The early nineteenth century was a real bonanza time for English poetry, but by 1822, things were beginning to wind down. Keats was dead, and Shelley would die midway through the year. Blake had finished his last and most ambitious book. Coleridge had long stopped producing verse and Wordsworth was past his prime, if not yet in his dotage. Byron still had some fire in him, but when he completed Vision of Judgment in late 1821, his best work was behind him. English poetry would rise again, of course, as poetry tends to, but an impartial observer might see 1822 as a twilight moment.
1822 had one trick left up its sleeve, though, a book-length prose poem so far ahead of its time that it was immediately ridiculed, ignored, and forgotten. I have reason to believe that I am the only living human to have read it in its entirety, which is a tragedy because few works on nineteenth-century literature have been as audacious or prescient. It’s also completely ape-nuts insane. I’m talking about Albion: In Twelve Books, an anonymously published 234 pages of madness doled out in approximately forty-five run-on sentences. It has to be read to be believed.
If I can bring word of the glories of Albion to the greater reading public, I will feel that I have accomplished something in this life.
Albion is the story of Admiral Nelson, whose 1805 death at the Battle of Trafalgar would still have been a living memory in 1822. It’s also the story of England, and of the entire world, and the world to come, but these latter subjects unspool from a Nelson center. The poem opens with Trafalgar, which means that by the end of Book the First the protagonist is dead. An angel retrieves his dying soul, and most of the rest of the poem is a colloquy between the soul and the angel, as they discuss sometimes the glory of God, sometimes ancient history, sometimes current events, but mostly the life of Nelson.
The subject matter of Albion is unusual enough to deserve notice—and we’ll be trying to puzzle through its subject matter in a minute—but the most ambitious part of the poem is its style. There’s almost no way to describe it, so let me just start with a brief excerpt. This is Nelson’s soul suggesting to the angel that they spend some time chatting:
“…thee I obey, O heavenly visitant, while night glow empyrean myriads, heaven’s empress, to extasy, each pious thought, let us on varied theme, omnipotence descant, unerring providence, till morn rouse joyful the dormant sons of men…”
Note that Nelson’s suggestion is but a small part of a much, much longer sentence. It’s also not very clear. Later on Nelson (or possibly the angel—I’m not always sure which one is talking) calls Albion, the island, “a monument the opaque,” and this description could serve Albion, the poem, just as well.
While Albion is often difficult on the basic level of sense, it just as often draws a chaotic beauty from its opacity. Here, in a longer excerpt, is the Battle of Trafalgar, Albion-style:
“…confusion, crash, rigging, yards, masts overboard, the Royal Sovereign, bereft ornament, a battered bulwark, led immortal prowess; prowess serene, now steady, enemy’s ranks, numbers pell-mell, force an awful destiny; elate the forward foe, Britons awed solemn brunt, one time terrible broadsides, inundate, lave watery, or mid-deck, chain weapon, two cut, heap heaps, a head here, there mangled frame, excruciate, twisted, overboard hid glared eyeballs, ’neath tinctured waves; death, groups to eternity; embossed enemies but the more confuse, innumerable veins, afar mingle vermilion, the distracted foe, push impeded decks, clear, tumbling ocean, unnumbered dead; some warm immortal life, scarce on celestial wing, others serene feature, heroic adieu, horrid mangled, some shock attitude, shrieks, agony, pitiful implore useless relief, some death invoke, cut short their woes, others, (so glory inspire,) farewell moments, king, endeared country; as thousand thunders, artillery roar…”
Had literature produced any more terrifying description of battle by 1822? It’s impossible for me to read these battle scenes without seeing them through the lens of Modernism. Certainly World War I would give us a tradition of emphasizing the grotesque nature of war: Wilfred Owen’s “wading sloughs of flesh” or “blood / Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs.” But it was more in retrospect that Modernist poets came to see war as something too chaotic to even be described. This is T.S. Eliot’s “heap of broken /static/images/acx/images1_37,” and is to some extent most of Modernist poetry, but the closest parallel to Albion I find in David Jones’s In Parenthesis, itself a book-length prose poem, where a morning wake-up call can get obscured by the literal fog of war—
“Fog refracted, losing articulation in the cloying damp, the word of command unmade in its passage, mischiefed of the opaque air, mutated, bereaved of content…”
—and the actual combat is both impersonal and often confusing—
“For ninety seconds black columns rise—spread acrid nightmare capitals. Corrosive vapours charge their narrow world.”
