Self, Identity and Place in Heroic Fantasy - The Importance of Urban Environment in Moorcock’s Elric Saga

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Felipe Real Hurtado

Professor Mike Wilson

LET1760–3 Seminar

5 July 2010

Self, Identity and Place in Heroic Fantasy:

The Importance of Urban Environment in Moorcock’s Elric Saga

In the context of fantasy as a genre, research regarding the relationship between self and

place is almost non-existent. Although a prominent subject matter in literary criticism nowadays,

the importance of place simply appears to have been overlooked by contemporary readings of

heroic fantasy works. It may be that the genre, in general, provides with hardly any suitable

material for such studies; after all, most of the lands-of-fable that populate the field belong to a

medieval environment where cities—and landscape in general—are nothing more than

background for storytelling and action.

However, one of the most challenging and modern works in the fantasy genre—the Elric

Saga by Michael Moorcock—supplies both readers and critics with “a complex relationship

between world and hero, between Multiverse and Eternal Champion” (Clute and Grant 657). As

a result, this research intends to unravel this complex relationship, and exhibit how Moorcock

challenges and deconstructs the notion of the classic Sword & Sorcery hero by emphasizing the

importance of place as the main determinant influence in Elric’s sense of identity.

According to Alan Moore, in his prologue to a new compilation of Elric’s stories,

“Moorcock was consummately hip and brought the sensibilities of a progressive and much wider

world of art and literature into a field that was, despite the unrestrained imagination promised by

its sales pitch, for the most part both conservative and inward looking” (iii). In this sense, Elric is

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an intriguingly complex character a priori. Clute and Grant summarize him as “[an] incestuous, a

kinslayer and a traitor; he is marked out both by his status a prince of an elder race and by his

albinism; he is almost inevitably fatal to everyone who comes near him, particularly his lovers

and friends; he gradually learns he has been manipulated by the Lords of Chaos and Order, and

that any crime he may have committed is trivial by comparison” (3). Since he is clearly not the

typical character of medieval, Tolkienian high fantasy, his place belongs in another sub-genre of

fantasy—that of Sword & Sorcery.

Sword & Sorcery is a term coined by American fantasy writer Fritz Leiber in 1961, when

Michael Moorcock requested a term to describe a sub-genre of fantasy characterized by

“muscular heroes in violent conflict with a variety of villains, chiefly wizards, witches, evil

spirits and other creatures whose powers are—unlike the hero’s—supernatural in origin” (qtd. in

Clute and Grant 915). The classic examples of this sort of fantasy narrative are Robert E.

Howard’s Conan

Moreover, Hans Joachim Alpers, in concluding a taxonomic attempt in the genre he

denominates heroic fantasy, exposes the main ideologies present in the vast majority of its

narratives in the following words:

stories, and they turned into an ‘anti-model’ that Moorcock followed by using

its opposites in building up Elric’s character; instead of muscle power, Elric is a weakling.

Although he usually faces enemy wizards and evil creatures, the albino is himself one of the

most powerful sorcerers in the Young Kingdoms, thanks to a demonic pact with Arioch, Lord of

Chaos, and an alien creature himself: a Melnibonéan, crimson-eyed albino.

The ideologies thereby propagated are: magic-mystic understanding of the world,

i.e. mystification of relationships that could be grasped by the intellect; right of

the stronger as the principle of societal organization; glorification of violence,

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particularly killing; oppression of women; emphasis on the racial superiority of

the Nordic (Aryan) type; fatalism toward hierarchic structures and their

consequences, such as wars; the fuehrer principle: the greatest butcher of them all

shall determine our fate; imperialistic policy; and anti-intellectualism. (42)

As it can be seen, the last Emperor of Melniboné propagates none of these ideologies. He is a

philosophically and ethically-oriented ruler which rejects his own supernatural power. In his own

words in The Fortress of the Pearl

The result of all this stripping down from the albino kinslayer is that creates a character

that can no longer be classified either as classic or heroic fantasy. As a result, his identity—both

as character and narrative—must be found elsewhere, and it is here where the notorious

importance of the urban environment becomes relevant in analyzing Elric’s character. In fact,

“Elric in no way conformed to the then-current definition of a hero, being instead a pink-eyed

necromaniac invalid, a traitor to his kind and slayer of his wife, a sickly and yet terrifying

spiritual vampire living without hope at the frayed limits of his own debatable humanity” (Moore

v).

, “I am sworn to myself not to use my power merely to make

others perform my will to my own selfish ends” (Moorcock 72). Furthermore, there is no

particular glorification of violence—quite the contrary—and, more importantly, the fatalism—

i.e. acceptance without questioning—towards hierarchic structure is nowhere to be found; Elric,

from the very beginning of the narrative questions the very same power structure of his own

Empire.

In this case, the obvious solution for the albino Emperor would be to identify with his

powerful position as Melniboné’s head of state. However, from the opening lines of Elric’s first

novel, Elric of Melniboné, the Prince of Ruins emerges as isolated and dubious of his own race;

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here it is mentioned that he “mentally debates moral issues and in itself this activity divides him

from the great majority of his subjects” (4). This philosophical inclination of Elric, the White

Wolf, is not only problematic for him; it is also symptomatic of a form of self-deception that

according to Carter Kaplan, characterizes Moorcock’s heroes as individuals devoid of their

identity and suffering from an incomplete knowledge of themselves. In Kaplan’s words,

“Moorcock repeatedly portrays characters that use science as a means to hide from the human

condition. An enthusiasm for theoretical science figures among the many self-deceptions of his

heroes, who, possessing incomplete knowledge of themselves, struggle unsuccessfully against

the contours of a hostile and deforming landscape” (38, my emphasis). It is this struggle against

his own immediate surroundings which catalyzes the sorcerer-emperor’s journey.

