Dark Liberation: An Introduction
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THIRD CYCLE – Introduction
It would have been hard to follow Butler's apotheosis in SOLOMON'S DREAM with anything but irony or bathos if the first novel of the Third Cycle, THE PRINCE, had not as it were grown up with SD. The Muse had been kind here – She has a better view of things, for sure.
In the overall scheme the Third Cycle concerns the social aspect of life, marriage, family and the like. The third section of THE FOURTH MAN tells of a prospective social union that never quite gets there, it is superseded by the ultimately larger issue of the individual. If we don't know who we are then how can we form a workable society? Likewise here: there are married folk and there are children, but there are loads of other people with other concerns.
But the novels of the Third Cycle do have a common concern - that of relationship. If the second cycle was about one main character, then this cycle is about the attempts of characters to relate to other characters. You will see societies destroyed in the attempt, people who murder in order to reach futilely to another, who have dealings with strange beings, and who finally must be utterly broken so that some trace of genuine love might seep out into the world.
THE PRINCE – Introduction.
The Prince was written in early 1992, shortly after the completion of Solomon's Dream and during a period of intense activity engendered by the latter. It was originally conceived at much the same time as Solomon's Dream, in fact some of its strongest imagery was long associated with the latter and only separated out as SD was being written. Yet while they both have a spiritual dimension, they are also quite different in context and tone. The true connection between them lies in the fact that SD completes the second sub-cycle of four novels and The Prince opens the third sub-cycle. They are like the two sides of a door, each facing in an opposite direction, but joined together at a level of truth that with a little effort can be comprehended.
The Prince is the shortest novel in the cycle, though given its concentrated narrative structure you will find that hard to believe. It is one of the most completely realised of the novels and yet still one of the most enigmatic.
THE PRINCE – Summary
The novel is about the relations between fathers and sons. It is a largely metaphorical work, projecting these relations on to an imaginary landscape in an attempt to display how sons are influenced by their fathers and what they do under that influence. The story is about a prince, whose father, an emperor too gentle to rule, is defeated and driven to suicide by the machinations of a powerful priesthood and a great city. The emperor’s death leaves his son a fugitive, protected only by two advisers and a small group of soldiers, and the novel tells of his reconquest of the Empire and how he goes on to do what his father could not do. The chief interest in the novel lies less in the outward events, though they are detailed pretty thoroughly, than in the effect the struggle has on the prince, his two advisers and his close friend; how shame can contaminate love, ambition pervert loyalty, and how the prestige of the father can place a tragic burden on the son.
The novel is narrated by one of the advisers of the Prince, once his tutor and now his confidant, whose relationship with the Prince is complicated by the fact that he is also the father of his close friend. The style of narration is simple, in the form of a long letter to the son of the Prince’s other adviser, by turns nostalgic or bitter, leavened by the narrator’s eccentric humour and distinctive philosophy. He is the perfect narrator, close to the events he recalls, a keen eye for local colour, subtle enough to discern the shifting tensions around the prince, qualified to analyse the hidden influences affecting the Prince’s action, and finally honest enough to see the part he plays in the drama.
Given the scale of the work, there are elements running through the novel which make it a parable about the contemporary world, especially to do with the decline of spirituality and the growth of illusion. These elements are allowed to speak for themselves; my chief concern has been to compose a work about a group of characters, and to this end I have endeavoured to create a varied world for them, at times whimsical but at times harsh, with the overriding aim of drawing out as much truth as I could about my main theme.
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ANON – Introduction
This novel was written in Brighton, Sussex, during winter-spring 1993-4. A strange work – containing some of the most concentrated writing the author has achieved to date – it was written in broad daylight at a wide window with a panoramic view of the South Downs. Not the most likely situation for plumbing the depths of what can be best called the cosmic aspect of us human beings. Nonetheless that is how it was done. And when the narrator calls the writer his amanuensis be sure that he means it.