I don’t want to harp to much on this. I’m not here to talk about David Jones; I’m here to talk about Albion! But keep in the back of your mind the Modernist connection, because for almost one hundred years no one would be capable of reading Albion, let alone writing something like it.
We left Nelson’s soul, you may recall, suggesting “let us on varied theme, omnipotence descant….” The varied themes will come, but the first thing he descants on is indeed omnipotence, the nature and glory of God, and the “endless beauty, infinite order” of the cosmos. Soon the angel responds by singing about the “revolt in heaven, when the Almighty, armed vengeance, flung unfathomable hell,” and on to the Genesis account of creation, filtered through Albion’s inimitable style. This, for example, is Genesis 1:20’s creation of fish:
“…assembled waters, heave, ingredient, globular long pavements, dappled surfaces, light, being, life, fin innumerable, huge whales, don leviathan, unknown empire, gratitude, praise…”
A rapid summary of biblical history follows. At times the narrative can proceed very very quickly (“…now a sparrow falls, now an empire born…”) but it also slows down for the set-pieces. Particularly fine—or perhaps I’m just betraying my esthetic—are the description of the world after the Fall:
“…nor scaped nature the dire infection, chagrined, despairing grief, heaven dips external; inward a gnawing foe, a canker-worm, to eternity, hurries the deceived, the deceiving…”
and the destruction wrought by the Flood:
“…died all flesh, life utter extinct, man immortal swept an awful eternity; ocean alike destructive besom, save selected few, by heaven caverned, dungeoned unsullied, while swum amazed ether, Noah, his household, and the floating world…”
Book the Second ends (unlike the Bible it’s been trotting alongside) with the birth of the Messiah, and in Book the Third the two protagonists have traveled to “the immortal isle.” If you thought the author of Albion was interested in dilating on the glory of God, just wait till you get a load of what he thinks of (“superior all nations”) England!
“…central ’neath heaven meridian, from everlasting, silent, blissful; ever a benign sun, ocean affectionate meander, gales intrinsic, a monument the opaque…”
The rest of the book is taken up with a whirlwind tour of British history from antiquity—
“…first ancient Britons, painted limbs, horrid plume, some lengthened hair, some skin of beasts, others terrific, in caves reposed, hideous dens, content live nature’s simpler fare; Cæsar’s landing, winds, waves, roaring, inland uncivilized yell, arms toward heaven, exhaustless shriek…”
—through the Battle of Hastings—
“…Harold on foot, William mounted; arrows as hail, battle-axe, hew sword, trampling horses, rack, rout, sounding retreat, Harold no more…”
—up to the reign of Henry V:
“…triumphant sang Britain, her monarch, her leaders, her armies, immortal, renowned in everlasting song.”
With that sentence Book the Third ends. Book the Fourth barely skips a beat, opening:
“Heaven’s refulgent sire, westward full sail, majestic when half way the hero, his divine friend; next the sixth Henry, his turbulent reign…”
And from Henry VI we move on towards the present day (which is, in the context of the poem, 1805). As we reach the late eighteenth century, the focus falls squarely on Nelson himself who begins to narrate his own life, relatively seamlessly, in the first person.
It appears that Nelson and the angel are on a ship, reclining on golden couches as they speak. The precise conveyance is something of a mystery, as is whether they’re traveling through the air or on the water.
But of course Albion is filled with mysteries. Why does Book the First contain a mere fifteen sentences (over the course of twenty-two pages)? Ludicrously long for any conventional book, in the context of Albion, this sentence length of one and a half pages is practically staccato. Book the Third, at fifteen pages, has only three sentences; Book the Ninth, nineteen pages, only two.
