"I am a landless man. I come out of the sunset and into the sunrise I go... While evil flourishes and wrongs grow rank, while men are persecuted and women wronged, while weak things, human or animal, are maltreated, there is no rest for me beneath the skies, nor peace at any board or bed."
-- Solomon Kane
SOLOMON KANE
Fantasy Elizabethan swashbuckler
of the late 16th, early 17th century
■ WORLD EVENTS: 1530s / 1540s 1550s / 1560s /
1570s / 1580s 1590s / 1600s / 1610s / 1620s#bookmark=id.38xzb49jktcf
*Glenn Lord's chronology places SK's birth "around 1530"
and living to 1610+. Click here for the text.
■ SOLOMON KANE'S WORLD 1550-1620
SOLOMON KANE ART: ■ COMIC ■ GARY GIANNI
ROBERT E. HOWARD: ■ REH PAGE
■ SK FACEBOOK ■ REH FOUNDATION (Engel9, ICNet)
SOLOMON KANE
... vowed after coming upon an expiring young woman left stabbed and violated by the side of the road, the wandering Solomon Kane will trek through Europe and Africa, battle great villains, retrieve vast treasure, be bound to a fiery stake, and be rescued by a shaman's supernatural intervention, all done solely to revenge this slaughter of someone's daughter whose name he never knew.
-- Quote in the graphic above from Red Shadows
/ Chapter 1: The Coming Of Solomon Kane.
ONE OF THE FIRST SUPERHEROES
"a true Galahad,
protecting the weaker"
- Red Shadows/ Chapter II
"Deep in Kane stirred the spirit of the crusader, the fire of the zealot —the fanatic who devotes his life to battling the powers of darkness." – The Hills of the Dead/ III. Dream Magic
"It has fallen upon me, now and again
in my sojourns through the world,
to ease various evil men of their lives."
-- Solomon Kane/ The Castle of the Devil
INDEX
PROSE: ■ REH- SOLOMON KANE
SOLOMON KANE- WHO IS? (HIS TIMES)
REH- PULP ARCHETYPAL ■ REH- BARBARISM
REH- INDIVIDUALISM ■ REH- PURPLE PROSE
RUGGED RHYMES LINKS:
ROBERT W. SERVICE
RUGGED RHYMES SERVICE SENSE OF LIFE
ROBERT E. HOWARD (REH)
WIKIPEDIA: Solomon Kane is a fictional character created by the pulp-era writer Robert E. Howard. A late 16th/early 17th century Puritan, Solomon Kane is a somber-looking man who wanders the world with no apparent goal other than to vanquish evil in all its forms. His adventures, published mostly in the pulp magazine Weird Tales, often take him from Europe to the jungles of Africa and back.
Howard described him as a sombre and gloomy man of pale face and cold eyes, all of it shadowed by a slouch hat. He is not particularly enlightened (i.e., trapped in the prejudices of his age and not a deep thinker), though emboldened especially by a furious drive to protect and avenge the powerless. Kane is dressed entirely in black and his weaponry usually consists of a rapier, a dirk, and a brace of flintlock pistols. During one of his latter adventures his friend N'Longa, an African shaman, gave him a juju staff that served as a protection against evil, but could easily be wielded as an effective weapon. It is revealed in another story, "The Footfalls Within", that this is the mythical Staff of Solomon, a talisman older than the Earth and unimaginably powerful, much more so than even N'Longa knew. In the same adventure with N'Longa, Kane is seen using a musket as well.
"With a great piece of his scalp hanging loose, his chest and shoulders cut and ripped, the world had become a blind, red thing in which he was aware of but one sensation--the bulldog urge to kill his foe." – Wings in the Night/ Chaper II
Sentence summarizing his life, his quest...
“A long red trail, black shadows and crimson shadows weaving a devils dance—marked by flashing swords and the smoke of battle—by faltering words falling like drops of blood from the lips of dying men.” – The Moon of Skulls/ Chapter III. — Lilith
And thus my soul, forever restlessly, / Longs for the outworld, vast, unultimate, / The vasty freedom of the swinging sea, / Forever roaming and forever free. – from Ocean-Thoughts (poem)
Compelled hero battling & driven by
ancient, archetypal forces...
