The Dark Man, vol. 5, no. 1

The most recent issue of The Dark Man (vol. 5, no. 1), the peer-reviewed journal of Robert E. Howard studies is now available from Gavinicuss Books and Mike Chomko Books. This issue contains three articles from REH scholars Charles Hoffman, Jeffrey Kahan, and Philip Emery as well as several reviews by Hoffman and Morgan Holmes. This week I would like to take a closer look at the three main articles in this issue and add a few comments of my own.

The first article, “’The Shadow of the Beast’: A Closer Look,” by Hoffman discusses one of the more unseemly sides of Howard’s work in analyzing the theme of miscegenation in “Shadow” and some of the other “Piney Woods” horror stories. The subject of Howard’s views on “race” is certainly a touchy one and often evokes passionate responses on the part of his fans (see for example this 17-page thread from the official REH forums). Trying to decipher the personal views of someone who lived and died nearly a century before is always a dangerous game, even when one has access to numerous writings and personal correspondence. To paraphrase Mark Finn, Howard’s views on race were complicated. Whatever his personal views, it is undeniable that Howard, like many pulp writers (as well as creators from other media), did make use of a number of the often-demeaning racial stereotypes of his day.

In this article, Hoffman unflinchingly discusses one of these stereotypes — the sexually aggressive black male who lusts after white women — and looks at how Howard made use of it in certain of his stories in order to play on the fears of his readers. For Hoffman, the fear of miscegenation in white America was “at the root of horrific violence committed against blacks” (TDM 5.1, p. 8). This is something of a generalization, but there is probably a lot of truth there. Consider the incredible popularity of the film Birth of a Nation (1915), in which the ‘heroic’ Ku Klux Klan rides to the rescue of a helpless white woman in the clutches of a lustful black man, or the intense hatred directed at heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, who dared to cross the color-line not only in the ring, but also in the bedroom.

In “Shadow of the Beast” Howard plays on this fear, as Hoffman notes. The antagonist (initially at least) is Joe Cagle, a black man, described by Howard in uncomfortably stereotyped language as “ape-like” and “bestial,” who attacks a white woman. Hoffman points out other examples of similar characters in Howard’s works, such as Tope Braxton in “Black Hound of Death” and Senecoza in “The Hyena.” While the racial element is clearly present in Cagle’s description, Hoffman comments that Howard’s language goes beyond race and uses Cagle as a symbol for humanity’s primal bestial nature that lurks under the veneer of civilized man. This becomes evident, Hoffman believes, when Cagle is replaced in the story by an even more bestial threat — the ghost of an actual gorilla.

I would have liked to have seen Hoffman address “Man-Killer” Gomez from “The Spirit of Tom Molyneaux.” Here is another black man described as a throwback to a more primitive state of humanity, but with the sexual element and miscegenation theme nowhere present. Likewise, it would have been interesting to see a brief discussion of the relationship between Bran Mak Morn and Atla in “Worms of the Earth.” There the fear of miscegenation is at the root of Bran’s horror that comes with the realization of Atla’s true nature; but in this story, the gender roles are reversed as it is the female Atla who is the animalistic, sexual aggressor. But these other examples, while interesting, are really beyond the scope of this article, which focuses specifically on the “Piney Woods” yarns.

Differing with Rusty Burke, who has commented that Howard’s sometimes racially insensitive language rarely adds anything to the narrative, Hoffman convincingly shows that the stereotypes employed in “Shadow,” as distasteful as they are to modern sensibilities, are a crucial element in the story as they are meant to evoke the very real fears of miscegenation present in white America during the early 20th century.

"Marchers of Valhalla" by Ken Kelly for the 1977 paperback cover.

While Hoffman’s article offers some interesting food for thought, sadly the same can not be said for Jeffrey Kahan’s “’Marchers of Valhalla,’ Creation, and the Cult of Castration.” Kahan’s thesis, as far as I can tell, is that the James Allison yarn, “Marchers of Valhalla,” can be read as “Howard’s commentary on castration and fertility cults” (TDM 5.1, p. 37). The piece is rife with mistakes, inaccuracies, misunderstandings, and false etymologies as Kahan makes one leap of faulty logic after another. I know that Deuce Richardson will discuss many of these problems in a forthcoming review of Kahan’s article for the next issue of REH: Two-Gun Raconteur, so I will try to confine my remarks to a general commentary on the inherent flaws in Kahan’s methodology.

The greatest methodological faux pas of the article, in general terms, is that Kahan takes every mythological reference that Howard makes (and there are many in “Marchers”) and then looks for any way, however obscure, to tie that reference into the themes of fertility and castration, without taking into account at all the context in which Howard uses those mythological references. Indeed, early on Kahan seems to suggest that to limit his inquiry to “Howard’s use and understanding of myth” (p. 22) would risk creating a western Euro-centric bias in reading the mythological themes in “Marchers.”

Okay… But, I thought we were trying to identify a supposed theme that Howard incorporated into “Marchers”? Should we give consideration to what Howard might have actually meant when using certain names and themes that have their origin in mythology? Apparently not, according to Kahan, who simply cherry-picks obscure usages for the mythological references that Howard makes in “Marchers” in order to try and prove his thesis. A few examples should illustrate the absurdity of Kahan’s methodology.