(These counts are almost certainly wrong, as scanning through the poem is deadening to the eye.)
You’ve no doubt noticed that the sentences in Albion, while clearly run-on sentences ripe for a copy-editor’s red pen, are unlike your average run-on sentence. They often are hardly sentences at all, being composed not of too many clauses, but rather of too many phrases—or just of words, words strung together with an almost complete absence of grammar. Look how long this can go without a single verb:
“…immortal edifices, living statues, breathing varied pedestal; the world, the busy world, golden fleets, nature her heavenly demean, her divine character, sacred muses, man, the rising generation, virgin peace, her celestial mien; pavement gold, seas liquid around, enchanting landscape, bounding ocean, yon horizon, as refulgent noon, enchanting hue the trees, smelt richness, variegated nature; heavenly diversity…”
Jorge Luis Borges once wrote a story (“The Aleph”) about a mysterious point in space that contains all points. Gazing into it, the narrator sees everything in the world, as enumerated by him in a partial list that spans a page and a half. The narrator apologizes for his inability to express, in less than pages, all the “infinite wonder” he witnessed in the Aleph. Well, perhaps no two pages could achieve it, but the piled-on, impressionistic lists of Albion do, eventually, reveal something Aleph-like about the “the world, the busy world.”
Note that in the above excerpt verbs aren’t the only thing lacking. Presumably the horizon is as refulgent as noon, but, as with “a monument the opaque,” a small, key word is missing.
Albion is a poem of omission—omitted details as much as omitted words or omitted full stops. But the most obvious omission is on the title page. There’s no author listed. Who wrote this crazy thing?
According to a contemporary review in the London Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres, “modesty obliges him at present to withhold” his identity—but if his book gets good reviews “he will be induced to give his name.” Unfortunately, the world was not ready for Albion, and the nicest thing the LLG&JoBL can say is that it is “unique.” The rest of the review is sarcastic, arch, and not exactly a close reading. “We do not understand a single page of Albion” the anonymous reviewer(s) admit.
This review, incidentally, estimates the total number of sentences in Albion to be “twelve to fifteen,” which is far too low. It also quotes a note from the anonymous author, which confirms (unnecessarily, as this is one of the clearer parts of the narrative) that the poem opens with the battle of Trafalgar, and is centered around the life of Nelson, and which goes on to apologize for the “numerous errors in stops, particularly commas, which can easily be erased.”
I’m not sure if this is true. I mean, nothing could be done “easily” with all these commas, and surely it would be hard to improve the punctuation of something like:
“…the hero descants past ages, sings rise, the fall empire; what antediluvian, Assyrian, Babylonian, leaders, kings, emperors, veterans war known, handed posterity; government, superior wisdom, architectural, Egypt, proof blast myriad ages, and ran the Jewish, Persian, Grecian, Roman empires, born, aspire, decline, father Time, his melancholy veil o’er human greatness…”
“…a pleasing labyrinth, knowledge every hand…”
In my experience, reading Albion is more pleasurable the more the reader understands what’s going on with the story. Surely this is true for any text, but, of course, Albion is more challenging than most, and the reader can easily get lost in the labyrinth of its strange syntax. To help the prospective reader out—because I do hope many or most people who read this review will go on to assay Albion—I want to offer a kind of trot to the “plot” of the rest of the poem. I’m absolutely certain I misconstrued some things and missed many more. It would probably be best to read Albion with a biography of Nelson open next to it (probably Southey’s Life of Nelson, because there’s a good chance that’s what the author of Albion used). If you are absolutely uninterested in a summary life of Nelson as filtered through a string of fragments, then just skip to part v., below.
