Novel by John Crowley
The Solitudes
1988 edition of
The Solitudes
by
VGSF
, bearing the original title
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Author
| John Crowley
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Original title
| Ægypt
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Country
| United States
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Language
| English
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Series
| Ægypt
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Subject
| History,
Hermeticism
,
English Renaissance
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Genre
| Fantasy
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Publisher
| Bantam Books
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Publication date
| April 1987 (1st edition)
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Pages
| 390 (Hardcover edition)
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Followed by
| Love & Sleep
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The Solitudes
(originally titled
Ægypt
contrary to the author's wishes
[1]
) is a 1987
fantasy
novel by
John Crowley
. It is Crowley's fifth published novel and the first novel in the
Ægypt
tetralogy. Titled after
Luis de Gongora
's
Las Soledades
(English: "The Solitudes"), the novel follows Pierce Moffett, a college history professor in his retreat from ordinary, academic life to pastoral life of Faraway Hills. While in the area, Pierce comes up with a plan to write a book about
Hermeticism
, in the process finding several parallels with his own project and that of the nearly-forgotten local novelist Fellowes Kraft.
The novel takes place in two time periods and features three main protagonists; that of Pierce's in the late twentieth century, and that of
John Dee
,
Edward Kelley
and
Giordano Bruno
as from the historical novels of Kraft in the Renaissance. The difference is marked stylistically by
dashes indicating dialogue
for events that happened in the Renaissance and events in the twentieth century marked by dialogue in quotation marks.
The novel was nominated for the
1988 Arthur C. Clarke Award
, and the
1988 World Fantasy Award
.
[2]
Background
[
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]
The novel is structured basically as a
kunstlerroman
("artist's novel"), following the late-life development of Pierce Moffett in his
attempts to finish a fictional book
combining speculative history, fiction and
a fictional world he created as a child
called Ægypt. Pierce's two main sources for the book include the work of his graduate professor and speculative historian Frank Walker Barr, and the highly productive historical novelist Fellowes Kraft. Barr's theories are likely based on the speculative historians Crowley cites in his short note at the beginning of the novel, which names the work of
Robert Graves
, the nearly forgotten
Pre-Raphaelite
Katharine Emma Maltwood
, and especially
Dame Frances Yates
, who Crowley cites as a deliberate influence, calling the novel a "fantasia on her themes".
Kraft, on the other hand, is a historical novelist native to Blackberry Jambs in whose novels Pierce first reads about
Giordano Bruno
, and whose uncompleted novel about
John Dee
and Bruno meeting is interspersed throughout the novel. His novels are known for their interesting sources, but Rosie finds in them colour and style with little driving force to illustrate their histories,
and Pierce finds too simplistic in their settings, but a useful starting point in illuminating the minds of their subjects.
Kraft has been widely speculated to be based on the life and work of
David Derek Stacton
, of whom Crowley is a notable admirer, though Stacton is never known to have written on the subjects of either
John Dee
or
Bruno
. On his blog, Crowley identified Kraft as an "intentional creation" who nevertheless resembles how Crowley imagines Stacton "if he'd lived to be old".
[6]
The project of a long uncompleted work on Bruno has many similarities to
The Last Confession
by
Morris West
.
This novel of the sequence is sectioned based on the first three
astrological houses
. Vita, signifying life; Lucrum, signifying wealth; and Fratres signifying brothers or brotherhood.
Plot
[
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]
The novel begins, like
Goethe's Faust
, with a "Prologue in Heaven", depicting
John Dee
and his scryer
Edward Kelley
?who Dee as yet only knows as Edward Talbot?watching Angels in a crystal. Suddenly, to their dread, the angels scatter and a child appears in the glass, "holding a space" Doctor Dee knows to be absolutely immense, into which both feel their souls being drawn. During a "Prologue on Earth" immediately following, a young Pierce Moffett, preparing to serve as an
altar boy
reads a novel about Giordano Bruno (later revealed to be by Fellowes Kraft), the sixteenth century Dominican Friar, and finds himself sharply identifying with the narrator.
The novel proper begins under the sign of
Vita
, with Pierce now in middle age, taking a bus to apply for a job at
Peter Ramus
College. Along the way he is reading a new translation of
Las Soledades
of
Luis de Gongora
. The bus stops in the Faraway Hills, where Pierce meets Spofford, a previous student of his. Impulsively, Pierce decides to forget the interview and leave with Spofford for the town of Blackberry Jambs nearby.
While there, Pierce comes to conceive of a novel combining his vast knowledge of history along with speculations about
Hermetic philosophy
, his interest in Giordano Bruno, as well as local author's Fellowes Kraft's unfinished series of novels involving Bruno and John Dee. In the meantime, he is drawn closer to Rosie Mucho. At the same time Rosie moves the painful first steps of divorcing her husband Mike. Interspersed throughout the novel are scenes from Kraft's novels, involving John Dee's first experiments with the occult, and his first meetings with other figures including
William Shakespeare
and
Edward Kelley
, as well as a second novel, featuring Giordano Bruno's education, rise to fame, and ultimately to his wandering years under the threat of death from the Church.
