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En Garde, whole no. 17, April 1946
Page 9
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page 9. A. MERRITT, MASTER OF MYTHS By A. E. van Vogt Time has played many dirty tricks on us human beings in the way of hiding from our eyes the truth of some long past event. It is doubtful, however, if the passage of the centuries has ever permanently concealed from us anything that is genuinely worthwhile and worth knowing. Most of the science and knowledge from t he most ancient days has come down to us virtually intact. We have adequate historical records of almost every state and empire that ever existed. Certain unimportant phases of history are blurred and unreal, and there is a little too much emphasis on kings and rulers, and their concubines. But in these days of democracy we have a habit of forgetting that, at one time, people did not make history. The whim of one man or his wives, their sense of honor, or desire for power---these were the mainsprings of history. And, frankly, few of us have the time or interest to follow the devious lifetimes of these neurotics of two thousand or more years ago. In my own meanderings through history I have been absorbed again and again by the superstitions prevalent in various climes and ages. It was rather interesting for me, therefore, to discover that another writer in the general field of fantasy, an obscure fellow named A. Merritt, had incorporated one or more of these old superstitions into almost every story he ever wrote. I still haven't the vaguest idea where some of his mythos came from--for instance, what is the source of the creature in the METAL MONSTER? The Kraken, in LAND OF THE MIST, derives, I presume, from the steppes of Asia. Certainly, Merritt himself rooted his black history in the remoter plains either in or near Tibet (a favorite spot of his, apparently). And yet, without being sure, ad I have no reference to hand, I have a persistent memory that there was a god-creature with a name very similar to the Kraken in the myths of the Toltecs, a race which some archeologists say pre-dated the Mayans in our own central America. (Some archeologists also maintain that the Toltecs never existed, which makes me feel very sorry for the Toltecs.) Whichever is correct, the main point seems to be that there was such an individual god as the Kraken, worshipped no doubt much as Merritt described. What I am gradually getting at is this: Regardless of the amount of actual material available from history, regardless of the drabness of the available material, Merritt the genius of imagination fabricated a picture more wonderful than any of the superstitions. As a writer, I am only too keenly aware of the difficulty of applying imagination to a fact and making it come out light and airy and dazzling as well as suspensefully dramatic.
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page 9. A. MERRITT, MASTER OF MYTHS By A. E. van Vogt Time has played many dirty tricks on us human beings in the way of hiding from our eyes the truth of some long past event. It is doubtful, however, if the passage of the centuries has ever permanently concealed from us anything that is genuinely worthwhile and worth knowing. Most of the science and knowledge from t he most ancient days has come down to us virtually intact. We have adequate historical records of almost every state and empire that ever existed. Certain unimportant phases of history are blurred and unreal, and there is a little too much emphasis on kings and rulers, and their concubines. But in these days of democracy we have a habit of forgetting that, at one time, people did not make history. The whim of one man or his wives, their sense of honor, or desire for power---these were the mainsprings of history. And, frankly, few of us have the time or interest to follow the devious lifetimes of these neurotics of two thousand or more years ago. In my own meanderings through history I have been absorbed again and again by the superstitions prevalent in various climes and ages. It was rather interesting for me, therefore, to discover that another writer in the general field of fantasy, an obscure fellow named A. Merritt, had incorporated one or more of these old superstitions into almost every story he ever wrote. I still haven't the vaguest idea where some of his mythos came from--for instance, what is the source of the creature in the METAL MONSTER? The Kraken, in LAND OF THE MIST, derives, I presume, from the steppes of Asia. Certainly, Merritt himself rooted his black history in the remoter plains either in or near Tibet (a favorite spot of his, apparently). And yet, without being sure, ad I have no reference to hand, I have a persistent memory that there was a god-creature with a name very similar to the Kraken in the myths of the Toltecs, a race which some archeologists say pre-dated the Mayans in our own central America. (Some archeologists also maintain that the Toltecs never existed, which makes me feel very sorry for the Toltecs.) Whichever is correct, the main point seems to be that there was such an individual god as the Kraken, worshipped no doubt much as Merritt described. What I am gradually getting at is this: Regardless of the amount of actual material available from history, regardless of the drabness of the available material, Merritt the genius of imagination fabricated a picture more wonderful than any of the superstitions. As a writer, I am only too keenly aware of the difficulty of applying imagination to a fact and making it come out light and airy and dazzling as well as suspensefully dramatic.
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