Portland, 8/20/26

In switching back to writing Ax Noon, from the many historical book reviews and travel articles, there was some difficulty. In the wake of a helpful review of Blood Hate by Crux Cross, who, as a nonfiction reader, had some problems following the internal monologue I so often use in fiction, I felt the urge to write with more clarity. For nonfiction readers are my market, my fiction readers mostly come over reluctantly from mere fact writing to truth writing.

This was coupled with the two main concerns of writing Ax Noon: 1.) how to depict a postmodern Christian interacting with medieval heathens, 2.) the need to address that character’s inner crisis as it becomes apparent that he is not stuck in a bad dream, but cast into a worst past.

To address both of these concerns, and also to pave the way for writing the Areid, an ancient epic, I need to investigate the internal monologue/dialogue that has been increasingly used by postmodern writers.

In 2003, after having written a few history books and a few self help texts, I was considering a serious run at fiction. I began reading releases from the 1990s which I had largely missed. One of the better offerings was George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. In the text extensive use of italics to represent a character’s inner thoughts permitted the development of, and reader empathy with, a large number of characters. The author decided to misuse this to torment the reader with gratuitous first person character death.

Such inner dialogues have a history in the soliloquy of English stage, and in the prayers of Antiquity, though these prayers were mostly uttered aloud. Speech with the guiding spirit, guardian angel or daemon was suspect by Christians, who demanded all prayer to be public by the 1600s. Those found guilty of the contention that they prayed directly and silently to God were slain for congress with Satan. [1] Day dreaming was alike deemed a sin. For although the ancients, Pagan and Christian, held that God spoke to man through dreams, Modern Christian theologians predominantly viewed dream space as the province of evil. This was probably due to the extensive use of dreams in the faiths of aboriginal peoples resistant to Christian conversion.

This brought me to a consideration of Martin and his work, being the first prolific user of this soliloquy, myself being the second so far as I know. It struck me in 2003, that being a reader in a post literate society, who began writing to keep from going mad, that I lived most of my waking life in soliloquy, speaking internally to my ego, alter-ego, and hopefully God and my ancestors. There was simply no one I knew to share such dangerous thoughts that inhabited my twisted mind. Martin gained his name in writing spin-off vampire fiction. This genre was largely a feminine expression that a conscious remnant of humanity struggled silently on in the babbling shadows of an unconscious society, ruled on the subconscious level by evil soul-eating elites. I was much like Martin’s characters, living in a world so morally debased that no honorable thought might be uttered without bringing the trump of doom.

In Ax Noon, Christos Skenderbeg is propelled back into 1399 during a crusade with pre-literate people. It occurs that his habit of soliloquy, necessary under Modernity, to prevent instant ostracism as a reaction to his bad thoughts, is out of place in a less corrupt time. He thinks out loud. This fits with a tech level when what we call literature was composed out loud, only written ages latter, and when speaking truth carried one’s honor high. In our society, where speeches and songs are composed mostly mutely, in writing first, and where honest speech and honorable acts are both affronts to the corrupt over-mind, truth is the worst crime.

This writer has decided to have fun with this and loop back to Postmodernity in a Prologue to what could be a second Grimwyrd Saga. Grimwyrd was conceived as the theme of Ax Noon months before it was realized that soliloquy was a mark of heresy in our day to day. In a pre-surveillance state of living, the soliloquy was more apt to constitute a private prayer offered up to Eternity by an afflicted person, a wish to a guardian angel, a consultation with an ancestor, perhaps, as today in my mind, as a debate with an inner guiding light as to the right way to advance the day.

Consider people you know who are in the habit of talking out loud to themselves? These will, upon investigation, found to be people with a couple things in common: 1.) alienation in the work place, where we find most of our human contacts, and where we find them lacking empathy for us, but harboring jealousy and hatred, 2.) Live largely alone, or with women and children who may not serve as confidants to a man under stress. In pre-modern settings, the person speaking to himself was regarded as insane, and in Early Modern Christian settings actually possessed by evil and in need of torment and death. The figure of the prophetic anacreon or ascetic, living alone on a pillar or locked in a cell in the desert, so holy to primitive Christians, was in Protestant times seen as a witch, warlock or sorcerer. Speaking to ourselves out loud has remained a medical qualification for diagnosis as mentally ill and incarceration, even under our current atheist social structure.

Taking these trends in mind, as I try and develop fiction tools sharp enough to write a convincing ancient epic from the vantage of warrior class and working class combatants, it becomes obvious that such argumentative inner dialogues and self-critical narrations that ostracized souls like myself use to maintain a rational rudder across these seas of insanity, need be jettisoned. Not only removed, but replaced, must the soliloquy be.

An idea intercedes here. In Gene Wolfe’s Soldier of the Mist and Soldier of Arete, Latro, a soldier with a head wound cursed by the mother of the gods to forget his actions and events occurring after his injury in the battle by her temple, is coached in sacred memnonics. The instructor is none other than Simonides of Cos, who advises Latro on developing a mental picture of a temple in his mind, with that temple to be peopled in time. During his injury he becomes aware that he sees and hears the higher and lower powers that frame the physical world. Taking this method as a lead, it seems best to occupy the inner thoughts of the Seven Sons of War who are the perspective characters in the Areid according to various conventions:

A.) Musing, or speaking within to the inspirational powers of God at large on earth, or the Muses, nymphs, nyriads, winds…

B.) Prayers, to heaven by the inner suppliant, which are best not spoken aloud unless one knows which power to address, such as Justice, Necessity, War or the Huntress, who in any case is best addressed in silence on the hunt,

C.) Pleas with the hereafter, to ancestors, saints, ghosts, haunts, buried dead and other agents dispatched from life to intercede in events,

D.) Asks of the birds, rivers, mountains, seas and other powers for some insight or clue as to one’s plight,

E.) Advice sought from one’s guiding light, or guardian spirit, thought by many persons of antiquity to accompany the human soul to earth to assist in navigating its troubled precincts,

F.) An oath, the inward bond-decision to take an action before whatsoever powers may be attentive to this oath, pledged by one’s self, such as, “I will climb this mountain by night to save my mates,” etc.,

…

Notes

1.) Increase and Cotton Mather, Wonders of the Invisible World, 1698.