Consequently, the White Wolf’s lack of self-identification and antagonism towards his

own people/Empire forces him to embark in a quest for his own sense of selfhood outside his

oikos. In this sense, in Elric

However, since the anemic king presents a refusal or inability to adjust to those realities

of the world of the Young Kingdoms—and later on, the Multiverse—that he sees as destructive

of his right to subjectivity and personal freedom, there is a prevailing mood of melancholy and

pessimism in his quest. This existential angst is usually associated to the German term

the crimson-eyed sees his own quest as useful for Melniboné at

large—although indirectly—since “his desire was not to reform Melniboné but to reform

himself, not to initiate action but to know the best way of responding to the actions of others”

(Moorcock 106). This desire is the real, profound leitmotif behind the somewhat-chaotic actions

of the 428th Emperor and, although he is not able to see it at first, his destiny and that of his

kingdom are entangled in one thread of development.

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Weltschmerz—literally, “world grief”—and comes to life especially in his position as Emperor

of a decadent Empire.

Now, it is interesting to point out that the albino’s kingship—and the responsibilities

inherent to it, which he intends to avoid—are usually embodied in the medieval, walled city.

Dean A. Miller, discussing the epic hero’s adventure framework, expands on this point.

“Nevertheless the king remains a fundamentally extraneous to the wild heart of the heroic

enterprise and to the demands of the heroic style, and the unstable tie connecting the two is

powerfully symbolized by the hero’s ambiguous or dubious attitude toward the king’s special

place: to city, palace, or even to his hall” (140-141). Thus, it can be seen here, a priori, that the

relationship between Elric and urban place is conflictive in two senses. First, as the urban

environment represents a kingship he repudiates, and second, as a clear opposition to his heroic

impulse to embark on his quest for identity and peace of mind. Now, Moorcock presents Elric to

us through this conflictive place: the first scene of Elric of Melniboné

Moreover, place in classic Sword & Sorcery narrative is only perceived as a wild

container for action, where “there [is] an emphasis on borderlands and water margins… The

geography of Sword and Sorcery is designed as an arena for heroes and heroines who awake

each morning at the beginning of their lives” (Clute and Grant 915). What this type of setting

develops in the palace

court, specifically in the throne room. Here, the Ruby Throne scenery represents the disparity

between the Emperor and the other Melnibonéans: “These are the people of Melniboné, the

Dragon Isle, which ruled the world for ten thousand years and has ceased to rule it for less than

five hundred years” (3). The rituals and traditions—properly developed in the Ruby Throne

room—represent the culture that Elric abhors and feels alien to him. He does not enjoy the hall;

for him, it is a cage as any other dungeon in the Dragon Isle.

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creates—as a secondary, non-intended effect—is a somewhat shallow eternal youth; heroes in

Sword & Sorcery stories do not age—and therefore, do not evolve or mature either.

On the other hand, in Moorcock’s writing—and especially in the Elric Saga—since place

takes a relevant role, characters do have the chance to develop; in his stories, place—particularly

related to urban settings—plays the role of Elric’s constant reflective surface, both in his feelings

and state of mind. Moreover, as pointed out by Carter Kaplan in his essay "Fractal Fantasies of

Transformation: William Blake, Michael Moorcock, and the Utilities of Mythographic

Shamanism," “[a]lthough Blake and Moorcock are careful to represent minute particulars with

all the detail made possible by language, it is not actually their plots or their characters that

represent the primary themes of their stories. Rather, what of importance in the mythographic

activity itself” (48). And this mythographic activity is directly related to the place where it

occurs. This relationship is explained in Kaplan’s theory as tripartite: self-perception—as

symptomatic of one’s own sense of identity—social identity and place, all related in a complex

ontology. As such, “Moorcock offer[s] what might be described as a Wittgensteinian ontology,

where the contours of human self-perception and social identity are to be located in the activities

of human being, in unique and particularized settings in the stream of life… Moorcock [is]

telling stories about people encountering and confronting the orthodoxies of their personal

mythologies” (Kaplan 51, my emphasis).

However, Moorcock goes a step further in his development of place: he relates all the

possible realities he creates (as well as their heroes) with one umbrella concept—that of

Multiverse. Clute and Grant, in their Encyclopedia of Fantasy, define it as “a universe consisting

of innumerable alternate worlds, all intersecting laterally and (palimpsest-fashion) vertically”

(668). More importantly, this Multiverse is not a static reality that can only be physically

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explored. On the contrary, the shifts from one world to another are usually shifts in perception:

phenomenologically speaking, heroes in Moorcock literally travel the Multiverse through their

sensations, thoughts, desires and dreams. This exploration is largely possible due to the

Multiverse’s characteristic of being “an indefinitely (though not, it seems, infinitely) extendable

array of alternate realities, each one of which is a Fantasyland with a palimpsest relationship to

other Fantasylands” (Clute and Grant 657).

The first direct effect of this new configuration of reality is the creation of a malleable

and unstable—even unreliable—dimension of existence, usually designated as playground. This

playground is “a set of related ideas or concepts which are open to the fantasy-creator to romp

in” (Clute and Grant 766). Indeed, this romping in is clearly reflected on a continuous expansion

and enlargement of the known world. In the prologue to The Weird of the White Wolf

Now, if reality can be expanded, it can also be shrunk—or even be destroyed—at the

whims of a hero. In this sense, the Multiverse functions as a palimpsest from both the narrative

and practical perspectives. As Clute and Grant state, “[c]osmologies—like the Multiverse created

by Michael Moorcock… which treat huge arrays of mundane and fantasy realities as having been

written in sand upon a central and fundamental reality can also be described as treating that

, entitled

“The Dream of Earl Aubec,” a part of this process is revealed in the narrative. Aubec of Malador,

a prior incarnation of Elric himself, conquers new lands south of his own and faces a mysterious

sorceress. The encounter is narrated from the woman’s viewpoint in the following terms: “Yet

she admired him, she was attracted to him, perhaps, because he was not so accessible, a little

more than she had been to that earlier hero who had claimed Aubec’s own land from Chaos

barely two hundred years before… She moved into another chamber to prepare for the transition

of the castle to the new edge of the world” (17).

