The Phoenix and the Mirror

Vergil Magus #1

by Avram Davidson

Against the backdrop of a hauntingly familiar yet alien otherworld, Avram Davidson casts the adventures of the sorcerer known as Vergil Magus. Vergil was to construct a virgin speculum, a mirror of magical properties.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Alternate History, High Fantasy, Novels, Speculative Fiction

275 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Avram Davidson was an American Jewish writer of fantasy fiction, science fiction, and crime fiction, as well as the author of many stories that do not fit into a genre niche. He won a Hugo Award and three World Fantasy Awards in the science fiction and fantasy genre, a World Fantasy Life Achievement award, and a Queen's Award and an Edgar Award in the mystery genre. Davidson edited The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1962 to 1964. His last novel The Boss in the Wall: A Treatise on the House Devil was completed by Grania Davis and was a Nebula Award finalist in 1998. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says "he is perhaps sf's most explicitly literary author".

Reviews

[Raymond Elmo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not quite a classic; but not for lack of quality.
If there is a scale measuring drama and thunder in fantasy, Phoenix serves for a marker at the far end from Pottery, Leibery, Zelaznery and all D&D type sword-and-sorcery.

A subtle story, fascinating for the endeavor of creating a magic object. This is magic presented as actual artifice, with cost and labor. As though magic were something special and difficult. A bizarre concept.

Hadn't thought about it in ages; Avram Davidson should be better remembered.

[Alissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I could appreciate this book on a stylistic level, and I liked the plot itself but it was too hard to read even though I was interested in finishing it.

”For my own part, if I had followed the hounds much longer I believe I would have begun to bay. Enough of that. It amuses the idiot aristocracy and keeps them too busy for intrigue, conspiracy, sedition, treason—in short, art—if one may so term it—substituting for nature and to the benefit of everyone. Except, of course, the stag. His fate, if I may quote that irascible Israelite, Samuelides, ‘is predetermined and exact.’ Let him run wheresoe’er he will, however swift, however slow, he cannot escape.”

[Kat Hooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

The Phoenix and the Mirror, written by Avram Davidson and published in 1966, is based on the medieval legend that the poet Vergil (The Aeneid) was a mage and sorcerer. Queen Cornelia of Carsus has taken hostage part of Vergil’s soul. This leaves him feeling like less than a full man — he’s unmotivated and impotent. Though some of his parts don’t work too well, Vergil’s brain still works fine, so he sets out to meet Cornelia’s demand: manufacture a virgin speculum so Cornelia can scry the whereabouts of her kidnapped daughter, Laura.

It’s not too easy to make a magic mirror, even for an ancient and powerful sorcerer like Vergil. His first task is to acquire tin and copper ore that has never been used before, but this is difficult in a time when the Sea Huns are prowling the waters and controlling trade. Even if he can get all the materials he needs, the actual construction is an extremely precise and delicate alchemical operation.

Luckily, Vergil has several allies: his colleague Clemens, who’s like a walking encyclopedia; a crew of students and apprentices who do most of Vergil’s laboratory work; a mysterious Phoenician who is willing to guide him in his travels; a strange woman who dispenses advice and prophecies as she feeds her cats; and a down-and-out Sea-Hun king who can be bribed with the promise of worshipping Aphrodite in her temple of beautiful priestesses.

Avram Davidson uses the backdrop of Vergil’s quest to fill The Phoenix and the Mirror with some real geography, history, and science, and plenty of richly-detailed bits of medieval legends, fantastical creatures, alchemical instructions, and astrological divinations. Thus, you’ll meet a cyclops, a gargoyle and a homunculus along with Roman soldiers and Sea-Huns and you’ll learn the exact techniques for the construction of magical mirrors.

The Phoenix and the Mirror is beautifully written and gently and delightfully humorous, too, as Vergil and Clemens playfully stab each other with their witty banter and as Vergil manipulates his intellectual inferiors with his subtle persuasive techniques. The book begins with Vergil being chased by manticores through the sewers of Naples, and it ends with a surprise and a twist, but the middle of the book bogs down with too many details about Vergil’s travels and the construction of the mirror.

Intriguing questions about Vergil remain — Where did he come from? How old is he? What are his powers? What was he searching for in the sewers? I hope these will be answered in the sequel: Vergil in Averno.

[Nicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm really not sure what to think of this. It reminds me of John M. Ford's The Dragon Waiting, somehow; something about the style, the density of it and allusiveness. I'm sure I missed some things by not being aware of the Vergil stories, not picking up on all the mythological references properly -- and I have a pretty good background in that sort of thing, since I took Classics.

