Something Old

 

Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year or two ago.     

“THE SCORPION GOD – Three Short Novels” by William Golding (First published in 1971)

 

Three novelle by William Golding were published together in one volume as The Scorpion God in 1971. They are The Scorpion God, Clonk Clonk, and Envoy Extraordinary. Envoy Extraordinary had been published earlier in a magazine in 1956. All three novelle are set in ancient times and in some way all are fables, as was the case in most of Golding’s earlier novels. However while two of these fables are serious, Envoy Extraordinary is more-or-less jocular. Later Golding turned Envoy Extraordinary into a play called The Brass Butterfly.

The Scorpion God is set in Egypt in very, very ancient times – about 3,000 B.C. Great House, meaning the Pharaoh, has to prove his strength regularly every seven years, or else the great river [the Nile] will not rise and the land will become barren. But he is ageing and is now clearly losing the ability to fulfil his ritual duties. His son, the prince, has to become a God and is referred to as a God. But the prince is very young [not yet a teenager] and does not want to become a God. Nor does he want to go through the ritual of marrying his sister Pretty Flower. Knowing he is ageing, Great House remembers that an earlier Pharaoh poison himself so that he could become immortal in the after-life. Should he do the same? But there is a character commonly called The Liar – a sort of court jester, but far more caustic – who knows more. Others do not believe him when he says that the land in which they live is only a small part of the whole world, and he speaks of mountains covered in snow. The river not only rises but it overflows. The Liar has to escape when he almost takes Pretty Flower as his wife. He is able to get through the deluge. Only on the very last page [p.62 in the copy I have]  does one of the soldiers chasing him gives the title of this novella. He describes The Liar as “Bleeding inside. He stings like a scorpion.” In the skies of ancient Egypt, there was a constellation known as the Scorpion, a violent god.

What exactly is Golding doing in this tale? It is known that he spent some time studying ancient Egypt in order to make his story credible, but there must be more to it than merely giving us an image of an ancient society far away. Like his novel The Inheritors, he is insisting that human behaviour is fairly consistent  - there is always ritual of some sort, there are always people who rebel against the status quo [The Liar] and such people are often threatened for seeing the world in a new way -  and there is always the threat of human violence.  Yet at the same time, there is a yearning for a force greater than human beings. Call it God if you will, but there it is.

            Clonk Clonk is a very different kettle of fish. As in The Scorpion God, Clonk Clonk had a profusion of characters with strange names, but even more so – and sometimes they are confusing, especially when one character is given many names. In Clonk Clonk there are characters with names like Bee Woman, Beautiful Bird, Stooping Eagle, Charging Elephant, Rutting Rhino etc. etc. The time is distant primeval times, hundreds of thousands of years ago. I have checked some pundits who assume that the story is set in Mesopotamia or on an island. But it is clear that the setting is somewhere in Africa, and as the society in question depends on warm pools (where they can clean themselves) it is clear that this part of Africa is in a volcanic area. For food, the men go hunting with their spears. The leopard is the animal they most hate. They pride in wearing leopard skins and putting up on poles leopard skulls. Meanwhile the women look for edible vegetation, prepare meals, and give birth. There are two main characters. The woman Palm is given many names. She is the woman who has the right to give names to new-born children and she has a role almost like a midwife. She longs to have children. She is something of a philosopher. She often refers to The Sky Woman – in other words the Moon – but she is beginning to understand that the Moon is simply another thing in the sky, not all mighty. Nevertheless she is fervent in keeping the right rituals. Much of the story takes place in moonlight. The other main character has become mockingly known as Chimp, because he failed to do well in one hunt and was injured.  In complicated ways, and to Chimp’s surprise, after much mocking him, Palm ritually takes him as her mate…. And she explains how men and women interact… at least that is how I interpret it. Once again, as in The Scorpion God , Golding explains the novelle’s title Clonk Clonk at the very end of the tale when Palm says “My ankle says clonk” adding “And I go clonk inside”. This suggests that she is pregnant, to her delight.

            Naturally Golding is considering the nature of human beings as they were and in many ways as they always will be, even after eons. Palm is acting as one who challenges what is taken for granted, and at least questions the environment she lives in. And the final pairing of Palm and Chimp have a tone of festivity. Human life goes on, harsh or sweet.

            So we come to the last novelle Envoy Extraordinary, which is partly tongue in cheek. As I noted above, this was written some years before the other two novelle. We are in ancient Rome. There are some political problems because the Emperor does not get on with his heir apparent, and this leads to some comedy and rivalry. But this is not the core of the tale. The Emperor’s confidante is an ingenious Greek, Phanocles, who is an inventor. Phanocles has persuaded the Emperor that the foreign idea of cooking in a [sort of] pressure-cooker is the best way to produce meals. Then Phanocles comes up with his brilliant idea of making use of steam to power ships. [At this point, although Golding never discusses it, it is true that in ancient Greece, some savants had worked out that steam could be used to make things move… but they never went further than using steam as a toy.] So Phanocles sets about creating a steam-ship, with paddle-wheels… It more-or-less works. Phanocles declares “I am altering  the shape of the world… there will be no slaves but coal and iron. The ends of the earth will be joined together”. But his hubris over runs him. There are problems, not only in the ship’s structure, and many explosions happen,  but sailors rebel. Even the slaves who row the ships rebel, asking what work will they be made to do if they were not in ships. Phanocles boasts that his ship will be faster than any other ship and will defeat any enemy fleet. But one bright person says “Suppose the enemy gets his own thunder-machine?” Reluctantly, the Emperor has to stop his friend Phanocles from going any further; and steam-ships are forbidden. But they remain good friends, walking in the Emperor’s garden, talking about philosophy and poetry… and [once again] William Golding waits until the very end when he tells us why this tale has its name. The Emperor  - discreetly wanting to get rid of him – he tells  Phanocles “I shall make you Envoy Extraordinary and  Plenipotentiary… I want you to go to China.” [Again for the record, ancient Rome vaguely understood there was a vast country in the Far East, but that was about as much they knew about it.]

            Golding is here basically having fun. There is that matter of hubris which he deals with in his novel The Spire – the man who is arrogant enough to think he knows better than the common crowd and the experts. But equally he is also suggesting that science takes a long time to develop… and science is sometimes misused. “Thunder-machines”, as one character calls them, could be far more destructive than what already existed. And surely warfare as we now know it is far more destructive than it ever was. As for the Emperor’s sending his friend off to China, I am sure Golding is nodding to the fact that in many ways ancient China was more sophisticated than most of Europe.  

            A bad tempered footnote: When I write about books, I read those books carefully. You do not have to agree with my verdicts; but I do not pretend to have read books that I have not read. I say this because increasingly I find students tend to look up precis and “notes” rather than sitting down and reading the book they are supposed to be studying. As you may be aware, “humanity” teachers at universities are finding it difficult to get students to read long books. What such students do not know is that the “notes” they often use are very simplified and erroneous. Example: Last week I ran (on line) into a hack telling students that  Golding’s novella Envoy Extraordinary was about a British official making a mess of things in Africa. Good luck to the students who use such information in an exam.