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substrate as a palimpsest” (743). Yet, this somehow flimsy configuration of place—and

traveling—in Moorcock’s narrative is deliberate; its origin lies in an extreme form of

phenomenology that seems to pervade his works—and especially the Elric Saga. Concisely, “in

his [Moorcock´s] works, shifts from one world to another, whether or not voluntary, are

normally signaled by shifts in perception. To perceive a new world in the Multiverse is to inhabit

it” (Clute and Grant 668).

Consequently, this creative freedom in and out of the world shapes a reality where,

although higher powers still exist and influence/interfere in mortal affairs, human beings have a

unique chance to characterize their lives—and place—in their own fashion. In Kaplan’s words,

“in that universe—let's call it a Lockean universe—human being is liberated from the

mechanism of the cosmos, and rather than being joined with the cosmos is instead separate and

free to discover the secrets of the mechanism in order to transcend it. It is this Lockean universe

to which Moorcock's elaborate mythography is tending” (40).

This configures both a dualistic, Cartesian model of reality and, at the same time, it opens

the possibility of unraveling the secrets of the universe through exploration. The latter has

already been characterized as a process that can include journeys of all type—physical, oniric

and even metaphysical in nature. In this aspect, the role of the hero—from here onwards, the

Eternal Champion—is fundamental to the Multiverse. His actions—or lack of them—will

determine the expansion or contraction of reality and, in more concrete terms, his explorations

will affect the amount of possibilities and their probabilities of occurrence from a

phenomenological standpoint. This last consequence is what has been defined as thinning, since

“in alternate-worlds or Multiverse stories, which often involve time travel, the weakening of the

fabric of probability… can also be described as a process of thinning” (Clute and Grant 942).

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The obvious next question should be what configures the Eternal Champion, responsible of such

magnificent feats— and catastrophes.

Now, since the Eternal Champion has responsibilities towards the Multiverse at large—

usually, unintended and undesired—his character rises high above that of a simple hero saving

the world. In the case of Elric, he does not know in the beginning how important or who he

really is; he only knows of the discomfort in his mind and his inability to be the Emperor his

people demand of him. The first, immediate outcome of this ignorance is that he commits

heinous acts—such as sealing a pact of servitude with the chaotic lord Arioch—without

acknowledging that he is actually unbalancing the Equilibrium of larger forces in a conflict that

he can hardly comprehend.

This type of behavior is what has usually been associated to the concept of anti-hero.

Regarding this, it is of special interest to the current discussion Genevieve G. E. Petty’s own

notion of this concept in her essay "The Anti-hero in Fantasy: Its Function for the Psyche—An

Examination of Elric of Melniboné." Here, she defends an anti-hero that “synthesizes and re-

integrates artificially-contrived dualities back into a continuum” (2). This conception is

especially useful in analyzing Elric’s position and behavior, since he is usually torn apart

between apparently irreconcilable poles: Chaos and Law, Melniboné and the Young Kingdoms,

his kingship and his identity, among others. Most significantly, the concept of Elric integrating

opposing poles becomes relevant for the current discussion when considered in the context of the

city in Moorcock’s narrative. This, because “within the context of the twentieth-century,

modernist perspective, the city is at once sordid, corrupt, ruinous, terrible, contaminating, and

still a place of wonders, magic, marvels and ‘reality’ in all its most startling and surprising

manifestations” (Marcus 233). This dialectically related notions of the city are present in the

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Elric Saga, and more importantly, it is through the albino that they come into real contact—as it

will be seen afterwards.

As mentioned before, Elric’s discomfort with his existence drives him to seek an answer

to his existential angst outside Melniboné. Accordingly, he evolves to be an accursed wanderer.

Clute and Grant, while discussing this notion, point out that frequently “the accursed wanderer…

is an avatar of some earlier [figure]” (3). As explained previously, Elric is indeed yet another

reincarnation of the ever-lasting figure—in the Multiverse—of the Eternal Champion. In

addition, this heroic template is defined by Clute and Grant as “taboo-breaking or blasphemous,

they may bear a distinctive mark, and they enjoy supernatural protection against mundane

threats” (2). The remarkable aspect of the definition is that, when applied to Elric, renders his

blasphemy and taboo-breaking as indeed highly moral for us. This, since Melnibonéan culture

has been characterized as morally decadent—they are actually depicted as “cruel and clever and

to them 'morality' means little more than a proper respect for the traditions of a hundred

centuries” (Moorcock 3)—the albino’s quest for an answer to his concerns regarding regret

appears extremely sympathetic for us. As a result, the anemic hero becomes “an antinomian

figure—that is, one of the blessed elect in spite or even because of his vile acts—who perceives

the wrongness of things in a way not open to those with calmer lives” (Clute and Grant 2).

However, this antinomian position has its price: the White Wolf is continually searching

for an escape from his world and the peace of mind that, he supposes, strives from being

nowhere. In this sense, Elric’s accursed wandering drives him into an obsessed seeking for this

place of peace previously mentioned. Tragically enough, though, this search is defined by having

no real end; all the peace that the albino king finds for himself is only temporal and it usually

only derives in a greater suffering, as the saga proves repeatedly. Besides, the last Emperor of

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Melniboné is concerned about his own sense of identity mainly because he ignores that he is a

liminal being. In Clute and Grant terms, “[a liminal being] exists at the threshold of two states;

this gives [him] both wisdom and the ability to instruct, while also rendering them dangerous and

uncanny” (581). This aspect is clearly illustrated in Elric’s physiognomy: he is a weakling and

almost human, yet he is indeed the most powerful mortal in the Multiverse and a Melnibonéan in

nature. Nonetheless, the most relevant aspect of Elric’s liminality for the present discussion is

that this liminality casts him into a bondage that emerges from his double nature as mortal and

Eternal Champion. Even more so, this bondage paralyzes the character and limits him to only an

essentially passive or catalytic role (Clute and Grant 581).