It's a slightly different style than expected, too, I think. It slides seamlessly between scenes without any transition, it slips from direct speech into reported speech -- it doesn't make things easy. I quite liked the writing style, for the most part, but I wouldn't like it to be a common one, if that makes any sense.

The story itself... it's a quest narrative, but the quest is more about knowledge than action, at its heart. It's about making a magical object, in a context where magic isn't easy, isn't a shortcut as it can be in other fantasy works. It's a long slow process, like any other way to make something, and it requires sacrifices and effort. It's an interesting take on it.

I wasn't overwhelmingly fond of the portrayal of women -- Cornelia, Phyllis and Laura seemed pretty nebulous, and the love aspect was just flung in there -- but The Phoenix and the Mirror was something a little different to my usual fare. It just wasn't as good as I'd hoped.

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is beautifully written with erudition that drips from the pages: Davidson went _all_ the way back to Classical sources and carved his own magical tradition from it that mixes engineering process and sympathetic magic and spiritualism. The creation of the speculum is magnificently extravagant both in terms of the process and of the sheer page count devoted to this McGuffin.

The speculum on one hand is essential--it is in the title, of course, and Virgil is compelled to its creation by outside forces--but on the other is irrelevant, and this is where the plot of the story crosses with the style of its telling and the characters that are supposed to be driving all of this. Clemens hands out the big reveal midway through but this is glossed over as the book marches through the inevitable production of the speculum, which is an end in itself, and its existence is justified in a Sherlock Holmes denouement that Virgil trots out so that the book can end.

The entire trick of Phyllis/Laura by nature leaves the princess off-scene but even afterwards there's this lip-service romance with Virgil that feels entirely unjustified: what quality attracted him to the rescued woman? The impression I get was of her being an empty vessel and pawn.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

All book reviews are personal. If they're not, then they're not really reviews, but rather synopses. Screw that. If I'm going to review a book, I'm going to write about what it meant to me, how I reacted to it. Otherwise I'm wasting my time and the reader's. Anyway, digression aside, I picked this one back up on a whim, as a long absent friend. First time in close to twenty years. Which is probably why I'd forgotten how much I love it. Davidson starts with the premise that all of the tales told of the poet Virgil are true, of how he was a magician and sorcerer. He then constructs a fictional Roman empire around him, defined and bordered by the legends and tales of the empire and later times. What remains is history, but blurred, fuzzy in places. As such, it's one of those books to be read, not so much for the plot, as for the ride, following along as Vergil travels the Mediterranean, gathering materials to construct a virgin speculum, a bronze mirror to be used for divination. It's interesting how much this book had an unconscious influence on the way I think about story. I've got a project I'm working on (as I tend to have) and the echoes of world-building from this book are definitely present in the way I think of my sort of real world past, the way I try to meld history and story. Good stuff. Recommended.

[Alex Sarll]

You know how in a mediaeval painting of a classical scene, the Rome or Jerusalem depicted isn't the past we now picture, but a precursor of the artist's own age? That's where this intriguing oddity is set, a world in which there can be such a personage as the Doge of Sparta or - in the lead - Vergil Magus. The Roman poet was apparently thought an alchemist by mediaevals, and so he appears here, engaged in a great and complex work which - as Adam Roberts' introduction notes - can be seen as a representation of the novelist's own endeavour. The alchemical work, though, can be spoiled by the slightest and most marginal imperfection - something which is mercifully not true of a book, where the clumsy editorial slips and inappropriate clockpunk cover of this edition cannot outweigh Davidson's playful erudition and lambent prose.
(Perhaps it isn't quite antiquity as mediaevals saw it, because some legends - not least christianity itself - seem more bent out of shape than even a village idiot would render them. But if you try too rigidly to define exactly what games Avram Davidson is playing, you'll generally come a cropper. He's pretty much the writer Umberto Eco believes himself to be)

[Paul Williams · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Phoenix and the Mirror takes advantage of a tradition from medieval and Renaissance Europe wherein the Roman poet, Virgil, had ascribed to him a great many feats of wizardry and alchemy rather than poetry and statecraft. In this story, Vergil Magus gets shanghaied by a sorcerous queen to produce a magic mirror that will, when first looked into, will give her a glimpse of where her abducted daughter is. Vergil thus must navigate a naval blockade, coy political gaming, a cyclops, and other difficulties in his quest for raw copper ore and other materials, as well as to actually save the princess herself.

I'm not going to pretend that I truly *got* this book. Reading Davidson reminded me, weirdly, of reading Henry James (though more in kind than in magnitude--James is far more artfully dense). I would read the paragraphs and find myself incapable of making much sense of the sentences. I suspect this is a result of my ADHD and probably says a lot about how unusual Davidson's approach to plotting is.