For Kahan, the city of “Khemu” that Hialmar and the Aesir encounter is a reference to the Egyptian creator god Khnum. It is true the name “Khemu” can be an alternate spelling of Khnum; however, it is only attested in a couple of places in this form. “Khemu” is much more commonly used in the theosophical and occult literature of Howard’s day as an alternative spelling of “Kemet” (KM.t), the ancient Egyptians’ name for their own land. In other words this is simply another example of Howard taking an ancient place name (like Cimmeria, Punt or Corinthia) and reusing it in his fictional Hyborian setting — it is not Howard making an oblique reference to an uncommon variant spelling of an obscure Egyptian creator god.

Additionally, Kahan sees Howard’s references to “Lemurians” as referring to the lemures or malevolent spirits of Roman superstitio. Of course anyone who has read enough of Howard’s pseudo-historical yarns would know that his Lemurians are the people of Lemuria, the now-sunken continent of the Pacific according to the theosophical beliefs of the day. The only connection to the Roman lemures is a convoluted and tenuous etymological link. But Kahan ignores (or is ignorant of) Howard’s actual meaning and because his Standard Dictionary of Folklore says that the Romans would appease the lemures by planting black beans, he is able to conclude triumphantly that “Howard clearly sees Khemu as an agrarian society, linked to the seasons of planting and harvest” (p. 25).

This is the type of methodological jiu-jitsu that Kahan is forced to employ throughout his article in order to “prove” that Howard was inculcating his story with the theme of fertility. In actually, “Marchers” takes place in Howard’s proto-historical Hyborian Age and, like the Conan yarns, he has populated the story with proper names from myth and legend, in order to suggest that the true origin of these names lies in his fictional setting that takes place before the dawn of recorded history. If there is a theme of fertility that can be observed in “Marchers,” it is not because Howard intentionally inserted it; it is simply because he made use of a good deal of mythological material that happened to have fertility themes associated with them. And here is a newsflash for Dr. Kahan: the ancient cultures that created all these myths and gods were agricultural societies. Their lives depended on their ability to grow things and to produce enough children to help tend the growing things. If you look hard enough you find that nearly all myths are related to fertility in some form or another. The unfounded idea that Howard attached the same meanings to the mythological names he employs as the ancient people who initially created them is the great flaw in Kahan’s logic that renders his thesis and his article meaningless.

Painting of Finn mac Cumail by Yvonne Gilbert.

All of this is not to say that Howard was unaware of fertility cults or that he did not make use of that concept in his work. In fact Lovecraft and he touched on the subject in their correspondence in 1930 and Howard included, quite explicitly, a depiction of a fertility cult in “The Black Stone,” complete with obvious imagery from the Roman Lupercalia and a bacchanalian orgy, not to mention a nude female suppliant being whipped and hugging a huge, phallic, stone monolith. When Howard wants to explore a particular theme in one of his stories, he usually is not shy about it. There actually are some comparisons (however tenuous) that could be made between the ritual scene in “The Black Stone” and the sacrifice of Aluna in “Marchers,” but Kahan does not make them. In fact nowhere does he address Howard’s obvious use of a fertility cult in “The Black Stone” or his conversation with Lovecraft on the subject. One would think that if you were looking for Howard’s commentary on fertility cults, you would start with the places where actually did comment on them.

Philip Emery takes a much more structured approach in attempting to discern Howard’s mythological and folkloric influences in his article, “Celtic Influences in the Works of Robert E. Howard.” Emery uses the five genres of Irish folklore identified by scholars Eleanor Knott and Gerard Murphy and attempts to place a number of Howard’s yarns into these categories. The five genres are: (1) mythological tales features the exploits of gods, (2) tales of the Ulster heroes, (3) tales of Finn mac Cumail (a.k.a. Finn mac Cool) and the Fiana warriors, (4) tales of kings and nobles, (5) tales about journeys to the Otherworld (echtrai) or sea voyages (immrams).

Emery does not just confine himself to the obvious stories with Irish and Gaelic protagonists, but also attempts to fit some of the tales of Howard’s sword and sorcery characters such as Conan, Kull, and Bran Mak Morn into Knott and Murphy’s categories. Occasionally this works quite nicely, as with the stories of Bran and Kull in the fourth genre; other times it seems like he is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, such as placing “Queen of the Black Coast” in the fifth category (would not “Pool of the Black One” or “Gods of Bal-Sogoth” be better examples as immram-like voyages into the unknown West?).

In the second half of his article, Emery looks at other characteristics of Irish mythology and folklore, such as the use of supernatural elements, the dichotomy of female characters being either incredibly beautiful or horribly hag-like, and the use of hyperbole in describing heroic deeds. Here Emery’s argument is less convincing, as these are elements that can be found in most mythic traditions. Howard certainly makes use of some of these elements in his works, but his inspiration could just as easily be Greek or Norse mythology as Irish (or more likely, all of the above). Emery admits that this is an issue, but notes that the scope of his article is to focus on only one of Howard’s many influences. That is fine, but then he needs to find some element that is unique to Irish traditions and see if Howard makes use of it, in order to better prove his point.

There is no doubt that Howard was heavily influenced by Irish mythology and folklore and Emery is on the right track in his attempts to indentify and describe that influence. Further research in this area could be a fruitful venture.