David Lindsay (Edinburgh Event)

So, I spent my birthday attending an online conference hosted by the University of Edinburgh, celebrating the work of David Lindsay on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the publication of his best-known book, A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS. 

There were papers and presentations on ARCTURUS, on his lesser known works, and on film and instrumental adaptations (I liked the piano/cello piece). The talk I got the most out of was Doug Anderson's, full of information cogently presented. And it was nice to see the tribute to J. B. Pick, who more or less invented Lindsay criticism. There was also a thoughtful inquiry into why Lindsay is increasingly being categorized as a Scottish writer rather than English. All in all, the standard of presentations was good. One or two pieces seemed to me to fall short of the mark, but to be fair this might have been fuzziness on my part due to time-zone issues.*

Those issues were the inevitable result of my attending (via zoom) an event that was taking place eight time zones away. Thus I had to get up at four a.m. to be ready for the event's start at 1 pm their time (five a.m. my time). Then it ran all the way to six p.m. their time (ten a.m. my time). Luckily I had a thermos full of tea (Yunnan) to see me through.

There were I think about twenty-five people in attendance -- not bad, considering that Lindsay has never been a popular author, being somewhat of an acquired taste. Here's a list of the papers, presenters, and sequence: 

 

A Voyage to Arcturus and Beyond: David Lindsay’s Visionary Imagination: Wed December 9, 2020

 

SCHEDULE

 

1pm: Introduction: Seán Martin, Louise Milne, Steven Sutcliffe

Session One, 1.10-2.20pm: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920) One Hundred Years Later

Chair: Seán Martin

 

Talk 1/1.10-1.30: Dr J D McClure – ‘Arcturus and After’

 

Talk 2/1.30-1.50: Dr Louise Milne – ‘Early Twentieth Century Dream Cultures as context for Arcturus’

 

Talk 3/1.50-2.10: Murray Ewing – ‘The Cultural Influence of A Voyage to Arcturus’

 

2.10-2.20: Questions

Session Two, 2.20-3.30pm: After Arcturus: From The Haunted Woman to The Witch

Chair: Louise Milne

 

Talk 4/2.20-2.40:  Dr Steven Sutcliffe – ‘The Struggle to Remember in The Haunted Woman and The Violet Apple’

 

Talk 5/2.40-3.00: Dr Andrew Radford – ‘Devil's Tor: Going After Strange Gods’

 

Talk 6/3.00-3.20: Dr John Herdman - ‘The Witch: David Lindsay's Quest of the Absolute.’

 

3.20-3.30: Questions

 

3.30-3.45: Tea/coffee break

 

Session Three, 3.45-5.15pm: Genre and Media

Chair: Steven Sutcliffe

 

Talk 7/3.45-4.05: Jan Pick – ‘John Barclay Pick: Keeper of the Flame’

 

Talk 8/4.05-4.25: Douglas A. Anderson - ‘David Lindsay and the Fantasy Genre’

 

Talk 9/4.25-4.45: David Power – ‘David Lindsay and Music'

 

Talk 10/4.45-5.05: Seán Martin – ‘Representing the Unrepresentable: Reflections on Filming David Lindsay’s Sublime’.

 

5.05-5.15: Questions

 

Respondant to the Talks 5.15-5.30

Chair: Steven Sutcliffe

 

Prof Christine Ferguson – ‘David Lindsay and 20th Visionary Fiction’ 

5.30 – 6.00: Questions and Discussion: Chair: Seán Martin

Unlike the Lindsay event a few weeks ago in Glasgow, this one was a paid event and will not be going up on You-Tube, or so I understand. There was mention of a published volume, which wd be a good thing.

--John R.

*I do have to confess my surprise when one comment in the general discussion that followed the event proper suggested that Lindsay's VIOLET APPLE inspired the apple scene in C. S. Lewis's THE MAGICIAN'S NEPHEW. Not likely, I shd have thought, seeing that Lewis never saw Lindsay's book nor knew of its existence (it was published in 1976, some thirty years after Lindsay's death and a dozen years after Lewis died). I was also dubious of a thread raised in the closing discussion asserting that Lindsay must have taken psychotropic drugs in order to imagine the things that he wrote about, for which there seems to be no evidence whatever.

 

 

THE DARK TOWER and A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS

So, I've been reading (or more accurately re-reading) a number of books by  David Lindsay, whose first and most famous book, A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS, celebrates its centenary this year. And I was struck by something I had previously passed over without its drawing my attention: a striking parallel between  Lindsay's book and Lewis's THE DARK TOWER. Lewis openly confessed his debt to Lindsay, particularly to OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET, but I don't think I've seen anyone extend the influence to include the final, unfinished fourth book of the Ransom series. 