“Now may I be permitted to proceed”: It’s the angel who suggests to Nelson, “ere terrestrial exit, ere heaven our willing feet, rehearse thy life, run race, thy mortal existence.” (Yes, a full stop!) Nelson takes him up on the invitation, but skips over his birth and early childhood days to launch right into his naval career, as midshipman on the 1773 Phipps polar expedition, which “sought a track, the Indies east, would the elements permit,” by hypothetical northwest passage. The Phipps expedition is probably best remembered today for its inclusion in Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography (The Interesting Narrative of the Life of…)—Equiano served the ship’s doctor—but Nelson was there, too, and his presence in the bleak arctic landscape gives Albion some great passages:
“…a hardy crew, on polar seas, smiling the grave hollow tomb, lifeless the air, animaculæ void, essential existence, and the human frame; onward sped…”
…the admiral narrates, right before his ship is attacked…by “rapacious bears”!
Over the course of a very rapid thirty-five words or so, Book the Fifth of Albion shuttles Nelson through the next few ships he sailed on: the Janus, the Lion, “and now the Albemarle.” By this point he is serving as captain. There is a nice bit on the Albemarle, when, off the coast of Massachusetts, an outgunned Nelson is pursued by a French squadron (“their vast superiority, their admired pursuit”). And what does Nelson do to inspire his men to work harder (hoisting sails, or what have you)? He begins to “harangue my brave crew, animate, inspire, recite celestial theme, ancient, worthies old…”
In other words, he recites Albion, books Second through Fourth!
Shortly afterwards, Nelson hands narrative duties over to the angel (“O visitant divine, do thou begin”) which is handy because the angel can discuss some current events that Nelson was not present for, such as, in Book the Sixth, the American Revolution:
“…war aloud, yell hideous, the Americans revenge armed, rude scythes, within worse, his walls, broken fences, harass the English their veteran return; meanwhile in general assembly, meet Philadelphia, sing their body the United States…”
This is one of the most interesting parts of the work, at least for the American reader, if only because it has characters the average American can recognize.
“…Washington chief, central revolving duties, life, soul, serenely blythe [sic], march, encountering to deceive, wade rivers, laugh howl night, serious invoke meridian nocturnal to escape o’er hills, rugged mountains, circuitous avoid close combat, harass, astound superior discipline, their wits’ end, every ambush avoid open field, invincible adversaries; chess game war…”
The mythological framework of the poem seems particularly, and delightfully, anachronistic when juxtaposed with these familiar eighteenth-century events. When Albion suggests that “Englishmen, vex chariot wheels enemy’s artillery”—I’m not certain what’s going on here, but the line works because of the utter incompatibility of the chariots and the artillery. Even better is the constant reference to that magical-sounding place known as “Long Isle.”
Here is Washington’s famous nighttime escape from Brooklyn:
“…Washington this way, that, pious invoke meridian night, prayed nocturnal, be dilatory, a stillness unheard those climes before; a higher hand bid ocean slumber, winds be silent, billows mackerel, a misty curtain, drawn omnipotent arm; Aurora rose, amaz’d the English hero, his opponent on the opposite shore…”
No spoilers, but things don’t go great for the Redcoats, because:
“…the Americans an infinite superiority knowledge their country; a deep fetched sigh the British, for open plains battle, or a correct view surround wilderness; nature her prodigious liberality amid din arms…”
“Nature her prodigious liberality” is a great way of saying there are too many trees for conventional “open plains battle.” But nature is not always so gloriously lush, though, and a page later the British troops encounter “labyrinth regions, cramped military scheme, and to contend devouring nature, frogs, bewilder clime, aloud wants, disease, inglorious death.” Here another sentence ends, there is a paragraph break, and the narrative picks up with: “Meanwhile the powers of Europe…”
Throughout, British troops have a tendency to be called “immortal” even as they are dying.
Book the Seventh resumes Nelson’s narrative, and his account of his adventures (“much remains and can I desist?”). This is the time of the French Revolution (“France broiled, death, fire, the guollitine [sic]”) and Nelson sails to Corsica, where “an aged sire” spends several pages narrating recent events on the island. This is the old man’s description of the depredations of the French, who:
“…pour in troops, destroy standing corn, juicy vines, fragrant olives, fire villages, insult female purity, the active, robust our youth, hang fatal by the neck; reduced abject slavery, most deplorable condition; till the isle roused sense alarming duty, men, women, striplings, their lisping theme, the liberties the land, the liberties the land, we hail your bulwarks, hovering the coasts; England friend the oppressed, we sang her virtues, we sang the glory her mighty empire…”
(The repetition of “the liberties the land” is a nice touch.) There’s a lot in this section I don’t understand: “…interim myself a labyrinth dance, jerked serious ocean…”? “…myriad thighs lamped further hemisphere…”? Fortunately, “Britain, as usual, serene the tumult world,” so don’t worry about Britain.