"The shape he looked upon was such as he had visioned dimly in wild nightmares, when the wings of sleep bore him back through lost ages."
– Red Shadows/ Chapter V
● Solomon Kane is something of a pure heroic prototype -- motivated fanatically and entirely by his true self, while mostly abandoning ego -- though he also is not a man without his Jungian shadows. He appears an obsessed righteous spirit unwittingly in touch with supra-personal/ supra-natural archetypal forces, many of which in these fantastical stories break through to the physical realm as material entities preying on mankind, much like, though, of course, a step far, FAR beyond, Carl Jung's more numinous “active imagination” experiences. See Jung at Heart article/ The Cimmerian
● "Over the souls of men spread the condor wings of colossal monsters and all manner of evil things prey upon the heart and soul and body of Man." -- Wings in the Night
● "For if abstract hate may bring into material substance a ghostly thing, may not courage, equally abstract, form a concrete weapon to combat that ghost?" -- Skulls in the Stars/ Chapter I
● “It certainly does seem that certain individuals occasionally get in contact with forces outside themselves, something like cog-wheels grinding away in their spirits, that suddenly, perhaps only momentarily, slip into the notches of gigantic, unseen cog-wheels of cosmic scope. Maybe that’s what is meant by ‘getting in touch with the infinite.’”
- Robert E. Howard
FROM THE PEN OF
ROBERT E. HOWARD
Such was Solomon Kane…
√ "All his life he had roamed about the world aiding the weak and fighting oppression; he neither knew nor questioned why. That was his obsession, his driving force of life. Cruelty and tyranny to the weak sent a red blaze of fury, fierce and lasting, through his soul. When the full flame of his hatred was wakened and loosed, there was no rest for him until his vengeance had been fulfilled to the uttermost." -Red Shadows, p. 38-39.
"He never sought to analyse his motives and he never wavered once his mind was made up. Though he always acted on impulse, he firmly believed that all his actions were governed by cold and logical reasonings. He was a man born out of his time — a strange blending of Puritan and Cavalier, with a touch of the ancient philosopher, and more than a touch of the pagan, though the last assertion would have shocked him unspeakably. An atavist of the days of blind chivalry he was, a knight errant in the sombre domes of a fanatic. A hunger in his soul drove him on and on, an urge to right all wrongs, protect all weaker things, avenge all crimes against right and justice. Wayward and restless as the wind, he was consistent in only one respect — he was true to his ideals of justice and right. Such was Solomon Kane." -The Moon of Skulls/Chapter III
"... 'methinks you lack somewhat in faith, both in Providence and in me. Nay, alone I am a weak creature, having no strength or might in me; yet in times past hath God made me a great vessel of wrath and a sword of deliverance. And, I trust, shall do so again.'"-- The Moon of Skulls/ Chapter VII.
"His blood quickened. Adventure! The lure of life-risk and battle! The thrill of breathtaking, touch-and-go drama! Not that Kane recognized his sensations as such. He sincerely considered that he voiced his real feelings when he said:
'These things be deeds of some power of evil. The lords of darkness have laid a curse upon the country. A strong man is needed to combat Satan and his might. Therefore I go, who have defied him many a time ...'" - Skulls in the Stars/ Chapter I
SOLOMON KANE:
20 CHARACTERISTICS
1. DOMINATING presence...
■ "He was tall and spare, almost gaunt, built with the savage economy of the wolf. Broad-shouldered, long-armed, with nerves of ice and thews of spring steel, he was no less the natural killer than the born swordsman ..." - Wings in the Night/ Chapter I
■ "The man was of a type to command attention and sometimes more. He was inches taller than Hollinster who was considerably above medium height. There was no once of fat or surplus flesh on that spare frame, yet the man did not look frail or even too thin. On the contrary. His broad shoulders, deep chest and long rangy limbs betokened strength, speed and endurance – bespoke the swordsman as plainly as did the long unadorned rapier at his belt...