Since the dialectic between the Eternal Champion and the Multiverse is pivotal for the

narrative—and this dialectic relationship is usually unknown to the hero himself—the quest that

is given to the hero is now somehow belated. The Weltschmerz previously mentioned is nowhere

more evident than in the pervading sense of hopelessness that fills the novel. At different points

in the narrative, Elric is confronted with certain death and seems to wish for an end to the

suffering of chasing the uncatchable. In The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, Moorcock narrates that

“Elric dreamed. He dreamed not merely of the end of his world but of the end of an entire cycle

in the history of the cosmos” (183). However, there is one hope for the Eternal Champion, “the

Quest for a truly virgin frontier, which is also a quest for the ideal city, is by this [belated]

reading a quest whose true bent is return” (Clute and Grant 102, my emphasis). This city does

actually exist in the Multiverse and is nothing more than its horizontal center: Tanelorn, the

Eternal City, is the promise of eternal rest and peace for the Eternal Champion, after the

tribulations of his existence.

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One of the aspects of the relationship between hero and space that is left to be explored,

is the concept of self-similarity. According to Kaplan, “self-similarity is a concept from chaos

theory that identifies and underlying pattern of order in complex phenomenon… where one part

of the pattern resembles the whole” (40-41). The first, obvious appearance of self-similarity in

the Elric Saga is the gathering of the four aspects of the Eternal Champion in “Sailing to the

Future,” first part of The Sailor on the Seas of Fate

In this sense, bondage can be understood as “a state of being contained or trapped in a

particular place, time, physical shape or moral condition” (Clute and Grant 125). In Moorcock’s

narrative, the albino warrior begins his adventures because of his own inability to rule Melniboné

properly—i.e. by being the cruel and selfish, power-hungry Emperor his people expect of him. In

the large scheme of the Multiverse, it is interesting to point out that the Eternal Champion—as

depicted above—fits this concept from all its possible perspectives. Actually,

. Here, Elric encounters Erekosë, Dorian

Hawkmoon and Prince Corum. All four are different incarnations of the Eternal Champion,

different, yet somehow resembling each other. This notion is another characteristic of the

abovementioned self-similarity pattern which Kaplan explains as “according to the aesthetic of

self similarity and scaling, parts resemble not only each other but the whole as well. Self-

similarity represents a transforming pattern of similarity and not exact replication” (41, my

emphasis). This characteristic of not exact replication is what allows the confluence of different

aspects of the Eternal Champion without collapsing the Multiverse and, even more importantly,

the foundation of the reciprocal and dialectic bondage relationship between Eternal Champion

and Multiverse.

What binds the world together… is the Eternal Champion. Each incarnation of the

Eternal Champion… finds himself in bondage to the particular version of the

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Multiverse he has been brought into being to defend or (scour). Despite that

seeming looseness of that Multiverse, therefore, many of Michael Moorcock’s

most popular characters are immured in lives and actions—however heroic—they

desperately wish to escape. (Clute and Grant 657)

Now, regarding the study of the city—or urbanism—a number of concerns that have

literary importance for the present research need to be developed. First, it is important to

establish the progress of the city concept. In this sense, “as the product of the Enlightenment,

urbanism is at the very heart of Western culture, the source of both political order and of social

chaos. As such, the city is also a source of intellectual excitement and challenge” (Lehan 2). As it

can be seen here, the city as we conceive it now was born—conceptually—as part of the

Enlightenment project. Indeed, the city was thought to be the representative and pinnacle of

progress, the place where all intellectual and technological achievements were possible.

However, this physical, tangible city has evolved into a notion that is no longer based on

physicality but, instead, on the intangible relationships that form our conception of what is a city

(Sharpe and Wallock 1). As a result, the city concept expanded in order to include now the

‘social chaos’ previously mentioned by Lehan and, more importantly, the linguistic dimension of

its existence. It is in this situation where the literary dimension of the real cities appear; in other

words, how the different literary forms interpret and present the authors’ perception of the great

metropolis at the beginning of the twentieth century—London, Paris, Chicago, and others.

Moreover, any conception of the city is formed—even determined—by words. William

Sharpe and Leonard Wallock discuss the notion of urbanism in their introduction to Visions of

the Modern City: Essays in History, Art and Literature and say that “language inevitably

conditions our responses to the city. Our perceptions of the urban landscape are inseparable from

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the words we use to describe them and from the activities of reading, naming, and metaphorizing

that make all formulations possible” (1). The case of unreal or purely imaginary cities—such as

the ones described, discussed and presented in Moorcock’s fantasy—is representative of this

notion. Furthermore, those cities are entirely made up of words; their whole existence is

completely dependent on words.

Meanwhile, the city concept evolved in the abstract axis until it became almost

completely divorced from the physical dimension. As mentioned by Sharpe and Wallock, at one

point Robert Park delineated one such concept using the following words: “Park felt that the city

was… ‘a state of mind, a body of customs and traditions, and of the organized attitudes and

sentiments that inhere in these customs and are transmitted with tradition.’ The city… possessed

‘a moral as well as physical organization, and these two mutually interact[ed] in characteristic

ways to mold and modify one another’” (4). The most interesting point here is that Park’s

conception of the city seems to resonate powerfully with the opening lines of the first volume in

the Elric Saga:

On the island kingdom of Melniboné all the old rituals are still observed, though

the nation's power has waned for five hundred years, and now her way of life is

maintained only by her trade with the Young Kingdoms and the fact that the city

of Imrryr has become the meeting place of merchants. Are those rituals no longer

useful; can the rituals be denied and doom avoided? One who would rule in

Emperor Elric's stead prefers to think not. He says that Elric will bring destruction

to Melniboné by his refusal to honour all the rituals (Elric honours many). And

now opens the tragedy which will close many years from now and precipitate the

destruction of this world. (Moorcock 1, my emphasis)

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The “body of customs and traditions” mentioned by Park has turned into rituals in Melniboné’s

oldest—and nowadays last—settlement: its capital, Imrryr, the Dreaming City. More

significantly, Elric’s figure as Emperor is being questioned mainly due to his refusal to follow

tradition. In other words, the Emperor’s problems—and foretold doom—are the result of his

inability to fully relate to his Empire’s capital.