Characters
[
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]
As earlier stated, the novel follows both characters in the present, as well as those in the Historical novels of Fellowes Kraft
- Characters in the present
- Pierce Moffett
- The widely educated protagonist of the novel. Pierce has mild
synesthesia
as to numbers and has a very easy time remembering historical dates. Holding a degree in "Renaissance Studies" Pierce's story generally follows his attempts to both satisfy his curiosity and find meaningful employment for the knowledge he has thus far accumulated.
- Rosie Mucho
- A long-time resident of the Blackberry Jambs, and eventually Pierce's close friend. Throughout the novel she goes the first painful steps of divorcing her husband
Mike Mucho
while trying to keep her daughter
Samantha
from being exposed to the process. Her surname may be a reference
to the husband of Oedipa Maas
in Thomas Pynchon's
The Crying of Lot 49
.
- Boney Rassmussen
- Rosie's uncle, and a member of the board managing Kraft's estate. He eventually offers Rosie the job of keeping Kraft's house.
- Val
- The town fortune teller, whose divinations are startlingly accurate.
- Julie Rosengarten
- Pierce's one-time girlfriend and literary agent. After pitching the idea for his novel, Julie first interests Pierce in marketing the idea towards New Age sensibilities.
- Beau Brachman
- Rosie's close friend, and frequent babysitter of Sam Mucho. Beau is an enthusiastic disciple of New Age philosophy, and widely admired throughout the town. Throughout the novel his appearance is humorously misread, first by Rosie noticing how much he resembles an iconographic Christ, and by Pierce as the god
Pan
.
- Characters of the Renaissance
- John Dee
- The Elizabethan cryptographer, doctor, alchemist and skryer. His character is revealed in two novels by Kraft, the first being
Bitten Apples
about the early life of Shakespeare, and the second being Kraft's unpublished novel.
- Giordano Bruno
- The Dominican friar, first encountered in the novels that Pierce reads as a young boy and later in the unpublished work Pierce finds in Kraft's estate.
- Edward Kelley
- John Dee's assistant, going by the name Edward Talbot. Dee however, is constantly suspicious of Talbot.
Brief appearances are also made by
William Shakespeare
and his family, and
Queen Elizabeth
.
Reception
[
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]
Dave Langford
reviewed
Aegypt
for
White Dwarf
#95, and stated that "
Aegypt
is the beginning of a long, strange journey, and is very beautifully written."
[7]
A review in the Times Literary Supplement found in the novel "its own vivid reality is an absorbing one, and it leaves the reader impatient for the second volume."
[8]
In a review for the
last novel in the Ægypt cycle
in the Boston Review, James Hynes noted that the book's original reception was "widely and respectfully reviewed".
[9]
Harold Bloom
included the novel in the last "Chaotic" Canon in the appendices of
Western Canon
.
[10]
Selected editions
[
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]
References
[
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]
Further reading
[
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]
- Dirda, Michael (Winter 2008).
"Souls Hungering After Meaning"
. The American Scholar
. Retrieved
2012-04-10
.
- Turner, Alice; Andre-Driussi, Michael, eds. (2003).
Snake's-hands: The Fiction of John Crowley
. Canton, OH: Cosmos Books.
ISBN
978-1587155093
.
External links
[
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]
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Novels
|
- The Deep
(1975)
- Beasts
(1976)
- Engine Summer
(1979)
- Little, Big
(1981)
- The Translator
(2002)
- Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land
(2005)
- Four Freedoms
(2009)
- The Chemical Wedding: by Christian Rosencreutz: A Romance in Eight Days by Johann Valentin Andreae in a New Version
(2016)
- Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr
(2017)
- Flint and Mirror: A Novel of History and Magic
(2022)
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Ægypt Cycle
| |
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Short fiction
|
- "Antiquities" (1977)
- "Where Spirits Gat Them Home" (1978)
- "
The Single Excursion of Caspar Last
" (1979)
- "The Reason for the Visit" (1980)
- "The Green Child" (1981)
- "Novelty" (1983)
- "
Snow
" (1985)
- "The Nightingale Sings at Night" (1989)
- "
Great Work of Time
" (novella, originally published in
Novelty
, 1989)
- "In Blue" (1989)
- "Missolonghi 1824" (1990)
- "Exogamy" (1993)
- "Gone" (1996)
- "Lost and Abandoned" (1997)
- "An Earthly Mother Sits and Sings" (2000)
- "The War Between the Objects and the Subjects" (2002)
- "The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines" (2002)
- "Little Yeses, Little Nos" (2005)
- "Conversation Hearts" (2008)
- "And Go Like This" (2011)
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