Catherynne M. Valente: A Dirge for Prester John, Vols. 1 and 2

Catherynne M. Valente. 

The Habitation of the Blessed: A Dirge for Prester John Vol. 1

Night Shade Books, 2010.

4.5 Polychromatic Galaxy Skulls

Catherynne M. Valente

The Folded World: A Dirge for Prester John Vol. 2

Night Shade Books, 2011.

4.5 Polychromatic Galaxy Skulls

A Dirge for Prester John centers on a late 17^th century expedition to find Prester John, a Nestorian priest who journeyed east from Europe some seven centuries earlier and who is presumably still alive since he drank from the fountain of eternal life.  The major strand of the novel, and the series as a whole, is the journey of Prester John himself (vol. 1), his rule in Pentexore (vol. 2), and, one may presume, his kingdom’s decline (vol. 3).
 

A Dirge is literary, fantasy, historical, mythological, folkloric, lyrical, poetic, and experimental, at once.  It’s also philosophical, theological, and gorgeous.  They both participate in and rejuvenate a literary tradition of journeys and first encounters that one can trace back to Homer’s Odyssey, Dante’s Inferno, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, to name a few.  Along with the journey/quest motif, A Dirge shares at least one thing in particular with each of these works: an encounter with the bizarre/surreal/weird (call it what you will)—half-swan humanoids, genderless angels, headless women with eyes for nipples, butterfly nannies, talking animals, a fountain of eternal life, book trees, bed trees, trees of anything one can bury.

Two Warnings:

Warning the First: Catherynne M. Valente knows more than you.  This is writing that challenges readers (or this reader at least) to expand with it or be lost.  It’s neither easily consumed nor pandering to consumers.  It’s aggressive, gorgeous, and unapologetic prose.  In this novel, Valente uses Greek myths (the scenes with Leda’s offspring are some of my favorite), medieval lore (Prester John himself is a legendary figure from the Middle Ages), and Judeo-Christian myths to build an utterly unique and thriving world within a world.  For every myth I recognized (Thomas the Doubter, for example, but only the slimmest thread) I’m sure that there were many that I didn’t.  And I don’t know that it matters.    

Warning the Second: Catherynne M. Valente is more imaginative than you.  Be prepared to expand your powers of visualization.  The incredible scenes she composes are rendered in such a way as to leave me both ecstatic and exhausted every five pages or so.  Not keeping up with Valente’s images means losing the thread of the story, which means wandering for pages in way over your head.  Since I’ve mentioned the Leda myth, I'll use it as an example.   Here’s how the myth is told to one of the main characters, with my thoughts interspersed in brackets:

But my friend who piles up olive pits among the columns [can you visualize that?] whispers [hear the voice] to me through the mountain-roots [okay—what? mountain- roots? literally?] that Leda had a fifth child, who did not have the beauty to fill out recruiters’ rolls [what rolls? recruitment for what?], but the head of a swan and the body of woman, a poor, lost thing, alone in her egg, without another heartbeat to keep the beast in her at bay [does that mean anything more than that she’s alone?  is she really in an egg, or is that a metaphor?  in this context, is the woman side of her the beast or the swan?].            

And it goes on like that, with an especially surreal image, a repeated motif throughout the novel, of a “dry sea that hurls its sandy waves at [the swans’] nests on the golden cliffs” (36).

No piece by Valente is for the faint of heart, certainly not this series.  It requires a commitment, and the experience may very well transform you.  She writes challenging works—intellectually demanding and artistically brazen—that become spiritual experiences.