, is another matter entirely.
If you want to try your hand at deciphering the acrobatic sentences expressed by his characters, you are welcome. I limited myself to only scratching the surface.
"Thoughts continually flow from Faceny's face backwards. Since his face is on all sides, however, they flow within it. Thus a current of thought continually flows from Nothingness within Faceny, which is the world. Thoughts become forms, and populate the world. This external world, therefore, which extends all around us, is in fact not really outside but inside. The visible universe is like a gigantic stomach, and not we will never see the true outside of the world."
Un romanzo grottesco, allucinato, con dialoghi assurdi di natura morale e filosofica dove i personaggi agiscono senza una logica chiara spinti da dettami incomprensibili. Accompagnamo il protagonista in questo suo peregrinare da un luogo ad un altro, alla scoperta di questo strano mondo e dei suoi abitanti, e ci si lascia incantare delle formidabili invenzioni di Lindsay.
Capirlo però è tutto un altro discorso.
Se volete cimentarvi e provare a decriptare le funamboliche sentenze di cui si fanno portavoce i suoi personaggi, siete i benvenuti. Io mi sono limitato a scalfire solo la superficie.
"I pensieri scorrono di continuo dal volto di Faceny all'indietro. Dato che il suo volto è da tutti i lati, comunque, scorrono al suo interno. Così una corrente di pensiero scorre continuamente dal Nulla all'interno di Faceny, che è il mondo. I pensieri diventano forme, e popolano il mondo. Questo mondo esterno, pertanto, che si estende tutto attorno a noi, di fatto non è proprio fuori ma dentro. L'universo visibile è come uno stomaco gigantesco, e non vedremo mai il vero esterno del mondo."
----------------------------------
It's 1920 and Mr. Lindsay publishes this bizarre journey which straddles proto-science fiction and fantasy, a period in which the distinction between the two genres was still unclear and mixed without problems.
A grotesque, hallucinatory novel, with absurd dialogues of a moral and philosophical nature where the characters act without a clear logic driven by incomprehensible dictates. We accompany the protagonist in his wanderings from one place to another, to discover this strange world and its inhabitants, and we are enchanted by Lindsay's formidable inventions.
Understanding it, however, is another matter entirely.
If you want to try your hand at deciphering the acrobatic sentences expressed by his characters, you are welcome. I limited myself to only scratching the surface.
"Thoughts continually flow from Faceny's face backwards. Since his face is on all sides, however, they flow within it. Thus a current of thought continually flows from Nothingness within Faceny, which is the world. Thoughts become forms, and populate the world. This external world, therefore, which extends all around us, is in fact not really outside but inside. The visible universe is like a gigantic stomach, and not we will never see the true outside of the world."
December 28, 2020
A spiritual quest, more than a science fiction novel - much, much more. The protagonist, Maskull (and, ultimately, Nightspore) take the hero's journey not through the underworld, but across the planet Tormance as it orbits the twin stars of Arcturus. He encounters several stock characters in his journey, each of which introduces him to a new perspective or philosophy, sometimes with all forthrightness, sometimes in spite of themselves and their masks. Through it all, Maskull seems to be coming to some sort of conclusion, but the clouds of the different philosophies make it difficult to see where he is headed (in fact, he doesn't know where he is headed, though he gains more confidence in his abilities as he travels further and further north). In the end . . . well, about the end.
Three years ago, I watched my father die. He had recently had surgery for a tumor in his sinuses. The cancer had wrapped around his optic nerve and his eye had to be removed. It was also revealed in the surgery that part of his frontal lobe was occluded and would need to be removed. At this same time, my mother had been hospitalized when her kidney's failed. To keep a four-month long saga of trips in and out of various hospitals, of hopes gleaned, then dashed to the ground, my mother passed away in February of 2018 and my father died in May of the same year. I was there for both instances because I had been the one to take each of them off of life support. Mom passed away after about 10 minutes of being off of life support - truth be told, she was practically dead when we made the decision to take her off. Dad's cancer had invaded his brain and it was riddled with tumors. He was inoperable and wasn't thinking straight because part of his brain had been removed during the initial operation. He was not himself. Dad had always been a highly intelligent individual and I'm fairly certain (he couldn't talk because of the tracheostomy that had to be given to him earlier) that he was in a living hell with part of his thinking machinery, so to speak, removed. It was inevitable that the cancer was going to kill him. There was no stopping it. So, after talking with my wife and a few very close friends and my kids, and after a lot of soul-searching and prayer, we decided to take him off life support.
He lived for two full weeks. I was with him every day, often spending the night in his room with him.
Losing my Mom and Dad was one of the most painful events of my entire life. It still hurts like hell just thinking about it now. Was it right to take them off of life support? I think so. But having to make that decision cut a deep scar in my heart. It will get better, it has gotten better, but it will never fully heal. I've learned to embrace the pain.
As I read A Voyage to Arcturus, I thought of my father, lying in the hospital bed conscious, but deteriorating, over the course of two weeks. By all rights, he shouldn't have lived that long. Dehydration should have killed him in a few days. But my Dad is one stubborn man, and full of fight. I often wonder what he was thinking, what he was even capable of thinking at that time. I know he knew I was there and I know he knew that I loved him and that he loved me. Beyond that, I don't know what was in his head. I suspect that in his painkiller-addled moments of delirium (which were far more frequent than his cogent moments) he was taking a sort of journey himself, maybe something similar to Maskull's journey. In the end, I think they might have come to the same conclusions, which you are free to learn for yourself.
Now, this book, while it tugged at my emotions, is anything but emotional. It is, in a word, flat. The characters are more "everyman" than anything. Their antagonists (and guides) represent ideas, not real people. I can see how this would be tedious to a lot of readers, and the reviews I've read bear this out. The writing is also clumsy and, at times, very stilted.
But for me, rather than criticize the surface appearances of the novel (it is, from a writerly point of view, ugly), I read with my heart, as well as my brain, and was put into a quite contemplative frame of mind. I reflected on the Tarot, of all things. If the Three of Swords could be expanded into a novel, then this might be it. Do I understand all the battling philosophies? No. Do I understand all the symbolism? No. But I understand the feeling that Lindsay was, especially at the end, trying to get across.
I know Krang, and I know him well. You'll know what I mean when you reach the conclusion . . .
. . . The Conclusion . . .
Three years ago, I watched my father die. He had recently had surgery for a tumor in his sinuses. The cancer had wrapped around his optic nerve and his eye had to be removed. It was also revealed in the surgery that part of his frontal lobe was occluded and would need to be removed. At this same time, my mother had been hospitalized when her kidney's failed. To keep a four-month long saga of trips in and out of various hospitals, of hopes gleaned, then dashed to the ground, my mother passed away in February of 2018 and my father died in May of the same year. I was there for both instances because I had been the one to take each of them off of life support. Mom passed away after about 10 minutes of being off of life support - truth be told, she was practically dead when we made the decision to take her off. Dad's cancer had invaded his brain and it was riddled with tumors. He was inoperable and wasn't thinking straight because part of his brain had been removed during the initial operation. He was not himself. Dad had always been a highly intelligent individual and I'm fairly certain (he couldn't talk because of the tracheostomy that had to be given to him earlier) that he was in a living hell with part of his thinking machinery, so to speak, removed. It was inevitable that the cancer was going to kill him. There was no stopping it. So, after talking with my wife and a few very close friends and my kids, and after a lot of soul-searching and prayer, we decided to take him off life support.
He lived for two full weeks. I was with him every day, often spending the night in his room with him.
Losing my Mom and Dad was one of the most painful events of my entire life. It still hurts like hell just thinking about it now. Was it right to take them off of life support? I think so. But having to make that decision cut a deep scar in my heart. It will get better, it has gotten better, but it will never fully heal. I've learned to embrace the pain.
As I read A Voyage to Arcturus, I thought of my father, lying in the hospital bed conscious, but deteriorating, over the course of two weeks. By all rights, he shouldn't have lived that long. Dehydration should have killed him in a few days. But my Dad is one stubborn man, and full of fight. I often wonder what he was thinking, what he was even capable of thinking at that time. I know he knew I was there and I know he knew that I loved him and that he loved me. Beyond that, I don't know what was in his head. I suspect that in his painkiller-addled moments of delirium (which were far more frequent than his cogent moments) he was taking a sort of journey himself, maybe something similar to Maskull's journey. In the end, I think they might have come to the same conclusions, which you are free to learn for yourself.
Now, this book, while it tugged at my emotions, is anything but emotional. It is, in a word, flat. The characters are more "everyman" than anything. Their antagonists (and guides) represent ideas, not real people. I can see how this would be tedious to a lot of readers, and the reviews I've read bear this out. The writing is also clumsy and, at times, very stilted.
But for me, rather than criticize the surface appearances of the novel (it is, from a writerly point of view, ugly), I read with my heart, as well as my brain, and was put into a quite contemplative frame of mind. I reflected on the Tarot, of all things. If the Three of Swords could be expanded into a novel, then this might be it. Do I understand all the battling philosophies? No. Do I understand all the symbolism? No. But I understand the feeling that Lindsay was, especially at the end, trying to get across.
I know Krang, and I know him well. You'll know what I mean when you reach the conclusion . . .
. . . The Conclusion . . .
August 18, 2015
So, I picked this book up because it is on my Inklings reading list – in other words on the list of books I’ve kept that, according to their own accounts, cultivated the imagination of the Inklings: CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, Dorothy Sayers, et all. This book especially has been noted as a primary inspiration for Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet. Now that this is out of the way…
Arcturus was published in 1920 less than a decade after Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter of Mars was first introduced to the world and feels very like a poor man’s version of that more cohesive tale. It has been (falsely) labeled as the first science fiction novel – I mean that’s just rubbish – and, by some very delusional individuals, the greatest novel of the 20th century. *insert blank stare*
Let’s say the good things first. Reading this is akin to reading George MacDonald’s Lilith (not surprising perhaps since MacDonald’s influence on Lindsay has been admitted). If you know going in that the protagonist (and whether or not he is the actually the protag is very debatable by story’s end) is going on a journey through things which have very little to do with one another, then you will be more prepared. The initial part – perhaps the first 25% - leads you to believe something very different. The opening scenes are electric, atmospheric, and exciting, in the vein of H.G. Wells. The first few encounters on the distant planet feel as though they are establishing important characters and a definitive trajectory. Don’t be fooled. They aren’t. At the 50% mark, you find yourself wondering if the author was dabbling in opiates while writing (like I said, it is akin to reading George MacDonald).
The novel’s greatest strength is the imaginative landscapes and creatures “Maskull” meets, both on earth and in that distant quadrant of the universe. While Lindsay seems unable to imagine any creature that isn’t somehow and in some way humanoid, there are stunning landscapes and plants and tectonic activity enough to make your head spin. At one point, the main character floats for some time on a sea plant tree thing that feels like a combination of Tolkien’s Treebeard and Meerkat Island from Life of Pi. In that scene, like many in the book, Lindsay hints at things around his character, that these things are going to turn out to be important, and then he abandons them. This, in fact, is his M.O. throughout the tale and eventually, you tire of feeling like you’ve been written yet another bad check.
