Gods of Sen

This book* is the first instalment of David Brookes's imagined mythology for ancient Britain.** I found this an astounding work of imagination: it genuinely reads like real mythology. From the prehistoric origins of the Bone Tree, finally bearing fruit to give birth to the supreme creator god Ah, to Ah's creation of the Old Gods Bet, Gon & Rif - Bet & Gon falling in love with each other & clocking out of conscious existence to become the sky & the land respectively, while Rif proves to be a troublesome character & is exiled but not before they create the beasts & monsters of the world; to the union of Bet & Gon spawning the nine Living Gods, who are nursed by Rif's creatures (these include Mhin-of-the-Mouse, Glim-of-the-Wolf, Ahma-of-the-Deer, etc); to the giants, the immortals, finally the humans; all of which are wrapped up in a nonlinear perplexing web of struggle. I particularly enjoyed L's epic five-part voyage & the chapter about Gedda the Blind - also the brief conflict involving Nask, King of the Newts (although he is far from the coolest monster in here).

   I read David's poetry & short stories last year but I sense that this was his magnum opus; I truly wish I'd ever had a chance to talk to him about it when he was alive. But if you like the literary texture of mythology & are interested in the modern capacity for inventing it, you'd love this book. I fully intend to read the next four instalments over the coming weeks.

* Unfortunately not available anywhere, hence no link. It was never published within David's lifetime & he committed suicide last year, leaving PDFs of all his work on his website, which since, given his death, has tragically been taken down. If you like the sound of what I describe here & would like to read it, comment your email address & I'll send you the PDF.

** The central conceit of this series is that in the 2010s there was a large earthquake in the English Lake District, which tore open a mountain - within which was discovered the remains of a Bronze Age civilization with advanced literary recording skills; the mythological texts discovered carved into the walls of that ancient ruined city are presented here, the mythos of the Sena people.

the Monsters and the Critics

This essay (available for free online from that link) by J.R.R. Tolkien* is arguably the landmark work in scholarship on Beowulf, the most famous surviving example of Old English poetic diction and potentially fragment of insight into pre-Christian English mythology. As such, it has been poked & picked at by academics for centuries, digging for clues into this large blank space in our historical memory - but, argues the Professor, in doing so, we have neglected, to our loss, to consider how to & why should we approach & appreciate Beowulf as what it is - a poem, to be enjoyed. I won't provide a summary of his arguments here or give much reflection on it as everything I would be likely to say has been articulated excellently by Gavin the medievalist on YouTube, so check that out - but if you're interested in seeing how Tolkien's mind worked on an academic** rather than creative level, this essay is essential reading; if you're interested in Old English culture and literature & somehow haven't read this essay where the heck have you been - and in any case it will certainly give you much food for thought in how we are to understand (and enjoy!) texts from distant times. For an academic essay it's incredibly readable*** and rather short (I finished the whole thing in a ninety-minute sitting) so go have a look.

* People remember him for his hobby, which was writing his own mythology, but often fail to remember him for his job, which was teaching about the history of language and literature - his essay on fairy-stories is another great example of his powerful scholarship, and is just as readable as this one.

** The appendix is much more linguistics-focused and digs into technical specifics rather than more readably making a broader argument, but I loved them for the depth of rigour Tolkien showed in his passion for the scholarship.

*** Not surprising for a writer of Tolkien's calibre: I particularly loved his early allegory (and yes, while he cordially disliked the form didn't mean he couldn't write a damn good one when called to) of the man who built a tower out of old stones.