Poetic Licence
Iain M. Banks’s Consider Phlebas and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land
(Originally published in Vector, Jan 1999)
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
Iain Banks had already published three innovative and imaginative multi-genre novels when, adding an extra 'M' to his name, he produced his first pure science fiction novel - Consider Phlebas (1987). It was in Consider Phlebas that Banks introduced us to his Culture: a utopian anarchist 'empire' of humans and AI Drones and Minds, its department of Good Works - Contact - and Contact's secret service - Special Circumstances.
Banks had already written several novels, which remained unpublished, before his success with The Wasp Factory (1984). Some of these were later rewritten as the Culture novels Consider Phlebas (1987), The Player of Games (1988), Use of Weapons (1990), the novella The State of the Art (published in the collection of the same name in 1991), and the non-Culture Against a Dark Background (1991). When Consider Phlebas was eventually published Banks had been working on the ideas surrounding the Culture for a long time so it was no surprise that he produced such a rich and mature novel.
As can be seen from the above quote at the beginning of Consider Phlebas, the title was a phrase taken from T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land. This poem is recognised as one of the major works of literature of the twentieth century; it is a modernist masterpiece. So how much, if any, of The Waste Land is in Consider Phlebas? I was able to ask the author that very same question at a recent reading (1). His reply was in part the same as that which he had given in earlier interview: 'Phlebas is the drowned Phoenician sailor in T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land which is my favourite poem, if you exclude Shakespeare. Not that I like what Eliot stood for, but he was a genius and The Waste Land is his masterpiece. Well, his and Pound's, also of iffy political leanings. I just always like the words, "Consider Phlebas". They looked good, they sounded good. They just looked like a title somehow. I tried all sorts of titles for the story before I settled on Consider Phlebas, but they all sounded too much like Star Wars. I knew it was a weird title but I thought well, if it works it'll just become right for the book.' (2)
He also informed the audience that Consider Phlebas is dedicated to his cousin Bill Hunt, who was an officer on the bulk carrier Derbyshire, which sank with all hands in a typhoon in the South China Sea, in 1980. The choice of name was definitely not an attempt to gain literary credentials or he would have ditched the 'camp aliens and laser blasters.' He has acknowledged the similarities to the poem in that the main character in Consider Phlebas is drowning and later undergoes a 'sea-change' - this being a motif running through The Waste Land - but that is far as it goes.
But there are a number of parallels between the two works, whether deliberate or not on Iain's part. To prove my point I will take a brief look at Consider Phlebas and then at The Waste Land, followed by examples of how the latter informs the former.
Consider Phlebas
Consider Phlebas is a very visual book, coincidentally the one that Iain would most like to see filmed. The plot has a number of action set-pieces which remain vividly in the memory: the megaship crashing into the iceberg; the fight under the hovercraft; the ship Clear Air Turbulence escaping from inside the somewhat larger ship, The Ends of Invention; and the final train wreck. Iain Banks has described the plot of Phlebas as: 'There's all this space paraphernalia but you can paraphrase the story as just being about a ship-wrecked sailor who falls in with a gang of pirates and goes off in search of buried treasure. It's a yarn set in S.F. terms'. (3)
To expand on the above and give an overview of the plot: Consider Phlebas is a Space Opera set against the background of a war involving the Culture and the imperialist religious-fanatic empire of alien Idirans. The reasons, wider implications and conclusions of this conflict are not fully explained until the Appendices at the end of the novel and the action of the novel takes place on the periphery of the war.
The Idirans hire the protagonist (it's hard to call him a hero) to recover a Mind (a highly sophisticated AI) which has hidden itself on a quarantined 'Planet of the Dead.' The protagonist, Horza (or more formally Bora Horza Gobuchul; Banks loves long and complicated names and this is one of his more restrained examples), who, although appearing human, comes from the militarist bio-engineered race of shape-changing mercenaries known as the Changers.
At the beginning of the book we find him captured during a spying mission and about to be drowned in his captor's own effluent. However he is soon rescued by the Idirans, only to shoot off into space when a Culture ship attacks to await rescue again. This arrives not in the form of the Idirans but a gang of pirate/mercenaries. He fights his way into the crew and then accompanies the group onto a disastrous mission to a temple. On the next mission to a megaship once again disaster ensues when the megaship hits an iceberg. Eventually he kills the mercenary captain, taking over his identity and escapes from a Culture trap and a Special Circumstances spy. He then heads off to complete his mission on Schar's World to recover the Mind. This mission also ends in a disaster with a train crash and most of the protagonists dead or dying. The Mind is rescued (by the Culture) but after reading the appendices, this seems to have little effect on the main events of the Culture/Idiran conflict - a mere footnote to a footnote.
