Guest Post: The Literary Conan - a Primer

Revisiting Robert E. Howard’s original Conan stories

By Brandon Engel

Conan the Barbarian has occupied a special place in popular culture for nearly 80 years. He was first created in the thirties by writer Robert E. Howard (1906 – 1936), who is credited with inventing the “sword and sorcery” genre of pulp fiction. Howard was a contemporary of writers Robert Bloch and H.P. Lovecraft, all of whom contributed stories to the magazine Weird Tales, and it was through this very magazine that Howard debuted Conan.

Background:

Conan hails from the fictional land of Cimmeria. Along his travels, he usurps thrones, engages in gruesome warfare, and encounters mystics, wizards, and giant serpents. The stories would ultimately inspire a series of Marvel comics which premiered in the seventies and were continually published into the early nineties. There was a feature film adaptation directed by John Milius titled Conan the Barbarian (1982), which was followed up by Richard Fleischer’s poorly received sequel, Conan the Destroyer (1984). The year 2011 saw a reboot of the franchise starring Jason Mamoa, Conan the Barbarian..

Style:

The stories read like exercises in romantic, macho escapism. They often feature tales of heroism, anti-heroism, and torrid love affairs shared between the titular barbarian and athletic pirate women in dragon infested forests. Like Tolkien and the other great escapist fantasy writers of the early 20th century, Howard constructed his own geographies, races, and civilizations, offering the reader a completely alternate reality into which they could immerse themselves.

In 2011, Ballantine books put out a compilation of six original Robert E. Howard stories from the thirties, all of which originally appeared in the magazine Weird Tales. The book was released to coincide with the release of the aforementioned Jason Mamoa Conan the Barbarian film, thus providing a more comprehensive context for the character and his world.

Selected Works:

“The Phoenix on the Sword” (1932)

This story is one of the first Conan stories that Howard penned. It tells of a Conan who is further along in his years, and is presiding over the Kingdom of Aquilonia, having usurped the throne of the villainous King Numedides several years earlier.

It’s an intriguing, fantasy-based political allegory, wherein the character of Conan, who was initially respected and held in high regard by the Aquilonian people, has watched his popularity decline sharply over the years due to the public’s mounting distrust over his Cimmerian ancestry.

A band of Conan’s adversaries assemble with the intention of attacking Conan while his defenses are down.

However, Conan is visited by the ghost of Epemitreus, a long-since-dead sage, who also marks Conan’s sword with the image of a phoenix, thus invoking the power of Howard’s fictional god Mitra.

A running theme throughout the Conan stories is that mystical entities come to Conan’s rescue when he’s in a pinch, so that in spite of the many hardships he endures throughout the course of his lifetime, there are even more moments where the stars seemed to be aligned in his favor.

“The People of the Black Circle” (1934)

Published over the course of three issues of Weird Tales, the story is a historical allegory set during Howard’s fictional Hyborian Age. It’s a story which covers a lot of ground, extending from the land of Vendhya (a fictionalized interpretation of India when it was still united with Pakistan) to Ghulistan (fictionalized Afghanistan).

At the beginning, Bunda Chand, the king of Vendhya, has been killed, and it is believed that he was murdered by a band of sorcerers: The Black Seers of Yimsha. Chand’s sister Devi Yasmina swears vengeance, and it is decided that Conan, who, at this time, is the leader of a hill tribe, is needed. Devi and the rest of the royal court of Vendhya orchestrate the capture of seven hill-men from Conan’s tribe with the intention of ransoming Conan into their bidding.

Conan instead abducts Yasmina, and insists that he won’t let her go until his men are freed. Along the way, other political entities intervene. Conan seeks refuge in mountain villages, but is pursued by several other armies. Even though the seven hill-men are put to death, Conan nevertheless murders the Seers, wages war against the Turanian army alongside his hill-men, and ultimately safely returns Yasmina to Vendhya.

“The Tower of the Elephant” (1933)

Conan, at a much younger age, is drinking in a tavern amongst a band of roughnecks, and he overhears a story about a phenomenally powerful jewel known as the “Heart of the Elephant,” which is said to be housed in an ominous tower guarded by an evil wizard named Yara.

Conan sets about finding the jewel, and along the way he finds a traveling companion named Taurus of Nemedia. They go to great lengths to uncover the mystery of the jewel, battling fierce guardian lions and gigantic, venomous spiders before gaining entry into the tower.