"The face was rather long, was smooth-shaven and of a strange dark pallor which together with the somewhat sunken cheeks lent an almost corpse-like appearance at times – until one looked in his eyes. These gleamed with vibrant life and dynamic vitality, pent deep and ironly controlled... There was the greyness of ancient ice in them, but there was also the cold blueness of the Northern sea's deepest depths. Heavy black brows hung above them and the whole effect of the countenance was distinctly Mephistophelean. -- Blue Flame of Vengenance/ Chapter I
■ "'The right is on my side,' said Kane somberly. 'And right is mightier than a thousand men-at arms.'" -- The Castle of the Devil
2. SIMPLE YET IMPOSING, dressed in unadorned black...
■ "The stranger's clothing was simple, severely plain and suited the man. His hat was black slouch, featherless. From heel to neck he was clad in close-fitting garments of a sombre hue, unrelieved by any ornament or jewel. No ring adorned his powerful fingers; no gem twinkled on his rapier hilt and its long blade was cased in a plain leather sheath. There were no silver buttons on his garments, no bright buckles on his shoes.
"Strangely enough the drab monotone of his dress was broken in a novel and bizarre manner by a wide sash knotted gypsy-fashion above the waist. The sash was silk of Oriental workmanship; its color was a sinister virulent green, like a serpent’s hide, and from it projected a dirk hilt and the black butts of two heavy pistols." - Blue Flame of Vengeance/ Chapter I
3. RIGHTEOUS...
■ "He did not understand. All his life he had roamed about the world aiding the weak and fighting oppression, he neither knew nor questioned why. That was his obsession, his driving force of life. Cruelty and tyranny to the weak sent a red blaze of fury, fierce and lasting, through his soul. When the full flame of his hatred was wakened and loosed, there was no rest for him until his vengeance had been fulfilled to the uttermost. If he thought of it at all, he considered himself a fulfiller of God's judgment, a vessel of wrath to be emptied upon the souls of the unrighteous. Yet in the full sense of the word Solomon Kane was not wholly a Puritan, though he thought of himself as such ..." - Red Shadows/ Chapter IV
■ “... the bandit symbolized, to Kane, all the things against which the Puritan had fought all his life: cruelty, outrage, oppression and tyranny.” – Red Shadows/ Chapter IV
■ “The trail ended here, and Kane was conscious of a strange feeling of futility. He always felt that, after he had killed a foe. Somehow it always seemed that no real good had been wrought; as if the foe had, after all, escaped his just vengeance.” – Red Shadows/ Chapter V
4. CONFIDENT, with trust in Providence...
■ "... his confidence never faltered. He was in the right and some way would present itself."- The Moon of Skulls/Chapter V
■ "...he felt perfect confidence in his ability to cope with any fiend or demon, armoured as he was in unshakable faith of creed and the knowledge of the rightness of his cause." - The Moon of Skulls/Chapter II
■ “'Nay, alone I am a weak creature, having no strength or might in me; yet in times past hath God made me a great vessel of wrath and a sword of deliverance...
"'Think you that having led me this far, and accomplished such wonders, the Power will strike us down now? Nay! Evil flourishes and rules in the cities of men and the waste places of the world, but anon the great giant that is God rises and smites for the righteous, and they lay faith on him.'”
- The Moon of Skulls/Chapter VII
5. DRIVEN...
■ "The average man would have camped at the foot of the crag and waited for morning before even attempting to scale the cliffs. But this was no ordinary man. Once his objective was in sight, he followed the straightest line to it, without a thought of obstacles, whether day or night. What was to be done, must be done. He had reached the outposts of the kingdom of fear at dusk, and invading its inmost recesses by night seemed to follow as a matter of course."