Book the Eighth is made up of even still more naval battles:
“…not a moment to lose, either quit the prize or ascend their bulwark, armed death, attendant tombs; to quit the glorious prize, wanton retrograde, stain gilded laurels, my soul repugnant, scorned the thought, resolved, then, them board, hush their battery, their rifle, flew signals, reinforcements at a beckon, countrymen, arms, to war! Westminster-Abbey, or victory, and once inspired, what mortal shall presume, withstand an Englishman, the dread hour battle; as flood-gates burst lucid barriers, as refulgence azure ether, we bid dilatory death, come forward…”
“Westminster-Abbey, or victory” is Nelson’s famous…cry? prophesy? as he led the boarding of the San Joseph in a 1797 battle off Cape Vincent. He meant that even if he died he’d get a hero’s grave in Westminster Abbey (as he, in the end, did not).
Eventually, Nelson returns home, which offers opportunities for more encomia on the wonders of Britain. The chapter ends:
“…my country! profoundest hail! may heaven continue, add the long list, her poets, her heroes, her divine worth, lengthened inscribed everlasting ages.”
End stop for the close of the book, and then it’s Book the Ninth: “And now the close the fleeting year [1797], father Winter enthroned….” Nelson is:
“…very chagrined, boiled our ire to reflect so long the foe, had trod unmolested the open seas…”
(“Trod” is a great word choice here.) So lest Napoleon tread unmolested, Nelson starts molesting:
“…sonorous aroar, alternate cheer, alternate agony, leaders, oratory inspire, ’mid rack, ’mid deaths, ’mid hell’s tremendous yell, glimpse, beam, joy king, country, bleed strains…”
Afterwards, Nelson travels to Naples, where he is feted and presented with prizes from various governments, most notably the Ottoman Empire, which gives him
“…a diamond aigrette, blaze brilliants, most honourable, representing a hand thirteen fingers, emblematical battle the Nile, the number the enemy’s ships taken and destroyed that memorable night…”
The opening of Book the Tenth pulls back for the big picture: “O world! thou wondrous orb, that hourly does thy myriads cast off to float th’ unknown beyond, who shall recount thee…” But soon we’re back on earth, at the Battle of Copenhagen “’mid rout, vermilion eddy, lucid human gore, such enthusiasm in man…”; and then, later, chasing French ships around:
“…O coward wretched man, slight the field of honour? fame as a meteor athwart meridian glory, graceful oratory, we listen…”
In Book the Eleventh, quite to everyone’s surprise, Nelson explains that “in a twinkling…me sudden transported the centre my beloved country,” where he sees, inter alia, “bird that in safety, rear innocent offspring, despite cruel ingenuity unthinking man…”. He then soars through the solar system on a voyage that seems patterned after Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis. After passing various strange sights, Nelson beholds:
“…universal sea, save land scarce seen, a lonely slumber on the billowed East, two squadron fleets, Britannian one, t’other combined hues…”
It is the Battle of Trafalgar, in which he died back in Book the First, seen from a distance! Nelson then watches his own funeral, Tom Sawyer-style: “…the sea in a calm, the waves forget to roar…”
The funeral’s pomp is unendurable, and lasts for many pages. Then, surprisingly, Nelson’s vision goes back in time, and he sees a young Napoleon playing at war (“…juvenile innocent pastime, plan on sand, defence [sic], attack fortifications…”). What inspires young Napoleon is his thirst for glory? Answer: “…his mind store renowned deeds ancient Greece, immortalized Rome, nor forgetful Britain, her heroic achievements, her sublime history…”. Like the dialectic of Batman and the Joker, the heroes of Britain create her greatest enemy, whose antics in turn create opportunities for further British heroism.