Haha. Those were the good things. Now to the “bad” things. The names for things in this book are some of the weirdest and most ridiculous I’ve ever read. Lindsay is just terrible at naming things. At one point I found myself wondering if he had just randomly opened a dictionary and put his fingers on two different words (any words) to put them together to form a name. I mean – I can do that. Watch. Boobticket. Dogbutton. Drunknoodle. It’s a bit like that. I really just had to let it go so that it didn’t drive me crazy. On to other things. This novel has been described as a combination of Calvinist theology and Nietzschen philosophy. Did you just shake your head? Because I did. On hearing that, (presumably) one immediately questions how these two wildly opposite philosophies could possibly coexist. The answer is, well, they can’t. I have rarely read a novel in which an author so strikes me as being both absolutely sure of where he is going, and as confused as a toucan in Antarctica. The experience, I admit, is not unlike reading Nietzsche himself and his constant need to be undefinable (yet talk like he knows exactly where he is and what he is doing). I’ve not yet read Zarathustra, but know enough about it to wonder if its influence is felt here in Maskull’s encounters with interplanetary gods and subjects. In a wild weird way, like Nietzsche, he even seems determined to make no sense – as if that is the point – and it very well may be. If that’s the case – Lovecraft performed “chaos” so much better. (And whee, what fun we could have with that topic on another day!) The alleged Calvinist influence can only be seen (by me, at least) perhaps in the underlying fatalistic traits that sometimes constrain portions of that theology. Lindsay was raised in a Calvinist background according to one biographer. Perhaps researching that tidbit a bit further would prove helpful.
In the meantime, my impression of David Lindsay is that he was a very confused man, and not far from the place Nietzsche ended up at the end of his own confused life. The whole experience reminded me of GK Chesterton’s chapter on lunacy in his book, Orthodoxy. I’m paraphrasing here, but he essentially says, “If you want to find a man who really believes in himself, check out an insane asylum.” This sentiment perfectly sums up my impression of The Voyage to Arcturus, in that it is pretending to be a thing that it isn’t – perhaps it is really wanting you to think that it knows where it’s going – but in the end, it really, really doesn’t. Proof in the pudding for me is the number of readers who admit absolute confusion while reading this book, rating it as low as ratings go, while, on the other hand, you have the eccentric few who give it five stars for being so enlightening that they can’t possibly explain why. A pretentious trademark if ever there was one. For me, a piece of art may certainly be hard to understand, but not impossible – especially if the list of confused includes the artist himself. If you can find enlightenment in this book, then explain yourself, man, or I don’t believe you. And before you think I’m being difficult, Einstein wouldn’t either. That said, the “punchline” of this book has been explained (always briefly) and it still doesn’t work. The punchline alone is made clear in the novel, but the “why” – the point – the remedy is completely absent. It feels a bit like watching a magician perform tricks in a mirror with the audience to his back.
The wildly curious thing to me about the book is how much imaginative force CS Lewis drew from it (his Malacandra and Perelandra display extremely similar (not identical) imagery to Arcturus as do his characters of Ransom, Weston (the Unman), and Tinidril), while his own books seem to also undo and counteract the structure of Lindsay’s weird world. He has been quoted as saying some very specific things about Nietzschen philosophy that I now wonder about as being perhaps provoked by Acturus’ psychedelic conclusions. In short, his Space Trilogy really seemed to be an effort to *fix* this story (as well as draw down the excitement from the John Carter series and play a more medieval tune). While I’m not really a fan of this novel, I admit I have it to thank for the pact Lewis and Tolkien made soonafter to both write science fiction. Lewis finished his, Tolkien started, but never published. Nevertheless, both Lindsay and Lewis did create some of the most fantastic images of foreign planets ever to appear in stories. Together, they provoked our imaginations to let go of earth entirely and imagine wholly new worlds – in Lindsay’s case, one of chaos, and in Lewis’ one of resounding love and design.
Arcturus was published in 1920 less than a decade after Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter of Mars was first introduced to the world and feels very like a poor man’s version of that more cohesive tale. It has been (falsely) labeled as the first science fiction novel – I mean that’s just rubbish – and, by some very delusional individuals, the greatest novel of the 20th century. *insert blank stare*
Let’s say the good things first. Reading this is akin to reading George MacDonald’s Lilith (not surprising perhaps since MacDonald’s influence on Lindsay has been admitted). If you know going in that the protagonist (and whether or not he is the actually the protag is very debatable by story’s end) is going on a journey through things which have very little to do with one another, then you will be more prepared. The initial part – perhaps the first 25% - leads you to believe something very different. The opening scenes are electric, atmospheric, and exciting, in the vein of H.G. Wells. The first few encounters on the distant planet feel as though they are establishing important characters and a definitive trajectory. Don’t be fooled. They aren’t. At the 50% mark, you find yourself wondering if the author was dabbling in opiates while writing (like I said, it is akin to reading George MacDonald).
The novel’s greatest strength is the imaginative landscapes and creatures “Maskull” meets, both on earth and in that distant quadrant of the universe. While Lindsay seems unable to imagine any creature that isn’t somehow and in some way humanoid, there are stunning landscapes and plants and tectonic activity enough to make your head spin. At one point, the main character floats for some time on a sea plant tree thing that feels like a combination of Tolkien’s Treebeard and Meerkat Island from Life of Pi. In that scene, like many in the book, Lindsay hints at things around his character, that these things are going to turn out to be important, and then he abandons them. This, in fact, is his M.O. throughout the tale and eventually, you tire of feeling like you’ve been written yet another bad check.
Haha. Those were the good things. Now to the “bad” things. The names for things in this book are some of the weirdest and most ridiculous I’ve ever read. Lindsay is just terrible at naming things. At one point I found myself wondering if he had just randomly opened a dictionary and put his fingers on two different words (any words) to put them together to form a name. I mean – I can do that. Watch. Boobticket. Dogbutton. Drunknoodle. It’s a bit like that. I really just had to let it go so that it didn’t drive me crazy. On to other things. This novel has been described as a combination of Calvinist theology and Nietzschen philosophy. Did you just shake your head? Because I did. On hearing that, (presumably) one immediately questions how these two wildly opposite philosophies could possibly coexist. The answer is, well, they can’t. I have rarely read a novel in which an author so strikes me as being both absolutely sure of where he is going, and as confused as a toucan in Antarctica. The experience, I admit, is not unlike reading Nietzsche himself and his constant need to be undefinable (yet talk like he knows exactly where he is and what he is doing). I’ve not yet read Zarathustra, but know enough about it to wonder if its influence is felt here in Maskull’s encounters with interplanetary gods and subjects. In a wild weird way, like Nietzsche, he even seems determined to make no sense – as if that is the point – and it very well may be. If that’s the case – Lovecraft performed “chaos” so much better. (And whee, what fun we could have with that topic on another day!) The alleged Calvinist influence can only be seen (by me, at least) perhaps in the underlying fatalistic traits that sometimes constrain portions of that theology. Lindsay was raised in a Calvinist background according to one biographer. Perhaps researching that tidbit a bit further would prove helpful.
In the meantime, my impression of David Lindsay is that he was a very confused man, and not far from the place Nietzsche ended up at the end of his own confused life. The whole experience reminded me of GK Chesterton’s chapter on lunacy in his book, Orthodoxy. I’m paraphrasing here, but he essentially says, “If you want to find a man who really believes in himself, check out an insane asylum.” This sentiment perfectly sums up my impression of The Voyage to Arcturus, in that it is pretending to be a thing that it isn’t – perhaps it is really wanting you to think that it knows where it’s going – but in the end, it really, really doesn’t. Proof in the pudding for me is the number of readers who admit absolute confusion while reading this book, rating it as low as ratings go, while, on the other hand, you have the eccentric few who give it five stars for being so enlightening that they can’t possibly explain why. A pretentious trademark if ever there was one. For me, a piece of art may certainly be hard to understand, but not impossible – especially if the list of confused includes the artist himself. If you can find enlightenment in this book, then explain yourself, man, or I don’t believe you. And before you think I’m being difficult, Einstein wouldn’t either. That said, the “punchline” of this book has been explained (always briefly) and it still doesn’t work. The punchline alone is made clear in the novel, but the “why” – the point – the remedy is completely absent. It feels a bit like watching a magician perform tricks in a mirror with the audience to his back.
The wildly curious thing to me about the book is how much imaginative force CS Lewis drew from it (his Malacandra and Perelandra display extremely similar (not identical) imagery to Arcturus as do his characters of Ransom, Weston (the Unman), and Tinidril), while his own books seem to also undo and counteract the structure of Lindsay’s weird world. He has been quoted as saying some very specific things about Nietzschen philosophy that I now wonder about as being perhaps provoked by Acturus’ psychedelic conclusions. In short, his Space Trilogy really seemed to be an effort to *fix* this story (as well as draw down the excitement from the John Carter series and play a more medieval tune). While I’m not really a fan of this novel, I admit I have it to thank for the pact Lewis and Tolkien made soonafter to both write science fiction. Lewis finished his, Tolkien started, but never published. Nevertheless, both Lindsay and Lewis did create some of the most fantastic images of foreign planets ever to appear in stories. Together, they provoked our imaginations to let go of earth entirely and imagine wholly new worlds – in Lindsay’s case, one of chaos, and in Lewis’ one of resounding love and design.
July 13, 2020
Without the existence of this seminal work of spiritualized science fiction, C S. Lewis would not have written The Space Trilogy.
I found this wonderful anomaly to be quite startling, and highly visual. If you are attracted to these things, seek this one out.
I found this wonderful anomaly to be quite startling, and highly visual. If you are attracted to these things, seek this one out.
April 24, 2012
Loses a star solely through my inability to understand what exactly transpired within and, with the passing of the years, my inability to recollect sufficiently to ponder it anew. Like everything truly excellent, it begins with a séance and an assortment of oddball characters ere the reader finds himself with the protagonist, Maskull, newly awoken upon the gravity-juiced planet of Tormance and, thus, in orbit about the plasmatic sphere known as Arcturus. It is at this point that the infamous Magn first makes its tentacular appearance, and the remainder becomes a pleasingly puzzling and puzzlingly pleasing extraterrestrial excursion in which the Shake 'n Bake™ with which an individual existence has been coated becomes eaten/removed/flaked through conscious concentration/collision/recollection/contemplation in order to expose the immaterial heart of true being pumping in metaphysical rhythm within. Or something like that. My abridged take? If God had deigned to laden men with a penis sharing the girth, flexibility, and tubularity of an elephant's trunk, we'd all be taking semen showers and there'd be a lot more gardens in the world.
Read
October 11, 2016Arcturus’a Yolculuk, hikâyeciliğin ve hikâyelerle mest olmuş/olan insanoğlunun zihninin ayartıcı ve aldatıcı yönünü göstermek için onun silahlarını ona karşı kullanıyor.
Yapı ve ilerleyiş tanıdık; dil akıcı ve sade. Yalnız, alışılagelenin aksine hoşnutluk ve tatmin duygusu esirgenmekte bizden. Tüm ana hikâye ve alt hikâyeler, zaman mekân algısı olarak ileriye doğru akarken düşünsel ve ahlaki anlamda geriye gidiş yaşanıyor. Olaylar düşünsel ve duygusal anlamda, yeryüzündeki bezmişlikten (dünya) cennetteymiş hissine (Tormance’taki ilk gün), oradan da bilinmezliğin hissettirdiği tekinsiz ve çaresizliğe devşiriliyor sırasıyla.
Mitsel anlatının, kahramanın omzu ardından bize bakıp seslenen tarzı, gene ders vermeye yarıyor. Ama bu sefer farklı bir ders: Hayatımızı sarıp sarmalayan mitselliğin ayartıcı doğasını ifşa. İfşanın düzgünce gerçekleştirilebilmesinde, sahne ve başrolde değişikliğe gidilmiş. İdeal kahramanın yerini, ona özenen sıradan insan Maskull alıyor. Bu sıradan insanın çıkacağı yolculuğun geçtiği Tormance dünyası, kendi evren bilimi ve varoluşuna mantıklı açıklamalar getirmeye çalışan Tormance sakinlerince kendi dünyamızın tarihi-sosyo-felsefi özleri temelinde yansımasına dönüşüyor.