That being said, I did understand the general story and there's a lot to praise about this book. Published in 1966, it follows Lord of the Rings and Narnia, but precedes Earthsea and the majority of American fantasy. This allows Davidson to avoid a lot of tropes that had not yet been codified, instead relying upon mythology and medieval mysticism to buttress his novel. The fantastical elements are derived from the mythic time when gods and heroes walked the earth. One of the most impressive moments is when Vergil and his assistant, Clemens, are constructing the mirror. Davidson dips into the metaphysics of Dante (which is fitting in a novel that focuses on Vergil), wherein the Universe is understandable and things like myth, archetypes, cultural symbols, and the sort are actually variations on the same religious cosmological themes, which can be decoded and recoded to produce magical effects. That parts pretty cool.

However, the writing style seemed to me to flatten the characters and the action. This isn't necessarily a bad thing to do, but it did impede my comprehension.

What was a bad thing to do was the depiction of women. I can't remember the last time a female character felt so completely like an object--she says nothing when Vergil rescues her and has zero opinions about how he goes about saving her. When another trap is sprung and she faces even greater peril, she is completely silent while the men banter about her fate. Readers were not as likely to speak up about these things at the time, and I don't think Davidson was malicious about this, but that doesn't change the fact that it really hobbled my enjoyment in the last 10% of the book.

Also, anyone else get some Sam Spade vibes from Vergil? There are so many moments when the book reminded me of The Maltese Falcon and other detective stories (structurally speaking), which was interesting, but I don't know if Davidson leaned into it enough.

I should reread this book someday. Not any time soon, but someday when I have more time and energy to go slowly and really dig into the text.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the Middle Ages, it was thought that the poet Vergil was also a magician. Davidson takes this medieval belief as his jumping-off point and creates a Vergil who truly is a mage, in a fantastical alternate ancient world, full of sorcery, erudition, mysticism, and alchemy, where Vergil must construct a magical mirror and defeat the demonic powers which are after him. This is the first Davidson I've read, and I loved his language; this is the first paragraph of Chapter Three:

"Westward into the sea the last rose strokes of sunset painted the sky. Smoke of wood and charcoal drifted up to Vergil leaning over the parapet on his roof. Fish and squid, lentil and turnip, bread and oil and garlic, and a little meat -- Naples was having its supper before retiring for the night; though few in Naples would have all of these for supper. A few horses still thumped their way down the street below, and a single heavy cart rumbled. Horses and cart were probably heading for the great stable at the foot of the hill. Women spoke in tired voices, filling their amphoras at the Fountain of Cleo. A baby cried somewhere, the sounds of its wailing thin upon the cool air. The lights of tiny oil lamps flickered like fireflies, and here and there the mouth of a brazier glowed, redly and briefly, as someone fanned the embers or blew upon them through a wooden tube. From the Bay came the faint thump-thump of a galley bailiff beating out the rhythm for the rowers as the ship put into port."

The whole book is full of this kind of wonderful word painting. I hope I run across the other book in the series, Vergil in Averno, soon.

[Xenophon Hendrix · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book way more than I did like it. Among connoisseurs of fantastic literature, The Phoenix and the Mirror by Avram Davidson has the reputation of a neglected classic. I was primed to be impressed.

Unfortunately, I found myself slightly bored through most of the book. I hypothesize that the problem is the detached point of view of most of the narrative. The reader is seldom allowed to see anything from the interior viewpoint of the protagonist, Vergil Magus. We, the readers, aren't allowed to know what the great wizard cares about, so we don't know what we should care about.

Also, a few incidents in the book happen without adequate explanation. Something happens, and the reader is left wondering just what it was. Only later is it explained. Note that these aren't mysteries that are supposed to be left unexplained until the end; these are merely confusing events that could have been rendered much less confusing with an introductory sentence.

Finally, among the faults, there are two coincidences essential to the plot that are never explained. This is simply bad plotting. An author is allowed one big coincidence to get the story rolling, but leaving any other unexplained is unsatisfying to the reader.

The book isn't all bad. The creation of the magic mirror referred to in the title is a good scene. So are a couple of encounters with legendary creatures. The author displays impressive erudition about myths, legends, and mysticism, and Davidson is noted for his style and precise diction.

I just wish the book were as good as its reputation.

[Avram Davidson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just read “The Phoenix and the Mirror” for the third time. The first time I struggled to understand it. To me it was like reading Shakespeare for the first time. The second time I almost grasped it. This third time, I have fallen in love with it. What an epic tale. I now understand when people say only Avram Davidson could have written it! Incredible!!

