“Conan staggered dizzily up, shaking the sweat and blood out of his eyes. Blood dripped from his poniard and fingers, and trickled in rivulets down his thighs, arms and breast. Murilo caught at him to support him, but the barbarian shook him off impatiently.
“‘When I cannot stand alone, it will be time to die,’ he mumbled, through mashed lips. ‘But I’d like a flagon of wine.’”
– From “Rogues in the House” by Robert E. Howard, first published in Weird Tales, January 1934
In 1927, Samuil Marshak (1887-1964), a writer in the Soviet Union, published a children’s book about the post office. Pochta has since been republished many times, illustrated by many illustrators, and translated into English as Hail to the Mail. The story follows a letter that’s chasing its intended recipient around the world. On a similar quest, I’ve been hunting for the edition illustrated by Yuri Korovin, published in Moscow in the 1960s and ’70s. I recently found it in Nicosia, Cyprus, thanks to eBay and Alexandre Gorchkov. I love the story and the artwork; I only wish my Russian was better.
The story begins with a knock on the door of Boris Zhitkov (1882-1938), a Russian children’s book author.
Boris gives the postman the sad news that the letter’s intended recipient has gone to Berlin.
And so the letter must follow!
But he has already gone…
…to London.
The letter follows him there, but he has just left for South America…
And so the letter takes a sea voyage, but the recipient has left…
… for Russia, and there the letter finds him, at last.
Thanks to postal workers all around the world.
It is not often in the Conan stories of Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) that we find the noted barbarian in a philosophical frame of mind, but in “Queen of the Black Coast” (1934) he has this conversation with Bêlit, the pirate queen:
“Conan, do you fear the gods?”
“I would not tread on their shadow… Some gods are strong to harm, others, to aid; at least so say their priests. Mitra of the Hyborians must be a strong god… But even the Hyborians fear Set. And Bel, god of thieves, is a good god. When I was a thief in Zamora I learned of him.”
“What of your own gods? I have never heard you call on them.”
“Their chief is Crom. He dwells on a great mountain. What use to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune! He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man’s soul. What else shall men ask of the gods?”
“But what of the world beyond the river of death?” she persisted.
“There is no hope here or hereafter in the cult of my people,” answered Conan. “In this world men struggle and suffer vainly, finding pleasure only in the bright madness of battle; dying, their souls enter a gray misty realm of clouds and icy winds, to wander cheerlessly throughout eternity.”
Bêlit shuddered. “Life, as bad as it is, is better than such a destiny. What do you believe, Conan?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom’s realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer’s Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: If life is an illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.”
Conan, as we are accustomed to seeing him, by Frank Frazetta
“The sea is a necessary evil; I suppose it is necessary because it was created. (Salt, I know, is vital; but why we can’t have salt without water is a mystery.) Mosquitoes, fleas, and rattlesnakes are also mysteries. The world would be a great deal better and vastly more comfortable without them; but my opinion is of no consequence to the universe, or I should have been consulted some time ago.”
– Kate Field in Hap-Hazard (1873)
“To sit late in a restaurant (especially when one has to pay the bill) or over a long meal after a cocktail party is particularly productive of Angst, which does not affect us after snacks taken in an armchair with a book. The business lunch is another meal from which we would prefer to be driven away in a coffin.”
– Cyril Connolly writing as ‘Palinurus’ in The Unquiet Grave (1945)
Before parting with my beloved Robert E. Howard Conan paperbacks with their Frank Frazetta covers, I had to scan them and enjoy them one more time.
“There was in Tsukushi a certain man, a constable of the peace it would seem, who for many years had eaten two broiled radishes each morning under the impression that radishes were a sovereign remedy for all ailments. Once some enemy forces attacked and surrounded his constabulary, choosing a moment when the place was deserted. Just then, two soldiers rushed out of the building, and engaged the enemy, fighting with no thought for their lives until they drove away all the enemy troops. The constable, greatly astonished, asked the two soldiers, ‘You have fought most gallantly, gentlemen, considering I have never seen you here before. Might I ask who you are?’ ‘We are the radishes you have faithfully eaten every morning for so many years,’ they answered, and with these words they disappeared. So deep was his faith in radishes that even such a miracle could occur.”
– No. 68 in Essays in Idleness (circa 1330) by Kenko
Illustration by Viola French from Jim Forest and Ranger Don (1959)
“They hurried on, and we followed them; until suddenly they set up a strange halloo, which was answered from beyond the grove through which we were passing, and the next moment we entered upon some open ground, at the extremity of which we descried a long, low hut, and in front of it were several young girls. As soon as they perceived us they fled with wild screams into the adjoining thickets, like so many startled fawns. A few moments after the whole valley resounded with savage outcries, and the natives came running towards us from every direction.
“Had an army of invaders made an irruption into their territory they could not have evinced greater excitement. We were soon completely encircled by a dense throng, and in their eager desire to behold us they almost arrested our progress; an equal number surrounded our youthful guides, who with amazing volubility appeared to be detailing the circumstances which had attended their meeting with us. Every item of intelligence appeared to redouble the astonishment of the islanders, and they gazed at us with inquiring looks.”
– From Typee (1846) by Herman Melville; illustration by Mead Schaeffer, from the 1923 Dodd, Mead edition.
“Protesting stomachs, shivering timbers, groaning machinery, whistling wind, breaking china, crying babies, and roaring waves are not music to the ear. Four senses out of five are systematically outraged, and, in nine cases out of ten, the fifth is rendered useless by the upward tendency of every article of food.”
– Kate Field, “At Sea” in Hap-Hazard (1873)