- The Moon of Skulls/Chapter I
■ "Once I dared the jungle--once she nearly claimed my bones. Something entered into my blood, something stole into my soul like a whisper of unnamed sin. The jungle! Dark and brooding--over leagues of the blue salt sea she has drawn me and with the dawn I go to seek the heart of her. Mayhap I shall find curious adventure--mayhap my doom awaits me. But better death than the ceaseless and everlasting urge, the fire that has burned my veins with bitter longing." -- The Hills of Dead/ Chapter I
6. RESTRAINED outrage and anger...
■ "The fury Solomon Kane felt would have been enough at any time and in any place to shake a man to his foundation. Now it assumed monstrous proportions, so that Kane shivered as if with a chill; iron claws scratched at his brain and he saw the slaves and the slavers through a crimson mist. Yet he might not have put his hate-born insanity into action had it not been for a mishap." - The Hills of the Deads/ Chapter V - Palaver Set!
7. CONFLICTED, finding the "Devil"
rooted in "power and conquest"...
Where the chained prisoner Kane is offered his freedom if he will take as his lover and rule with the beautiful, seductive Nakari, "the vampire queen of Negari" …
■ “What man can say truthfully that in his heart there lurks not a yearning for power and conquest? For a moment the Devil sorely tempted Solomon Kane. Then before his mind's eye rose the wistful, sad face of (wronged innocence lost) ...” - The Moon of Skulls/Chapter IV
8. NON-AVARICIOUS, rejecting ill-gotten gains...
When the cruel and cunning robber LeLoup offer to share with Solomon Kane “the equivalent to an emperor's ransom”...
■ “Kane leaned forward, a terrible brooding threat growing in his cold eyes. He seemed like a great condor about to launch himself upon his victim.
"'Sir, do you assume me to be as great a villain as yourself?'"-- Red Shadows/ Chapter II
9. RISK-TAKER, joy in achievement...
■ "As it was, he was taking a most desperate chance in daring the nighttime jungle, but all his life he had been used to taking desperate chances." – Red Shadows/ Chapter III
■ "Kane's clothing hung in tatters about him. He was torn, scratched and bruised. But in his eyes shone the clear calm light of serenity as the sun came up, flooding cliffs and jungle with a golden light that was like a promise of joy and happiness." -- The Moon of Skulls/ Chapter VII.
10. PRIMITIVE...
■ "Somewhere in his soul a responsive chord was smitten and answered. You too are of the night (sang the drums); there is the strength of darkness, the strength of the primitive in you; come back down the ages; let us teach you, let us teach you (chanted the drums)." - Red Shadows/Chapter 3
11. PSYCHIC, primordial memory...
■ “Now there was motion in the shadows; they merged fantastically and moved out into the glade... Kane blinked: was this the illusion that precedes death? The shape he looked upon was such as he had visioned dimly in wild nightmares, when the wings of sleep bore him back through lost ages.” – Red Shadows/
Chapter V
■ “Far away the drums whispered through the night, like an accompaniment to this grim Stone Age drama... Again ghosts of memories whispered to Kane: you have seen such sights before (they murmured), back in the dim days, the dawn days, when beast and beast-man battled for supremacy.” – Red Shadows/ Chapter V
■ "Again, somewhere in his soul, dim primal depths were stirring, age-old thought memories, veiled in the fogs of lost eons. He had been here before, thought Kane... back there in the gray dawn of the world, the speech of the bellowing drums, the singing priests, the repellent, inflaming, all-pervading scent of freshly spilt blood. All this have I known, somewhere, sometime, thought Kane..." - Red Shadows/Chapter IV
12. FATALISTIC...
Wandering an ancient, abandon corridor leading to the abode of the “demon queen” Nakari, Solomon Kane muses…
■ “The evident antiquity of his surroundings depressed him, making him sense vaguely
the fleeting and futile existence of mankind.” -- The Moon of Skulls/ Chapter II,
The People of the Stalking Death
■ “... he considered himself a fulfiller of God's judgment, a vessel of wrath to be emptied upon the souls of the unrighteous. Yet in the full sense of the word Solomon Kane was not wholly a Puritan, though he thought of himself as such. – Red Shadows/ Chapter IV
■ “Believing in the justice of his vengeance, he did not doubt that the dim beings who rule men's destinies would finally bring him face to face with Le Loup.” – Red Shadows/ Chapter V
13. DEFIANT...
■ "And he lifted his clenched fists above his head, and with glaring eyes raised and writhing lips flecked with froth, he cursed the sky and the earth and the spheres above and below. He cursed the cold stars, the blazing sun, the mocking moon, and the whisper of the wind. He cursed all fates and destinies, all that he had loved or hated, the silent cities beneath the seas, the past ages and the future eons. In one soul-shaking burst of blasphemy he cursed the gods and devils who make mankind their sport, and he cursed Man who lives blindly on and blindly offers his back to the iron-hoofed feet of his gods..." - Wings in the Night/ Chapter V.
