"Andrew J. Offutt - Cormac 04 - Tigers Of The Sea" - читать интересную книгу автора (Offutt Andrew J)

second to none in their display of a heroic, poetic writing-style that derives from a line of epic bards extending
from Robert Service back to Homer. Howard was first of all a poet in the heroic tradition, and a few of his tales
deserved to be considered modern classics in that field.
In his article, тАЬRobert E. Howard: The Other HeroesтАЭ Etchings and Odysseys #1, 1973, Ted Pons states:
тАЬMost readers tend to associate Robert E. Howard with his four principal creations: Conan, Solomon Kane,
Kull of Atlantis, and the Pictish tribal king Bran Mak Mom... Not to be forgotten, however, are the other
heroes: those other characters in the weird genre who also sprang to life from HowardтАЩs fertile imagination
and talented pen...тАЭ One such character is the hero of this collection of tales: Cormac Mac Art, the Gaelic
renegade and pirate who roved and slew with the Vikings in the days of King Arthur.
Howard seems to have had a preference for heroes with a strong Gaelic strain in their ancestry. All his
protagonists tended to be vital and muscular to a superlative degree, to be sure, but his Gaelic heroes had a
depth of character development and a certain intensity that set them apart. Howard himself had a strong Irish
strain in his ancestry and identified heavily with it. Also, he very often used the idea of reincarnation in his
talesтАФthough it is doubtful that he took the idea very seriously, and probably used it for its poetic effect only.
Still, it is tempting to think that HowardтАФhimself a muscular, darkhaired man over six feet in height, like most
of his heroesтАФmay have toyed with the notion that the heroic figures blossoming so readily into his
imagination were his own previous incarnations.
Just for fun, letтАЩs examine this notion. HowardтАЩs favorite hero-type is a tall, rangy, wolflike warrior of pure
Gaelic ancestryтАФblue-eyed but with a rather swarthy complexion, black-maned and with a scarred,
somewhat sinister countenance; he is always a barbarian, neither giving nor expecting quarter in open battle,
but possessing a concealed, innate chivalry or basic decency that keeps him from being downright cruel.
Cormac Mac Art fits into this type precisely.
So also do HowardтАЩs mightiest epic-heroes, King Kull of Atlantis and Conan the Cimmerian. Kull, a barbarian
from the island-continent of Atlantis, wins to the throne of ValusiaтАФthe mightiest kingdom of what then
corresponded to the continent of EuropeтАФthrough his skill with the sword and the might of his own steely
thews; all this took place 100,000 years ago, if one is to believe the utterances of the old Pictish priest Gonar
in one of HowardтАЩs finest tales, тАЬKings of the Night.тАЭ Ages later, about 18,000 B.C., Atlantis sank and terrific
cataclysms changed the face of the world; the Hyborian Age came into being, its glamorous civilization rising
only after long millennia of barbarism following the cataclysms. Eventually, Conan the CimmerianтАФa
black-maned, muscular, scar-faced hero like KullтАФwins to the throne of Aquilonia, mightiest of the Hyborian
nations. In тАЬThe Hyborian Age,тАЭ an elaborate article Howard penned to detail the background for his Kull and
Conan stories, it is stated that тАЬNorth of Aquilonia... are the Cimmerians, ferocious savages...; they are the
descendants of the Atlanteans...тАЭ Thus Conan turns out to be of the same basic racial strain as Kull. Finally,
near the end of his article, after describing the destruction of the Hyborian Age, Howard states: тАЬThe Gaels,
ancestors of the Irish and Highland Scotch, descended from pure-blooded Cimmerian clans.тАЭ Thus a racial
link is established between Kull of Atlantis, Conan of Cimmeria and the various black-maned, sinister-faced
Gaelic heroes of HowardтАЩs who rove and slay within the framework of more-or-less known history.
Perhaps the earliest of these тАЬhistorical-CimmerianтАЭ heroes is Conan of the reivers, who appears in the tale
тАЬPeople of the Dark.тАЭ Raiding a village on the west coast of Britain with his fellow reavers from Erin, Conan
pursues into the forest a blond girl who has excited his primitive lustтАФand finds himself battling in her behalf
the horrid, semi-human тАЬLittle PeopleтАЭ (so well depicted first in modern horror-fiction by Arthur Machen, and
later elaborated on by Howard). Conan of the reivers, like his Cimmerian predecessor, seems to have little on
his mind but satisfying his brutish appetites, though a primitive chivalry comes to the fore in him when the
chips are down; King Kull, on the other hand, often displayed a melancholy, philosophical temperamentтАФa
brooding wonderment that wrestled with the problems of what the universe was all about.
Conan of the reivers, judging from internal evidence, probably ranged the British Isles sometime during the
first millennium B.C., before the coming of the Roman legions to the isles. Cormac of Connacht, the next
Gaelic hero-figure in the series, appears at the time of the final military defeat that breaks the power of Rome
in Britain. Actually Cormac is more of an observer than a hero, for the real hero at this time is Bran Mak
Morn, king of the Picts. Cormac is a major figure in тАЬKings of the Night,тАЭ perhaps HowardтАЩs greatest tale of