Now, the city as archetype is much older. As Carol Joyce Oates mentions in her article

"Imaginary Cities: America," “the City, an archetype of the human imagination, that may well

have existed for thousands of years, in various manifestations (as Heavenly City, the Kingdom of

the Dead, the City of God, the City of Man, the Cities of the Plains, etc.), has absorbed into itself

the presumably opposed images of the ‘sacred’ and the ‘secular’” (11). It is this city, which now

embodies dialectically the sacred and the profane, that is central in Moorcock’s fantasy in

general—and particularly in the Elric Saga. As it will be seen, most of the manifestations

mentioned by Oates are present in Elric’s journeys throughout the Young Kingdoms.

Oates’ manifestations of the city archetype have been recast into what has been called

city metaphors. According to that model, “as it symbolized human faith and aspirations, the

contemporary metropolis took on the aspects of the Heavenly City, the New Jerusalem; as it

embodied the failure of these hopes, it partook of the depravity of Babylon or Sodom; its smoke,

industry , and avarice suggested the Infernal City of Dante; and its confusion, noise, and lack of

direction or community likened to Babel, the original urban chaos” (Sharpe and Wallock 6). As a

result, the city changed and evolved as it had descended from the idealization of capitalism’s

ideal to the final chaos of the modern, me(ga)tropolis of Babel.

Nevertheless, city metaphors are not the only way in which the city archetype has been

classified. Following historian Carl Schorske, Sharpe and Wallock present a tripartite model for

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the city’s notion evolution. Accordingly, “speaking in the broadest cultural terms, the historian

Carl Schorske has identified three major areas of urban self-perception since the eighteenth

century: the Enlightenment city of Virtue, the Victorian city of Vice, and the modern city

‘beyond good and evil’” (7). It is evident that this model corresponds with several of the city

metaphors and, more importantly, they correspond with the urban reality presented in the Elric

Saga.

First, the model of the Heavenly City, the New Jerusalem, comes to represent human

existence in its ideal form (Thüsen 2). It is, moreover, a representation of the Enlightenment city

of Virtue and it is clearly derived from an idealized vision of the urban environment that is taken

from an earlier source. In Edward Timms’ words—in his introduction to Unreal City: Urban

Experience in Modern European Literature and Art

The city is depicted as a closed system reflecting a harmonious hierarchy of

values. The dominating bulk of the castle is flanked by the spires of the principal

churches and girdled by the roofs of patrician houses. Humbler dwellings huddle

against the city walls, which enclose the urban ensemble. The massive gate-

towers convey a sense of security, while the river in the foreground suggests a

balance between town and country. The pride of the Renaissance in the

achievements of urban culture is reflected in a harmonious iconography. (3)

:

As it can be seen, the medieval city reinterpreted in the Renaissance has a balance between town

and country—between nature and (human) artificiality. Furthermore, the symbolism—therefore,

the meaning—of the city life is considered harmonious.

This notion of New Jerusalem is embodied throughout the Elric Saga in the city of

Tanelorn. This ideal city is first presented to readers in Book I, Elric of Melniboné by Rackhir,

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the Red Archer/Warrior Priest of Phum that joins Elric on his quest for the two black swords.

According to him, “there is a city called Tanelorn which may sometimes be found on the shifting

shores of the Sighing Desert. If I ever return to our own world, Comrade Elric, I shall seek that

city, for I have heard that peace may be found there—that such debates as the nature of Truth are

considered meaningless. That men are content merely to exist in Tanelorn.” The albino king, at

first, envies the very notion of Tanelorn. However, even Rackhir immediately persuades him that

this city is the stuff of legends—and legends are best left alone (Moorcock 171).

In the second book—chronologically—of the saga (Book VII in order of publication),

The Fortress of the Pearl

This notion of New Jerusalem/Tanelorn as only an idea that cannot truly be reached in

life is interestingly related to the City of God postulated by Augustine. According to Lehan,

“Augustine argued that history was linear, moving from Creation through the Redemption of

Christ and continuing, in the manifestation of the Spirit, toward the City of God… The City of

God was an invisible city, to be acknowledged at the end of history… Augustine’s is the

apocalyptic vision: the city becomes realizable only at the end of Life” (22). This quest for the

unreachable is both tragic—in an extremely verifiable notion of the concept—and, at the same

, the White Wolf has just left Melniboné in search for his long-desired

peace of mind. After a while, we are told, he naïvely believes an Ilmioran drunkard who sells

him a map which supposedly leads to fabled Tanelorn. As a result of following that map, the last

Emperor of Melniboné almost meets his end in the middle of the Sighing Desert (Moorcock 4-5).

Later on, the crimson-eyed albino encounters a wise dreamthief who, when inquired regarding

the existence of Tanelorn, responds that "Tanelorn exists... And it has many names. Yet in some

realms, I fear, it is no more than an idea of perfection. Such ideas are what maintain us in hope

and fuel our urge to make reality of dreams. Sometimes we are successful" (Moorcock 86-87).

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time, connects with the characterization of Elric as an obsessed seeker, forever hunting the

uncatchable.

Nevertheless, although Elric appears to realize the futility of his quest, he still continues

in pursuit. In Book II (volume three of the chronological saga), The Sailor on the Seas of Fate

Although the possibility that this ‘graveyard of cities’ is Tanelorn is immediately

discarded, Corum’s statement can be related to an important part of the postmodern questioning

of the city. The urban realm is no longer stable nor objective, but instead “the object scrutinized

has itself been shaped by the actions and imaginations of earlier viewers, each having his own

conception of the city” (Sharpe and Wallock 8). And, in even more telling terms, “the city that

we seek conditions the city that we will find” (Sharpe and Wallock 9). In a way, this revelation

regarding Elric’s ultimate goal—because Tanelorn is truly the only place where the Eternal

Champion can find any solace—immediately conditions our perception of the saga in general

terms. In other words, the tragic nature—and ultimate destiny—of Elric as a hero is revealed to

us through the notion/nature of the city which is both the center of the universe—literally—and

the center of the narrative.

