Aegypt (FANTASY MASTERWORKS)

by John Crowley

if he was not forced to wait for hours in squalid terminals for connections, he would be thrust in among colicky infants or seated next to liars with pungent breath who bent his ear and then slept on his shoulder; it was inevitable.

he felt suddenly able to shed by sheer motion a state of himself that had become binding and flavorless, and enter into another, or many others, like these scenes now being shown to him one by one, each seeming to be a threshold of happy possibilities.

he able not to toy with thoughts of hypnotic powers, unrefusable charms, the world his harem – or, conversely, of a single perfect being shaped exactly to his wants, of the kind that lonely academics described at such self-revealing length in the Personals columns of certain journals Pierce subscribed to.

There was no joy Pierce knew like the joy of finding himself freely chosen by the object of his desire, no joy even remotely like it.

There was something penitential about those long trips in it that he would not forget, and though he held nothing against the Nash, ‘pleasure driving’ would remain an oxymoron for Pierce the rest of his

country that was at once History and the gleaming clean Present as well.

the name of the intransigent geographical feature it breached and left behind so neatly, so curtly

fingertips – applied in a way to wisdom too, to enlightenment, to heart-knowledge, useless unless earned, the earning of it being no doubt all that it consisted of.

He could only hope that when the wishes came he would be wise, and not yearning; in good case; not transfixed by some object of desire; not in some dreadful circumstance from which he desperately needed relief: not, in other words, just now.

use his third wish simply to wish that he might forget the whole thing had ever happened; his safety and ease magically assured, to forget he had ever known wishes could be granted, to be returned to his (present) state of ignorance that such irruptions of power into the world, power placed at his unwise disposal,

On the face of it it seemed unlikely, considering his joblessness, and his mental health, which did not seem to him ruddy – but there would be no way to tell. He could have been visited this very morning. This day, this blue day, might be the first day of his fortune, this moment might be the first moment.

i have felt the same way several times. have i been part of adventures i can never remember? visited lands of fantasy that are out of the reach of my memory? lived and loved annd lost?

they might, Rosie thought, melt like Sambo’s tigers in this heat, churn themselves into buttermilk.

A swim. A long dive into dark water. Always that moment, as you leaped, when the desired water made you afraid, a moment in the middle of the air when you half-changed your mind, decided not to dive after all, a thrill of oh-no that was swept off by the cloven water’s cold solidity and the bliss of being in it.

a standing wave of glee and triumph like the wave that stands in a silk banner in the wind.

The first sentence of the proposal was this: ‘Why do people believe that Gypsies can tell fortunes?’ And the last sentence was this: ‘There is more than one history of the world.’

A conjunction took place there of ourselves, our desires, and the world; it has acquired meaning; if it produces no more for us, are we not tempted to think we have only used up a magic which it once truly had?

We are understanding what we have made, and its shape is ours; we have made history, we have made its street corners and the five-dollar bills we find on them; the laws that govern it are not the laws of nature, but they are the laws that govern us.

Down Passage Year

long-ago summer Saturday nights, out sparkin’, of freedom and expectation: as though this road were an extension of one he had once been on, one that he had left years ago and had suddenly rejoined at this juncture, who would have thought it led here, who would have thought.

Pierce lives obstinately in the past...every experience seems to echo with resonance to some childhood memory. This happens to us all but Pierce seems to lament his life...is convinced he is meant for greater things and has missed a turning somewhere.

Fires had been lit in some of the dolmens, and woodsmoke mingled with the night air; a thin piping could be heard, curling through the pines’ hushing.

This entire scene echoes pagan revelry. Red wine has always been synonymous with blood while the tables loaded with food suggest the vast cornucopia of fruits and meat that are usually depicted in bacchanalian revelry. The night time with a full moon shining on storm clouds in the horizon seems to echo the roiling mist of human emotion and desire that lie underneath our calm facades.

He was followed by a blond child, rushing in to his knees with a shriek and then stopping in surprise; then an older child who raced on past him and went under. A large woman, their mother it might be, drawing off her smock, her great breasts rolling with her stride, followed them in, churning the gold-barred water into silver foam.

Adamites.

harvest

Harvest. Red wine thick as blood. Nudity. Free love. This chapter is chock full of pagan symbolism.

sat the piper, his thin uncertain music coming from a set of bound reed pipes, and himself looking Pan-like in a mild-mannered way, bow mouth pursed to blow and a boyish beard.

Pierce wandered away after the smile he had seen, which had disappeared amid the partygoers.

Egyptian cat sculpture;

References to Egypt again.

