The King of Elfland's Daughter (1924)

I first heard about The King of Elfland's Daughter during a group read earlier this year. Then again when I read Neil Gaiman's A View from the Cheap Seats. So I figured it was probably time to read this classic fantasy.

I must confess to being underwhelmed. Certainly its influence is undeniable, though I wonder about entertainment value in today's world. Its lavish language and low-key action don't seem to jive with the average mainstream reader of the 21st century.

Also, I found Lirazel annoying; she kept changing her mind with really no regard for how the consequences of her choices affected the lives of everyone else. That selfishness could be attributed to young love / first love but I just couldn't get behind the quests because I disliked her. Mother Witch I liked; her refusal to help the men of Earth when they decided they didn't want the magic they at first demanded was quite satisfying. I loved the parallel worlds of Erl and Elfland, especially how Time was different in each place. My favorite thing about the whole story was the enchanted trees that protected Elfland.

All in all, happy to mark done a book considered a must-read fantasy classic. Will I read it again anytime soon? Not likely.

3 stars

"Then out of the hush rose little murmurs of yearning, little sounds as of longing for things that no songs can say, sounds like the voices of tears if each little salt drop could live, and be given a voice to tell of the ways of grief. Then all these little rumours danced gravely into a melody that the master of Elfland called up with his magical hand."

"...the Princess Lirazel with that faint gleam on her face that shone from a hidden smile; for she secretly smiled forever at the power of her great beauty."

"Go hence. To your village go. And you that sought for magic in your youth but desire it not in your age, know that there is a blindness of spirit which comes from age, more black than the blindness of eye, making a darkness about you across which nothing may be seen, or felt, or known, or in any way apprehended. And no voice out of that darkness shall conjure me to grant a spell against magic. Hence!" ( )

Lord Dunsany wrote true fantasy, the sort that had the ability to evoke genuine awe and inspire in the reader a desire for something beyond the trammels of the mundane and the everyday world. While his short stories are perhaps the pinnacle of his craft (and arguably the pinnacle of all fantastic fiction) this rare novel is an absolute gem, and a high watermark of fantastic fiction. Through the course of two hundred odd pages, Dunsany weaves a tale of lost love and despair, a heartfelt yearning for a world and people that once experienced seem to slip forever from our grasp yet haunt our very beings until the day we die. It's also a sobering meditation on the necessity for both magic and the mundane in our lives (and a warning never to lose touch with our humanity in the search for wonder) as well as a paean to life in all its myriad complexities.
( )

Poetical? Yes. In a class with Tolkein? Uhm, no. Admired by Neil Gaiman? Apparently, yes. Admired by me? No. This story is light on character development, light on plot, pretty much humorless, with poor parenting choices, and loads of slaughtered beasts, including a ghastly unicorn hunt which nearly made me put the book down (yep, definitely judging here - I would make a terrible anthropologist). It reminds me of the Bible. No, seriously. For the aforementioned reasons but also, I'd say 90% of the sentences and paragraphs begin with "And," as in "And then when ..." "And the next day ..." "And there was ..." followed by phrases like "thus (such and such...)" and "for (such and such)." Some examples:

"And Alveric would not speak the words ... for no man, he foolishly thought, should compromise in matters touching on heathenesse."

"And to the land thus expectant, thus watchful ..."

The young person in this story is abandoned by both of his parents and goes feral, becoming a bloodthirsty hunter of, it seems, anything that wasn't his pack of hunting dogs. He killed animals, wore animals, ate animals, and dreamed of killing more animals. Special guy.

Luckily, it's short. But really, this could be a 20 page picture book for tykes and I'd get the very same message. Come to that, I don't have a clue what the message might be. Scratch that idea. ( )

The parliament of Erl tell their lord that they should wish to be ruled by a magic lord, so he sends his son Alveric to wed the titular princess. The eventual reign of the grandson illustrates the saying about being careful what you wish for.

The short novel combines typical fairytale motifs - such as the supernatural bride's difficulties fitting into human society - with Dunsany's scintillating language and motifs we recognize from his earlier short stories. The narrator occasionally steps in to wonder whether a shooting star fell to provide an omen or pursuant to some natural law; or to assert that the horn of a unicorn killed by one of the characters was the very same as that which in a later age was presented by the Pope as a gift to the King of France.

While it may not appeal to all fantasy fans - it's certainly rather different than most post-Tolkienian fantasy - I liked it a lot.

Dunsany also had a bit of fun with the names here - in particular, Alveric means "Elf King"! The place-name Erl recalls the Erlking.

Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter and Mirrlees's Lud-in-the-Mist present two faces of the same coin. If Mirrlees lends her prose a lyrical tone, Dunsany chooses to craft his epic poem in prose. And as well-suited to their separate tales are their varying characters and premises, both authors emphasise theme over plot.

Each novel concerns itself with choices attendant to the separate realms of faery and mankind, where these realms touch, and the attendant friction. The central motif in Mirrlees is that of an opposition between magic and reason, and a society too much driven by commercial calculus. The ending provides a compromise, without any promise of permanence. Dunsany focuses on the rule of time, an opposition between relentless change and life's underlying essence. All organic life is circumscribed in Erl: growth, decay, the entire biological and evolutionary process follow the dictates of time. Time brings change but threatens to strip society of its underlying character.

In the end, Dunsany's tale reinforces the ambiguity inherent to compromise between Faery and The Fields We Know: the King of Elfland uses the last Rune to allow Lirazel's return to Erl and reunion with her son Orion, yet any outcome remains unclear. Faery wonders are indeed come again to Erl, without it being wholly absorbed into Elfland. But the King of Elfland has foretold future "dubious years" which may overcome Elfland, and that Rune was Elfland's sole means of withstanding the power of "material things". The balance, it would seem, will soon enough be threatened once again.

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Dunsany could as easily named the novel after the Erl King's Son as the Elf King's daughter, or even for Orion, the child of Alveric and Lirazel.

Presumably Dunsany alludes to the Danish ballad "Elveskud", variously translated into German and thence into Romanticism: Johann Gottfried Herder's "Erlkönigs Tochter" ("The Erl-king's Daughter") in his collection of folk songs, Stimmen der Völker in Liedern (published 1778), and Goethe's "Der Erlkoenig", part of his 1782 Singspiel Die Fischerin. There is a history of mis-translation into English, where Erlkoenig should be Alder King but is often rendered Elf King. Dunsay would appear to play with this ambiguity, with the human kingdom of Erl set against the kingdom of Elfland.

As with Cabell, I struggle to recall specifics of plot and premise, regretting my inability to bring to mind character names or major scenes. But like the tales of Poictesme, the reward is in the prose, the remove, a certain acceptance of perennial wisdom. It will be just as rewarding to read again. ( )