Collections

Dream Country
"Calliope"
"The Dream of a Thousand Cats"
"A Midsummer Night's Dream"
"Facade"

Distant Mirrors
"Thermidor"
"August"
"Three Septembers and a January"
"Ramadan"

Convergence
"The Hunt"
"Soft Places"
"The Parliament of Rooks"

I get this now - more than I did before. These are three groups of single issue short stories. Thus, "Calliope" was originally published as no 17 of Neil Gaiman's monthly comic book, The Sandman, but also as the first of four issues sub-titled Dream Country, and so on. These four stories were collected under their collective title as what became Volume 3 of a series of Sandman graphic books as opposed to monthly periodicals. Thus, the title Dream Country had pre-existed the volume of that title.

Distant Mirrors and Convergence could each likewise have been collected as a single volume of the same title but instead these seven stories were incorporated into Volume 6, Fables And Reflections, together with a Sandman Special and a shorter story from an anthology, thus making Volume 6 considerably more voluminous than Volume 3.

Of the Dream Country stories, two feature the word "Dream" in their titles and the fourth discloses that:

"...mythologies take longer to die than people believe. They linger on in a kind of dream country that affects all [human beings]." - Neil Gaiman, Dream Country (New York, 1995), p. 109.

The Distant Mirrors stories are overtly connected by their titles and, when read, by the kind of historical figures on which they focus. Set in the past, they are relevant to the present, hence their collective title. Another Sandman story about a ruler is "The Golden Boy" in Volume 8, Worlds' End, but its US President is fictitional, not historical.

In the Convergence sequence, characters come together to tell stories although in very different settings. The second and third of the stories reveal that Morpheus has a new girl friend in the Dreaming and thus prepare the reader for the beginning of Volume 7, Brief Lives.

The Cobweb Palace

OK. I have found at least one more historical person in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Abraham Warner, proprietor of the Cobweb Palace, in "Three Septembers and a January," collected in Fables And Reflections. It is instructive to google "The Cobweb Palace." (see image)

Something that Neil Gaiman said to Hy Bender in The Sandman Companion makes me think that another character is historical but, so far, I have been unable to identify him. Because of gambling debts, a liniment salesman commits suicide by swallowing aconite and, for some reason, is referred to as "...the King of Pain." (p. 37) In the story, this "King," although now a paper-white ghost, is in the realm of Desire, not of Death.

He tries to lure Norton from Dream's domain to Desire's by offering him a suitable betrothal and a newly built house. It cannot be in a ghost's power to offer such things so it seems that Desire is prepared to intervene in human affairs to this extent - but s/he fails. (Maybe heterosexual male readers should assume that Desire is female, and so on.)

A constitutional monarch lacks direct political power but might instead enjoy recognition, respect, popular affection and material support, including publicly provided appropriate apparel. It seems that Norton I had all this.

In Season Of Mists, Dream tells the demons that they would have no power if the damned were unable to dream of Heaven and here he tells Despair that, "Without dreams, there could be no despair." (p. 25) This story features five of the Endless. Norton passes from Dream to Death without being snared by Despair, Delirium or Desire.

Death tells Norton that everyone wonders what lies beyond life "...and sooner or later everybody gets to find out." (p. 44) Many readers will probably agree with this but we only find out if there is anything there.

Ramadan

Two posts ago, here, I did forget to list one of the Sandman stories that is a story told by a character within the story. The last page of "Ramadan" in Fables And Reflections reveals that the story of the Golden Age of Baghdad has been told to the crippled boy Hassan by a story teller amidst the ruins and rubble of the bomb-sites of modern Baghdad.

The story begins:

"In the name of Allah,
"the compassionate,
"the all-merciful,
"I tell my tale.
"For there is no god but Allah,
"and Mohammed is his prophet." (p. 227)

The last page informs us that Allah has been invoked neither by the author nor by an invisible narrator but by a story teller who ends his narration for the day because Hassan has no more coins or cigarettes to pay him with. Hassan asks, "How could the city last?" but then goes home "...by child's short-cuts..." with, behind his eyes, "...towers and jewels and djinn, carpets and rings and wild afreets, kings and princes and cities of brass..." (p. 258). That is how the city lasts.

Gaiman's fictional premise was: if the wondrous city of Baghdad really did exist exactly as described in the legends, then what happened to it and where is it now? Knowing that all things pass, Haroun asked Morpheus to make his city last and the only way to do this was to remove it from the world of fact into the realm of dreams and stories. Haroun sleeps on a no-longer-flying carpet in the market place and wakes to a mundane Baghdad. His forgotten original city now exists in a bottle in a trunk in the Dreaming, in the story teller's tales and in Hassan's head.

Having summoned Morpheus, Haroun asks him:

"Are you, then, the lord of sleep, the prince of stories, he to whom Allah has given dominion over that which is not, and was not, and shall never be?" (p. 245)

A Muslim must express it like this and Morpheus does not take issue with his theology but they also say that "...there is no god but Allah..." and we have seen many.