Tormance gezegeninin gerçeklik düzleminde, kâinatı yaratan gücün varlığının bilinmesi ve hatta bundan yararlanılması söz konusu. Doğrudan veya dolaylı olarak, tanrılar, peygamberler, kahramanlar ve büyücüler ile karşılaşılabilmesinin yüksek ihtimali; fantastiğin soyutu somut hale getirip, geçmişi şimdiye taşıma özelliğinin neticesiyle imkân buluyor.
Fantastik yanı sayesinde, dünya tarihimizin her noktasında yer almış ve almaya devam eden inanç, fikir ve felsefenin esas özlerinin Tormance dünyasının karakterleriyle beraber kucaklanabilme fırsatı yaratılıyor. Maskull (ve onun yolculuğuna tanıklık eden bizlerin) kavram ve olgular ile daha rahat temas etmesi sağlanıyor. Ardından onlara şüpheyle bakılmasını da elbet.
Teolojik bakış açısı sırasıyla tek tanrılı, çok tanrılı ve daha da gerisini kapsayacak temellere oturtulmuş vaziyette. Şeytan kavramının, dünyayı yaratımındaki rolünden bahseden mitlere kadar giden kökleri ve tanrının adı ve dünya ile olan ilişkisinin devamlı farklı yorumlanması; inanç tarihi ile azıcık ta olsa haşır neşir olmuşsanız, pekte yabancısı olmayacağınız konular (özellikle ikincisi için sadece yaşadığımız dünyaya bir bakış atmak bile yeterli).
Bizim dünyamıza kıyasla her yönüyle hayaller âlemi gibi duran Tormance’ın bilinçli varlıkları, içinde yaşadıkları rüya âlemini kendi iç dinamiklerinde yorumlayıp akılcılaştırıyorlar. Tormance – evren – bilimi diyebileceğim mantıki disiplinlerden yararlanarak, yaşadıkları evreni belli sebep-sonuç ilişkilerine oturtmaya gayret gösteriliyor devamlı. Tormance – evren – bilimiyle üretilen yeni duyu organlarının olması, nesne ve duyular üzerinden dünyayı algılama konusuna kafa patlatmaya yetecek kadar malzeme sunuyor. Fantastik ile bilimkurgu arasındaki ilişkinin bu örneğiyle duyu organlarını aşıp, yazılı ve sözlü olanın iletişim nesnesi olarak ki varlıklarını hatırlatmakla kalınmıyor hatta. Şu zamanlarda, akıllı telefon ve internetle olan bağlarımızdan dolayı bizlerin durumunu da düşündürttü beni.
Arcturus’a Yolculuk, okuru yorabilecek beklentiler döngüsüne sokuyor bilinçli olarak. Kendini bir sevdirip bir soğutarak, aslında, mitsel döngünün ayartıcı kumpaslarına karşı belleğimizi tetikte olmaya zorlamakta. Bile isteye okuru kendinden soğutacak hatta anlaşılmaz olduğunu düşündürecek hamlelerde bulunuluyor. Tormance’ın, kurallarını ana karakter Maskull’a kabul ettirdiği gibi, kitap da okurun beklentilerine kolay kolay teslim olmadan kendi kurallarını dayatıyor.
Geleneksel kahramanlık destanı ile dilinin kemiği olmadan her şeye sataşan hicvin ortak noktası ne olabilir? “Kaçış edebiyatı” tanımlamasındaki “kaçış”ın kendi köşesinde takıldığı düşünülürken, hayatımızın her yanına fark ettirmeden sinmiş olabilir mi? Arcturus’a Yolculuk’u okuduktan sonra aklıma takılan birtakım sorular bunlardı. Ve bu sorular, soruları sordurtan ve cevapların kesinliğine güvenmeyen kendisi tarafından yanıtlar buldurdu; ironik geleceği gibi.
Geçerli sebeplerden dolayı, okura dost canlısı davranıp hemen her şeyini ortaya saçmayan yolculuğu beğenen nice büyük yazara hak vermek gerek. Ömürlerini kurmaca oluşturmaya adamış isimler, onunla alakadar olarak kitapta keşfettikleri bizler içinde önem taşıyor.
1920’de yayımlansa da, insanoğlunun var olduğu süre boyunca tali yollara saparak uzaklaştığı varoluş yolculuğuyla alakalı olarak tazeliğini yitirmeyen ve acı verici tahlillerde bulunuyor yazar David Lindsay, Arcturus’a Yolculuk’ta.
- Cemalettin SİPAHİOĞLU
İncelemenin tamamı için: http://kayiprihtim.com/inceleme/arctu...
Yapı ve ilerleyiş tanıdık; dil akıcı ve sade. Yalnız, alışılagelenin aksine hoşnutluk ve tatmin duygusu esirgenmekte bizden. Tüm ana hikâye ve alt hikâyeler, zaman mekân algısı olarak ileriye doğru akarken düşünsel ve ahlaki anlamda geriye gidiş yaşanıyor. Olaylar düşünsel ve duygusal anlamda, yeryüzündeki bezmişlikten (dünya) cennetteymiş hissine (Tormance’taki ilk gün), oradan da bilinmezliğin hissettirdiği tekinsiz ve çaresizliğe devşiriliyor sırasıyla.
Mitsel anlatının, kahramanın omzu ardından bize bakıp seslenen tarzı, gene ders vermeye yarıyor. Ama bu sefer farklı bir ders: Hayatımızı sarıp sarmalayan mitselliğin ayartıcı doğasını ifşa. İfşanın düzgünce gerçekleştirilebilmesinde, sahne ve başrolde değişikliğe gidilmiş. İdeal kahramanın yerini, ona özenen sıradan insan Maskull alıyor. Bu sıradan insanın çıkacağı yolculuğun geçtiği Tormance dünyası, kendi evren bilimi ve varoluşuna mantıklı açıklamalar getirmeye çalışan Tormance sakinlerince kendi dünyamızın tarihi-sosyo-felsefi özleri temelinde yansımasına dönüşüyor.
Tormance gezegeninin gerçeklik düzleminde, kâinatı yaratan gücün varlığının bilinmesi ve hatta bundan yararlanılması söz konusu. Doğrudan veya dolaylı olarak, tanrılar, peygamberler, kahramanlar ve büyücüler ile karşılaşılabilmesinin yüksek ihtimali; fantastiğin soyutu somut hale getirip, geçmişi şimdiye taşıma özelliğinin neticesiyle imkân buluyor.
Fantastik yanı sayesinde, dünya tarihimizin her noktasında yer almış ve almaya devam eden inanç, fikir ve felsefenin esas özlerinin Tormance dünyasının karakterleriyle beraber kucaklanabilme fırsatı yaratılıyor. Maskull (ve onun yolculuğuna tanıklık eden bizlerin) kavram ve olgular ile daha rahat temas etmesi sağlanıyor. Ardından onlara şüpheyle bakılmasını da elbet.
Teolojik bakış açısı sırasıyla tek tanrılı, çok tanrılı ve daha da gerisini kapsayacak temellere oturtulmuş vaziyette. Şeytan kavramının, dünyayı yaratımındaki rolünden bahseden mitlere kadar giden kökleri ve tanrının adı ve dünya ile olan ilişkisinin devamlı farklı yorumlanması; inanç tarihi ile azıcık ta olsa haşır neşir olmuşsanız, pekte yabancısı olmayacağınız konular (özellikle ikincisi için sadece yaşadığımız dünyaya bir bakış atmak bile yeterli).
Bizim dünyamıza kıyasla her yönüyle hayaller âlemi gibi duran Tormance’ın bilinçli varlıkları, içinde yaşadıkları rüya âlemini kendi iç dinamiklerinde yorumlayıp akılcılaştırıyorlar. Tormance – evren – bilimi diyebileceğim mantıki disiplinlerden yararlanarak, yaşadıkları evreni belli sebep-sonuç ilişkilerine oturtmaya gayret gösteriliyor devamlı. Tormance – evren – bilimiyle üretilen yeni duyu organlarının olması, nesne ve duyular üzerinden dünyayı algılama konusuna kafa patlatmaya yetecek kadar malzeme sunuyor. Fantastik ile bilimkurgu arasındaki ilişkinin bu örneğiyle duyu organlarını aşıp, yazılı ve sözlü olanın iletişim nesnesi olarak ki varlıklarını hatırlatmakla kalınmıyor hatta. Şu zamanlarda, akıllı telefon ve internetle olan bağlarımızdan dolayı bizlerin durumunu da düşündürttü beni.
Arcturus’a Yolculuk, okuru yorabilecek beklentiler döngüsüne sokuyor bilinçli olarak. Kendini bir sevdirip bir soğutarak, aslında, mitsel döngünün ayartıcı kumpaslarına karşı belleğimizi tetikte olmaya zorlamakta. Bile isteye okuru kendinden soğutacak hatta anlaşılmaz olduğunu düşündürecek hamlelerde bulunuluyor. Tormance’ın, kurallarını ana karakter Maskull’a kabul ettirdiği gibi, kitap da okurun beklentilerine kolay kolay teslim olmadan kendi kurallarını dayatıyor.
Geleneksel kahramanlık destanı ile dilinin kemiği olmadan her şeye sataşan hicvin ortak noktası ne olabilir? “Kaçış edebiyatı” tanımlamasındaki “kaçış”ın kendi köşesinde takıldığı düşünülürken, hayatımızın her yanına fark ettirmeden sinmiş olabilir mi? Arcturus’a Yolculuk’u okuduktan sonra aklıma takılan birtakım sorular bunlardı. Ve bu sorular, soruları sordurtan ve cevapların kesinliğine güvenmeyen kendisi tarafından yanıtlar buldurdu; ironik geleceği gibi.
Geçerli sebeplerden dolayı, okura dost canlısı davranıp hemen her şeyini ortaya saçmayan yolculuğu beğenen nice büyük yazara hak vermek gerek. Ömürlerini kurmaca oluşturmaya adamış isimler, onunla alakadar olarak kitapta keşfettikleri bizler içinde önem taşıyor.
1920’de yayımlansa da, insanoğlunun var olduğu süre boyunca tali yollara saparak uzaklaştığı varoluş yolculuğuyla alakalı olarak tazeliğini yitirmeyen ve acı verici tahlillerde bulunuyor yazar David Lindsay, Arcturus’a Yolculuk’ta.
- Cemalettin SİPAHİOĞLU
İncelemenin tamamı için: http://kayiprihtim.com/inceleme/arctu...
October 16, 2014
I don't think I can write properly and it may be entirely because of reading this "dizzlingly" piece of art.
I've not read anything like it before and I tend to doubt there is anything like it out there. However, like Maskull & Nightspore, I will spend my life "out there" pursuing it--whatever "it" is--hopefully I'm longer for this world. Though in this hope I sometimes falter.
"Arcturus" a pitch-perfect "something".
It is a great lumbering, spiritually forgetful romp! I believe I have heard it referred to as an amalgam of disparate religious doctrines, rituals, etc.
This book surges while disorientating, disorientating while it shows you glorious unknown things.
The book itself is such a rich fantasy, perhaps even an esoteric allegory, as some have suggested, but the writing is working seamlessly to hide all the cogs about how its trick of credibility was accomplished. The one thing that struck me were the characters' wonderfully ridiculous* names, which you would think would completely undercut the power of the story somehow and force it to seem all at least a little bit silly, however this is not the case. While brimming with symbolism, madness---there is even a touch of humor in the symbolism and story: Haunte's "masculine stones" the conceit of which made me giddy in its sheer audacity. His stones help propel his craft: now isn't that cute (and so true!).