14. STALWART, toughened as tempered steel from life's battles…
■ "Years of wandering in strange lands and warring with strange creatures had melted away from brain, soul, and body all that was not steel and whalebone."
- Wings in the Night/ Chapter I
■ “Kane had rowed, chained to the bench of a Turkish galley, and he had toiled in Barbary vineyards; he had battled red Indians in the New Lands and had languished in the dungeons of Spain's Inquisition. He knew much of the fiendishness of man's inhumanity...” - Wings in the Night/ Chapter I.
15. REDEMPTIVE from mysterious past...
■ "Aye, I led a rout of ungodly men, to my shame be it said, though the cause was a just one. In the sack of that town you name, many foul deeds were done under the cloak of the cause and my heart was sickened – oh, well – many a tide has flowed under the bridge since then, and I have drowned some red memories in the sea..." – The Blue Flame of Vengeance, Chapter I
16. COURAGEOUS, feeling no fear...
■ “For man's only weapon is courage that flinches not from the gates of Hell itself, and against such not even the legions of Hell can stand.” - Skulls in the Stars/ Chapter I
■ "Kane shrugged his broad shoulders and his hand unconsciously touched the black butts of his heavy pistols, the hilt of his long rapier, and the dirk in his belt. Kane felt no fear as an ordinary man would feel, confronted with the Unknown and Nameless." - Wings in the Night/ Chapter I
17. SELF-RELIANT, independent,
no interest in power over others…
■ "I will aid you in all that it be my power," answered Kane sombrely. "But I wish no earthly
throne of pride and vanity. If we bring peace to a suffering race and punish evil men for their cruelty, it is enough for me." -- Hawk of Basti
■ "Then they would have knelt and kissed his feet, but he, in much confusion, forbade them roughly. Then as they made preparations to go, one said to him: 'Master, what of thee? Wilt thou not return with us? Thou shalt be our king!'
"But Kane shook his head. 'I go eastward,' said he... And Kane shouldered the staff that had been the rod of the Pharaohs and of Moses and of Solomon and of nameless Atlantean kings behind them, and turned his face eastward, halting only for a single backward glance at the great mausoleum that other Solomon had built with strange arts so long ago, and which now loomed dark and forever silent against the stars." -- Last paragraphs from The Footfalls Within
■ "I will aid you in all that it be my power," answered Kane sombrely. "But I wish no earthly throne of pride and vanity. If we bring peace to a suffering race and punish evil men for their cruelty, it is enough for me." -- Hawk of Basti
18. LANDLESS man, "one time of Devon"...
■ "Who are you?" (Jack Hollinster)
"My name is Solomon Kane, young sir, a landless man--one time of Devon." (Solomon Kane) – Blue Flame of Vengeance/ Chapter I
■ "You--who are--you?" her words came in gasps. (Dying woman)
"Naught but a wanderer, a landless man, but a friend to all in need." (Solomon Kane) – Red Shadows/ Chaper I
■ "'But who are you? Whence come you? What seek you? Whither do you go?'