The Waste Land
The Waste Land was published in 1922 in The Criterion after a major and devastating real-life conflict; the First World War. However, although the poem has an overriding air of depression and despondency, Eliot was not just referring back to the war but to the desolation of man's spirituality in the modern age. The 'Waste Land' of the poem is modern European culture, which had come too far from its spiritual roots. Human beings are isolated and sexual relations are sterile, loveless and meaningless. The poem itself can, at times, seem annoyingly obscure but rewards careful study. It is a mixture of past and present, pulling ancient myths into a contemporary urban setting, literary yet slangy and iconoclastic; it is truly a product of the Jazz Age. The poem itself was written after several years' gestation and Eliot incorporated many and extensive revisions suggested by his mentor, the poet Ezra Pound.
Eliot was on the verge of becoming a Buddhist when he wrote The Waste Land and the poem forms a counterpoint between Eastern and Western religions, including Buddhism and Hindu as well as to the medieval legend of the Holy Grail. It finds in them the common thread of the mythic cycle of the death and resurrection of gods )4). More specifically, he found in a book by Jessie Weston, From Ritual to Romance (1920), the story of the Fisher King, a mythic figure whose loss of power or fertility produces a corresponding blight or drought in his kingdom. Only through the death of this king and his replacement by a new, young, and vigorous knight can the land be restored to fertility. The possibility of regeneration is represented by the fragments into the text of the poem such as allusions to the Chapel Perilous in the 'What the thunder said' section of The Waste Land.
As with any work as intricate as this, there is a difference of opinion among commentators with regard to its interpretation. In the analysis that follows it will be impossible to track every interpretation, allusion or reference. Instead I will deal with those that I think influence and inform Consider Phlebas (5) and areas where there seems to be broad agreement.
The poem consists of five sections, which vary in rhythm and rhyme from line to line. It is often seemingly fragmentary in structure as Eliot quotes from or alludes to a wide range of literary sources in a number of languages. Because of the variety and, frequently, the relative obscurity of Eliot's allusions it is impossible to appreciate the full depth of the poem without some form of guidance. However the general impression of isolation, decadence, and sterility comes through in every reading. The poem presents a series of conversations or scenes that lead through the wasteland to a moment of hope, the expectation of rain, at the end. These sections are titled and numbered to indicate shifts of scene and speaker. A brief description of the contents of the poem follows to give some idea of the breadth and depth of the work.
The first part of the poem, 'The Burial of the Dead,' starts in the voice of a countess looking back on her pre-war youth as a freer, more romantic time. Her voice is followed by a solemn description of present dryness when 'the dead tree gives no shelter.' Then the poem returns to a fragmentary love scene of the past, perhaps the countess's. The scene shifts to a fortune-teller who reads the tarot cards and warns of death for the 'drowned Phoenician Sailor'. One interpretation of 'The Phoenician Sailor' is instead of an actual person it is a type of fertility god whose image was thrown into the sea to symbolise the death of summer. The final section of part one presents a contemporary image of London commuter crowds moving along the streets blankly, as if dead. One pedestrian calls out to another, grotesquely asking if the corpse in his garden has sprouted yet, suggesting the necessity of death before rebirth can take place.
The subsequent parts of the poem are similarly complex, shifting unexpectedly between different locations and speakers. This can be seen in the second part, 'A Game of Chess', subdivides into three sections: an exotic description of a making up table, a neurotic rich woman frustrated by her male companion's reserve and by a gossipy barroom monologue about sex, infidelity and abortion.
The third section, 'The Fire Sermon,' mingles snatches of an old marriage song celebrating the Thames River with a contemporary image of the filthy, trash-filled Thames. Then the ancient seer Tiresias (who been both male and female) narrates a banal and loveless scene of seduction of a typist by her lover, a real estate agent. The scene is squalid and passionless and the sexual act is meaningless to both participants. This is followed by contrasting images of Queen Elizabeth I boating on the Thames with her lover, the Earl of Leicester.
The fourth section, 'Death by Water,' is where the 'Consider Phlebas' quote is taken from. It fulfils the prophecy made by the fortune-teller in the first part. This brief section both marks death as the end, or, in keeping with the whole poem's structure, situates death as the prelude to transformation and rebirth.