It is a fully-realized world and I can't help but wonder if it influenced Jack Vance's enjoyable and highly detailed entertainments. "Arcturus" obviously has bigger fish to fry than simply entertaining you. It stimulates the senses...more than just the five, if you possess a sorb. Despite the comparisons, mine to Vance, others to Bunyan, it is not only a good novel of its kind: it is the only novel of its kind.
Tentative conclusions
Conclusion: This book is a "more than human" flight of fancy. Further Conclusion: David Lindsay was obviously not a man of this world.
*Further note on Lindsay's "Arcturian" names: Lindsay was perhaps referencing the improbable names of the heroes and villains in the pulp novels of his days while twisting them into transcending such humble origins=charging them with somehow mythic significance; WOMBFLASH FOREST / FLASH GORDON / GORGON. In other terms, the names, like the story itself, are oddly harmonious hybrids that against all odds work.
I've not read anything like it before and I tend to doubt there is anything like it out there. However, like Maskull & Nightspore, I will spend my life "out there" pursuing it--whatever "it" is--hopefully I'm longer for this world. Though in this hope I sometimes falter.
"Arcturus" a pitch-perfect "something".
It is a great lumbering, spiritually forgetful romp! I believe I have heard it referred to as an amalgam of disparate religious doctrines, rituals, etc.
This book surges while disorientating, disorientating while it shows you glorious unknown things.
The book itself is such a rich fantasy, perhaps even an esoteric allegory, as some have suggested, but the writing is working seamlessly to hide all the cogs about how its trick of credibility was accomplished. The one thing that struck me were the characters' wonderfully ridiculous* names, which you would think would completely undercut the power of the story somehow and force it to seem all at least a little bit silly, however this is not the case. While brimming with symbolism, madness---there is even a touch of humor in the symbolism and story: Haunte's "masculine stones" the conceit of which made me giddy in its sheer audacity. His stones help propel his craft: now isn't that cute (and so true!).
It is a fully-realized world and I can't help but wonder if it influenced Jack Vance's enjoyable and highly detailed entertainments. "Arcturus" obviously has bigger fish to fry than simply entertaining you. It stimulates the senses...more than just the five, if you possess a sorb. Despite the comparisons, mine to Vance, others to Bunyan, it is not only a good novel of its kind: it is the only novel of its kind.
Tentative conclusions
Conclusion: This book is a "more than human" flight of fancy. Further Conclusion: David Lindsay was obviously not a man of this world.
*Further note on Lindsay's "Arcturian" names: Lindsay was perhaps referencing the improbable names of the heroes and villains in the pulp novels of his days while twisting them into transcending such humble origins=charging them with somehow mythic significance; WOMBFLASH FOREST / FLASH GORDON / GORGON. In other terms, the names, like the story itself, are oddly harmonious hybrids that against all odds work.
June 29, 2017
"Leave the past alone, it cannot be reshaped. The future alone is ours. It starts fresh and clean from this very minute."
Το "Ταξίδι στον Αρκτούρο" κυκλοφόρησε το 1920 οπότε δεν περίμενα να διαβάσω για διαστημόπλοια και λέιζερ στο διάστημα. Ήταν ακριβώς αυτό που περίμενα να είναι, ένα μυθιστόρημα με φιλοσοφικό χαρακτήρα που όμως δεν του λείπει η φαντασία. Ο Λίντσεϊ μας περιγράφει το ταξίδι του Μάσκαλ, τον θαυμαστό και περίεργο κόσμο του Αρκτούρου, τους ξεχωριστούς κατοίκους του, όλα μέσα από το πρίσμα της επιστημονικής φαντασίας αλλά επικεντρώνεται στις σχέσεις των ατόμων, τις σκέψεις τους, τις πράξεις και τις συνέπειες αυτών, κάτι που του δίνει έντονη φιλοσοφική χροιά. Συχνά φέρνει σε πρώτο πλάνο τη θέση της γυναίκας στην κοινωνία (έστω αυτήν του Αρκτούρου) και ακόμη δεν είμαι απόλυτα σίγουρη ποια είναι η άποψη του συγγραφέα ή τουλάχιστον ποια είναι αυτή που προβάλλεται μέσω του μυθιστορήματος. Ένα μικρό plus η πανέμορφη έκδοση του Αιόλου :)
November 30, 2012
How I first came to learn about David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus was in a strange cookbook I saw in the early 1970s written by a hippie who decided to use as the heading of each page a recommended book title. One of the books was this one, but it took me over forty years to get around to reading it. I remember liking many of the cookbook author's recommendations, and my library is full of them; and yet I cannot remember the name of the cookbook or its author. (Does anyone reading this review know of this odd cookbook?)
It is particularly apt that A Voyage to Arcturus is as strange as the way I first came to learn of the book. What I thought at first was a science fiction novel (based solely on its title) turned out to be a spiritual quest that is just happens to be set on a distant planet named Tormance that circles Arcturus, which in the book is a double star consisting of Branchspell and Alppain. With two companions, Krag and Nightspore, the hero Maskull takes a voyage to the distant star, where he is deposited in the middle of a red desert with no one else in sight.
For the remainder of the book, Maskull travels from south to north on Tormance, going through several lands, and having strange encounters with a wide variety of natives, who all seem to live in isolated pockets spread across the different lands. On his quest, which takes five days, Maskull finds love, murder, adventure, religion, and death:
I wonder whether my appraisal of this book will change over time, as it has for Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, which I now feel like downgrading. A book like this one leaves a powerful aura behind it which sometimes lasts, and sometimes doesn't. I rather suspect that the aura of Lindsay's book will last, if for no other reason that it is such an original. It is a book that reflects its Scottish author's feelings about the recently concluded horrors of the First World War. The book starts in Victorian London and quickly moves to outer space, but the adventures of Maskull could take place anywhere in a world that has come loose from its moorings.
It is particularly apt that A Voyage to Arcturus is as strange as the way I first came to learn of the book. What I thought at first was a science fiction novel (based solely on its title) turned out to be a spiritual quest that is just happens to be set on a distant planet named Tormance that circles Arcturus, which in the book is a double star consisting of Branchspell and Alppain. With two companions, Krag and Nightspore, the hero Maskull takes a voyage to the distant star, where he is deposited in the middle of a red desert with no one else in sight.
For the remainder of the book, Maskull travels from south to north on Tormance, going through several lands, and having strange encounters with a wide variety of natives, who all seem to live in isolated pockets spread across the different lands. On his quest, which takes five days, Maskull finds love, murder, adventure, religion, and death:
He was a naked stranger in a huge, foreign, mystical world, and whichever way he turned, unknown and threatening forces were glaring at him. The gigantic, white, withering Branchspell, the awful, body-changing Alppain, the beautiful, deadly, treacherous sea, the dark and eerie Swaylone's Island, the spirit-crushing forest out of which he had just escaped -- to all these mighty powers, surrounding him on every side, what resources had he, a feeble, ignorant traveller from a tiny planet on the other side of space, to oppose, to avoid being totally destroyed? ... Then he smiled to himself, "I've already been here two days, and still I survive. I have luck -- and with that one can balance the universe.In the end, the experience of reading Arcturus is as different from the sci fi genre as Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha or The Glass Bead Game.
I wonder whether my appraisal of this book will change over time, as it has for Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, which I now feel like downgrading. A book like this one leaves a powerful aura behind it which sometimes lasts, and sometimes doesn't. I rather suspect that the aura of Lindsay's book will last, if for no other reason that it is such an original. It is a book that reflects its Scottish author's feelings about the recently concluded horrors of the First World War. The book starts in Victorian London and quickly moves to outer space, but the adventures of Maskull could take place anywhere in a world that has come loose from its moorings.
February 16, 2021
My mind feels like a thin sieve, and this book is gold dust being sifted through it. I understood very little of it but from what I did gather - the few larger gold nuggets sticking into the sieve - I had in my hands a remarkable work of faith and spirit and alien worlds. Some day I'll figure out the rest of it.
December 24, 2020
Update after 3/2/14 re-read:
I just finished this for the second time and God. DAMN. My mind has been blown. The last 5-6 pages are one jaw-dropping revelation after another, each one more magnified than the previous until the very last page when, despite maybe the best closing dialogue ever, my jaw couldn't drop any lower because it was already on the goddamned floor.
I was recently called to this, and that's really the best way to describe the feeling the book gives you: it "calls" you back eventually. After reading it the first time I didn't think about it again for years, but someone recently mentioned it offhand and I began thinking about it. And it worked on me, and worked, until eventually I decided to read it again. It's a good example of the hidden power this book contains. It's small but extremely dense, like that lens that Krag gives Maskull at the beginning, an object the size of an egg that weighs over twenty pounds and contains the key to deciphering the universe.
My original review below still stands, but I wanted to add some thoughts. It is definitely more religious treatise than sci-fi/fantasy (with that glorious, sublime, gut-punching payoff). It is definitely flawed, with episodes that tend to run together after awhile, an over-emphasis on setting which bogs down the narrative, and non-existent characterizations -- Krag and maybe Nightspore actually end up being the only somewhat solid characters with real motivations. But it is exceptionally powerful as a parable, and Lindsay's creativity qualifies as genius, especially so when considering he wrote it in the 1920s.
More than a parable, the entire novel feels like a transcribed dream. Even on Earth, Maskull's motivations are fundamentally absent; he has no reason to behave how he does. Yet he does, and you allow it because it feels inexorable, much like a dream. Everything follows a dream-logic, which is to say no recognizable logic at all, but one that nevertheless begins to feel internally consistent.
For instance, it doesn't make sense how Maskull can discard both people and convictions the way he does. But the moment demands it, just as in a dream you often forget what you needed to do one minute ago because there is a new obstacle before you. Nothing follows from the immediate past, everything is disjointed and interrupted. New things continually present themselves from nowhere, or better yet from places that we can't fathom because they're buried too deep within us.
At one point I even began to wonder if all of the typos, a ridiculous amount really, were added intentionally in service to this disturbing, surreal, "off" feel that the book exudes from the very beginning. There are misplaced commas galore, even a mistaken paragraph indentation at one point, and "graveyard" is misspelled "grayeyard," a curious typo since the two keys are not that close to one another and the "y" coincidentally resembles the "v."
And this dreamy, inexorable feel makes sense thematically because it's Lindsay's whole point: not only are we stuck in this false dream-world of pleasure, but we are struggling eternally and inevitably toward the Muspel. And I love Krag's role as the pseudo-Trickster who actually reveals reality through his brash opposition to the superficial nature. Perhaps the spiritual theory is not the most original -- both Buddhism and Hinduism have similar ideas -- but I guarantee that you've never seen it depicted as Lindsay does here. His vision of this well-worn spiritual path is unique.
In conclusion, whereas I was intrigued on my first reading, I love it after my second. It's not perfect so I can't reasonably give it 5 stars, but it's definitely one of my all-time favorites. I recommend it to any sci-fi/fantasy aficionados, plus any deep thinkers who can sympathize with spiritual questing. I also recommend that you read it in as close to one sitting as possible, in order to fully appreciate the dreamy shroud that Lindsay weaves around you.
I also heartily recommend the book that recommended me this one: the brilliant Colin Wilson's The Books in My Life, a warm, educational and fascinating description of many famous and obscure great works.
Original Review:
This book is far from perfect. The writing is clumsy, the character development implausible and often non-existent (leading to confusion over their motives and occasional disinterest), and the names distractingly ridiculous. That said, the story is so utterly inventive and unique and the ending so powerful that it will remain with me for a long time. Lindsay crafted what on first glance appears to be a straightforward Fantasy/SciFi novel but is really a metaphysical/mystical treatise on the nature of reality and the path to salvation. It recalls Dick's VALIS in that it is an important mystical statement masquerading as cheap fiction.
