And see ye na yon bonny road,
That winds about the ferny brae?
That is the way to fair Elfland,
Where you and I this night maun gae.
But, Thomas, ye maun hauld your tongue,
Whatever you may hear or see;
For if ye speak word in Elfin land,
Ye’ll ne’er win back to your ain countrie!”
Though occasionally a rhymer and often a doubter, my name is not Thomas.
But I did go to Elfinland. And I never won back to my own country. (Indeed in latter years I have come to suspect that I no longer know the way back: my country has become imaginary.)
You must judge for yourselves whether I have kept silence.
Elfinland and its kissing cousins Utopia and Dystopia are where I found politics. Of course they are not the only places, just as there is no one beginning. How could they have been? As a child my life stood frozen before the witching hour — whether morning or dusk, it was always three minutes to midnight. In such circumstances, one finds politics, despair, or both.
One of the first places I found in Elfinland was the vast expanse of Middle Earth. A traveller embarks on a dangerous, hopeless journey, to renounce something that he can neither live with nor live without. His journey is long and wearisome, and in the end he fails in intent and would also have failed in deed — except that earlier on, he’d once managed to get something right. And by God, Tolkien sticks to his guns. When push comes to shove, Frodo does not survive the Ring and its loss. Means and ends matter enormously in Middle-Earth — and despite its processions of kings and nobles, the end sought is that of Empire. Finally, among other things, it’s a powerful love story — and I don’t just mean Aragorn and Arwen. Why do you think it hurts so when Sam marries Elanor and Frodo goes West?
Now let us take ship with C. J. Cherryh, out towards the Beyond, to the claustrophobic confines of Downbelow Station embroiled in war. A closed system, lurching from one crisis to the next and never ever quite recovering its footing. Union on one side, Mazziani’s ‘Company Fleet’ on the other: Downbelow Station stuck in the middle. And Signy Mallory of Norway — callous, calculating and morally compromised to the hilt, yet in the end unable to abandon principle entirely, unable not to play the traitor.
If we venture further afield, light aeons past Union space, perhaps we would find ourselves on the fringes of the (anarchic? socialist?) Culture, Iain M. Bank’s licentiously sprawling, permissive, promiscuous and at times whimsical civilisation. Depending on where you stand, its perfection is either profoundly Utopian or Dystopian. Either set after the beginning of history (in the Marxist sense) or long beyond its demise. For myself, I suspect the former, but can one believe its account of itself? Has not the pen been much in the Culture’s hand?
Fall through two mirrors backwards and you might find yourself in Neveryon: a world that is a reflection, but then emphatically not a reflection of our pasts and presents. Although I had discovered Samuel Delany’s short stories (and who could argue with a title like “We in some strange power’s employ move on a vigorous line”) and essays (read his introduction to Neil Gaiman’s A Game of You) some time ago, it was not until last year that I discovered Neveryona.
As Nanette would say, go and read the whole thing.
One finds many things in Elfinland and its kin, but contrary to popular report, escape is not among them.
And as for winning back to your own country? Journey long enough: it will no longer be your own.
