The kiss of the black god

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Cover of the October 1934 issue of Weird Tales magazine with the story The Black God's Kiss .

The kiss of the black God (AKA Black God's Kiss ) is a fantasy - short story by the American author Catherine L. Moore , in October 1934 in the pulp magazine Weird Tales appeared. In it, Moore's red-haired warrior Jirel von Joiry appears for the first time , who is also the protagonist of a series of other stories from Moore.

The story The Shadow of the Black God (original title Black God's Shadow ) is the immediate continuation. It also appeared in Weird Tales in December 1934 .

The kiss of the black god

Jirel is the ruler of the Principality of Joiry, located in a fantastically alienated medieval France. This is attacked and conquered by Guillaume, an enemy warlord . Jirel herself is thrown into a dungeon in her own castle because she refuses to submit to the victor. From there she succeeds in escaping into a strange, subterranean world, which is inhabited by sometimes only strange, sometimes repulsive beings. In this plutonic, pagan world - as long as she has a chain with a crucifix with her, the world remains invisible to her - she arrives after a long, but easy and dreamlike journey to a shining tower or tower of light. She enters the inside of the tower and sees a radiant light there that transforms into a human figure, an image of herself, which she speaks in a strange voice and asks what she wants. She replies: “I'm looking for a weapon, a weapon against a man I hate so much that no weapon on earth is enough for this hatred.” The figure of light tells her to give this man what she in the black temple on the lake find.

Jirel sets off and finally comes to the black temple and sees a black idol in it. A half-human, one-eyed figure, crouching, with head stretched out and lips pursed as if for a kiss. She approaches the figure of the Black God as if under duress and takes a kiss from his stone lips. And with this kiss a strange, cold and paralyzing something invades her soul. As in a dream, she makes her way back through the underworld.

When she reappears in the castle, Guillaume and his men are waiting for her. Under the weight of the strange something in her, Jirel thinks that he must almost sink down. Instead, she falls into the arms of the conqueror, who receives the kiss from her offered lips with a triumphant laugh. But the kiss is his ruin, it becomes pale and cold, paralysis overcomes him: “Only in his eyes was there still life, and in them there was torture - and an understanding.” When Guillaume finally lies dead before her, the world becomes Dark for Jirel and she finally understands what drove her to such violent hatred. She goes down on her knees and weeps for her dead lover.

The shadow of the black god

Jirel decides to descend again into the underworld to save the soul of the lost lover. The underworld is actually not an underworld, although the way there is a descent, starting in the lowest dungeons of Castle Joiry, because when you finally arrive, you see another world with its own sky. There is also a separate time, because it is night in Joiry, but day there. Jirel waits until night has fallen there too. Alien constellations appear in the sky and she realizes that the landscape is completely different than on her last visit. As with the first time, Jirel can move with a dreamlike ease and speed.

At first she does not know where to start her search, but is guided by a faint, wind-borne call and eventually comes to a hill. At its height, she sees a black figure of a coarse, shuffling, flat-headed figure with dangling arms, which appears to her as an obscene three-dimensional caricature of Guillaume, and she realizes that Guillaume's soul is forever trapped in this parodying design is. That is the punishment of the Black God, "so just, and yet so utterly unjust". As she stands there and looks at the statue, she becomes aware of the presence - the shadows - of the black god who tries to overwhelm her and plunge her into an abyss of cold despair. But finally, through the vision of a dance group of dancing girls, each one an aspect of herself, she overcomes the God and finds back to life and warmth, but the image melts and melts until only a black shadow remains, which begins to move across the floor.

Jirel follows the dark form gliding over the ground, the shadow of Guillaume, which once merges with the shadow of a strange, tentacle-reinforced tree. The tentacles reach for Jirel, but she cuts it with her sword. Finally, in a dark ravine, the shadow lines up in a circle of dancing shapes and again the presence of the black god makes itself felt and attacks Jirel, who wins again. Guillaume's shadow disappears and becomes a weak, barely audible voice that keeps calling Jirel's name.

Finally, following the voice, Jirel arrives at a temple, where a final attack by the black god takes place, whom Jirel now believes he can no longer defeat. But when Guillaume's voice penetrates her, a warming fire of life ignites in her, the cold disappears and silence ensues. She realizes that it is the silence of peace and a finally achieved death: “She had driven Guillaume out of the image and into the shadow, and from the shadow into this voice, and from the voice… into a clean death, perhaps. “Jirel has fulfilled her mission, given the soul of the beloved she murdered peace and can now return to the world above.

expenditure

  • First printing:
    • Black God's Kiss. In: Weird Tales. Vol. 24, No. 4 (October 1934).
    • Black God's Shadow. In: Weird Tales. Vol. 24, No. 6 (December 1934).
  • US first edition in: CL Moore: Shambleau and Others. Gnome Press, 1953.
  • UK first edition in: CL Moore: Shambleau. Consul Books, 1961.
  • Paperback: CL Moore: Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams. Gollancz / Orion (Millennium / Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks # 31), 2002, ISBN 0-575-07417-5 .
  • E-Book: CL Moore: Jirel of Joiry. Gateway / Orion, 2013, ISBN 978-1-4732-0802-5 .
  • Translations:
    • The kiss of the black god. Translated by Lore Straßl. In: CL Moore: Jirel, the Amazon. Pabel (Terra Fantasy # 25), 1976. Also called: The Kiss of the Black God. In: CL Moore: Jirel, the Amazon. Festa (Festa Dark Fantasy # 1102), 2002, ISBN 3-935822-44-8 . Also in: Frank Festa (ed.): The red room. Festa (HP Lovecraft's Library of Secrets # 2625), 2010, ISBN 978-3-86552-088-3 .
    • The kiss of the black god. Translated by Irene Holicki. In: CL Moore: The kiss of the black god. Heyne SF&F # 3874, 1982, ISBN 3-453-30760-7 . Also in: CL Moore: Shambleau. Heyne (Library of Science Fiction Literature # 77), 1990, ISBN 3-453-03929-7 .
    • The shadow of the black god. Translated by Lore Straßl. In: CL Moore: Jirel, the Amazon. Pabel (Terra Fantasy # 25), 1976. Also called: The Shadow of the Black God. In: CL Moore: Jirel, the Amazon. Festa (Festa Dark Fantasy # 1102), 2002, ISBN 3-935822-44-8 .

Both stories were translated into French and Italian in addition to German. Of Black God's Kiss is also a Finnish translation.

Black God's Kiss was also the cover story of a collection published by Paizo Publishing in 2007 (Planet Stories # 3, ISBN 978-1-60125-045-2 ). The collection began with the essay Where No Man Had Gone Before by Suzy McKee Charnas and contained all six Jirel-of-Joiry stories. In 2015, an e-book edition of the collection was published by Diversion Books ( ISBN 978-1-68230-116-6 ).

literature

  • Jennifer Jodell: Mediating Moore: Uncertain Origins and Indeterminate Identities in the Work of CL Moore . Dissertation Washington University in St. Louis 2010, All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) # 784, online , pp. 25, 32, 177.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "Guillaume the conqueror" in the text, ie "William the Conqueror". However, there is no direct reference to the historical figure William the Conqueror .
  2. ↑ "I seek a weapon," she said, "a weapon against a man I so hate that upon earth there is none terrible enough for my need."
  3. ↑ "Only his eyes remained alive, and there was torment in them, and understanding."
  4. ↑ "[...] she had driven Guillaume out of the image and into the shadow, and out of the shadow into the voice, and out of the voice into — clean death, perhaps."