Fables and Reflections is more an anthology of Sandman stories than it is anything else. If you read the comic series, you’ll notice that the individual stories in this volume read out of order. The three “month” stories ("Thermidor," "August,” and “Three Septembers and a January”) were published before A Game of You, as was the mythic “Song of Orpheus,” released as the first Sandman Special in 1991. The three “convergence” stories that feature story-telling as device came after (“The Hunt,” “Soft Places,” and “The Parliament of Rooks”). After the Convergence tales, which feature characters coming together, comes the so-slight-it’s-barely-a-story “Fear of Falling,” published as a Vertigo preview. The capstone tale, and arguably the most popular of the stand-alone Sandman stories, “Ramadan,” comes later, between Brief Lives (next week’s topic) and World’s End, the quintessential homage to Chaucer, Boccacio, and story-tellers everywhere.
Which means that Fables and Reflections suffers from a lack of cohesion, as it’s made up of the leftover bits and pieces that didn’t really fit anywhere else. As an anthology, the volume is a bit diffuse and scattered. If you’re into the meta-Sandman plotline, there are stories here that, strictly speaking, could be considered skippable. You could miss, for instance, “The Hunt,” and your understanding of Morpheus’ tragic arc wouldn’t be affected.
But you would miss the teeny little tie-in about the book Lucius lost, one of Kit Marlowe’s—Marlowe whom you remember was Shakespeare’s friend. Now that you’re thinking of Shakespeare, you will notice that the story the Grandfather tells is one that marries the ideas of valuing family with not getting your heart’s desire. And if you happen to wonder whether those chiming thematics are intentional, because the Grandfather didn’t get his wish but lived a full and happy life, while Shakespeare got his great wish but lost his son...well, now you’re catching on. As Morpheus tells Titania in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,”
The price of getting what you want, is getting what once you wanted. (1, p. 81)
In other words, the striving is more important than the reward; it’s the journey that counts, far more than the destination. Vasily realizes this; having achieved one dream, he sets his heart closer to home. How this fits in with Morpheus...well, that’s part of the story, because Morpheus may possess the wisdom, but he’s only starting to apply the lessons to himself.
Despite its ad hoc nature, the stories in Fables and Reflections generally fall into two groups: 1) meditations on power and 2) the power of storytelling, the human need for stories. Stories within stories, tales of tales. Stories tell us who we are; they knit us together into families or cultures; they teach us history, feed our dreams, and sustain our hearts.
The Months of the Year
The three short stories named for months are about power, all of them wise and subtle. “Thermidor” (July in the calendar of the French Revolution) and “August,” set in Rome during the reign of the Emperor Augustus, both consider the brutal nature of power and its cost. The leaders of the French Revolution are utterly committed to their righteous cause, willing to execute even Thomas Paine for being insufficiently pure (which should sound familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of the Freedom Caucus). Robespierre tells his prisoner Joanna Constantine that he will destroy all myth and memory of the past:
We are remaking the world, woman; we are creating an age of pure reason. We have taken the names of dead gods and kings from the days of the week and the months of the year. We have lost the saints and burnt the churches.
I myself have inaugurated a new religion, based on reason, celebrating an egalitarian supreme being, distant and uninvolved.
To which Constantine, echoing the burning of villages, answers,
You will save France, if you have to kill every child, woman and man in the country to do it. (2, np)
To Robespierre, might makes right. Together with his sidekick, St. Just, Robespierre is riding the tide of history to everlasting glory, the myth of a pure Enlightenment. Then the two have their run-in with real myth; they meet Orpheus who, instead of passively accepting his destruction, sings to the men. And Orpheus, son on Onieros and Calliope, moved Hades and Persephone to pity; he made the Furies weep; in other words, for the first time, Robespierre and St. Just meet real eloquence. The experience so rattles them that they lose their eloquence and find themselves facing Mme. Guillotine. The lesson is two-fold: wield power viciously and you’ll receive what you give; and do not mess with myth.
“Thermidor,” the month of July, figures in the next story, “August,” one of Gaiman’s most understated and powerful short fictions, because the Emperor Augustus fears one god above all the others—he is most afraid of Julius Caesar, his uncle, his adopted father. Julius has given power to Gaius Augustus, as well as given him an understanding of how power is wielded in the service of empire. Julius Caesar dreamed that Rome would conquer the world and stand supreme for thousands of years; Augustus’ understanding of the brutality of conquest and governance, the sheer and dehumanizing brute force that realizing Julius’ dream would take, terrifies him. He knows why Julius chose him as his successor—it was to make a Rome that would dominate forever.