The Hunt

One group of Sandman short stories is "Distant Mirrors" whereas another is "Convergence." Thus, a coming together as against a remote reflection.

In how many stories is a valuable lost item recovered? The items lost throughout the series are:

Morpheus' pouch;
his helmet;
his ruby;
Brute and Glob, personifications of brute strength and base cunning;
Fiddler's Green;
a nightmare of a serial killer;
Orpheus' head;
The Merrie Comedy of the Redemption of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe from the Library of Dream;
one of the Endless;
a dog.

Some of these "items," as I have called them, are persons who do not want to be found so it is really two lists.

In Worlds' End, travelers tell stories while waiting for a storm to end.
In one of these stories, undertakers tell stories after a funeral.
In one of the undertakers' stories, apprentices hear a story from their mistress.
But Worlds' End is a story told in a bar.
In "The Parliament of Rooks," Abel's tea guests tell stories.
In "The Hunt," an old man "of the people" tells his granddaughter a story from the old country.
In "A Midsummer Night's Dream," the play of that name is performed.
In "The Tempest," the play of that name is written.

I will wake up in the middle of the night remembering something that should have been on one of these lists.

Thermidor

The Sandman stories named after months are connected, with distinctive cover illustrations, as "Distant Mirrors." Like all art, they should reflect life but why at a distance?

Three one-word titles each represent a different calender:

August, Roman Imperial;
Thermidor, French Revolutionary;
Ramadan, Muslim.

The remaining "Distant Mirror", "Three Septembers And A January", refers to two Roman months - September was the seventh and January is the door (ianua) to the year, associated with the god of doorways, Janus.

Each "Mirror" features a ruler:

Augustus Caesar;
Robespierre;
Haroun Al Raschid;
Joshua Norton, self-styled Emperor of the United States.

Thermidor features three historical figures:

Louis de Saint-Just;
Thomas Paine;
Robespierre;

- refers to two:

Sir Frances Dashwood;
the Chevalier d'Eon;

- features one mythical figure:

Orpheus;

- and seamlessly inserts its fictional heroine, Lady Johanna Constantine, ancestress of Alan Moore's John Constantine, into this milieu so that she is possibly Dashwood's daughter, certainly Saint Just's lover, d'Eon's protege, Robespierre's prisoner and Orpheus' rescuer, working on behalf of Orpheus' father, Morpheus, of course.

How To Meet Death

Destruction tells Orpheus three ways to meet Death:

die - you will see her but you won't have much chance to talk;
be born - but we always forget that conversation with her (is it written anywhere else that she speaks to us then?);
visit her house - no good to the rest of us but Destruction can send him there.

This is the only time we see Death's dwelling which she prefers to decorate anachronistically. Then the story returns to the Classical myth as Death tells Orpheus where and how to enter the Greek underworld. Much later, Orpheus' fate affects his father, Morpheus, in ways created by Gaiman as a sequel to the myth.

Morpheus tells Shakespeare that, as the Prince of Stories, he himself cannot have a story but what then is The Sandman? Is it only that, within the story, he cannot have a story?

The Parliament Of Rooks II

(xii) Eve tells the story of Adam's three wives:

Lilith;
the nameless one;
Eve.

The story that Adam began as a hermaphrodite parallels a story in Plato. There is already a daughter of Lilith in The Sandman. Lilith and her children are major players in the sequel series, Mike Carey's Lucifer. CS Lewis mentions that the White Witch of Narnia is descended from Lilith. I have been told that Lilith is mentioned only once and not by name in canonical scripture.

Eve quotes the Midrash as stating that Adam, having witnessed the step by step creation of the nameless wife, "...wouldn't touch her...'He saw her full of secretions and blood.'" (p. 215). Detailed descriptions of the disgusting contents of human bodies are one Buddhist way of teaching non-attachment to bodies.

"But some say Adam married only once. And they speak truly too." (p. 217)

How can it be true both that he married three times and that he married only once? Because these are stories and stories exist in different versions. We have known that since we first read a book and saw the film but it was already true in the Bible and in Greek myth.

(xiii) Abel's story presents what I think is the original appearance of the "Li'l Death" and "Li'l Morpheus" cartoon parodies of Death and Dream (p. 218).

(xiv) Matthew, who was a man before he was a raven, speaks for the readers when he asks:

"Look, can I ask a dumb question? All this Biblical stuff. I mean, how true is it? Are you guys the real Cain and Abel? Are you the real Eve? And I mean, y'know, how does it all tie in with cavemen and dinosaurs and all that shit?" (p. 221)

It is a relief that there is a character who can ask this question on our behalf and Abel says just enough to reassure us:

"Oh, this whuwasn't on Earth, thuh thu..." (ibid.)