Not Bad Reviews
@pointblaek
I just finished this for the second time and God. DAMN. My mind has been blown. The last 5-6 pages are one jaw-dropping revelation after another, each one more magnified than the previous until the very last page when, despite maybe the best closing dialogue ever, my jaw couldn't drop any lower because it was already on the goddamned floor.
I was recently called to this, and that's really the best way to describe the feeling the book gives you: it "calls" you back eventually. After reading it the first time I didn't think about it again for years, but someone recently mentioned it offhand and I began thinking about it. And it worked on me, and worked, until eventually I decided to read it again. It's a good example of the hidden power this book contains. It's small but extremely dense, like that lens that Krag gives Maskull at the beginning, an object the size of an egg that weighs over twenty pounds and contains the key to deciphering the universe.
My original review below still stands, but I wanted to add some thoughts. It is definitely more religious treatise than sci-fi/fantasy (with that glorious, sublime, gut-punching payoff). It is definitely flawed, with episodes that tend to run together after awhile, an over-emphasis on setting which bogs down the narrative, and non-existent characterizations -- Krag and maybe Nightspore actually end up being the only somewhat solid characters with real motivations. But it is exceptionally powerful as a parable, and Lindsay's creativity qualifies as genius, especially so when considering he wrote it in the 1920s.
More than a parable, the entire novel feels like a transcribed dream. Even on Earth, Maskull's motivations are fundamentally absent; he has no reason to behave how he does. Yet he does, and you allow it because it feels inexorable, much like a dream. Everything follows a dream-logic, which is to say no recognizable logic at all, but one that nevertheless begins to feel internally consistent.
For instance, it doesn't make sense how Maskull can discard both people and convictions the way he does. But the moment demands it, just as in a dream you often forget what you needed to do one minute ago because there is a new obstacle before you. Nothing follows from the immediate past, everything is disjointed and interrupted. New things continually present themselves from nowhere, or better yet from places that we can't fathom because they're buried too deep within us.
At one point I even began to wonder if all of the typos, a ridiculous amount really, were added intentionally in service to this disturbing, surreal, "off" feel that the book exudes from the very beginning. There are misplaced commas galore, even a mistaken paragraph indentation at one point, and "graveyard" is misspelled "grayeyard," a curious typo since the two keys are not that close to one another and the "y" coincidentally resembles the "v."
And this dreamy, inexorable feel makes sense thematically because it's Lindsay's whole point: not only are we stuck in this false dream-world of pleasure, but we are struggling eternally and inevitably toward the Muspel. And I love Krag's role as the pseudo-Trickster who actually reveals reality through his brash opposition to the superficial nature. Perhaps the spiritual theory is not the most original -- both Buddhism and Hinduism have similar ideas -- but I guarantee that you've never seen it depicted as Lindsay does here. His vision of this well-worn spiritual path is unique.
In conclusion, whereas I was intrigued on my first reading, I love it after my second. It's not perfect so I can't reasonably give it 5 stars, but it's definitely one of my all-time favorites. I recommend it to any sci-fi/fantasy aficionados, plus any deep thinkers who can sympathize with spiritual questing. I also recommend that you read it in as close to one sitting as possible, in order to fully appreciate the dreamy shroud that Lindsay weaves around you.
I also heartily recommend the book that recommended me this one: the brilliant Colin Wilson's The Books in My Life, a warm, educational and fascinating description of many famous and obscure great works.
Original Review:
This book is far from perfect. The writing is clumsy, the character development implausible and often non-existent (leading to confusion over their motives and occasional disinterest), and the names distractingly ridiculous. That said, the story is so utterly inventive and unique and the ending so powerful that it will remain with me for a long time. Lindsay crafted what on first glance appears to be a straightforward Fantasy/SciFi novel but is really a metaphysical/mystical treatise on the nature of reality and the path to salvation. It recalls Dick's VALIS in that it is an important mystical statement masquerading as cheap fiction.
Not Bad Reviews
@pointblaek
April 23, 2019
Where to even begin with this book… A journey to a far distant world in search of adventure, some sort of meaning not found anymore on our world. It is a spiritual journey, an emotional journey through a strange land inhabited by wise men, surreal creatures all living, feeling under the glare of two suns. There is a definitive otherworldliness over the novel, not only in its setting, but Lindsay’s use of proper names, and prose throughout it bordering at times on being overwhelming. Beneath the surface of the novel lurks hidden symbolism, references to various religious doctrines and rituals, but all this is well concealed through the evocative prose of Lindsay. Maskull’s journey through the strange world can be seen as an allegory for this spiritual and metaphysical quest, as he moves through a world that is almost unknowable to him, inherently alone, searching for some sort of sign to guide him to an answer that may not even exist. Parts of the book was beyond my comprehension, but there is a lingering feeling after finishing it, as if the novel spoke directly to the part of me that has a yearning for understanding, for some sort of spiritual, existential fulfillment. There is no doubt that I will pick up A Journey to Arcturus again, and maybe after completing this extraordinary journey once more, then more pieces will fall into place.
December 19, 2017
Sin querer entrar en polémicas estériles, es decir, que tiro la piedra y escondo la mano, no me parece en absoluto una obra de ciencia ficción, se trata más bien de una alegoría religiosa, o espiritual, de raíz gnóstica. Es más, está más cerca de la fantasía que de otra cosa, quizá de una fantasía que hundiera sus raíces en la cf, puesto que en este libro he visto reflejado desde "El libro del Sol Nuevo", de Gene Wolfe (otra obra alegórica religiosa que consiste en un largo viaje del protagonista) hasta los últimos autores de historietas cósmicas, desde Jesse Moynihan o Michael DeForge, hasta incluso un poco el "Prison Pit" de Johnny Ryan. Para que se entienda, "Viaje a Arcturus" parece esos episodios cósmicos de "Hora de Aventuras" pero protagonizados por un Finn de treinta y tantos años y todavía más raro que la famosa serie de televisión.
La historia nos narra las peripecias de Maskull, el símbolo del hombre corriente, profundamente físico y material, por el planeta Arcturus al que le han llevado sus dos extraños acompañantes, Krag y el taciturno Nightspore. Allí va a disfrutar de uno de los viajes iniciáticos sobre la esencia espiritual de la existencia más raros que he leído, encontrándose con los habitantes del planeta y sus diferentes filosofías y formas de ver la vida. Y de fondo, los encuentros con las dos deidades que gobiernan ese mundo; Surtur, señor del Muspel, el mundo espiritual y verdadero, y Cristalino, el creador/formador de la materia de Arcturus, el Demiurgo que corrompiendo la fuerza espiritual de la luz de Muspel, ha creado este falso mundo material y físico lleno de placeres con los que tiene engañados y sometidos a sus habitantes. Sólo a través de Surtur, del dolor, el ascetismo, el rechazo de los placeres mundanos, llegaremos a conocer la verdadera naturaleza divina, alcanzando iluminación espiritual.
Me he sentido bastante cómodo leyendo "Un viaje a Arcturus" y he disfrutado mucho de la novela, no me extraña que haya sido libro de culto para tanto escritor ilustre, desde C.S Lewis a Harold Bloom pasando por John Clute o Gene Wolfe. A mí me ha divertido mucho su extravagancia tan británica (en la línea de novelas rarísimas como "La casa en el confín del mundo", "La nube púrpura" o "La colina de los sueños"). Esta novela pasa olímpicamente de las reglas de cómo hay que escribir una novela, con su desarrollo de personajes, motivaciones, psicología y demás zarandajas y eso es algo que aprecio, como aprecio su desbordante imaginación, su torpeza al escoger nombres para sus personajes y topónimos, esos diálogos tan raros y bruscos y esa sensación casi emocionante de que podía pasar cualquier cosa en cualquier momento. Además, a diferencia de la opinión de la mayoría de reseñas de esta página, considero que su tema central bastante fácil de entender en general, aconsejo releer el prólogo de Alan Moore tras terminar la novela y buscar en internet "gnosticismo". Pero, y en mi opinión muy afortunadamente, ni Moore ni internet nos aclaran todos las metáforas y claves que Lindsay deja aquí y allá en su relato, me parece fundamental que una novela, sobre todo tan rara como esta, se guarde misterios y enigmas que desentrañar y disfrutar en nuevas relecturas.
La historia nos narra las peripecias de Maskull, el símbolo del hombre corriente, profundamente físico y material, por el planeta Arcturus al que le han llevado sus dos extraños acompañantes, Krag y el taciturno Nightspore. Allí va a disfrutar de uno de los viajes iniciáticos sobre la esencia espiritual de la existencia más raros que he leído, encontrándose con los habitantes del planeta y sus diferentes filosofías y formas de ver la vida. Y de fondo, los encuentros con las dos deidades que gobiernan ese mundo; Surtur, señor del Muspel, el mundo espiritual y verdadero, y Cristalino, el creador/formador de la materia de Arcturus, el Demiurgo que corrompiendo la fuerza espiritual de la luz de Muspel, ha creado este falso mundo material y físico lleno de placeres con los que tiene engañados y sometidos a sus habitantes. Sólo a través de Surtur, del dolor, el ascetismo, el rechazo de los placeres mundanos, llegaremos a conocer la verdadera naturaleza divina, alcanzando iluminación espiritual.
Me he sentido bastante cómodo leyendo "Un viaje a Arcturus" y he disfrutado mucho de la novela, no me extraña que haya sido libro de culto para tanto escritor ilustre, desde C.S Lewis a Harold Bloom pasando por John Clute o Gene Wolfe. A mí me ha divertido mucho su extravagancia tan británica (en la línea de novelas rarísimas como "La casa en el confín del mundo", "La nube púrpura" o "La colina de los sueños"). Esta novela pasa olímpicamente de las reglas de cómo hay que escribir una novela, con su desarrollo de personajes, motivaciones, psicología y demás zarandajas y eso es algo que aprecio, como aprecio su desbordante imaginación, su torpeza al escoger nombres para sus personajes y topónimos, esos diálogos tan raros y bruscos y esa sensación casi emocionante de que podía pasar cualquier cosa en cualquier momento. Además, a diferencia de la opinión de la mayoría de reseñas de esta página, considero que su tema central bastante fácil de entender en general, aconsejo releer el prólogo de Alan Moore tras terminar la novela y buscar en internet "gnosticismo". Pero, y en mi opinión muy afortunadamente, ni Moore ni internet nos aclaran todos las metáforas y claves que Lindsay deja aquí y allá en su relato, me parece fundamental que una novela, sobre todo tan rara como esta, se guarde misterios y enigmas que desentrañar y disfrutar en nuevas relecturas.
May 25, 2009
Of the stranger books I've come across, this has to be strangest, and while the title and initial chapters suggest that this may be a work of dismissive Science Fiction / Fantasy, it is decidedly not.
Published in 1920, the book hails from a strong lineage of allegorical-journey stories. Think of the travails of Candide or better yet, of Gulliver's Travels. While the aforementioned books were of a political nature, A Voyage to Arcturus speaks about something more primal: how does one define meaning in the universe? What is the relation of what we feel to what actually is?
Ostensibly, we have a curious protagonist offered a chance to visit a strange planet orbiting a distant binary star system. He eagerly takes up on the voyage and is transported to the other realm; what ensues is a fantastic philosophical debate on the nature of good and evil, the role of existence, and the true nature of man.
In all honesty, I cannot pretend to understand even a fraction of what transpires. My attempts to relate it to known texts, biblical or classical, fall short. But that could only be because I lack the memory or intelligence to recall my past associations with those literature.
When our hero wakes on the planet, he is alone and has inexplicably gained the function of several new appendages. As he progresses through the various continents and countries, he meets characters, seemingly more knowledgeable than the last, each directing him forward, compelling him closer to what he seeks (which is the creator of the planet or what he has associated as God on Earth but in truth neither is or isn't). His appendages either gain new functions or fall off completely. And invariably, many of his hosts perish through his actions.