The final section, 'What the Thunder Said,' begins with images of a journey over barren and rocky ground. The thunder is sterile, being unaccompanied by rain. Through the journey chaotic images of rot and of a crumbling city lead up to a when a cock (a symbol of Christ and hence rebirth) crows, announcing the coming rain. The poem ends with the exposition, almost a jazz riff, on three terms from Hindu lore: Datta (to give alms), Dayadhvam (to have compassion), and Damyata (to practise self-control). Then the poem finally seems to collapse into a rush of quotations and allusions - a flood of meanings and suggestions ending with the word 'shanti' (peace) repeated three times.
Influences
Initially it seems that as writers Eliot and Banks could not be further apart. Eliot, an American (later naturalised British) was a religious pro-monarchist and politically right-wing literary poet whilst Banks is a Scottish, atheist, republican, socialist, popular genre novelist. However Banks's writing is very poetic and for a popular writer in places very experimental and non-populist. This is noticeable in works such as The Bridge (1986) and in particular, the recent novel Song of Stone (1997) which was based on a long poem written by Banks some years ago. Consider Phlebas even includes a snatch of quasi-poetry at the beginning which is repeated towards the end, which to me seems very close in style to a fragment of Eliot's (6). Although Banks has said he does not want to be part of the literary establishment, he is clearly a literary writer despite his protestations.
Banks sees what he was trying to do in Consider Phlebas as what Brian Aldiss describes as: 'Wide-Screen Baroque - a kind of free-wheeling interplanetary adventure, full of brilliant scenery, dramatic scenes and a joyous taking for granted of the unlikely.' (7) This was originally used to describe Alfred Bester at his prime and it seems Banks has inherited his mantle. It is also ironic that one of Bester's most well known works - The Stars My Destination (aka Tiger! Tiger!) - was modelled on the classic text, The Count of Monte Cristo.
Consider Phlebas reflects the despondent atmosphere of The Waste Land. In a number of interviews Banks has indicated that he was trying to break out of the straight-jacket of right-wing Imperialist American space opera and regain the intellectual high ground for the left (8). He has done this in a number of ways. Unlike the majority of space opera there is no clear cut division between the Good Guys and the Bad; no evil empire and noble rebels. The Culture (although clearly Banks's 'favourite') at times seems to behave as badly, if not worse, than the Idirans who, although misguided, seem noble in comparison. All the major characters die or are near death at the end of the conventional narrative. In fact the reader is even cheated out of a conventional conclusion with the 'Dramatis Personae' section killing off most of the survivors of the previous narrative so that only the very minor protagonists, to whom we have little attachment, have a happy ending.
Also unlike say, the gung-ho atmosphere of something like Starship Troopers or a John Wayne war-movie, Consider Phlebas is more reminiscent of an anti-war film such as Apocalypse Now (9). Banks is reiterating the old cliché that 'War is hell'. All the conflicts in the book at best produce pyrrhic victories and are non-heroic and squalid affairs, filled with chaos and confusion where luck plays a large part in whether characters live or die. This was a deliberate step away from the attitude of novels such as Dune where everyone acts out a predictable chess game where all opponent's moves are known in advance. The Vietnam War has taught us how false an attitude this is.
Additionally, technology in Consider Phlebas is not completely reliable, failing in spectacular and lethal ways, mostly through lack of attention by the user, such as the 'failure' of the Antigravity harness on the megaship and the 'gun barrel crash' towards the end (10) Another reaction against conventional space opera is the novel's treatment of so called Big Dumb Objects. In Banks's work, instead of spending a whole novel (or two or more) exploring an object such as the Vavatch ring and its megaships, it is merely used as backdrop to the main action and casually destroyed.
As I have already mentioned, Banks has acknowledged two deliberate connections between Consider Phlebas and The Waste Land; the fact that the protagonist Horza is drowning at the beginning of the novel and that he undergoes a 'sea change' (11) halfway through. Unlike the Phoenician Phlebas who drowns, Horza is rescued from death by drowning. In fact this 'rebirth' is needed for the Mind to be ultimately rescued. However it is only a temporary measure and throughout the book Horza is living on 'borrowed time.'
The 'sea change' referred to is an allusion in the poem to the image of the 'sea change' in Ariel's song in The Tempest (12). This occurs twice in the poem, at the tarot reading scene and during 'Death by Water' section immediately before the lines in the quotation prefacing 'Consider Phlebas'. In the novel it is thought that after the disaster on the megaship Horza has drowned but he has survived, which is a mirror of the situation in The Tempest where an absent character is thought to have died.
