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= A_Voyage_to_Arcturus =
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Introduction
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'A Voyage to Arcturus' is a novel by the Scottish writer David
Lindsay, first published in 1920. An interstellar voyage is the
framework for a narrative of a journey through fantastic landscapes.
The story is set at Tormance, an imaginary planet orbiting Arcturus,
which in the novel is a binary star system, consisting of the stars
Branchspell and Alppain. The lands through which the characters travel
represent philosophical systems or states of mind as the main
character, Maskull, searches for the meaning of life. The book
combines fantasy, philosophy, and science fiction in an exploration of
the nature of good and evil and their relationship with existence.
Described by critic, novelist, and philosopher Colin Wilson as the
"greatest novel of the twentieth century", it was a central influence
on C. S. Lewis' 'Space Trilogy', and through him on J. R. R. Tolkien,
who said he read the book "with avidity". Clive Barker called it "a
masterpiece" and "an extraordinary work ... quite magnificent".
The book sold poorly during Lindsay's lifetime, but was republished in
1946 and many times thereafter. It has been translated into at least
six languages. Critics such as the novelist Michael Moorcock have
noted that the book is unusual, but that it has been highly
influential with its qualities of "commitment to the Absolute" and
"God-questioning genius".
Background
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David Lindsay was born in 1876. His father was a Scottish Calvinist
and his mother English. He was brought up partly in London and partly
in Jedburgh in the Scottish borders. He enjoyed reading novels by
Walter Scott, Jules Verne, Rider Haggard and Robert Louis Stevenson.
He learnt German to read the philosophical work of Schopenhauer and
Nietzsche. He served in the army in the First World War, being called
up at age 38. He married in 1916. After the war ended in 1918, he
moved to Cornwall with his wife to write. Lindsay told his friend E.
H. Visiak that his greatest influence was the work of George
MacDonald.
Synopsis
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Tormance is a planet orbiting the double star Arcturus, consisting of
Branchspell, a large yellow sunlike star, and Alppain, a smaller blue
star 100 light years from Earth. The light of the second sun, Alppain,
is to the north; southern countries are illuminated only by
Branchspell. Maskull, longing for adventures, accepts an invitation
from Krag, an acquaintance of his friend Nightspore, to travel to
Tormance after a séance. The three travel to an abandoned observatory
at Starkness in Scotland, where there is a tower with Tormance's heavy
gravity; climbing it is difficult. Maskull learns he will not return
from the voyage. They set off in a "torpedo of crystal" from the top
of the tower, propelled by Arcturian "back rays".
Maskull awakens to find himself alone in a desert on Tormance; his
body has grown a tentacle, or magn, from his heart, and an organ
called a breve. A woman, Joiwind, exchanges blood with him to allow
him to survive on Tormance; she tells him that Surtur created
everything. She worships Surtur. Her husband Panawe suggests that
Maskull may have stolen something from the Maker of the universe, to
ennoble his fellow creatures. Maskull travels to the Lusion Plain,
where he meets Surtur. Surtur asserts the beauty of his world, claims
Maskull is there to serve him, and disappears. Maskull meets a woman,
Oceaxe, from Ifdawn, who has a third arm in place of her magn. She is
rude, but shows interest in having him as lover, and gives him a red
stone to convert his magn into a third arm. Maskull wakes to find his
magn transformed into a third arm, which causes lust for what is
touched, and his breve changed to an eyelike sorb which allows
dominance over the will of others. He travels through Ifdawn with
Oceaxe; she wants him to kill one of her husbands, Crimtyphon, and
take his place. Maskull is revolted at the idea, but kills Crimtyphon
when he sees him using his will to force a man into becoming a tree.
Tydomin, another wife of Crimtyphon's, uses her will to force Oceaxe
to commit suicide by walking off a cliff; she persuades Maskull to
come to her home in Disscourn, where she will take possession of his
body. On the way they find Joiwind's brother Digrung who says he will
tell Joiwind everything about Maskull's behavior on Tormance; to
prevent this, and encouraged by Tydomin, Maskull absorbs Digrung,
leaving his empty body behind. At Tydomin's cave, Maskull goes out of
his body to become the apparition that appeared at the seance where he
met Krag. He awakens free of her mental power.
Maskull takes Tydomin to Sant, to kill her. On the way they meet
Spadevil, who proposes to reform Sant by amending Hator's teaching
with the notion of duty. He turns Maskull and Tydomin into his
disciples by modifying their sorbs into twin membranes called probes.
Catice, the guardian of Hator's doctrine in Sant, and who has only one
probe, damages one of Maskull's to test Spadevil's arguments. Maskull
accepts Hator's ideas and kills Spadevil and Tydomin. Catice sends
Maskull away to the Wombflash Forest, in search of Muspel, their home.
Maskull awakes in the dense forest with a third eye as his only
foreign organ, hears and follows a drumbeat, and meets Dreamsinter,
who tells him that it was Nightspore whom Surtur brought to Tormance
and that he, Maskull, is wanted to steal Muspel-light. Maskull travels
to the shore of the Sinking Sea, from which Swaylone's Island can be
seen. There he meets Polecrab, a fisherman, who is married to
Gleameil. Maskull goes to Swaylone's Island, where Earthrid plays a
musical instrument called Irontick by night; no one who hears it ever
returns. Maskull is accompanied by Gleameil, who has left her family.
