CONAN THE BARBARIAN: NIETSZCHE’S ÜNINTENTIONAL ÜBERMENSCH, Part 2

Hello all! Back for more? Thanks for coming back. Let’s recap. Freddy Nietzsche was a dweeb who imagined what he thought was the perfect, badass-of-a-man. This was a response to the nihilism sweeping across Europe at the time, and was based on Freddy’s love of Greco-Roman myths and heroes. He gave them his own high-minded twist and BAM, Übermensch! Freddy died insane.

Actually, here, I’ll reprint my timeline:

""How about a sketch of a timeline? Freddy N. lived from 1844 to 1900 (died insane, of pneumonia and strokes); Howard lived from 1906 to 1936 (suicide by gunshot to head); the first Superman comic was published in 1938 and the first Batman comic in 1939; H.P Lovecraft, the nerdy New England pen-pal of Howard, lived from 1890 to 1937 (died, in poverty, of intestinal cancer). …Not very happy men, I’ll tell you that. First, let’s start with Nietzsche!""

Wrong! Back to Earth! Specifically, Texas! Yee-haw, folks! Robert E. Howard was a Texan whose next-door neighbors were honest-to-God former cowboys. They were there in the Wild West, and outlived the West when it was closed down. They told their stories to that youngin’ ‘Two-Gun Bob’. Howard was the son of a traveling country doctor, Dr. Issac Mordecai Howard, and traveled with his father on his circuits. There, young Howard saw plenty of violence, indirectly, as his father patched up small-town fighters and the men who were injured working the oil fields of Texas. In his own words (which I paraphrase) Howard said ‘living in a boom town taught a boy that things get real ugly, real quick.’

Unlike Freddy, Howard was not only smart, but an athlete; he became a bodybuilder and an amateur boxer. How jacked was he? …Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his heyday. But Texan. Now, imagine so jacked a dude as Howard, and put him in a soda-jerk uniform. You know, in those old-timey films where you had dudes pass out sodas and ice-cream floats? Howard worked as one to make money. Howard-Schwarzenegger, the barbarian, working as a soda-jerk. “Hellooo!!! How would u like yur ice-kream float? Neaggh!”

Now, to help my contemporary audience, we need to understand a few things before we dive into Conan. The first is that around the time, people had no concept of magic or superheroes. This was the era before superheroes! This was before the era when ‘magic’ was a common feature in for-profit fiction, or even in the popular imagination. It was spacemen, mad scientists, and murder mysteries who dominated the fiction books. Specifically, Howard was influenced by the real-life esotericism, theosophy. You know, one of those secret knowledge, magic-cult things…Psychic powers. Theosophy, in common usage, is basically psychic powers and spiritualism, like séance tables. Theosophy was founded by Helena Blavatsky and William Scott-Elliot. (I don’t have high opinions of them, and I’ll leave it at that.)

Howard and Lovecraft, being so influenced by Theosophy, wrote its ideas into their stories and thus the public imagination. (Like many esoteric movements, Theosophy was popular only among fringe weirdoes, and intellectuals with too much time on their hands.) Lost civilizations? Entire lost continents? Out of body experiences? Extra-sensory perception? Time travel? Reincarnation? Hidden magical beings? Outer space being freaky? Ancient astronauts?! Lizard-people conspiracies! You got it, that’s Theosophy!

Except for the last two. Lovecraft, as far as I’m aware, wholly invented the idea of ‘aliens come to earth during the age of the dinosaurs’, the first of its kind, in his story At the Mountains of Madness. Howard meanwhile can be credited with putting the Reptilian Conspiracy into popular imagination with his story “The Shadow Kingdom”. It is NOT a Conan story, it’s a King Kull story—I’ll get to him in another post.

Yup, you’re hearing it right. If a story focuses on weird magic and unknown paranormal forces (that aren’t based on Christianity or traditional paganism), it is because of these two weirdoes, Howard and Lovecraft. Weirdness, action, and horror—these are the staples that have lasted well into today.