[fonz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una estupenda novela fantástica de intriga que me parece increíble que no se haya traducido aún al castellano, hubiera quedado fenomenal en Alamut, entre el Wallace Breem de "El enviado de Roma" y "El puente de pájaros" de Barry Hughart, con unas gotas de la erudición juguetona de un Joan Perucho, por ejemplo.

Los puntos fuertes de la novela son la fenomenal ambientación y cómo juega con los elementos fantásticos de un Imperio Romano imaginado por los eruditos y alquimistas de la Edad Media, ejemplo es esa construcción del espejo, que me ha hecho muchísima gracia, entre la exaltación de la ética del trabajo manual y el ingenio humano, y la erudición alquímica y mágica medieval. El tramo final en el desierto y el regreso a Nápoles, que presenta una visión más amplia del universo imaginado por Davidson es muy potente y sugestiva también. Quizá los mecanismos del argumento, por imitación de la tradición narrativa medieval o por otra razón, no sean nada del otro jueves, pero hay muchas cosas con las que maravillarse en esta novela y la flojera argumental no me ha molestado en absoluto.

[Rich · Rating 3 out of 5]

Virgil (Vergil) as a Renaissance sorceror. Mixed feelings on this one. The writing was rather beautiful and the world felt different to any I'd read before. Shades of Jack Vance or Gene Wolfe. Unfortunately the plot was a bit meandering (probably intentionally) and the female characters were jarring in their lack of any depth or personality.

[Ignacio · Rating 4 out of 5]

La lectura de esta novela como una historia de peripecia, valorada en función de las cosas que suceden, lo más probable es que conduzca a la frustración; globalmente, más allá de sus cincuenta últimas páginas, apenas cuenta mucho. Sin embargo la recreación de la Roma de Augusto tal y como podría verse desde la Baja Edad Media, mágica, mitológica, es deslumbrante. Más si se aprecia la imaginación de Davidson a la hora de describir las calles de Nápoles, los cultos a los dioses, un Sahara mítico relleno de extrañas criaturas... y su manejo del lenguaje para describirlo, arcaico, barroco. Después hay cosas que no se entienden mucho, como las treinta páginas dedicadas a describir la construcción de un espejo, pero si se ha entrado en el juego ya no se abandona.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this elaboration of legends associated with the mediaeval construct of the Roman poet Vergil to be fascinating. It would have been better, however, had I known much about Vergil beforehand.

[Adam McPhee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Definitely helped improve my vocabulary.

[William Leight · Rating 2 out of 5]

The obvious reference point here is John M. Ford’s “The Dragon Waiting”, another alternate-history novel with lots of magic and style to make up for occasional weaknesses of plot and character. However, Davidson’s choice of setting, the ancient world as described by writers of medieval romances (who made it resemble the medieval world to a considerable extent), is somewhat more recherche than Ford’s, and that’s more or less the problem with the book: Davidson gambles that he can get by almost entirely on setting and style, plot and character be damned, and loses badly. Davidson has clearly done a ton of research in order to put together a version of the ancient Roman world in which Vergil (I’m following Davidson’s spelling here, though the author of the Aeneid is usually given as Virgil with two i’s) is a mage living in Naples, and he is more than happy to show off what he’s learned. (For instance, there’s a scene in which Vergil is at a hunt and Davidson introduces a discussion of medieval hunting that screams “look at all the books I’ve read!”: T.H. White did it much better, and far more subtly, in “The Sword in the Stone”.) Unfortunately, he has not spent the same amount of time putting together a reasonable plot. Take the titular mirror: it has to be made out of brass that Vergil forges himself, so he needs to get some copper and some tin. Copper requires a difficult trip to Cyprus, full of adventure and danger, and tin comes from Britain, even further away, so one expects even more adventures as Vergil obtains some of it, but instead some tin just shows up one day: it’s a bit jarring, really. Then, once the mirror is constructed, accomplishing a goal that Vergil has spent the entire first two-thirds of the book striving towards, it is used once, giving an unclear result, and then never referred to again. These kinds of ridiculous plot shenanigans might be forgivable if we cared about the characters, but, frankly, we don’t. Vergil never makes much of an impression, his buddy Clemens is nothing more than (in theory, if, alas, not always in practice) a certain amount of comic relief, Cordelia is not especially interesting as a villain, the Ruddy Man manages to be enigmatic and mysterious without being especially intriguing, the love interest would probably be more interesting if she were a cardboard cutout, and that’s really about it. There’s one more commonality between Davidson and Ford: they are both writers’ writers, whose biggest fans seem to be other writers. When it comes to Davidson, at least, I just can’t figure out why this is the case.