I venture my meager understanding of the conclusion that the author may have wished to impart: that the thoughts of humankind is resplendent in emotions, but only pain truly defines them. The first land that the protagonist comes to, he feels great affection for his hosts, but that feeling is amorphous. In the final land, he falls in love with a singular being and by then he is already so close to the truth, this emotion is sharp and distinct, made real by his proximity to pain.
It is important to mention that "love" is perhaps only one aspect of the novel, maybe of primary importance. I do not believe it is love as in "romantic love" but love as in the good within. If you are curious about this book, there are many resellers on Amazon offering it for cheap. The best thing this book does is rid oneself of preconceived notions. It will make you think.
Upon finishing this book, I came to see myself as a void of malleable putty. Each significant event has attempted to mold me, but I return to the same darkness, to the same formlessness. I believe that is akin to the journey of the protagonist. Though he is shaped and changed much, he returns inevitably to the same mold because the truth was within the whole time.
In any case, it is a mind fuck.
Published in 1920, the book hails from a strong lineage of allegorical-journey stories. Think of the travails of Candide or better yet, of Gulliver's Travels. While the aforementioned books were of a political nature, A Voyage to Arcturus speaks about something more primal: how does one define meaning in the universe? What is the relation of what we feel to what actually is?
Ostensibly, we have a curious protagonist offered a chance to visit a strange planet orbiting a distant binary star system. He eagerly takes up on the voyage and is transported to the other realm; what ensues is a fantastic philosophical debate on the nature of good and evil, the role of existence, and the true nature of man.
In all honesty, I cannot pretend to understand even a fraction of what transpires. My attempts to relate it to known texts, biblical or classical, fall short. But that could only be because I lack the memory or intelligence to recall my past associations with those literature.
When our hero wakes on the planet, he is alone and has inexplicably gained the function of several new appendages. As he progresses through the various continents and countries, he meets characters, seemingly more knowledgeable than the last, each directing him forward, compelling him closer to what he seeks (which is the creator of the planet or what he has associated as God on Earth but in truth neither is or isn't). His appendages either gain new functions or fall off completely. And invariably, many of his hosts perish through his actions.
I venture my meager understanding of the conclusion that the author may have wished to impart: that the thoughts of humankind is resplendent in emotions, but only pain truly defines them. The first land that the protagonist comes to, he feels great affection for his hosts, but that feeling is amorphous. In the final land, he falls in love with a singular being and by then he is already so close to the truth, this emotion is sharp and distinct, made real by his proximity to pain.
It is important to mention that "love" is perhaps only one aspect of the novel, maybe of primary importance. I do not believe it is love as in "romantic love" but love as in the good within. If you are curious about this book, there are many resellers on Amazon offering it for cheap. The best thing this book does is rid oneself of preconceived notions. It will make you think.
Upon finishing this book, I came to see myself as a void of malleable putty. Each significant event has attempted to mold me, but I return to the same darkness, to the same formlessness. I believe that is akin to the journey of the protagonist. Though he is shaped and changed much, he returns inevitably to the same mold because the truth was within the whole time.
In any case, it is a mind fuck.
May 3, 2015
"Subterranean fantasy classic" is certainly an apt description (on the cover of my dog-eared Sphere edition) of Great War veteran David Lindsay's novel. A fave among such diverse writers as J.R.R. Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, Clive Barker, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore and Phillip Pullman.
The best key I can offer to the esoteric text is the recurrent symbolism of "Gnostic duality": the twin-suns of the planet Tormance; Branchspell and Alppain, rugged adventurer Maskull, likewise sighting them, in the Starkness-tower and then later his 'true self'; the introverted (and possibly War-traumatised) Nightspore ascends the Muspel-tower at the novel's climax, and of course Lindsay's "new primary colours" of jale and ulfire.
On Tormance, Maskull(/Nightspore)'s search for the 'divine' truth is blighted by the deceitful and demiurgic Shaping/Crystalman; whose ghastly, sneering 'death-mask' reccurs in a nightmarish triumph, on those who perish in the pilgrimmage. Before Surtur/Krag reveals the dualistic way of this cosmos.
A huge influence on C.S. Lewis' 'Space Trilogy' though as Michael Moorcock reflected in a Guardian article Lewis didn't share Lindsay's "God-questioning genius".
Anyone who desires an escape from the mundane, should give this one time.
The best key I can offer to the esoteric text is the recurrent symbolism of "Gnostic duality": the twin-suns of the planet Tormance; Branchspell and Alppain, rugged adventurer Maskull, likewise sighting them, in the Starkness-tower and then later his 'true self'; the introverted (and possibly War-traumatised) Nightspore ascends the Muspel-tower at the novel's climax, and of course Lindsay's "new primary colours" of jale and ulfire.
On Tormance, Maskull(/Nightspore)'s search for the 'divine' truth is blighted by the deceitful and demiurgic Shaping/Crystalman; whose ghastly, sneering 'death-mask' reccurs in a nightmarish triumph, on those who perish in the pilgrimmage. Before Surtur/Krag reveals the dualistic way of this cosmos.
A huge influence on C.S. Lewis' 'Space Trilogy' though as Michael Moorcock reflected in a Guardian article Lewis didn't share Lindsay's "God-questioning genius".
Anyone who desires an escape from the mundane, should give this one time.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 9, 2013
Made it 1/3 of the way through this book right up to the sentence, "He applied the drude first to his magn, and then to his breve."
September 29, 2021
This is one of those stories where you’re frequently wondering what the author was smoking while he wrote. And the editor for that matter. And the publisher. And, really, pretty much anyone involved in getting this book to print.
We begin with a séance, not the best way to open a SF novel, but then, this isn’t a SF novel, regardless of the fact that it mostly takes place on an imaginary planet circling a real star. But before we meet the three primary characters, Krag, Maskull, and Nightspore (First names? Last names? No idea.), we spend quite a lot of wordage with the throwaway characters at the event, including the medium, who gets the most screen time, only to never see any of them again.
Krag, Maskull, and Nightspore get to Tormance (the name of the planet) via a strange crystalline space ship, at which point Maskull wakes up to become the sole focus for the rest of the book.
I don’t think I’m going to try to describe the rest of the book on anything more than a high level. It was a difficult, irritating, infuriating read. I went into this story expecting, as per most of the reviews I read while choosing it, an intellectual, spiritual, and philosophical journey of some kind. What I got was the wandering of the main character through a series of unthinking enslavements to bizarre ideologies and philosophies. In each, he thinks he’s entering freely, but is always shocked when he comes out the other side, or not shocked when he switches to something else mid-stream. He’s not even really a passenger, more or less doing as he’s told by anyone he comes across or, in rare cases, the exact opposite of what he’s told because that fits with the ideology of the moment.
Every land he passes through has its own version of reality, and every one of them seems to require a different set of sensory organs which Maskull is required to grow on demand. Easy, since it’s an alien world and he’s adapted his body to it. Nearly everyone he meets dies, sometimes at his hands and sometimes just because he was there. Whether he murders them or not, it’s always his fault.
I come to the conclusion that the individual lands are clear criticisms of various religious and philosophical belief systems or concepts. Some are easy to identify: religion, spirituality, duty, love. A couple are a little more esoteric or just odd: art, willpower, and another round of spirituality (I think). But they’re only criticisms and basically on the order of “look how stupid you are if you follow this path."
Just for a little extra mindbleepery, at the end of the book, we discover that Maskull is actually , and has been all along. Then we get one last journey through a bizarre construct in a bizarre world, at the end of which we learn nothing and understand nothing other than maybe that the author believes life to be a harsh struggle that you’re just as well to ignore or be rid of when it’s over.
Overall rating: 1 star. This was the toughest slog of a book I’ve ever had the strength to finish. It’s a grim, confusing, obnoxious journey from nowhere to nothing, filled with characters that aren’t and oblique criticisms of just about everything that made up the author’s society at the time.
But one quote does leap out at me. It defines the head in the sand mindset that seems so typical of zealots, both religious and political, today: “Then, since you’re right in this, I must believe all that you’ve been telling me.” The line still makes me shudder, even as I see it in the real world all around me.
We begin with a séance, not the best way to open a SF novel, but then, this isn’t a SF novel, regardless of the fact that it mostly takes place on an imaginary planet circling a real star. But before we meet the three primary characters, Krag, Maskull, and Nightspore (First names? Last names? No idea.), we spend quite a lot of wordage with the throwaway characters at the event, including the medium, who gets the most screen time, only to never see any of them again.
Krag, Maskull, and Nightspore get to Tormance (the name of the planet) via a strange crystalline space ship, at which point Maskull wakes up to become the sole focus for the rest of the book.
I don’t think I’m going to try to describe the rest of the book on anything more than a high level. It was a difficult, irritating, infuriating read. I went into this story expecting, as per most of the reviews I read while choosing it, an intellectual, spiritual, and philosophical journey of some kind. What I got was the wandering of the main character through a series of unthinking enslavements to bizarre ideologies and philosophies. In each, he thinks he’s entering freely, but is always shocked when he comes out the other side, or not shocked when he switches to something else mid-stream. He’s not even really a passenger, more or less doing as he’s told by anyone he comes across or, in rare cases, the exact opposite of what he’s told because that fits with the ideology of the moment.
Every land he passes through has its own version of reality, and every one of them seems to require a different set of sensory organs which Maskull is required to grow on demand. Easy, since it’s an alien world and he’s adapted his body to it. Nearly everyone he meets dies, sometimes at his hands and sometimes just because he was there. Whether he murders them or not, it’s always his fault.
I come to the conclusion that the individual lands are clear criticisms of various religious and philosophical belief systems or concepts. Some are easy to identify: religion, spirituality, duty, love. A couple are a little more esoteric or just odd: art, willpower, and another round of spirituality (I think). But they’re only criticisms and basically on the order of “look how stupid you are if you follow this path."
Just for a little extra mindbleepery, at the end of the book, we discover that Maskull is actually , and has been all along. Then we get one last journey through a bizarre construct in a bizarre world, at the end of which we learn nothing and understand nothing other than maybe that the author believes life to be a harsh struggle that you’re just as well to ignore or be rid of when it’s over.
Overall rating: 1 star. This was the toughest slog of a book I’ve ever had the strength to finish. It’s a grim, confusing, obnoxious journey from nowhere to nothing, filled with characters that aren’t and oblique criticisms of just about everything that made up the author’s society at the time.
But one quote does leap out at me. It defines the head in the sand mindset that seems so typical of zealots, both religious and political, today: “Then, since you’re right in this, I must believe all that you’ve been telling me.” The line still makes me shudder, even as I see it in the real world all around me.
January 30, 2012
Really loved this for the first quarter of the book. Thought it was great- wicked weird- which is always good. Unfortunately, the well-written weirdness could not make up for the lack of action in the plot. The antiquated views, especially concerning women, really started to bug me. Eventually I got to the point where I couldn't be bothered with this story anymore. The only reason I gave it two stars was because it had some great ideas character/setting wise.
Want to read
November 1, 2016I'm so happy to finally get a copy of this gorgeous Savoy edition of this confounding book! I read this a few years ago with mixed reactions, and I just know I didn't give it a proper chance (I read it in little bits and pieces, often interrupted, while I was supposed to be working - not a very conducive atmosphere for tackling a book with so much substance!) I look forward to encountering it again properly with this luxurious, definitive edition.
September 15, 2018
it was like the author took me on a date, we went back to his place, he asked my consent to have sex, I said okay, then he did a BUNCH of things I was uncomfortable with, but for some reason, I stayed quiet and just let him do it. Then I left, feeling dirty and ashamed and not knowing why or what I did wrong.