Attracted by the music, she dies. Maskull, after entering a trance,
forces Earthrid to let him play the instrument, whereupon Earthrid
dies and Irontick is destroyed. Maskull crosses the sea by manoeuvring
a many-eyed tree and reaches Matterplay, where many life-forms
materialise alongside a magical creek and vanish before his eyes. He
goes upstream and meets Leehallfae, an immensely old being of a third
sex, who seeks the underground country of Threal where the god Faceny
may dwell. They reach Threal through a cave. Leehallfae falls ill and
dies. Corpang appears and says this is because Threal is not Faceny's
world, but the creator of the world of feeling, Thire's. Corpang
follows Maskull to Lichstorm, where they again hear drumbeats.
Maskull and Corpang meet Haunte, a hunter who travels in a boat that
flies thanks to masculine stones which repel earth's femininity.
Maskull destroys the masculine rocks which protected Haunte from
Sullenbode's femininity, and all three journey to her cave.
Sullenbode, a faceless woman, kills Haunte as they kiss. Maskull and
Sullenbode desire each other. Maskull, Sullenbode and Corpang set off.
Corpang goes eagerly ahead but Maskull pauses, causing Sullenbode to
die. Maskull, upon waking, discovers Krag again, and then Gangnet.
They travel together to the ocean and take to the sea on a raft. When
the sun Alppain rises, Maskull sees in a vision Krag causing the
drumbeat by beating his heart, and Gangnet, who is Surtur, dying in
torment enveloped by Muspel-fire. Maskull learns that he is in fact
Nightspore himself, and dies. Krag tells Nightspore he is Surtur,
known on Earth as pain; and teaches him about the origin of the
Universe.
Publication history
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Methuen agreed to publish 'A Voyage to Arcturus', but only if Lindsay
agreed to cut 15,000 words, which he did. These passages are assumed
lost forever. Methuen also insisted on a change of title, from
Lindsay's original ('Nightspore in Tormance'), as it was considered
too obscure. Of an original press run of 1430 copies, no more than 596
were sold in total. The novel was made widely available in paperback
form when published as one of the precursor volumes to the Ballantine
Adult Fantasy series in 1968, featuring a cover by the illustrator Bob
Pepper.
Editions of 'A Voyage to Arcturus' have been published in 1920
(Methuen), 1946 (Gollancz), 1963 (Gollancz, Macmillan, Ballantine),
1968 (Gollancz, Ballantine),1971 (Gollancz), 1972, 1973, 1974
(Ballantine), 1978 (Gollancz), 1992 (Canongate), 2002 (University of
Nebraska Press), and later by several other publishers. It has been
translated into at least six languages.
Analysis
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Lindsay's choice of title (and therefore the setting in Arcturus) may
have been influenced by the nonfictional 'A Voyage to the Arctic in
the Whaler Aurora' (1911), a book by his namesake, David Moore Lindsay
about the ship SY 'Aurora'. The scholar Kathryn Hume writes that with
the name of the planet, Tormance, and its sun, Alppain, Lindsay "is
cosmically punning on the yogic tenet that all existence, all
consciousness, is pain". The historian Shimon de Valencia states that
the names "Surtur" and "Muspel" are taken from Surtr, the lord of
Múspellsheimr (the world of fire) in Norse mythology.
The novel is recognised for its strangeness. Tormance's features
include its alien sea, with water so dense that it can be walked on.
Gnawl water is sufficient food to sustain life on its own. The local
spectrum includes two primary colours unknown on Earth, 'ulfire' and
'jale', and a third colour, 'dolm', said to be compounded of ulfire
and blue. The sexuality of the Tormance species is ambiguous; Lindsay
coined a new gender-neutral pronoun series, ' for the phaen, who are
humanoid, but formed of air.
Hume writes that the book evidently has a deeper meaning, which may be
strictly allegorical or more broadly "visionary" like the work of
William Blake; and that this has both attracted a cult following, and
prevented the book from reaching a wider audience. Hume describes the
planet of Arcturus, far from being a standard science fiction setting,
as having a threefold function: the literal setting for a "quest
romance"; the psychological frame, "a projection of the faculties of
the mind"; and an allegorical 'paysage moralisé', like the moralised
landscapes of 'Pilgrim's Progress' or 'Piers Plowman'.
Hume contrasts 'A Voyage to Arcturus' with Christian allegory, which,
she writes, makes its direction and plan clear to the reader. She
gives as one example the seven circles of Dante's 14th century
'Inferno', which are organised by the seven deadly sins. She notes,
too, that readers readily see in Maskull's steady journey through many
challenges a reflection of John Bunyan's 'The Pilgrim's Progress'
(1678) in which Pilgrim journeys continuously through the trials of
the world towards salvation. Lindsay's "original allegory" has its own
framework, which is the hierarchy of experiences on the road to
enlightenment, from Pleasure to Pain, Love, Nothing, and finally
Something. This structure is compounded by having the protagonist
examine the world in terms of the dyad of I and not-I, and the triad
of "material creation, relation, and religious feeling"; in the end,
Maskull transcends personality for dualism on both the macrocosmic and
the microcosmic scales.