The transformation (13) that Horza undergoes on the crashed shuttle roof during his 'sea change' is a double pun on change - not only does he decide to start the process of transformation into the identity of the mercenary captain, this is also the first time he decides to 'change' his destiny - to take control over fate. The nature of fate is a large theme in The Waste Land. In the poem the Phoenician 'turns the wheel': this is the 'wheel of fate' of both Tarot and Buddhist symbolism. In the novel Horza makes very few decisions of his own and for most part he is led by fate. Up until the 'sea-change' he is swept along in the events - captured then rescued, rescued again, then accompanying the mercenaries on two missions, accepting the lead of the captain. His eventual downfall is mostly brought about by the actions or inaction of others rather than his own decisions.
The poem prophesies death and in the novel the message from the Dra'azon - 'THERE IS DEATH HERE' (p. 293) could be interpreted as, rather than a description of the dead Changers and Idirans on the planet below, a predication that death awaits most of the crew of the Clear Air Turbulence. Another connection to the poem is the use of cards in the novel, although they are not used for prediction in the latter. Instead they are used in the gambling game of Damage, a feature of which allows the audience to dip into the thoughts of the participants which, coincidentally, is exactly what the poem does, with the reader dipping into the thoughts of others.
Although concentrating mainly on Horza the novel does have some different points of view, though not quite so many and varied as The Waste Land. As well as the Mind (whose potential is so vast that we can only begin to understand its mental processes because it is crippled), we also see one of the distant Culture agents who are supposed to direct the action. She however proves ineffectual to the main events; she even has a limb cast in plaster to symbolise this.
Eliot's poem has many religious images and, although not directly about religion, so does Banks's book. The Culture are fighting a war based on a post-religious ideology (their 'Good Works'), whilst the Idirans want to capture territory for religious reasons. The first place that is attacked by the mercenary group happens to be a religious temple, the monks of which are saved by the walls of their place of worship, although not in the conventional sense. Horza's beliefs are very close to those expressed in The Waste Land. He thought the Culture was decadent and lacking a spiritual centre having abandoned its 'soul', its evolutionary destiny to machine intelligence (p. 29). The Dra'Azon is treated as it was a godlike being. It certainly has godlike powers and it is something, if not exactly to be worshipped, then to be placated.
The novel, being a quest, shares the same epic roots as the poem. One of the main themes of the poem is the legend of the Fisher King, which is a precursor of the Grail legend. In this a wounded, maimed or simply old king - connected with the fish symbol, both the Christian or pagan symbol of life (hence the Fisher King) - has to be rescued by a knight who passes certain tests and who above all suffers an ordeal in the Chapel Perilous (the location of the Grail). The ordeal involves ascertaining the significance of the symbols of the lance and the cup: the lance pierced Christ's side on the cross and the cup is the one used at the Last Supper. He may be challenged by a lady, a hag who later turns out to be a beautiful young girl, or he may be beguiled by a young woman who tries to seduce him. If he succeeds in his quest, the king is healed and with him the whole land returns from drought and sterility back to fertility and fruitfulness.
It is relatively easy to fit some of the events of the novel to the above. The Mind, which is crippled, is the Fisher King - it being the Minds that 'rule' the Culture. Horza, the knight, has to under go many trails and tests until he gets to Schar's World. Schar's World itself could be seen as the Chapel Perilous where he undergoes an ordeal (physical rather than intellectual). The train could be identified as a lance and the underground caverns as a cup. Once the ordeal on Schar's World is completed and the Mind is rescued (and later healed) the novel comes to its conclusion.
In the Appendices we are informed that the Idrians are eventually defeated and in Banks's terms the land is brought back from the intellectual drought of religion to the fruitfulness of more sensible policies. Balevda can be seen as the woman. She, like Horza, changes her identity and although she does not physically try to seduce him she tries to intellectually seduce him and especially his companions into the ideas of the Culture. Horza can also be identified as Phlebas from the poem, one a Phoenician and hence a seafarer whilst the other is a spacefarer. One suffers death by drowning, the other escapes death by drowning.
Another theme in the poem is the sterility of relationships. There are literally sterile relationships in the book because of the lack of fertility between different species of human (p. 82). However Banks reverses the situation of the poem in that the protagonist has found love both in his old relationship with the Changer on Schar's World (although this taken away from him) and with Yalson during the novel. In fact a large part of his motivation in returning to Schar's World is through the love he has for the Changer. It is of course heavily ironic that we find out that Yalson is pregnant only for that potential to taken away and we are informed that, as almost the last sentence in the book, 'The Changers were wiped out as a species during the final stages of the war in space' (p. 467). Other examples of sterility in the novel are Schar's World which is virtually devoid of life, and the ideological positions of both the Idrians and the Culture, are seen as sterile and non-progressive by each other.