The rest of Book the Eleventh—and this is wonderful—is an account of the rise of Napoleon, that “leader august, small in stature, a mind superior wiles, frowns ten thousand worlds”; his
“…majesty imperial, terror all nations, save Britain, her calm, demean, her significant smile, slow to revenge insults her injured rights…”
There’s also a cameo by the Duke of Wellington, who is described as a “superior man, ten thousand worlds, death’s ghastly grin, Arthur his name”; note the reappearance of the Napoleonic “ten thousand worlds.” This phrase (like many phrases) occurs again and again throughout Albion, and back in Book the First Nelson himself is described as being “superior ten thousand worlds.”
In Book the Twelfth Nelson’s vision concludes with a trip to Heaven, where he encounters a mighty allegorical “sudden superb structure,” three sides of which are ruled by Ocean (?), Victory, and Fame;
“…then the last side this princely mansion…one deformed, stood entrance, besmeared repose, a hideous monster, instant harangue, what, what, what now…”
—you will perceive that this is Nelson, instantly haranguing the monster (with “What? What? What now?”), and the monster replies—
“…I born in heaven, and scarce an infant peep jubilant region, when headlong unfathomable plunged hell, league my grand progenitor now called the devil…my name is war…”
Oh. It’s War.
Only after this vision—which takes in many more things, including “king George, etherial gold, refulgent gold, a crown immortal gold, that rested on his head”—etherial, refulgent, and immortal are three of the poems favorite words, and their application to George’s gold crown must be significant—only after all this do we return to the career of Napoleon, who now appears more overtly as a Satanic figure.
“…heaps slain, soil that reeked human gore, Napoleon as a god, strode blood plains, full chase, hue, cry, conquering to conquer…”
In Russia Napoleon brings “anarchy, as before the birth of time….” Indeed, victorious Napoleon “threw peace Europe around, save Britain, ’ere [sic] long, her single handed, hurl this mad usurper from his presumptuous saddle…”
This is great! This is like Paradise Lost if the battle had been a fair fight!
Pages 232–3, the antepenultimate and penultimate pages, are missing from every online source I’ve found—part but not all of the missing text is quoted in the Belles Lettres review mentioned above—so we don’t get to see Napoleon cut down, but we know it happens, because on page 234:
“…shout allelulian [sic], th’ assembled world an answer shout, rill echo joy, the amazement orb…”
Suddenly Nelson is back at Trafalgar on the H.M.S.Victory at the moment of his death; “the hero ended,” i.e. he has ended his narrative, but also he has died. Everyone retires “to realms of everlasting bliss.”
v.
It may be anachronistic to call Albion a writerly text, but surely it is a text that similarly demands interpretation, and I thought it might be beneficial to pause a moment, look at a brief passage, and see what meaning may be gleaned. Many passages rebuffed my attempts at sense, but this one, narrating the end of 1801’s Battle of Copenhagen in Book the Tenth, is, like the gore, fairly lucid:
“…instant I hoist sacred hue, despatched their capital, disclose our minds, ere armed worse death, hear ye Danes! unless honourable, pride all nations, we wet the glittering blade, we fiercer kindle our glare, immortal mien, nor spare your chiefs, your mighty, the thousands your devoted land; listening heard, the carnage stayed, artillery ceased, heaven’s canopy relieved, suspension, peace drew nigh, sacred muses, victory, fame, a circuit wheel their heavenly chariots…”
In other words: Nelson says: I hoisted a flag [sacred hue] indicating my desire to negotiate with the enemy [ye Danes]. Then I went to Copenhagen [their capital], where I threatened to kill [wet the glittering blade] lots of Danes [nor spare your chiefs, your mighty, the thousands]. The Danes thought it over [listening heard], and agreed to a truce [the carnage stayed]. “Stayed” here means stopped, not remained, of course. “Peace drew nigh.”
A reader may be simply frustrated by the obscurantism of the passage, but the strange beauty of phrases like “we fiercer kindle our glare” make it all worthwhile to me. There are times, not necessarily my favorite times, when the poem becomes clear, snapping into focus suddenly.