Reception
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The critic and philosopher Colin Wilson described 'A Voyage to
Arcturus' as the "greatest novel of the twentieth century". The
playwright and novelist Clive Barker stated that "'A Voyage to
Arcturus' is a masterpiece", calling it "an extraordinary work ...
quite magnificent." The fantasy author Philip Pullman named it for
'The Guardian' as the book he thought was most underrated.
Reviewing the book in 2002, the novelist Michael Moorcock asserted
that "Few English novels have been as eccentric or, ultimately, as
influential". He noted that Alan Moore, introducing the 2002 edition,
had compared the book to John Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress' (1678) and
Arthur Machen's 'The Great God Pan' (1890), but that it nevertheless
stood "as one of the great originals". In Moorcock's view, although
the character Maskull seems to be commanded to do whatever is needed
to save his soul, in a kind of "Nietzschean 'Pilgrim's Progress'",
Lindsay's writing does not fall into fascism. Like Hitler, Moorcock
argued, Lindsay was traumatised by the trench fighting of the First
World War, but the "astonishing and dramatic ambiguity of the novel's
resolution" makes the novel the antithesis of Hitler's "visionary
brutalism". Moorcock noted that while the book had influenced C. S.
Lewis's science fiction trilogy, Lewis had "refused Lindsay's
commitment to the Absolute and lacked his God-questioning genius, the
very qualities which give this strange book its compelling, almost
mesmerising influence."
Also in 2002, Steven H. Silver, criticising 'A Voyage to Arcturus' on
'SF Site', observed that for a novel it has little plot or
characterisation, and furthermore that it gives no motives for the
actions taken by its characters. In his view, the book's strength lay
in its "philosophical musings" on humanity after the First World War.
Silver compared the book not with later science fiction but with the
earlier authors H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, commenting however that
Lindsay had "neither author's prose skills." He suggested that Lindsay
was combining philosophy with an adventure tale in the manner of Edgar
Rice Burroughs.
Impact
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The novel was a central influence on C. S. Lewis's 1938-1945 'Space
Trilogy'; he called 'A Voyage to Arcturus' "shattering, intolerable,
and irresistible". Lewis also mentioned the "sorbing" (aggressive
absorption of another's personality into one's own, fatal to the other
person) as an influence on his 1942 book 'The Screwtape Letters'.
Lewis in turn recommended the book to J. R. R. Tolkien, who said he
read it "with avidity", finding it more powerful, more mythical, but
less of a story than Lewis's 'Out of the Silent Planet'; he commented
that "no one could read it merely as a thriller and without interest
in philosophy[,] religion[,] and morals". Tolkien, who used frame
stories in his novels, did not approve of the frame story machinery,
the back-rays and the crystal torpedo ship, that Lindsay had used; in
his unfinished novel 'The Notion Club Papers', Tolkien makes one of
the protagonists, Guildford, criticise those kinds of "contraptions".
In 1984, the composer John Ogdon wrote an oratorio entitled 'A Voyage
to Arcturus', based on Lindsay's novel and biblical quotations.
Ogdon's biographer, Charles Beauclerk, notes that Lindsay was also a
composer, and that the novel discusses the nature and meaning of
music. In Beauclerk's view, Ogdon saw Lindsay's novel as a religious
work, where for instance the wild three-eyed, three-armed woman Oceaxe
becomes Oceania, described in the Bible's Book of Revelation chapter
12 as "a woman cloth'd with the sun, and the moon under her feet".
Adaptations
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The BBC Third Programme presented a radio dramatisation of the novel
in 1956. Critic Harold Bloom, in his only attempt at fiction writing,
wrote a sequel to this novel, entitled 'The Flight to Lucifer'. Bloom
has since critiqued the book as a poor continuation of the narrative.
William J. Holloway, then a student at Antioch College in Yellow
Springs, Ohio, created a 71-minute film adaptation of the novel in
1970. The film, unavailable for many years, was independently
restored, re-edited and colour-enhanced, to be redistributed on DVD-R
in 2005.
In 1985, a three-hour play by David Wolpe based on the novel was
staged in Los Angeles.
Paul Corfield Godfrey wrote an operatic setting based on the novel to
a libretto by Richard Charles Rose; it was performed at the Sherman
Theatre Cardiff in 1983. The jazz composer Ron Thomas recorded a
concept album inspired by the novel in 2001 entitled 'Scenes from A
Voyage to Arcturus'. The Ukrainian house producer Vakula (Mikhaylo
Vityk) released an imaginary soundtrack called 'A Voyage To Arcturus'
as a triple LP in 2015.
A musical based on the novel was written by Phil Moore and performed
in 2019 at the Peninsula Theatre, Woy Woy, Australia. This production
was filmed and is available on some streaming platforms.
See also
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* 1920 in science fiction
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