The final part of The Waste Land takes place of a journey across barren and rocky ground and the final part of Phlebas takes place on an equally barren but frozen world and the end game takes place in a rocky and barren underworld. The captured Idiran description of his journey that his companions endure is a nice counterpoint to the end of the poem (p. 371). The poem dissolves at the end into a number of allusions and metaphors whilst the novel end is equally radical with its postmodern appendices. Instead of a cock crow at the end of The Waste Land, we have a rather noisier train wreck. We even have rain at end of the novel as well, although this takes the form of a rain of foam to extinguish the flames of the train wreck. But we have no peace at the end of the novel unless you count death for virtually all the participants.
Conclusion
Does The Waste Land inform Consider Phlebas? Well I think the above shows to some extent that it does. Horza can be identified as both the knight from the Fisher King legend and Phlebas from the poem. However in some ways the book is the opposite of the poem. Clearly Banks thinks the secular Drones and AIs of the Culture are a good thing and Religion is a bad thing and humanity will only mature when they throw off the constraints of old belief. In the end of course it is the religious Idiran civilisation that is defeated and dies. This is opposite to what Eliot was implying with The Waste Land in that we should embrace old myths. Banks see the potential in progress whilst Eliot is disturbed by it.
It is interesting that Banks was contemplating having Horza survive but felt it would not be true to the book (14). I have read several reviews (mostly on the internet) complaining about his death at the end of the novel and that somehow the reader has been cheated. His actions, on a cursory examination, do seem futile; Horza tries to get the girl but first his first love and then his new love is killed and he himself are killed by the actions of his former allies. The Mind is rescued, but by the Culture, the protagonist's opposition and the only survivors of the final confrontation are the drone and the Mind leading to a 'triumph of the machines' and the opposite of everything the protagonist stands for. This is indeed in keeping with the desolated nature of the poem.
However, buried in the appendices is the fact that once healed the Mind 'survived the war despite taking part in many important space battles' (p. 467) and takes Horza's name so that after his death he becomes a hero as in those old epics the poem refers back to. Perhaps Banks is saying that the events of the novel contribute to the earlier ending of the war and therefore Horza is in the end heroically successful. The novel, like the poem and many of Banks's other works, is a puzzle, waiting to be solved.
Well, there is always the problem of taking too much poetic licence and writing too much into a text. Eliot himself said the reader should come to his own conclusions. I will leave you to do just that. (15)
Notes
1. At the Iain Banks Song of Stone reading and question and answer session on 2 September 1998 at the British Library, London. Banks has also repeated much of this information in a number of interviews. (Return)
2. Interview with Iain Banks, Science Fiction Chronicle (October 1994). In The Bridge the protagonist's girlfriend loves T. S. Eliot too (Pan, 1987, p. 102). (Return)
3. Interview with Iain Banks, Radical Scotland # 42 (December 1989 / January 1990). His wish to see Consider Phlebas filmed is repeated in many interviews. (Return)
4. Eliot also studied Buddhism and Hinduism whilst reading anthropology at Harvard. (Return)
5. For the description and analysis of the poem I have referred mainly to Brodie's Notes on T. S. Eliot's Selected Poems by Desiree Hunt and A Student's Guide to Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot by B.C. Southam and especially English Literature From 1785 by Kathleen McCoy and Judith Harlan. (Return)
6. 'The Jinmoti of Bozlen Two kill the hereditary ritual assassins of the new Yearking's immediate family by drowning them in the tears of the Continental Empathaur in its Sadness Season' p. 9, repeated p. 467 (All quotes taken from Orbit, 1993 edition). (Return)
7. Interview with Iain Banks, Wired (June 1996). (Return)
8. Interview with Iain Banks, Wired (June 1996). (Return)
9. This could be said to another reading of The Waste Land, as well as Heart of Darkness - but that's another story. (Return)
10. See SFX (June 1995) and Consider Phlebas pp. 116 and 351. (Return)
11. Science Fiction Chronicle (October 1994), SFX (June 1995) and also reiterated 2 September 1998 at the British Library, London. (Return)
12. See A Student's Guide to Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot. (Return)
13. The poem involves changes of identity, in particular the seer Tiresias who as both male and female can be seen to stand for all the characters in the work. Not only Horza but also Balevda change their appearance and identity during the novel. (Return)
14. Interview with Iain Banks, Wired (June 1996) and other interviews. (Return)
15. See A Student's Guide to Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot. The notes to his poem which appeared after its first periodical appearance can be regarded as a spoof to trap the unwary (as well as a guard against charges of plagiarism and a means to fill out an otherwise slim volume). (Return)