'I am a landless man.' A strange intangible, almost mystic look flashed into his cold eyes. 'I come out of the sunset and into the sunrise I go, wherever the Lord doth guide my feet. I seek - my soul's salvation, mayhap. I came, following the trail of vengeance. Now I must leave you. The dawn is not far away and I would not have it find me idle. It may be I shall see you no more. My work here is done; the long red trail is ended. The man of blood is dead. But there be other men of blood, and other trails of revenge and retribution. I work the will of God. While evil flourishes and wrongs grow rank, while men are persecuted and women wronged, while weak things, human or animal, are maltreated, there is no rest for me beneath the skies, nor peace at any board or bed. Farewell!'" - The Blue Flame of Vengeance/ Chapter V
■ "You have the heart of a king," she said calmly, "else you would fear me. Are you a king in your land?" (Nakari)
"I am only a landless wanderer." (Solomon Kane) – Moon of Skulls/ Chaper IV
■ “You must be a god--yet the gods bleed not and you have just all but died. Who are you?" (Goru)
"I am no god," Kane answered, "but a man like yourself, albeit my skin be white. I come from a far land amid the sea, which land, mind ye, is the fairest and noblest of all lands. My name is Solomon Kane and I am a landless wanderer… (Solomon Kane) – Wings in the Night/ Chapter III
19. WANDERER/ a man without a country ...
■ "'England!' Kane's deep eyes lighted at the word. 'I find it hard to remain in the land of my birth for more than a month at a time; yet though I am cursed with the wanderlust, 'tis a name which ever rouses a glow in my bosom.'" – Moon of Skulls/ Chaper VII
■ "I am a wanderer on the face of the earth and have no destination." (Solomon Kane) ...
"Name of the Devil, man, know you not whither you are bound at the present?" (John Silent) ...
"Wherever the spirit moves me to go," answered Solomon. "Just now I find myself in this wild and desolate country through which I journey, doubtless hither drawn for some purpose yet unknown to me" ...
"Do you mean to tell me that you journey through the countries of the world with no goal in view, caring not where you may be?" (John Silent)
"Sir, what matters it where a man be if he is carrying out God's plan for him?" (Solomon Kane)
– The Castle of the Devil
■ "Adventures he had had in plenty …(a) paranoid urge had driven him on and on, deeper and deeper into those trackless ways. Kane could not have analysed this call; he would have attributed it to Satan, who lures men to their destruction. But it was but the restless turbulent spirit of the adventurer, the wanderer—the same urge which sends the gipsy caravans about the world, which drove the Viking galleys over unknown seas and which guides the flights of the wild geese."- The Hills of the Dead/Chapter II
■ "I have wandered for many moons," said Kane, half reluctantly. "Why I am here I know not--but the jungle called me across many leagues of blue sea and I came. Doubtless the same Providence which hath guided my steps all my years has led me hither for some purpose which my weak eyes have not yet seen." -- Hawk of Basti
■ "'But who are you? Whence come you? What seek you? Whither do you go?'
'I am a landless man.' A strange intangible, almost mystic look flashed into his cold eyes. 'I come out of the sunset and into the sunrise I go, wherever the Lord doth guide my feet. I seek - my soul's salvation, mayhap. I came, following the trail of vengeance. Now I must leave you. The dawn is not far away and I would not have it find me idle. It may be I shall see you no more. My work here is done; the long red trail is ended. The man of blood is dead. But there be other men of blood, and other trails of revenge and retribution. I work the will of God. While evil flourishes and wrongs grow rank, while men are persecuted and women wronged, while weak things, human or animal, are maltreated, there is no rest for me beneath the skies, nor peace at any board or bed. Farewell!'" - The Blue Flame of Vengeance/ Chapter V
■ "And Solomon Kane looked up into the silent hills and felt the silent call of the hills and the unguessed distances beyond; and Solomon Kane shifted his belt, took his staff firmly in his hand and turned his face eastward." - Wings in the Night/Chapter V
20. MYSTERIOUS, "no man knew his road"...
■ A wild moon rode the wild white clouds, the waves in white crests flowed,
When Solomon Kane went forth again and no man knew his road.
They glimpsed him etched against the moon, where clouds on hilltop thinned;
They heard an eery echoed call that whistled down the wind
- last lines, Solomon Kane's Homecoming (poem)
Worlds within worlds
“And Solomon Kane shuddered, for he had looked on Life that was not Life as he knew it, and had dealt and witnessed Death that was not Death as he knew it. Again the realization swept over him, as it had in the dust-haunted halls of Atlantean Negari, as it had in the abhorrent Hills of the Dead, as it had in Akaana--that human life was but one of a myriad forms of existence, that worlds existed within worlds, and that there was more than one plane of existence. The planet men call the earth spun on through the untold ages, Kane realized, and as it spun it spawned Life, and living things which wriggled about it as maggots are spawned in rot and corruption. Man was the dominant maggot now--why should he in his pride suppose that he and his adjuncts were the first maggots--or the last to rule a planet quick with unguessed life?”