,

Tanelorn shows up again and this time more information is supplied regarding the nature of the

fabled city. In a catalytic encounter with other three incarnations of himself, the Prince of Ruins

learns that all four of them are actually in the same pursuit; they are all travelling in quest for

Tanelorn (Moorcock 43). Moreover, when confronted with a bizarre vision of a city that seems

to contain the architecture of thousands of cities, Corum, one of the incarnations of the Eternal

Champion, states that "[p]erhaps this is Tanelorn... or, rather, all the versions of Tanelorn there

have ever been. For Tanelorn exists in many forms, each form depending upon the wishes of

those who most desire to find her" (Moorcock 44).

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The albino, however, will finally encounter the legendary city. In Book IV, The

Vanishing Tower

Now, the second model of the city presented is usually identified with the notion of the

sinful cities of Babylon, Sodom and Gomorrah. This concept comes to represent the fall from

grace of the Enlightenment ideal. It is the city of Vice, the failed project of progress,

appropriately identified with the emergence of the modernist movement in literature and arts.

According to Lehan, “the city, once an Enlightenment ideal, was being questioned in romantic,

modern and postmodern thought. A sense of being at home in the city was replaced by its

opposite—the ‘unhomely,’ expressed as the uncanny and often embodied by the outsider, the

, yet another secret of Tanelorn will be revealed. All those who dwell there can

have no supernatural master (156)—i.e. they can have no allegiances to either Chaos or Law—

and therefore Elric’s entrance is forbidden a priori. However, special circumstances will change

the situation in favor of Elric, the Womanslayer. The city of Tanelorn is put under siege by the

King of the Beggars, Urish, and an army of demonic women—the Elenoin—conjured up by

Elric’s archenemy, the sorcerer Theleb K'aarna. The mad albino, while trying to save his friend

Rackhir, who has finally encountered Tanelorn, joins the battle and turns it decisively in favor of

the Eternal City. Elric’s prize for such help is the entrance to Tanelorn, where he is given the

opportunity to abandon his pact with the demonic lord Arioch and his blood feud with Theleb

K’aarna. In a word, he is offered with peace. However, the final lines of the book already foretell

that such freedom is not possible for the White Wolf: “They rode for Eternal Tanelorn. Tanelorn,

which had welcomed and held all troubled wanderers who came upon it. All save one… Elric, of

all the manifestations of the Champion Eternal, was to find Tanelorn without effort. And of all

those manifestations he was the only one to choose to leave that city of myriad incarnations"

(Moorcock 199-200).

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Other, the mysterious stranger, or the lonely man in the crowd” (xv). This feeling of not

belonging is mainly identified in the Elric Saga with Imrryr, the Dreaming City, capital and last

city of the once-mighty Melnibonéan Empire of which Elric is its last Emperor.

The notion of this city is, indeed, the most complex in the whole saga. First of all, since

Imrryr is the last inhabited city of the Empire, it has come to be interchangeable in practical

terms with Melniboné as a whole. Thus, in reality “[this] particular city may be seen as the

expression of a culture or of a phase of civilization” (Thüsen 2). As such, Imrryr/Melniboné

reflects the decadence of an empire that ruled the world for ten thousand years and ceased to rule

it for only five hundred. In these terms, Moore’s comparison of Melniboné with London/the

British Empire makes perfect sense: “I remember Melniboné. Not the empire, obviously, but its

aftermath, its debris: mangled scraps of silver filigree from brooch or breastplate, tatters of

checked silk accumulating in the gutters of the Tottenham Court Road. Exquisite and depraved,

Melnibonéan culture had been shattered by a grand catastrophe before recorded history began”

(i). Imrryr is indeed the capital of the empire—a city that demands a definition and analysis of its

own. In Williams’ words:

For a number of social and historical reasons the metropolis of the second half of

the nineteenth century and of the first half of the twentieth century moved into a

quite new cultural dimension. It was now much more than the very large city, or

even the capital city of an important nation. It was the place where new social and

economic and cultural relations, beyond both city and nation in their older senses,

were beginning to be formed… In the earliest phases this development had much

to do with imperialism: with the magnetic concentration of wealth and power in

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imperial capitals and the simultaneous cosmopolitan access to a wide variety of

subordinate cultures. (20)

This phenomenon of the ‘imperial city’ helps us to begin to understand, in general terms, the

reason for Melniboné’s decline as an empire. The concentration of both power and wealth made

the city of Imrryr the true center of the world. As such, it attracted the attention of the emerging

cultures of the Young Kingdoms, who invaded—at least economically and culturally—the

empire’s capital. The obvious result was that Melnibonéan culture became ‘contaminated’ and

finally changed by the influence of the Young Kingdoms’ diverse cultures.

In more general terms, “at the center of empire, demands were made on capital cities that

weakened their center” (Lehan 5). In conclusion, this process mainly catalyzes—it would

seem—the decentering of the city in both Moorcock’s fantasy and the real world. This

phenomenon has also been analyzed under the umbrella term of doughnut complex. In Sternlieb

and Hughes’ words, “in many places the hole in the doughnut is a decaying central city and the

ring is a prosperous and growing suburban an exurban region” (qtd. in Sharpe and Wallock 38).

Elric encounters this political, economical and social situation as he ascends to the Ruby Throne,

as described by Moorcock in the following terms:

Now few Melnibonéans left Imrryr even to collect these harvests. Only slaves

visited the greater part of the island, seeking the roots and the shrubs which made

men dream monstrous and magnificent dreams, for it was in their dreams that the

nobles of Melniboné found most of their pleasures; they had ever been a moody,

inward-looking race and it was for this quality that Imrryr had come to be named

the Dreaming City. There, even the meanest slaves chewed berries to bring them

Real 22

oblivion and thus were easily controlled, for they came to depend on their dreams.

(21)

This city, once the center of the world, is indeed now a dead city. It is the Other, the alienating

force that no longer provides its inhabitants with any framework of meaning and, as a result,

drives them—and more importantly, the Emperor—to seek answers to their symbolical meaning

outside from it. However, whereas the Melnibonéan people—in general—take refuge in their

dreams, the Womanslayer feels the (heroic) urge to depart from his (birth) place and look for

answers outside the Dreaming City.