Howard introduced weird magic into the popular imagination, all well and good. But that’s not the whole story. Howard was a voracious reader, but all his life lived in small towns with small libraries. He loved history above all, and he can be credited with making his own model of history from what limited information he had. You’ve all heard it before—barbarism and civilization, the eternal clash. In Howard’s time, the view of history was ‘Whiggish’. It is very familiar to us today, because Whiggish history says ‘progress is good, progress is the norm, progress is never-ending—also, we live in the best time ever, and all those past periods of history are useless bunk.’

It's telling to contrast the two friends. Lovecraft, though he wrote about all-powerful squid monsters, loved civilization. He loved architecture especially. His view was that civilization was, ultimately, the height of humanity, though he also held the morose view that while civilization is good, it decays and dies, and, there is no guarantee that it may be replaced with something else. (Especially if Cthulu or the other squids come knocking. Then nothing will be left.) Howard? Howard thought that barbarism was the norm for history, and that civilization was the anomaly. Sure, civilizations come around and stay for a while, but they all burn down the same way—barbarians.

So let’s start talking about our psychic-barbarian-Übermensch-hero, shall we? (I’ll mention a story in parentheses, like this!)

The world of Conan is called the “Hyborian Age”, a time that is between the sinking of Atlantis and before the founding of Sumer, Uruk and Egypt (4000 B.C.). It is a dark, morbid time, where life is cheap and death cheaper. It is a world so violent, even the women stomp on the heads of the slain, to see the eyeballs pop out of the skull (scene-for-scene in “Red Nails”). Shining cities, like jewels under the sky, are built upon slavery and conquest, where ‘civilized men’ rule with terror and arbitrary force. But even the civilized city-men rule as weaklings, taking no direct action against one another except by scheming. All forms of authority—civil or religious—are frauds (The Hour of the Dragon/Conan the Conqueror, where the high priest of Stygia is irreverent to his ceremonial objects). There’s a cruel irony behind power—namely, that the power of civilization, maintains its power, by lying that it is unstoppable or has a right to rule.

And sorcery! What of that mystical art? This is not the art of Harry Potter, nor of Lord of the Rings. All sorcery in Conan is based on strange, alien powers—either forcing the aliens to do your bidding, or by making a bargain with them. Sorcery is volatile, and is so dangerous that it is better not to use it in the first place. ‘Sorcery thrives on success, not failure’, saith an apprentice sorcerer, Khemsa (The People of the Black Circle). Sorcery is the ultimate zero-sum game, where a sorcerer or any magic-user must constantly strive for more and more power, lest they be killed by a rival or by the very magical entity that gave them their dark powers!

There are way, way too many times to count when this happens—actually, if a wizard or the like shows up in a Conan story, he’s going to die, or suffer a fate worse than death. Because otherwise said magic-user will end up killing Conan or worse, and we can’t have that? The few benevolent wizards are true sages, blessed by the holy gods or live in quiet hermitage away from people (“The Phoenix on the Sword” for the former, The Hour of the Dragon/Conan the Conqueror for the latter). They are also ‘good wizards’ in that they help Conan with something, free of charge! Well, okay, it’s because Conan needs to kill a greater evil, so they give him some help.

The one exception to all this is Thoth-Amon! The greatest rival and threat to Conan, and Conan to he! And they’ve never met in person before. See, Thoth-Amon is considered the arch-nemesis to Conan, by the fandom (more like fan-dumb! OOO), and that’s because Thoth-Amon wasn’t killed in any of the stories he showed up, “The Phoenix on the Sword” and “The Black Stranger”. Both times, Thoth-Amon gets mad at somebody, and summons a demon to kill that person. Conan is not the target; he’s just nearby, so he kills the demon in self-defense. And, that’s it. That’s the basis of their rivalry in the fandom’s mind. Now, Thoth-Amon is humanized to a better degree that other sorcerers, in that like Conan, Thoth-Amon can be down on his luck, and has a can-do attitude that has him persevere through his troubles. (Please ignore that he’s a scheming wizard.) He does show up in the movie though—that’s for a later post.

But what of Conan?

;)

More to follow!