May 20, 2012
This was a rather interesting book. I wonder if the author studdied Buddhist texts before writing this story.
During the reading of the story I was also able to see how it inspired Phillip Pullman in the writing of "His Dark Materials" series.
During the reading of the story I was also able to see how it inspired Phillip Pullman in the writing of "His Dark Materials" series.
July 21, 2024
Imagine what the conversation between a couple of university deans of philosophy might be as they are gazing up at the night sky while smoking some strong reefer and high on mushrooms as Uriah Heep wafts through an open window from the stereo. That's this book.
This was a reread for Michael K. Vaughn's Cheap Ol' Book Club, and I decided to buy the "Illuminated" version from Beehive books for this event, though that certainly ruined the whole idea of this being a cheap ol' book. But you'll understand why I splurged on this beautiful edition after my review.
It had been almost a decade since I last visited the planet Tormance in the pages of this very psychedelic book, and I got a lot more out of it this time around.
If the notoriety of David Lindsay's first novel has escaped you, then let me assure you that this is one of the most bizarre and OTP stories you could ever read, and thus difficult to describe. Ironically, it is easy to classify. It is one of those allegorical travel fantasies inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy, Homer's Odyssey, and especially Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The 20th Century was packed with these. Off the top of my head, examples I have read recently include "Uriel's Voyage" by Andre Gide, "Journey to the Planet Mars" by Sara Weiss, "A Pilgrim's Progress in Other Worlds" by Nettie Parrish Martin, "Upsidonia" by Archibald Marshall, and "The World Below" by S. Fowler Wright. C.S. Lewis was a particular fan of the subgenre, bringing us "The Pilgrim's Regress," and he has gone on record saying that his Perelandra "Space" series was inspired directly by his love of this book.
As a result, "Voyage to Arcturus" is not about any particular thing. Or is it? Lindsay is not necessarily espousing one religious or philosophical worldview like in "Pilgrim's Progress," but rather is describing the human tendency to seek the Absolute. And so it is the story of an earth man, Maskull, a l novelty-seeker and heavy drinker, who jumps blindly at the chance to gain knowledge by hitching a ride with two eccentrics to a distant star system. When he gets to his destination, he is asked why he came. He says he doesn't really know. Isn't that the way with all of us when we seek to learn something new?
His journey across this very alien world shows us all manners of weird flora and fauna like flying jellyfish and 18-legged vampire serpents, bizarre landscapes of green snow and floating streams, as well as a variety of strange personalities and surreal situations, all meant to evoke how the human mind operates. It is through our minds we seek Truth, and it is in how we build our intellectual, artistic, and emotional intelligence that we find sideways glimpses of the Universal. As we follow Maskull, he develops and opens his mind through his experiences which are opaquely disguised metaphysical philosophies about the truth of reality and the nature of God informed through the lens of Gnosticism.
If you are not caught up on your philosophy, don't worry. The author is just experimenting with these ideas here. I don't think even he understood everything that was vomiting out of his pen. Maskull, like the author and the reader, is seeking truth. Each person he encounters preaches their own truth, which Maskull either assimilates or partially buys into until some new revelation causes him to reject it, just like any of us when we read religious, philosophical, or political works. So as I said, the author isn't preaching any particular philosophy, but providing the reader with samples which he deconstructs where he can. The novel opens with a seance in an upper middle class salon, so we start with the pseudomysticism and pseudoscience that was all the fad in the Victorian and Edwardian anglicized world. Then we advance from through multiple moral, philosophical, and religious schools of thought, many of which might be recognized by students of these fields, such as Nietzche's Will-to-Power as represented by the character of Oceaxe, but you are not expected to know these things ahead of time, as the philosophies are pretty well spelled out in the dialogue.
So here is a taste of what to expect.
There is a passage that discusses a being called Faceny, essentially a giant brain with no back or sides, that sees in all directions. Because it is all "face"--get it? And surrounding this being is Nothingness. So Faceny is eternally contemplating Nothingness. The thoughts that Faceny has are the World. Therefore, nothing exists outside of the thoughts of this entity. The World is merely Will and Representation, to use the vernacular of Arthur Schopenhauer, and we cannot know anything outside that world.
This sounds like cosmic horror, but it is actually something that has been arrived at through logic formulas and language tricks by metaphysicians for centuries. Hegel talks about it in "The Philosophy of Mind" (see my review for that doozie) and Vitaly Vanchurin, a theoretical physicist at the University of Minnesota Duluth, sees evidence that the universe is a neural network.
What I love about books like these is that they are puzzles, much like the works of James Branch Cabell or even "House of Leaves," where breadcrumbs are left for the reader to explore and be interactive with the text, should they so choose. An obvious example are the names of the characters and places. Faceny is a "glaring" example, and so is the name of our protagonist, Maskull, who hides his mind, but gradually through the story, the mask slowly peels from his thick cranium.
Even seemingly small actions may have further significance. Maskull has to receive a wound before he can travel on the spaceship, which seems to make no sense unless you assume that we tend to go through some kind of pain before we attempt to seek God. Or perhaps the wound represents the sacrifice we have to make to gain knowledge? Or how one gains wisdom through pain? As you can see, this is a good example of how your interpretations may vary according to what you bring to the text from your own personality, but ultimately everyone's conclusions will more or less be pointing in the same direction.
My favorite passages have stuck with me since I first read it nine years ago, such as how Lindsay introduces two new primary colors that can be found on Tormance. But how do you describe a color, let alone a fictional one that has no experiential equivalent? The reader cannot even imagine such colors. This just goes to show how bold this novel is, and how the medium of literature is able to convey things like no other art form. There's no way this book could ever be adapted properly into a movie! Well, they did try to adapt it as a stage play musical, but that's a whole other type of weird.
But sometimes the weirdness just seems to be for sake of weirdness. Characters hardly ever respond to each other like you think they would, especially the deliberately obtuse Nightspore, a "friend" of Maskull that plays a pivotal role at the climax, but who you'll want to give a swift kick in the ass. Their relationship is best summarized by Maskull himself:
"I understand you—or, rather, I don't—but it doesn't matter." The reader echoes that sentiment about the author himself throughout the whole book.
Even the mundane elements of the story can never just be commonplace. Near the beginning of the novel, before Maskull ever travels into space, he is scrounging in a kitchen for something to eat. He finds some good tea and an unopened can of ox tongue. Now, I know this story is a product of Edwardian Britain, so I don't expect Maskull to find a can of Vienna Sausage or Chef Boyardee, but come on! Ox tongue? Ah, who am I kidding?--I'd still eat it.
Therein lies the main problem that keeps this book from being better known. It's too much and too long to expect someone to maintain their attention on something this surreal. I have read psychological and philosophical novels that I've tremendously enjoyed, but the allegorical elements were couched in a compelling story. Dostoevsky was the master of this. Tolkien and Lewis were as well. Lindsay, on the other hand, was purposefully trying to emulate Bunyan, which is certainly not a bad thing, but demands a hell of a lot more patience on the part of the reader. This is one of those science fiction and fantasy classics that you can't approach as escapism, but as a potential reference for wisdom, reading a few passages here and there and closing the book to think. And as I've learned, it is one of those books worthy of revisiting as your own mind develops to see what new treasures you might find. That is why I chose to get a nice version of it, because the Beehive Press edition literally looks and feels like an ancient tome of wisdom from outer space--or a giant blot of acid.
Highly experimental but influential, this is required reading for science fiction and fantasy fans, but because it is so outrageously odd, I understand that, in the end, this will not be for everyone. So if you decide to give this a try, definitely start with a cheap ol' version!
SCORE: 4 crystal ships and a half can of ox tongue, rounded to 5 out of 5
This was a reread for Michael K. Vaughn's Cheap Ol' Book Club, and I decided to buy the "Illuminated" version from Beehive books for this event, though that certainly ruined the whole idea of this being a cheap ol' book. But you'll understand why I splurged on this beautiful edition after my review.
It had been almost a decade since I last visited the planet Tormance in the pages of this very psychedelic book, and I got a lot more out of it this time around.
If the notoriety of David Lindsay's first novel has escaped you, then let me assure you that this is one of the most bizarre and OTP stories you could ever read, and thus difficult to describe. Ironically, it is easy to classify. It is one of those allegorical travel fantasies inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy, Homer's Odyssey, and especially Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The 20th Century was packed with these. Off the top of my head, examples I have read recently include "Uriel's Voyage" by Andre Gide, "Journey to the Planet Mars" by Sara Weiss, "A Pilgrim's Progress in Other Worlds" by Nettie Parrish Martin, "Upsidonia" by Archibald Marshall, and "The World Below" by S. Fowler Wright. C.S. Lewis was a particular fan of the subgenre, bringing us "The Pilgrim's Regress," and he has gone on record saying that his Perelandra "Space" series was inspired directly by his love of this book.
As a result, "Voyage to Arcturus" is not about any particular thing. Or is it? Lindsay is not necessarily espousing one religious or philosophical worldview like in "Pilgrim's Progress," but rather is describing the human tendency to seek the Absolute. And so it is the story of an earth man, Maskull, a l novelty-seeker and heavy drinker, who jumps blindly at the chance to gain knowledge by hitching a ride with two eccentrics to a distant star system. When he gets to his destination, he is asked why he came. He says he doesn't really know. Isn't that the way with all of us when we seek to learn something new?
His journey across this very alien world shows us all manners of weird flora and fauna like flying jellyfish and 18-legged vampire serpents, bizarre landscapes of green snow and floating streams, as well as a variety of strange personalities and surreal situations, all meant to evoke how the human mind operates. It is through our minds we seek Truth, and it is in how we build our intellectual, artistic, and emotional intelligence that we find sideways glimpses of the Universal. As we follow Maskull, he develops and opens his mind through his experiences which are opaquely disguised metaphysical philosophies about the truth of reality and the nature of God informed through the lens of Gnosticism.
If you are not caught up on your philosophy, don't worry. The author is just experimenting with these ideas here. I don't think even he understood everything that was vomiting out of his pen. Maskull, like the author and the reader, is seeking truth. Each person he encounters preaches their own truth, which Maskull either assimilates or partially buys into until some new revelation causes him to reject it, just like any of us when we read religious, philosophical, or political works. So as I said, the author isn't preaching any particular philosophy, but providing the reader with samples which he deconstructs where he can. The novel opens with a seance in an upper middle class salon, so we start with the pseudomysticism and pseudoscience that was all the fad in the Victorian and Edwardian anglicized world. Then we advance from through multiple moral, philosophical, and religious schools of thought, many of which might be recognized by students of these fields, such as Nietzche's Will-to-Power as represented by the character of Oceaxe, but you are not expected to know these things ahead of time, as the philosophies are pretty well spelled out in the dialogue.
So here is a taste of what to expect.
There is a passage that discusses a being called Faceny, essentially a giant brain with no back or sides, that sees in all directions. Because it is all "face"--get it? And surrounding this being is Nothingness. So Faceny is eternally contemplating Nothingness. The thoughts that Faceny has are the World. Therefore, nothing exists outside of the thoughts of this entity. The World is merely Will and Representation, to use the vernacular of Arthur Schopenhauer, and we cannot know anything outside that world.
This sounds like cosmic horror, but it is actually something that has been arrived at through logic formulas and language tricks by metaphysicians for centuries. Hegel talks about it in "The Philosophy of Mind" (see my review for that doozie) and Vitaly Vanchurin, a theoretical physicist at the University of Minnesota Duluth, sees evidence that the universe is a neural network.