As it can be seen, it is the city of Imrryr—as representative of the Empire of

Melniboné—what catalyzes Elric’s heroic journey. In Engels words, “this isolation of the

individual, this narrow self-seeking is the fundamental principle of our society everywhere, it is

nowhere so shamelessly barefaced, so self-conscious as just here in the crowding of the great

city” (qtd. in Williams 17). And, in Moorcock’s narrative, there is no greater city—nor will ever

be—than Imrryr/Melniboné.

Now, it is fundamental to posit the question of whether the individual is determined and

completely swayed under the city’s dominion or if there is a chance to escape for him. The

answer that seems to appear in Moorcock’s Elric Saga is that its protagonist is doomed to fail in

his attempt to try to escape the city. This can be inferred from a number of sources, but mainly

from the way in which Imrryr reflects and projects the albino as a character. First, we have that

“the contrast between life in the nearby city and this lazy rusticity was very great and seemed to

mirror some of the contrasts existing in the mind of at least one of the riders who now

dismounted and led his horse, walking knee-deep through a mass of blue flowers” (Moorcock

17). That rider, no other than the Prince of Ruins himself, is in clear confusion regarding his own

Real 23

identity, and the place surrounding him does not help. Indeed, “the city has been seen as social

and psychological landscape, both producing and reflect the modern consciousness” (Sharpe and

Wallock 6). Second, after Melniboné’s demise—by Elric’s hand—the White Wolf loses his one

connection to an urban environment that is significant for him; as a result, we could believe that

he is finally released from the city’s captivity. Moorcock’s narrative states otherwise in The

Revenge of the Rose

Finally, the last of the great manifestations of the city archetype remains to be discussed:

Babel. In this case, we find the aftermath of the city’s Fall from the city of Virtue through the

city of Vice. This is the city beyond good and evil, the really (post)modern urban realm. Now,

although “so far, there is no common language for, or agreement upon, the nature of the

contemporary city” (Sharpe and Wallock 25), it is clear that its identity corresponds with the

biblical example; the contemporary city’s identity is the fragmented, the deconstructed and

ultimately never re-constructed significance. These are the islands of meaning that lost their

regulating and ordering center and are no longer able to correlate between each other.

Furthermore, there is “this waning sense of city as place is intimately linked to the inability to

: “These were the times when Elric left his friend Moonglum in Tanelorn an

ranged the whole world to find a land which seemed enough like his own that he might wish to

settle there, but no such land as Melniboné could be a tenth its rival in any place the new mortals

might dwell. And all these lands were mortal now” (7). Last, in the saga’s conclusion, after

having blown the Horn of Fate and reshaped the world in its entirety, Elric still cannot find the

peace of mind that nowhere is supposed to bring. Indeed, “Elric… was filled with a sense of loss,

knowing that all the places that were familiar to him, even the very continents were gone and

replaced by different ones. It was like the loss of childhood and perhaps that was what it was—

the passing of the Earth’s childhood” (Moorcock 376).

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say what the city might mean” (Sharpe and Wallock 26). As such, the intangible network of

relationships that once replaced the physicality of the city in semiotic importance has now

collapsed into itself—and no new model has yet arisen to take its place.

In the Elric Saga, the Babel-aspect of the city is represented by the Young Kingdoms in

conjunction. Even the name given to them by Melnibonéans—somewhat patronizingly—has

come to represent their true reality; they are—both individually and collectively—the immature,

the identity-in-development. More importantly, “what was once perceived as a class structure is

now re-represented as an ‘order’ that has failed” (Marcus 247-248) and, as a result, they can no

longer model themselves after the decadent Melnibonéan Empire. For the Prince of Ruins,

however, this is more than just an accident. In the beginning of the saga, it is clearly stated that

Elric hopes to find an answer to his existential angst in the Young Kingdoms. It is because of this

hope that he decides to leave Imrryr after regaining his position of Emperor and leave his

cousin/conspirator-of-a-failed-coup in the Ruby Throne. Thus, the reality that the contemporary

city/Babel/Young Kingdoms offers to Elric condemns both his quest and himself, finally.

The most relevant aspect in this damnation is the dual, paradoxical aspect of Babel: “A

result of this fusion of polar symbols [sacred and secular] in the contemporary City… must

always be read as if it were utopian (that is, ‘sacred’)—and consequently a tragic

disappointment, a species of hell” (Oates 11). What Oates is stating here is merely that the

incorrect reading of Babel as significant in two, contradictory dimensions renders it useless in

practical terms. As Elric himself tragically experiences, the world of the Young Kingdoms offers

him no consolation or explanation. He does not learn the answer he seeks, and moreover, it is

only led by this void of meaning in a self-destructive path. Finally, what Elric and we as readers

encounter is that:

Real 25

The old idea of the spiritual city, founded as a sacred burial place with the

sanctuary in the center, had given way to the commercial city organized around

the East India House, the Bank of England, the Royal Stock Exchange, and other

trading firms and counting houses. It was this new commercial London that gave

rise to a new breed of men who became wealthy from trade and other

investments. (Lehan 26)

The emergence of this commercially centered city introduces a new concept of national identity;

in other words, people no longer identify themselves culturally but rather with their economically

influent cities. An example of this phenomenon is that of Dhoz-Kham, a city that serves as

capital for two different nations: Oin and Yu. In the narrative of Elric, we find that “Oin and Yu

are barely nations at all. Their only halfway decent city is Dhoz-Kham—and that is shared

between them, half being on one side of the River Ar and half being on the other” (Moorcock

118).

The most relevant—yet unintended—result of this phenomenon for the present research

is that there is no longer a cultural distinction between nations in the Young Kingdoms. In the

context of city reading, this is the equivalent of the realization that cities are no longer readable;

their nature—and semiotics—are now devoid of real meaning, and Elric’ quest, therefore, fails

resoundingly. According to Lehan, this is the contemporary opposition between the City of Man

and the City of God metaphors. Indeed, he states that “the two cities manifested themselves in

human society with the birth of Cain, who belonged to the city of man, while his brother Abel

belonged to the City of God” (22). Interestingly enough, Cain, the Kinslayer, the city of man’s

proper inhabitant, appears to be yet another reflection after Elric’s own character and concerning.