I'm all tied up with other projects right now, but if I were going to write this up I'd focus on one of the most striking things in A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS. Lindsay's work is famous for the way his protagonist grows new organs and appendages once he enters the alien world, the first of which is a breve, described as "something hard on his forehead . . . a fleshy protuberance, the size of a small plum, having a cavity in the middle, of which he could not feel the bottom" (VtA.44) 

This is strongly paralleled by what happens to Lewis's hero:  when Scudamour jumps through the chronoscope, switches places with his double, and arrives in the Otherworld, he acquires a sting growing out of his forehead: "It was broad at the base and narrowed quickly to its point, so that its total shape was rather like that of a thorn on a rose-branch . . . It was hard and horny, but not like bone . . . and . . . [d]ripping with poison" (DT.33). But where Maskull's breve granted him telepathy, The Stingerman's sting converts those he attacks with it into automatons. 

In addition to this major point of the appearance of otherworldly organs on the forehead, three other paralleled elements between Lewis's unfinished work and Lindsay's odd masterpiece might be worth exploring.

First,  the seance that opens Lindsay's book, along with the materialization of a being from the other world into our own, parallels the projection of images from another world that opens Lewis's. MacPhee even has an exchange with Orfieu about the validity or otherwise of psychical research.  

Second, there's the image of the Tower that so dominates Lewis's story, while a similar tower frames Lindsay's work, appearing first as the Observatory early in the book, then reappearing as Krag's tower at the story's climax, containing the long sought for route into the true world, Muspel. 

Third, it might be worthwhile to do something with the theme of doubles: Maskull and Nightspore in Lindsay's book (so that one cannot appear until the other is gone) and Scudamour/the Stingerman in Lewis's.

As I said, I'm too absorbed in something else to write this up and develop the argument. And besides, I've already had my say about THE DARK TOWER in my essay on the interrelations between Lewis's Ransom books, esp the first and fourth one) and Tolkien's two time travel stories.* And I've also already said pretty much what I had to say about A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS.**

On the other hand, if anybody has explored / developed the DARK TOWER / VOYAGE  TO ARCTURUS parallels and I just missed teir piece,*** I'd be happy if someone points me to it.

--John R.

*this appeared in TOLKIEN'S LEGENDARIUM, an unofficial festschrift for Christopher Tolkien (2000)

**in my online monthly column CLASSICS OF FANTASY: Lindsay's strange masterpiece was the focus of the sixth essay (January 2003). It's no longer up on the Wizard's site but can still be found online with a bit of internet searching

***I think I've read all the scholarship on DARK TOWER, but you never know

The Lindsay Event (Glasgow)

So, today was the long-awaited Centenary Seminar in honor of David Lindsay's A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS (1920). The timing wasn't too bad for an overseas event eight time zones away: 6pm Greenwich time and 10 am out here in the Pacific Northwest.

Dimitra Fimi was host and moderator and did a good job setting things up and then moderating the Q&A at the end. 

Of the three speakers, independent scholar Doug Anderson gave a fact-filled overview of Lindsay's life and writing career --a good thing to have if you're new to Lindsay and for those who know some  helpful for clearing up various mistakes in previous accounts. My favorite new fact I learned: J. R. R. Tolkien owned three copies of A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS: one of the 1920 original, one of the 1946 reprint just after Lindsay's death, and one from the 1963 edition that more or less marked  the point at which Lindsay's work came to be more widely known.

Novelist Nina Allan, whose THE RIFT contains some Arcturan echoes, discussed Lindsay's legacy to his fellow science fiction writers. I think my major takeaways from this was inherent in the realization of this being the centenary, that VtA came out at a mid-point between the early days of Verne/Wells and the classic era of science fiction in the 1930s.

Finally Professor Rbt Davis compared Lindsay's work with various theological thinkers and schools of thought, particularly Gnosticism. He quoted a v. interesting passage from a letter he'd received from Philip Pullman regarding both what Pullman sees as Gnostic affinities in his work (the evil imposter-god) and his greatest departure therefrom (Pullman's celebration of the natural world as good, not evil).

Quite a lot of interesting material within a short space, well worth watching.

For those who cdn't make the live event, they've put footage of the presentations up on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6HpKWSLuBM

--John R.