It’s within the tower that Conan discovers a mystical person/elephant hybrid named Yag-Kosha whom Yara has kept prisoner for years. To harness the power of the jewel, Conan must kill Yag-Kosha and spread his blood on the jewel. It’s a fascinating tale, which displays something of the wanderlust and dynamism of the character in his youth.

“Queen of the Black Coast” (1934)

Conan, trying to escape political enemies in Argos, demands entry onto a barge. When the barge drifts into pirat- infested waters, Belit, known as “The Queen of the Black Coast,” and her minions lay siege to the ship and kill everyone aboard except for Conan, with whom she falls passionately in love. The pair begins conquering villages, and becomes the stuff of seafarers lore, with many survivor’s from ravaged ships retelling stories of the fearsome power couple.

Eventually, they find ancient ruins and a bizarre winged monster. Belit professes that she will stop at nothing to prove her love to Conan.  Not even death itself will deter her. Much of the story is about the burgeoning passion between Conan and Belit, which lends the story an emotional timbre which is seemingly absent from the rugged, hyper-macho works of Howard otherwise.

“Red Nails” (1936)

This was the last Conan serial published through Weird Tales, and once again, it features Conan and a romantic interes, this time the pirate Valeria, whom Conan meets in the wilderness while Valeria is in exile for having killed a man who attempted to assault her.

After a stand-off with a dinosaur, they find what at first appears to be an old, abandoned city. They learn that there is a hermetically-sealed world within this old city, known as Xuchotl.  There, the political rulers who built the city were overthrown long ago by a tribe overseen by brothers Xotalanc and Techulti, who had led their people peacefully. That is, until the brothers began feuding after Techulti had an affair with Xotalanc’s wife.

Xuchotl is now fraught with tension, and while Valeria and Conan are initially embraced for their athletic prowess and military capabilities, things soon take a strange turn.

Eventually, we come to learn that a servant girl, who makes attempts to drug and abduct Valeria, is actually a sorceress, and the wife of Xotalanc…who had an affair with Techulti. The sorceress wants to sacrifice Valeria on an altar as part of a ritual that would endow the sorceress with Valeria’s youth.

One of the themes featured prominently in this story is the “lost civilization” trope. The idea of a civilization unraveling to its own decadent excesses was also featured in other Conan stories, such as “Xuthal of the Dusk.”

“Rogues in the House” (1934)

This story is somewhat similar to “The People of the Black Circle” in that it’s another situation where Conan is recruited to carry out the bidding of a nation-state during a time of crisis. His reputation precedes him…

This story takes place in a province between two feuding states, Zamora and Corintha, the former of which is ruled by the Murilo, and the latter of which is ruled by the priest Nabonidus.

Murilo learns about Conan, who is reputed as being a man of unmatched strength and agility, and decides to recruit him to kill Nabonidus.

Conan murders a corrupt priest, and afterwards, while drunk, he is turned over to the authorities by a prostitute. Murilo goes to visit Conan in jail, and arranges for Conan to be released on the condition that he murder Nabonidus.

Ultimately, Conan breaks out on his own but decides nevertheless to honor his word to Murilo.

After exacting his revenge on the prostitute who betrayed him, Conan enters Nabonidus’s castle, only to find that both Murilo and Nabonidus are being held captive by Thak, an evil, Neanderthalic, ape-person/hybrid whom Nabonidus had abducted as a child and made into a slave.

Conan ultimately slays Thak, and as Nabonidus proclaims his evil plans to harm Conan and Murilo, Conan swiftly kills him.

Summary:

The world that Robert E. Howard created is a grisly one, featuring many of the hallmarks of escapist hetero-masculine juvenilia in genre pulp, such as Conan’s sexual escapades, the swords, the sorcery, notions of the “self-made man” transcending the limitations of what he was born into (a motif which is expanded upon by John Milius in his film adaptation), the moral ambiguity of the character, and the fact that he always seems to triumph.

Even though it is heavily gendered prose, Howard had a fertile imagination, and the books are incredibly fun to read.

What’s more, after reading this material you will see traces of Howard’s influence everywhere, from classic swashbuckler films to comic books and contemporary action films.

Like many of his contemporaries, he didn’t receive due recognition during his lifetime, a fact made all the more tragic because Howard took his own life at a young age upon learning that his mother had slipped into a coma.

Regardless, his work lives on, and his influence is as resonant today as it has ever been.

Author Brandon Engel is a Chicago-based blogger who writes about everything from genre pulp fiction, to vintage horror films, to energy laws. Visit his blog, and follow him on Twitter: @BrandonEngel2