Augustus has his own plan—to limit the empire, to ensure it will last hundreds, not thousands, of years, and will eventually fall, assailed from without by barbarians and eaten from within by strange new gods. We are never told why. Is he wiser than Julius Caesar? Is it that his own heirs are unworthy to follow him and he doesn’t know how to secure a competent succession? Or is it because every night in his dreams he’s again a 16-year old kid, the kid who idolizes his uncle only to be brutally raped by him, night after night, sodomized as Caesar whispers that he will make him emperor? Augustus wonders whether he is more himself as a beggar in the forum, or as emperor on his throne. Morpheus’ advice that he disguise himself for one day a year and make his plans where the gods won’t be watching or listening gives him the courage to ensure that Julius’ dream never comes to reality.
If “Thermidor” and “August” deal with the excesses of power, “Three Septembers and a January,” the story of Joshua Norton, Emperor of America, is about its restraint. The tale is a delight in its own right, as Despair, Desire and Delirium challenge Dream to give the depressed Norton a reason to live. Morpheus makes him a king, and the citizens of San Francisco greet their monarch with indulgence and charity. Desire tempts Norton with women or whatever else he might want—she tempts him with real power, but Norton refuses, saying,
This is my city, in my country. They treat me well here. I want nothing….I am the emperor of the United States….I am content to be what I am. What more than that could any man desire? (2, np)
Delirium, brought in for her evaluation, says, “He’s not mine...is he? His madness….His madness keeps him sane….” to which Morpheus responds, “And do you think he is the only one, my sister?” (2, np)
Sane or not, Norton has his dream and that sustains him, but it’s not a dream of power; it’s one of responsibility. Joshua Norton is an emperor who rules wisely, who advises parties in the Tong Wars, who accepts scrip and charity from his fellow San Franciscans, and who, when he dies, learns he was one of the 36 Tzaddikim, upon whom the world depends. (And we haven’t even mentioned Mark Twain’s prominent role in the story).
Beyond Mark Twain, we learn a bit more about Desire’s resentment of his/her big brother, and his/her vow, “I’ll make him spill family blood, I’ll bring the kindly ones down on his blasted head...one day” (2, np).
The fourth “Month” story is out of order, but fits within the parameters of the discussions of power, and that is “Ramadan.” During the month of Ramadan, Caliph Haroun Al Raschid has an Ozymandias problem: his city Baghdad is perfect, a jewel on earth. He has achieved everything he ever wanted, and he knows it will—it must—one day fail. So he strikes a bargain with the Lord of Dreams, to take his city into his realm, where it will never fade. A dream of the city, a city in a bottle, a city that will live forever.
“Ramadan” is unusual in that it’s one of the few Sandman stories that wasn’t written as a script, but as a short story (3, p. 156). The narrative itself carries an unmistakable “storyteller” flavor, and on its own would be a fine and lovely side tale. And it is, until the end, when Haroun sees Morpheus in the Soukh but doesn’t recognize him. Nor does he recognize the beautiful city in a bottle that Morpheus holds. He doesn’t know exactly what’s happened, because it’s all happened in a dream, but he walks away happy.
And then we turn the page:
The reality of Baghdad, whether in Haroun’s day or in Hassan’s, is not nearly as important as the dream of Baghdad, alive in the Hassan’s imagination. And that is the lesson.
Convergence Stories
The convergence stories, “The Hunt,” “Soft Places,” and “The Parliament of Rooks” all fill in details in the Sandman universe. “The Hunt,” is not only a reverse fairy-tale, it’s a fun werewolf story filled with tenderness, humor, and sharp teeth. “Soft Places” shows what happened in Preludes and Nocturnes between Morpheus’ escape from Burgess’ glass cage and his being found by Gregory the Gargoyle. We also get a conversation between Marco Polo and Gilbert (Fiddler’s Green) as G.K. Chesterton, who complains that Morpheus and his latest love interest are making goo goo eyes at each other within him. “It’s embarrassing,” he huffs.
This new love affair merits another mention—in “The Parliament of Rooks,” wherein Eve says, “She’s not really his type, is she?” Morpheus is not terribly lucky in love, and his lack of good fortune forms part of the subtext through the entire series. Love is Desire’s domain, and Desire has it in for Dream.