Her hand was small and moist, and he felt, hand on her back to put her ashore, the cotton of her dress slide against the silk of her skin. Beside her, he offered the flask again. They listened to the silence.

Very sensual.

When, where had he once before broken into a locked place that smelled so, a place where old summers had been left?

Will this question be answered?

drunken bob like a bee-visited blossom;

Reading this metaphor itself has made this book worth it

He had a mad thought that she knew this room, had long known it; and, for it was in some way the same thought, that he could do anything at all to her here, anything, and would meet with no resistance but this strange inattention. It was not he she was wandering from.

Does he attempt to rape her in the same room later on?

The piper had gone, and most of the others. Pierce was struck suddenly by a thought: These people now all have to drive cars to get home. How do they manage? How will she?

And the real world intrudes

‘Good party,’ said Spofford. He was consuming a piece of cake, one hand held below it like a paten for the crumbs.

A paten is a plate ised for the Eucharist to collect the crumbs of bread. It seems to be a recurring theme in this book christian religious imagery juxtaposed against pagan rituals. Beau look likee Jesus but plays the pipes of Pan, the red wine of communion is blood but is it the blod of jesus or the sacrificial blood of bacchanalia? What ks Crowley trying to say?

country so far it was made of time not space. Standing,

Is he talking abouit hitory itself?

And he saw, by the old man’s clear sad eyes, that oh he would do his best, he would, but that he would forget it all, everything he had learned, his task, his education,

Or is this country simply the future? Are humans doomed to never learn from experience?

blazed a single star before sunrise.

A lot of free association. These are the most frustrating stretches in Crowleys work. He tends to clothe a lot of his characters motivations in abstract weirdness which divorces the reader from the story. Pierce Moffett is the least interestig character in thiss book

‘I hope you’ll be back,’ Spofford said. ‘Now that you know the way.’

Again references to paths and ways...

Rosie waved apologetically, and a passenger obscure behind the green glass waved back.

Thats pierce obvioisly.

His name had been Drill. He thought that was funny; Rosie only thought it was proper, like the Ball Building. The big town, the big strange-smelling halls of the big Ball Building: she hadn’t finished putting that town together with this small one.

When we see things from Rosies point of view thee abbtractions are all gone

The house Doctor Dee led him into seemed to be more than one house, several thrown into one, with doors broken through walls and passages made to lead from barn to kitchen to still-room to washhouse; Will followed along after the doctor’s billowing robe and slipslop slippers, into a large long room, windowed on both sides with small mullioned windows, and stuffed full of more things, in greater disorder, than any room he had ever been in or dreamed of.

This echoes the house in little big

‘Readin’, writin’, and ’rithmetic,’ Pierce said. ‘All that stuff is coming back,’ Earl said. ‘It’s a new age.’

Ha

‘I’m afraid she’s on vacation,’ said a voice like Julie’s. ‘For almost three weeks.’

Echoes. Three weeks of waiting.

Mystery 101. How history hungers for the shape of myth; how the plots and characters of fable and romance come to inhabit real courts and counting-houses and cathedrals; how old sciences die, and bequeath their myths and magic to their successors; how the heroes of legend pass away, fall asleep, are resurrected, and enter ordinary daylit history, persisting as a dream persists into waking life, altering and transforming it even when the dream itself has been forgotten or repressed.

We get the first mission statement for the bok.

He knows tiny details of things, and he just tosses them out, like of course. I know it’s a novel, but still.’ She realized she didn’t know quite what she was talking about. ‘Still.’

The points of view of each character are quite distinct

‘It’s as if,’ Rosie said, ‘he every once in a while, for the fun of it, pretends that the world used to be different than it is, and things could happen that can’t anymore.’

Mission statement

who could see things for him in a crystal ball: who could see angels, and have conversations with them.

This is what we read in the prologue

the vast knowledge contained in God’s holy angels as in vessels could be obtained by man: that it could be drunk: and that if it were, then neither the man who drank it nor the world would be the same thereafter.

it troubled him – that it was not only the pious, not only the honest, through whom a way could come to be pierced. Nor that, just because a man might try to cheat him with false skrying, the same man could do no true skrying as well.

Ability and virtue

boy I know, said Doctor Dee, saw somewhat in this stone. He was a player, and perhaps he lied to me, but he said that there are creatures who are answerable to this stone, only it was not he to whom they would speak; that he to whom the stone belonged was to come later.

At this point the story starts to meld with the fictional novel within the novel

All creation is a huge, ornate, imaginary, and unintended fiction; if it could be deciphered it would yield a single shocking word.

IF EVER SOM POWR WITH 3 WISHES TO GRANT