The Idle City - one of sixteen brief stories included in A Dreamer's Tales, a delightful collection of fantasy literature by Anglo-Irish author Lord Dunsany (1878-1957).
By my judgement, The Idle City is linked in special ways with two other tales from this collection - The Madness of Andelsprutz and Bethmoora. I'll offer comments on all three.
THE IDLE CITY
The
custom of the city known as the Idle city is to demand all visitors
tell a tale prior to being granted entrance. The narrator, one such
visitor to the idle city, waits as three other visitors take their turn
in telling their tale to the city guards. Following each tale - tales of
profound events, of gods and angels, of mountains and dragons, of the
cycle of life and death - the visitor is permitted to walk through the
gates.
When it comes time for the narrator to tell his tale, the
sun is setting and ghostly silences rise from distant hills. A
stillness hangs over the city gates. And the great silence of the night
is more acceptable to the guards at the gate then any sound of man.
Therefore, the guards beckon the narrator to enter the city without the
need for him to tell his tale.
Once in the idle city, the
narrator reflects: "For how short a while man speaks, and withal how
vainly. And for how long he is silent. Only the other day I met a king
in Thebes, who had been silent already for four thousand years."
So
few words but words rich in meaning. Even a great writer like Lord
Dunsany recognizes our human speech, doesn't matter if the words are
spoken as idle gossip on the street or as part of a classic performance
on stage - Oedipus Rex, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet - all human speech is
but a speck in time, a brief moment in space, surrounded by an ocean, an
infinity, an unending vista of silence.
THE MADNESS OF ANDELSPRUTZ
Hiking
across fields and looking out at Andelsprutz, prior to remarking on the
beauty of this singular city, the narrator shares observations on the
vast differences one will encounter in cities, lyrical musings bringing
to mind Italo Calvino and his Invisible Cities:
"There are
cities full of happiness and cities full of pleasure, and cities full
of gloom. There are cities with their faces to heaven, and some with
their faces to earth; some have a way of looking at the past and others
look at the future; some notice you if you come among them, others
glance at you, others let you go by. Some love the cities that are their
neighbours, others are dear to the plains and to the heath; some cities
are bare to the wind, others have purple cloaks and others brown
cloaks, and some are clad in white. Some tell the old tale of their
infancy, with others it is secret; some cities sing and some mutter,
some are angry, and some have broken hearts, and each city has her way
of greeting Time."
Then the narrator fires off a batch of harsh
zingers aimed at the city he's about to enter, concluding with this
striking remark: "But the windows of Andelsprutz in her houses looked
vacantly over the plains like the eyes of a dead madman." A city's
windows likened to the eyes of a dead madman? What a powerful image!
And
with nightfall, the narrator senses a much deeper gloom: "When the
night fell and the blinds were all drawn down, then I perceived what I
had not thought in the daylight. I knew then that Andelsprutz was dead."
Thus, he's prompted to seek an answer to his pressing question.
He enters a cafe and proceeds to ask three different men why
Andelsprutz is dead and her soul gone. The first and second man tell him
a city does not posses a soul. They offer no further comment. But when
the narrator comes upon a third man, a gent of slight build and black
hair, he's provided a detailed account which includes the following
haunting snip: "somewhere in the midst of a great desert are gathered
together the souls of all dead cities."
Provocative, curious, bewitching - a tale that just might prompt you
to think about the very city you are living in or near during these
unsettling times.
BETHMOORA
Walking
the streets of London, our narrator, a chap I'll call Drax, thinks of
far distant Bethmoora, city of the desert sands, now completely empty,
its inhabitants having fled years ago, or so he's been told.
Why?
Legend has it on that fateful day when all the Bethmoorans gathered up
their belongs and traveled either northwards or eastwards, three men on
mules had been noticed crossing the face of the nearby Hills of Hap. And
once those men on mules delivered their message at the copper gates of
Bethmoora, delivered to dancers dressed in green and lilac who came out
to meet them, the three strange travelers went back the way they came
the instant their message was given.
Many have speculated on the content of that message: some say Thuba Mleen, the ferocious emperor of those lands, advised all to leave immediately; some claim the message contained a warning from the gods, although no one knows if those gods were for or against the Bethmoorians; yet others think plague or another form of diabolical sickness. But most believe it was a message from the desert himself, spoken in a cry to those three travelers who could recognize his voice.
Now, why would the desert want Bethmoora all
to himself? In Drax's own words: "They say that the desert had a need
for Bethmoora, that he wished to come into her lovely streets, and to
send into her temples and her houses his storm-winds draped with sand.
For he hates the sound and the sight of men in his old evil heart, and
he would have Bethmoora silent and undisturbed, save for the weird love
he whispers to her gates."
Again, all is speculation. Drax vows to one day leave London and travel south to uncover the mystery.
A Dreamer's Tales can be read online. Link: https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/dun/...
Anglo-Irish
author Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany, or,
more commonly, the name he used for all his many books - Lord Dunsany
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