Orpheus, Son of his Father
Which is another way of saying that the pomegranate doesn’t fall far from the tree.
“The Song of Orpheus” is a straightforward telling of the Orpheus/Eurydice myth, with the addition of the Endless as characters. Gaiman said of its genesis:
My original plan for The Sandman Special was to do the equivalent of a series of jazz riffs, all on Orphic themes, spinning off of stories precisely like The Einstein Intersection. The result would have been much weirder and more interesting than what I ended up writing….I was traveling around on a signing tour at the time, and when people would ask me, “What’s coming up?” I’d respond, “I’m going to do a series of stories about Orpheus,” and they’d tilt their head and say, “Morpheus?” [Laughter] And I’d say, “No, Orpheus,” and they’d look puzzled and say, “Who’s Orpheus?”
This same conversation occurred over and over, all across America. I was very resistant at first, but finally the information I was being provided sunk in: despite the fact that I was dealing with well-educated, sophisticated readers, they didn’t know the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.
You can’t do jazz riffs and variations on a theme when the audience isn’t familiar with the theme itself. So The Sandman Special became a literal retelling of the Orpheus tale, interwoven with my overall Sandman story. (3, p. 152)
As Gaiman says, the story is pretty much a straight retelling. Even so, it holds important clues for the alert reader. Morpheus and Calliope are still a couple on Orpheus’ wedding day. Based on the nightmare that Orpheus has the night before the wedding, Morpheus knows that something bad is fated to happen. He could intercede with the gods of the Underworld but doesn’t, because he won’t bend the rules. To him, the rules and responsibilities of his function—his job—are more important than anyone. He will not help Orpheus, and can’t even comfort him.
As prideful and stubborn as the father is, he meets his match in his son. Neither is willing to bend. So when an emo Orpheus rejects his father, Morpheus vows he won’t see him again. This is the Morpheus Calliope knew, and the one she expected back in Dream Country.
You have changed, Onieros. In the old days, you would have left me to rot forever, without turning a hair. (4, p. 33)
The Fates (aka The Kindly Ones, The Furies, the Daughters of the Night, the Erinyes, the Three Ladies, etc etc etc) keep turning up in different incarnations, different forms, different bodies. They are the three witches in “Fear of Flying.” They are the Bacchante in “The Song of Orpheus.” They’re in “The Hunt” with the princess as maiden, the gypsy as mother, and Baba Yaga as crone. They manifest as Adam’s three wives in Eve’s story in “The Parliament of Rooks”—maiden, the second wife that Adam won’t touch because he witnessed her creation and therefore finds her repulsive; mother, Lilith—Adam’s equal; crone, Eve, who tells the story and lives in the cave of nightmares. Eve says, “This is true. Adam had three wives. But some say Adam married only once, and they speak truly, too.” The three-in-one nature of the goddess, the Furies, the Fates—they’re all linked. They’re mentioned in “Three Septembers,” when a frustrated Desire swears to “make him spill family blood, I’ll bring the kindly ones down on his blasted head,” which may be where the plot to impregnate Unity and make her a dream vortex starts. Desire has failed with Unity/Rose; she’s failed with Orpheus, who has already gotten Death’s promise not to come for him, and Morpheus turns his back on his son. He doesn’t know how to turn to him again.
What’s Left?
The stories in Fables and Reflections range widely in style, subject, and time frame. There’s a lot more in them that can be covered in a diary like this. For example, in Orpheus’ story we meet the missing sibling, the one who abandoned his realm and function: Destruction. And he seems like a great guy. No wonder the younger siblings all mourn his absence. He’s as warm and sensible as Death. We realize that the rest of the Endless don’t like to refer to Death by her name, since taking the soul from the body is only one of her functions. She has others, and they don’t want to limit her role.
The quality of the artwork varies from lush and blocky to delicate and exquisite. The artist for “Ramadan,” P. Craig Russell, translates perhaps the most perfectly rendered vision, not only of Baghdad, but of the Dream-King himself, in all of The Sandman canon.
Every page is a gem.
Next week, it’s back to the main story, with Brief Lives.
References
1. Neil Gaiman, Dream Country. NY: Vertigo, 1991.
2. Neil Gaiman, Fables and Reflections. NY: Vertigo, 1993. All quotations from the volume are not paginated.
3. Hy Bender, The Sandman Companion. NY: Vertigo, 1999.
4. Neil Gaiman, Preludes and Nocturnes. NY: Vertigo, 1991.
Previous Sandman Diaries