It was in the Dreaming or in a closely related mythical space, not on the physical Earth.

(xv) Cain silences Abel with a clever misquotation of a common phrase:

"What's the point in having secrets and mysteries if you're going to blab them to every tom-tit, dicky-bird and...and harrier?" (ibid.)

(xvi) Matthew tells Cain that he sounds like Vincent Price, Cain replies, "That bargain basement vaudevillian? He sounds nothing like me..." (p. 209) and we think, "Yes, Price could have played Cain."

The Parliament Of Rooks

"The Parliament of Rooks" in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, Volume 6, Fables And Reflections (New York, I cannot find a year of publication in my copy) is a story about stories that encapsulates a great deal of information of different kinds.

(i) It begins with Lyta Hall telling the story of Goldilocks to her son, Daniel, before putting him into his cot for an afternoon sleep.

(ii) Lyta phones a friend called Carla whom we will see in Volume 9. Rose Walker, who will babysit for Lyta in Volume 9, was phoned in Volume 1 and appeared in Volume 2.

(iii) As Lyta says that Daniel will soon learn how to get out of his crib, he gets out of it in a dream.

(iv) He walks into the Dreaming, passing the letters of the alphabet on his bedroom wall. In dreams, the letters continue beyond Z...

(v) He addresses the fearsome gargoyle, Gregory, as "Dog-gee." (p. 203) Volume 9 suggests that Gregory features in videos in the waking world.

(vi) Daniel, Matthew the Raven, Eve, Cain, the baby gargoyle Goldie and Abel have tea in Abel's House of Secrets which is a way-station to Nightmare although Daniel does not have a nightmare on this occasion.

(vii) Abel's house has something nasty in the basement but this was mentioned in Volume 2 and is taken for granted. It is appropriate on the way to Nightmare. In Volume 7, when Morpheus is so upset that he floods parts of the Dreaming, Abel mentions that the something nasty says that it does not mind being underwater and in fact quite likes it. Of course, we never see it.

(ix) Cain, whose nearby house is another way station, the House of Mysteries, points out that he and the other two members of Adam's family are three old story tellers now with an audience.

(x) Cain's story is the mystery of the Parliament of Rooks. He describes these gatherings of rooks (corvus frugilecus) accurately but I am not sure about the veracity of his ending: the parliament either flies away in unison or pecks to death the lone rook that has addressed it?

(xi) Interesting dialogue -

Eve: I'm not your mother, Cain.
Cain: You're everybody's mother.
Eve: That's a matter of opinion. (p. 212)

Yes, it is a matter of opinion whether the human race had a single mother called Eve. These characters of Gaiman's know that they are characters in stories. Why does Eve deny that she is Cain's mother? Is she disowning him or alternatively implying that there is more to the story than we realize? He falls back merely on the assertion that she is everybody's mother...

There is more but it is late.

Destruction And Mortality

(i) I said earlier that I thought that Destruction of the Endless was first named in Volume 7 of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series. This is not quite true. He appears and is introduced by his Greek name of Olethros in Volume 6, Fables And Reflections. However, we are not told what "Olethros" means and thus are not told which aspect of consciousness he personifies. We do not yet know who he is - although I do not remember noticing this on originally reading Volume 6.

(ii) Morpheus tells his son Orpheus, "You are mortal..." (p. 165). Is he? In this retelling of the myth, Orpheus' father is one of the seven Endless, who live longer than gods, and his mother is one of the nine Muses, who are goddesses of inspiration. So how can two immortals have a mortal son?

(iii) In "Orpheus," script writer Neil Gaiman and artists Bryan Talbot and Mark Buckingham beautifully retell the Orpheus myth and seamlessly incorporate it into Gaiman's new myth of the Endless. The seven Endless attend the wedding of Orpheus and Eurydice. Does the presiding priest of a local deity know what beings are standing behind him?

Death debunks a myth:

"...Herakles was full of it. He just got dead drunk for a couple of weeks in Phrygia and told everyone he'd been to the land of the dead." (p. 173)

"Dead drunk"! Of course! Now we know! He could not really have gone to the land of the dead.

But Orpheus does, of course. Dream refuses to help but Olethros sends him to Teleute (Death) who tells him how to enter the underworld via Charon and Cerberus. When he is there, Persephone tells him that, although he has entered from Taenarum, Thrace is not hundred of leagues away because "All lands lie above the underworld." (p. 186) In other words, people die everywhere. Good fantasy writers, certainly including Gaiman, can express abstract truths, for example about death, as if they were concrete facts about places, in this case Hades.

The Greek myth of death expresses two truths (I think) about death. The dead are "Cold and pale immobile..." (p. 167). Thus, death is the absence of life. And they "...drink the waters of Lethe, that bring forgetfulness." (ibid.) Death is the loss of all faculties, including memory.