- The Footfalls Within
_______________________________________________
"Yonder in the unknown vastness" -
his long finger stabbed at the black silent jungle
which brooded beyond the firelight -
"yonder lie mystery and adventure and nameless terror."
Ancient, magical, from before time...
STAFF OF SOLOMON KANE
The staff is a gift from the ancient ("I am so old that you would call me a liar if I told you my age.") African shaman N'Longa.
N'LONGA: "I sleep and my spirit goes out over the jungle and the rivers to talk with the sleeping spirits of my friends. There is a mighty magic on the voodoo staff I gave you--a magic out of the Old Land which draws my ghost to it as a white man's magnet draws metal." - The Hills of the Deads/ Chapter V - Palaver Set!
The staff is older than the world itself. It is of wood no longer existent, which over time became covered in hieroglyphics. It has a deadly sharp spear-point at one end and what appears the head of the feline goddess Bast on the other.
Atlantean priests used it to combat evil. Mosses carried it in his people's flight from Egypt. As the Scepter of Israel, King Solomon fought magicians and djinns with it.
A powerful weapon against supernatural terrors, just its touch destroys earthly monsters. Lay the staff on your breast, fold arms over it, sleep, and N'Longa will visit & communicate with you in your dreams.
Yussef the Hadji speaking about the captive Solomon Kane's staff:
"This staff is older than the world! It holds mighty magic! I have read of it in the old iron-bound books and Mohammed—on whom peace!—himself hath spoken of it by allegory and parable! See the cat-head upon it? It is the head of a goddess of ancient Egypt! Ages ago, before Mohammed taught, before Jerusalem was, the priests of Bast bore this rod before the bowing, chanting worshippers! With it Musa did wonders before Pharaoh and when the Yahudi fled from Egypt they bore it with them. And for centuries it was the sceptre of Israel and Judah and with it Sulieman ben Daoud drove forth the conjurers and magicians and prisoned the efreets and the evil genii!” – The Footfalls Within/ Chapter 1.
ROBERT ERVIN HOWARD (1906 - 1936)
CLICK HERE for a representative body of his work
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A SHORT REH BIOGRAPHY
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Characters as contemporary viewpoints
Barbarism and civilization: Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8
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BOOKISH HOWARD
The printed page was like wine to me...
As a boy and a youth in my teens, I read purely for the love of reading. I can say with confidence that no man ever loved reading for its own sake more than I. I did not read because of any particular urge for learning, or to merely pass the time, or to escape the realities of life. I read simply because I loved reading for its own sake alone. The printed page was
like wine to me. - from an essay by Robert E. Howard
METAPHYSICAL HOWARD:
Material cognition belies worldly experience...
“Life is but a web spun of ghosts and dreams and illusions.”
- Robert E. Howard (Kull: Exile of Atlantis)
We know only of a reality via
the limitations of the senses...
“Time, place and space are illusions, having no existence save in the mind of man which must set limits and bounds in order to understand.” - Robert E. Howard (Kull: Exile of Atlantis)
True self, psyche as essence of reality...
“Man can be that which he wishes to be; form and substance, they are but shadows. The mind, the ego, the essence of the god-dream -- that is real, that is immortal.” - Robert E. Howard (Kull: Exile of Atlantis)
While, fate, great archetypal forces can intercede...
“It certainly does seem that certain individuals occasionally get in contact with forces outside themselves, something like cog-wheels grinding away in their spirits, that suddenly,perhaps only momentarily, slip into the notches of gigantic, unseen cog-wheels of cosmic scope. Maybe that’s what is meant by ‘getting in touch with the infinite.’” - Robert E. Howard
“Time and times are but cogwheels, unmatched, grinding on oblivious to one another. Occasionally - oh, very rarely! - the cogs fit; the pieces of the plot snap together momentarily and give men faint glimpses beyond the veil of this everyday blindness we call reality.”