Both are kinslayer—and both have lost the grace of reading/inhabiting the City of God.

Real 26

In conclusion, Moorcock’s fantasy is in no possible way either Sword & Sorcery or

Tolkienian fairy tale; as Alan Moore put it, “[the Elric Saga] alabaster hero Elric, decadent,

hallucinatory and feverish, battled with his howling, parasitic blade against a paranoiac back-

drop that made other fantasy environments seem lazy and anaemic in their Chinese-takeaway

cod orientalism or their snug Arcadian idylls” (ii). However, Elric’s innovation as a fantasy

character does not lie on the nature of his Quest(s), his (questionably) heroic and noble actions or

his extraordinary physical traits (sic). On the contrary, his moral and philosophical questioning

regarding his own identity is the real novelty of his character. And, more importantly, it is the

complex relationship between this (lack of) sense of identity and what he (wrongly) evaluates as

his (rightful) place in the world what will eventually cause his downfall—and the destruction of

the world.

Such tragic events and character(s) can only be understood in an Expressionist context. In

Timms’ words, “[t]he visionary poetry of the Expressionists portrays a city haunted by demons

and threatened by portents of disaster... The English Georgians, on the other hand, responded to

the pressures of city life by taking refuge in an enchanted village of the imagination” (9). As

such, the Elric Saga opposes the Georgian (Tolkienian) fantasy narrative, and decides to identify

with the Expressionist city in its full magnificence. Nevertheless, whereas landscape—in

general—looses the importance and (poetic) attention that Georgian fantasy has given to it, it

gains quite a momentum in the particular instance of city reading. Cities are places—and

characters—of enormous (and Expressionist) importance in the Thin White Duke’s adventures.

Not only they actively interact with the characters—as reflections of her own interior landscapes

and catalysts of them—but they are as unique and as carefully depicted as the saga’s characters.

Real 27

Indeed, the main source of credibility in the Elric Saga stems from the ‘realistic’ nature of

the protagonist’s conflict; Elric is not really concerned—at least at the beginning of his

adventures—with saving the world. His leitmotif as a character is much less heroic—and far

more real—than that. Indeed, he only pretends to reform himself; in other words, to answer the

questions posed by the moral he has gained through so much reading and reflecting. Since his

readings have only posed more and more questions, the Prince of Ruins erroneously evaluates

that what he lacks is experience in a world beyond that of his homeland. In philosophical terms,

he believes that by denying and escaping his origins, he will be able to find a ‘home’ outside of

himself.

The White Wolf is, indeed, a lone wolf; he is the accursed, tragic hero that fights Fate

without any chance—and, later on, hope—of triumph. His search—or more heroically

designated, Quest—is pointless; the mad albino journeys from damned Babylon/Melniboné in a

crusade for Holy Land, yet his New Jerusalem/Tanelorn serves him as little rest. Instead, he

prefers to freely roam the Young Kingdoms, although it is clear both for the protagonist and

reader that all the Young Kingdoms are nothing more than the remnants, diseased and rotten, of

Melniboné’s own failure as the bourgeois effort of founding the perfect, ordered city. The Young

Kingdoms are nothing more than Babel, shattered by differences in language—and culture—

which go beyond their own understanding.

In this sense, Elric’s real tragic flaw—following Aristotelian conventions—is not so

much his condition as empowered figure or anaemic albino, but his inability to “read” his

landscape correctly; he still naïvely believes that he will find the truth about Melniboné’s

bourgeois’ project failure in the upstarts rebels who were once slaves and part of Melnibonéan

culture. In other words, he is incapable of assuming that he is in bondage to the world of the

Real 28

Young Kingdoms as much as this world is bondage to him. He cannot escape the world—or see

beyond it, for that matter—as much as he cannot experience the world through someone else’s

eyes. Furthermore, there is really no world beyond that of Melniboné; in truth, the Young

Kingdoms are nothing more that the parts of the ‘decentered city’ of Imrryr that barely sustain on

their own without the leadership/guidance/tyranny of the downtown structure now disappeared.

The primary consequence of this tragic flaw is that there is no City of God—in

Augustine’s terms—to be reached at the end of a linear, progressive history. Now, considering

the examples provided and analyzed from the Elric Saga—the Eternal Champion, reincarnated

repeatedly in bondage to a specific reality inside the Multiverse, the accompanying accursed

wandering in search for the (nigh) unattainable Ideal City and the inability to escape such a tragic

Fate—in addition to the abovementioned non-linearity of History, configure a cyclical history.

This sort of Greek cosmovision—with no telos, or final goal, to be achieved at the end of it

(Lehan 22)—seems to be the pervading, Weltschmerz message throughout Moorcock’s Elric

Saga. There is no hope in succeeding, because the heroic Quest is already doomed before it even

starts. Moreover, failure seems to be an unconscious desire of Imrryr’s inhabitants: “[in] Sodom

and Gomorrah—[there is] a general doom ‘desired by people who have botched everything.’ Can

the individual transcend this social malaise? Is there a margin of human accountability, quite

apart from the lawlessness of civilization’s ‘leaders’? But how, bewitched by the frenzy of the

age, is one to ‘meet the terms of his contract’? (Oates 25).

In fact, Melniboné’s decline—and the consequent decentering of the city—can be seen as

both the catalyst of Elric’s heroic journey and, at the same time, the underlying reason why he

cannot succeed in it. In Lehan’s words, “cut off from a source of nourishment beyond itself, the

city became a closed system, entropic, which led to the decline of civilization: instinct was

Real 29

sacrificed to reason, myth to scientific theories, barter and exchange to abstract theories of

money” (6). The City of God project failed, when it was abandoned in search of more mundane

and immediate objectives. Accordingly, Melniboné stopped ruling the world after ten thousand

years of successful, Bright Empire existence (sic), its Emperor made all the wrong decisions and

the final result was the destruction of that world—and the birth of our own from its ashes.

Real 30

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