What I love about books like these is that they are puzzles, much like the works of James Branch Cabell or even "House of Leaves," where breadcrumbs are left for the reader to explore and be interactive with the text, should they so choose. An obvious example are the names of the characters and places. Faceny is a "glaring" example, and so is the name of our protagonist, Maskull, who hides his mind, but gradually through the story, the mask slowly peels from his thick cranium.
Even seemingly small actions may have further significance. Maskull has to receive a wound before he can travel on the spaceship, which seems to make no sense unless you assume that we tend to go through some kind of pain before we attempt to seek God. Or perhaps the wound represents the sacrifice we have to make to gain knowledge? Or how one gains wisdom through pain? As you can see, this is a good example of how your interpretations may vary according to what you bring to the text from your own personality, but ultimately everyone's conclusions will more or less be pointing in the same direction.
My favorite passages have stuck with me since I first read it nine years ago, such as how Lindsay introduces two new primary colors that can be found on Tormance. But how do you describe a color, let alone a fictional one that has no experiential equivalent? The reader cannot even imagine such colors. This just goes to show how bold this novel is, and how the medium of literature is able to convey things like no other art form. There's no way this book could ever be adapted properly into a movie! Well, they did try to adapt it as a stage play musical, but that's a whole other type of weird.
But sometimes the weirdness just seems to be for sake of weirdness. Characters hardly ever respond to each other like you think they would, especially the deliberately obtuse Nightspore, a "friend" of Maskull that plays a pivotal role at the climax, but who you'll want to give a swift kick in the ass. Their relationship is best summarized by Maskull himself:
"I understand you—or, rather, I don't—but it doesn't matter." The reader echoes that sentiment about the author himself throughout the whole book.
Even the mundane elements of the story can never just be commonplace. Near the beginning of the novel, before Maskull ever travels into space, he is scrounging in a kitchen for something to eat. He finds some good tea and an unopened can of ox tongue. Now, I know this story is a product of Edwardian Britain, so I don't expect Maskull to find a can of Vienna Sausage or Chef Boyardee, but come on! Ox tongue? Ah, who am I kidding?--I'd still eat it.
Therein lies the main problem that keeps this book from being better known. It's too much and too long to expect someone to maintain their attention on something this surreal. I have read psychological and philosophical novels that I've tremendously enjoyed, but the allegorical elements were couched in a compelling story. Dostoevsky was the master of this. Tolkien and Lewis were as well. Lindsay, on the other hand, was purposefully trying to emulate Bunyan, which is certainly not a bad thing, but demands a hell of a lot more patience on the part of the reader. This is one of those science fiction and fantasy classics that you can't approach as escapism, but as a potential reference for wisdom, reading a few passages here and there and closing the book to think. And as I've learned, it is one of those books worthy of revisiting as your own mind develops to see what new treasures you might find. That is why I chose to get a nice version of it, because the Beehive Press edition literally looks and feels like an ancient tome of wisdom from outer space--or a giant blot of acid.
Highly experimental but influential, this is required reading for science fiction and fantasy fans, but because it is so outrageously odd, I understand that, in the end, this will not be for everyone. So if you decide to give this a try, definitely start with a cheap ol' version!
SCORE: 4 crystal ships and a half can of ox tongue, rounded to 5 out of 5
June 21, 2018
I can well imagine David Lindsay's fantastic trip through the world of Tormance being rather polarizing to a lot of readers. It is not a plot-driven book, in that if one reads looking for cause and effect, action and reaction, it will probably be a disappointment. Lindsay's style is odd too: characters with names like Maskull and Nightspore, and elliptical conversations that never seem to impart any kind of information, even when directly solicited. For most of the book, I ended up feeling as though it was just beyond my reach, as if Lindsay has something to say, but I can't quite catch his meaning.
On the other hand, if the reader has had a life-long suspicion that things are not really what they seem, and that most solutions offered to answer your questions are actually empty shells, and has also had a heart-felt desire to get behind the curtain to get a glimpse of the real workings of the universe, then A Voyage to Arcturus may grab you immediately and feel like one of the most important novels you've ever read.
So how am I in the middle? Because I don't think I feel the urgency of the quest as I might have when I was a younger fellow. Unfortunately, I couldn't have absorbed this book when I was a younger fellow either. (And that's assuming I absorbed it now, which I'm more than a little hesitant about claiming.) I've been too young to read it and too old, but I don't know if I was ever just right.
The book follows Maskull, who, with a character named Nightspore, is given the opportunity to travel to Tormance, a planet which revolves around Arcturus. Maskull is a man who wishes to know things, to know what is behind the curtain. As this trip to Tormance seems to promise just that, he agrees to it, and with the mysterious assistance of a man named Krag, he makes the trip conveyed in a torpedo-like ship, but loses consciousness during the ride. He awakes to find himself alone on Tormance, with new appendages and sensory organs. From this point, he meets with several different denizens of Tormance, briefly falling under the sway of each before breaking free of them on his quest towards a being which he believes can satisfy all his longing to know reality, a being variously called Crystalman, and sometimes Surtur. Each of these characters that accompany Maskull for a part of his journey evoke in him a particular philosophy, a certainty about life that, in the end, Maskull throws off like a yoke. Gradually he moves from a state of innocence to one of knowing, though the ending implies the journey has really only just begun.
At least, that's what I took away from the book, and I don't think I'm too far off. But I think the gauge of how affecting a book like this will be to the reader is contained in two separate measurements: how strongly one has felt that the world around you as you understand it is incomplete, and how lonely you've felt as the only one who you know that feels this way. A book like Arcturus may be one that satisfies both conditions, but the real affinity lies in the second, with the realization you have not been as alone as you may have thought.
On the other hand, if the reader has had a life-long suspicion that things are not really what they seem, and that most solutions offered to answer your questions are actually empty shells, and has also had a heart-felt desire to get behind the curtain to get a glimpse of the real workings of the universe, then A Voyage to Arcturus may grab you immediately and feel like one of the most important novels you've ever read.
So how am I in the middle? Because I don't think I feel the urgency of the quest as I might have when I was a younger fellow. Unfortunately, I couldn't have absorbed this book when I was a younger fellow either. (And that's assuming I absorbed it now, which I'm more than a little hesitant about claiming.) I've been too young to read it and too old, but I don't know if I was ever just right.
The book follows Maskull, who, with a character named Nightspore, is given the opportunity to travel to Tormance, a planet which revolves around Arcturus. Maskull is a man who wishes to know things, to know what is behind the curtain. As this trip to Tormance seems to promise just that, he agrees to it, and with the mysterious assistance of a man named Krag, he makes the trip conveyed in a torpedo-like ship, but loses consciousness during the ride. He awakes to find himself alone on Tormance, with new appendages and sensory organs. From this point, he meets with several different denizens of Tormance, briefly falling under the sway of each before breaking free of them on his quest towards a being which he believes can satisfy all his longing to know reality, a being variously called Crystalman, and sometimes Surtur. Each of these characters that accompany Maskull for a part of his journey evoke in him a particular philosophy, a certainty about life that, in the end, Maskull throws off like a yoke. Gradually he moves from a state of innocence to one of knowing, though the ending implies the journey has really only just begun.
At least, that's what I took away from the book, and I don't think I'm too far off. But I think the gauge of how affecting a book like this will be to the reader is contained in two separate measurements: how strongly one has felt that the world around you as you understand it is incomplete, and how lonely you've felt as the only one who you know that feels this way. A book like Arcturus may be one that satisfies both conditions, but the real affinity lies in the second, with the realization you have not been as alone as you may have thought.
November 9, 2012
This is going to be one of those books that is really hard to talk about. Not because I'm worried about giving away spoilers, but rather because I'm not sure how much I understand it.
It starts well. A group with a common interest in witnessing the supernatural come together to observe a "summoning", that goes well until interrupted by a rude stranger. One of these observers (Maskull) is then invited by the stranger to visit Arcturus, a planet in a distant binary star system. Unbelieving at first, he is eventually convinced to see go along with him. The voyage begins from a remote observatory in Scotland and Muskall is put to sleep for the journey. He awakes on Arcturus abandoned by his companions and finds himself now in possession of an alien body with strange appendages and new sense organs.
Things then get stranger by the page as he Maskull journeys across this new planet, drawn northwards and encountering an array of alien beings who briefly accompany him on his travels. The importance of his physical journey gradually begins to dwindle in the wake of his spiritual, philosophical and moral journey.
Towards the end, the essential nature of existence is unveiled turning any preconceptions we might have had until that point on their head. That is, preconceptions I might have had had I not read the spoiler ridden introduction first.
All in all it was fairly hard work but should appeal to those that like reading a narrative that consists mainly of philosophical musings and descriptions of deeply imaginative environments.
It starts well. A group with a common interest in witnessing the supernatural come together to observe a "summoning", that goes well until interrupted by a rude stranger. One of these observers (Maskull) is then invited by the stranger to visit Arcturus, a planet in a distant binary star system. Unbelieving at first, he is eventually convinced to see go along with him. The voyage begins from a remote observatory in Scotland and Muskall is put to sleep for the journey. He awakes on Arcturus abandoned by his companions and finds himself now in possession of an alien body with strange appendages and new sense organs.
Things then get stranger by the page as he Maskull journeys across this new planet, drawn northwards and encountering an array of alien beings who briefly accompany him on his travels. The importance of his physical journey gradually begins to dwindle in the wake of his spiritual, philosophical and moral journey.
Towards the end, the essential nature of existence is unveiled turning any preconceptions we might have had until that point on their head. That is, preconceptions I might have had had I not read the spoiler ridden introduction first.
All in all it was fairly hard work but should appeal to those that like reading a narrative that consists mainly of philosophical musings and descriptions of deeply imaginative environments.
April 25, 2024
Updated to 5 stars. Regardless of its issues this book is truly a masterpiece of the human mind and what it’s capable of. Just this morning while making breakfast I had the urge to rush back to my kindle to look for certain lines, trying to tie this whole thing together. If it wasn’t evident already then I’ll say it again. READ THIS!
“Life breeds passion, passion breeds suffering, suffering breeds the yearning for relief from suffering.”
As a piece of literature this book is a 4 star read, mainly due to the lack of consistent prose and characterization. If however you are someone who values ideas, and pieces of writing that have the ability to possibly change the way you view the world around you then this book gets 5 stars to the millionth power. It’s psychological, spiritual, fantastical and out of this world. Lindsay was never famous but his work lives on to this day, affecting readers like myself to the core.
“Life breeds passion, passion breeds suffering, suffering breeds the yearning for relief from suffering.”
As a piece of literature this book is a 4 star read, mainly due to the lack of consistent prose and characterization. If however you are someone who values ideas, and pieces of writing that have the ability to possibly change the way you view the world around you then this book gets 5 stars to the millionth power. It’s psychological, spiritual, fantastical and out of this world. Lindsay was never famous but his work lives on to this day, affecting readers like myself to the core.
October 21, 2014
"I can't believe you're going to force yourself to finish that book."
- "Life is a struggle."
"You're going to rip it up and give Manny Rayner paper cuts until he dies."
So I stopped. I really did try. Not only did Manny mention it in his review of my book, Lisa: A Chess Novel but I'm giving science fiction the old college try. Hoyle's The Black Cloud is next.
Arcturus is everything I feared sci-fi would be.
- "Life is a struggle."
"You're going to rip it up and give Manny Rayner paper cuts until he dies."
So I stopped. I really did try. Not only did Manny mention it in his review of my book, Lisa: A Chess Novel but I'm giving science fiction the old college try. Hoyle's The Black Cloud is next.
Arcturus is everything I feared sci-fi would be.
January 5, 2022
Weird yet fascinating... I can definitely see how this work inspired Lewis's Space Trilogy. I prefer Lewis's rendition, but enjoyed this story. I never read sci-fi, so I don't know how this compares to other books in the genre.
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