― Robert E. Howard, Bran Mak Morn: The Last King
POLITICAL HOWARD:
romanticized individual
“It is the individual mainly that draws me – the struggling, blundering, passionate insect vainly striving against the river of Life and seeking to divert the channel of events to suit himself – breaking his fangs on the iron collar of Fate and sinking into final defeat with the froth of a curse on his lips.” -- Robert E. Howard in a letter to H.P. Lovecraft
... individual liberty.
It is the only thing that matters...
"I have but a single conviction or ideal, or whateverthehell it might be called: individual liberty. It's the only thing that matters a damn. I'd rather be a naked savage, shivering, starving, freezing,
hunted by wild beasts and enemies, but free to go and come, with the range of the earth to roam, than the fattest, richest, most bedecked slave in a golden palace with the crustal fountains, silken divans, and ivory-bosomed dancing girls of Haroun al Raschid."
-- Robert E. Howard in a letter to H.P. Lovecraft
Civilization: contrived, aberrant,
repressive straightjacket...
Barbarism is the natural state of mankind... Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.
-- Last line of Beyond The BlackRiver
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split... -- Chapter 1, The Tower of the Elephant
“The more I see of what you call civilization, the more highly I think of what you call savagery!” ― Robert E. Howard, King Kull
However, no endorsement
of the “noble savage” concept...
I have no idyllic view of barbarism—as near as I can learn it's a grim, bloody, ferocious and loveless condition. I have no patience with the depiction of the barbarian of any race as a stately, god-like child of Nature, endowed with strange wisdom and speaking in measured and sonorous phrases. Bah! My conception of a barbarian is very different -- Robert E. Howard in a letter to H.P. Lovecraft
While very much viewing the barbarian
“lifestyle” in a favorable, exciting light...
But he was lithe and strong as a panther, and the full joy of strenuous physical exertion was his. The day and the night were his book, wherein he read of all things that run or walk or crawl or fly. Trees and grass and moss-coverd rocks and birds and beasts and clouds were alive to him, and pertook of his kinship. The wind blew his hair and he looked with naked eyes into the sun. Often he starved, but when he feasted, it was with mighty gusto, and the juices of food and strong drink were stinging wine to his palate -- Robert E. Howard in a letter to H.P. Lovecraft
Celebrating the unvarnished,
unbordered, soul-seeking self…
I want, in a word, the frontier… land rich and unbroken and virgin, swarming with game and laden with fresh forests and sweet cold streams, where a man could live by the sweat of his hands unharried by taxes, crowds, noise, unemployment, bank-failures, gang-extortions, laws, and all the other wearisome things of civilization. -- Robert E. Howard in a letter to H.P. Lovecraft
Rejecting the demands of modern life...
"Don't you realize that the freedom of the West meant more than lack of restraint by law? It meant freedom from crushing taxes, from crowds, the hurry and rush of urban life, from the monotony of the sweat-shop or the office, from never-varying routine, from snobbery and from being merely a cog in the machine" -- Robert E. Howard in a letter to H.P. Lovecraft
On the frontier, there were men that were real men…
A man is only a man, regardless of how many books he has read, or written. Neither wealth nor erudition gives him any more fundamental rights than is due any man. That’s why I love the memory of the frontier; there a man was not judged by what he had or what he knew, but by what he was. -- Robert E. Howard in a letter to H.P. Lovecraft
I was a man before I was a king...
What do I know of cultured ways,
the gilt, the craft and the lie?
I, who was born in a naked land
and bred in the open sky.
The subtle tongue, the sophist guile,
they fail when the broadswords sing;
Rush in and die, dogs—
I was a man before I was a king.
—The Road Of Kings, Intro to Chapter 5,
The Phoenix on the Sword
When I was a fighting-man,
the kettle-drums they beat,
The people scattered gold-dust
before my horse's feet;
But now I am a great king,
the people hound my track
With poison in my wine-cup, and daggers at my back.
Maps & art reflecting Solomon Kane's times,
click on graphics to enlarge