[Tabitha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such a truly strange book. The story is fantastical and exotic, however, it sometimes reads like a textbook in alchemy and occultism. The narrative is sometimes broken by characters' thoughts and memories and lectures in magic to the point where the reader (me), is confused to where you are in the story and what you just read has to do with anything. Also, some of the grammatical structure is odd. I feel like I didn't even really understand what was going on until the end, but once I understood I found it a fun story. I just wish it had been written more straight forward. I could see it in my head as I was reading as a film or show, so there's definitely good material here. Perhaps I'm just not advanced enough to wrap my head around the narrative style.

[Allyson Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is on my Did Not Finish shelf. "The Phoenix and the Mirror" starts out terrific, with the protagonist wandering in a maze pursued by a pack of manticores. The reader expects that the world-building associated with this fantastic beginning will be meticulous and fascinating, but soon after the protagonist, Vergil [spoiler ahead!] escapes the maze, the whole thing dissolves into a phantasmagoria of description that just doesn't let up. It's exhausting. And when I discovered that the other two books in the "Vergil Magnus" series by this well-regarded author are prequels, I just skipped ahead, read the last chapter, and DONE!

[Ronald Koltnow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Among the most erudite and complex fantasy novels. Set in a world something like ours, with a history and mythology similar to ours, this tells the tale of Vergil. Not Vergil the poet as we know him but Vergil the Magus, as he came to be known in the Middle Ages. Vergil is coerced into building a virgin mirror that will help locate the missing daughter of a powerful Queen. Powerful queens are rarely to be trusted in tales like these. His travels take him around the Mediterranean and into the deserts of Libya. His real quest is for the truth.

[Randal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took me a long time to get into this one. It was a close battle between loving the many classical and literary references and getting slogged down by the overwhelming detail (mostly of how to cast a "virgin" brass mirror. At some point the craft of writing about the craftsmanship won out, and I enjoyed the book. Like nothing else I've read, recently at any rate.

Didn't love the ending (old man gets young woman). Three-plus stars.

Hard to recommend ... fans of very slow, literary fantasy, perhaps?

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

On top of all its other myriad pleasures, I was not expecting this book to be such goshwow *fun*. Sometimes a bit opaque as to exactly what happened or why, bur enough can be gleaned from context that that doesn’t detract/distract too much. Narratively a bit spiky, but that’s also one more reason why it’s interesting. This like one long blessed snort from the nitrous bottle of Story, chased with some gleeful toots of erudite unhistory. I just loved it, warts and all.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terry Carr edited a series of books in the late Sixties that to this day remain exemplars of their form. Avram Davidson was idiosyncratic among idiosyncratics and produced some of the most unique and intelligent works of the genre. This one...it would be useful to have a good knowledge of the actual Virgil and of the varieties of myths and cosmogonies current at the time, but not essential. This one is quite a yarn.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very interesting read.

We follow the poet Virgil (yes, the one you are thinking of), as he is tasked by his Queen to discover and create a magic mirror for her. We follow him on his adventures to find the perfect ingredients to to fulfil his duty.

There is a great twist at the end, and an overall fun read. Dense, but short.

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Imagine if the poet Virgil was actually Sherlock Holmes and performed magic.
Sound interesting to you?
As an added bonus you get some peak Davidson style writing here as well.
Just a little bit boring in some parts.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the opening page of this book from 1966:
"He had long ago lost his way in this vast, vaulted labyrinth, and the manticores, seeming to sense this, began to draw closer. He could smell the strong, bitter stink of them; could hear the guttural, gobbling noises which passed for speech among them."

The opening might make you think this is a book full of action but this is not the case. The majority of the book is commerce and politics in a fantasy Roman empire, acquiring materials to make a magic mirror. The remainder is a rescue with a quite satisfying conclusion to the mysteries of the book. It just wasn't what I thought I'd be reading from that opening page.

[Molly]

I don't know what to say about this book. I was completely unprepared for a lot of it and really not sure if I'd call the ending satisfying. there were a number of passages I really enjoyed however. Maybe Virgil's real spouse was Clemens all along.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Given that sci fi authors back in 60s and 70s produced a lot of works alongside all of them being great prose writers eventually if you read enough of their works you’re going to find a work operating at a higher level. Avram is no exception. I easily can see why Gollancz reprinted this.

[7thTrooper · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nej, inget för mig.

[Stuart Lutzenhiser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Got this at a library remainder sale. A fantastical tale of Ancient Rome and a wizard who helps the Queen of Naples find her daughter via a mirror. Really classic tale