“…Alexander supreme, full assurance fraternal her friendship Great Britain; ceased hostility, no more artillery roar, yell hell, nor death’s tremendous blast, triumphant theme, the muses listen and approve,…”
This is simply Tsar Alexander allying himself with England. It’s fairly straightforward, but elevated by the unexpected rhyme of “yell hell” and metonymy of “death’s tremendous blast.”
The sea battles in Albion can indeed begin to get repetitious; but clearly whoever wrote Albion was not particularly interested in avoiding repetition. The phrase “immortal prowess,” which appears in the Trafalgar quote at the beginning of this review, is a real favorite of the author’s, and as you read Albion you’ll stumble upon it again and again. “Heroic adieu” (from the same excerpt) I found only once more, describing the biblical death of Samson, which is nicely apposite. Some words are trotted out with far more frequency than is normal: I’ve already mentioned refulgent, etherial, and immortal, but also vermilion, enthroned, nod…
At one point a young Nelson, threatened by ice floes in the Arctic, apostrophizes:
“…and am I destined here to die? ne’er again friends, the sacred borders endeared Britain? ah, me cut off in youth, to repose my limbs, the bare ice, a prey savage beast, heavens forbid; O thou Almighty, down in mercy, if sovereign will demands, to thee my life, leaning on all-sufficiency; vouchsafe heavenly father, hear, and forgive; restore in safety, that years future, and afar, to thee, the sacred demands my beloved country…”
Five pages later, in another, very different perilous situation, Nelson delivers the same speech, word for word (with slightly different punctuation). I probably wouldn’t have noticed had the speeches been more than five pages apart…a lot of these passages do start to look similar.
But again and again, on page after page, something startling and new jumps out, a little gem that begs to be copied down in your commonplace book, such as this description of a ship’s broadside:
“…deafening crash, shook lowermost sea, unfathomable earthquakes alarm antipodes; a pause unknown terrestrial, save chaos of old, when Deity on creative morn, roused the eternal stillness…”
I’ll admit to a fondness for weird books, the flat-earth tracts and the young-earth tracts and the hollow-earth tracts; Allen C. Ross-Ehanamani’s joint biography (researched in part through spirit visions) of Crazy Horse and Field Marshall [sic] Rommel; a nineteenth-century anthology of 116 different but very similar translations of a five-line Latin poem; Malcolm de Chazal’s Sens-Plastique; The Poems and Teachings of His Holy Majesty the Royal Crown Prince Obimingo Oboginimi, an itinerant secret Bantu priest-king still alive today; A.T. Schofield’s 1888 attempt to use Abbott’s Flatland to explain biblical phenomena; Henry Wilberforce Clarke’s overly literal translation of the Sikandar Nama, with footnoted asides on how he, Clarke, calculated the relationships between sunspots and cholera outbreaks; Huna: The Ancient Religion of Positive Thinking; William McGonagall and Julia A. Moore; Tobias Smollett’s 1769 novel of an immortal atom reminiscing about his time as part of a medieval Japanese warlord’s butthole; Shadows from the Walls of Death, an 1876 book that has literally poisonous pages (I read a digital copy). Albion belongs somewhere with these.
But it also belongs somewhere with another kind of crazy book.
“How he stud theirs with himselfs mookst kevinly, and that anterevolitionary, the churchman childfather from tonsor's tuft to almonder's toes, a haggiographyin duotrigesumy, son soptimist of sire sixtusks, of Mayaqueenies sign osure, hevnly buddhy time, inwreathed of his near cissies…”
This is from Finnegans Wake, a book I have never (unlike Albion) finished. It may seem unfair to compare Joyce and the anonymous author of Albion—surely Joyce at the very least is more self-aware—but there’s a similarity in their commitment to finding the beauty in making things new and strange. Place Joyce’s “the sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea” against Albion’s “unfathomable earthquakes alarm antipodes.”
Ultimately your enjoyment of Albion will depend on how much you’re willing to wade through opacity; in your endurance; in how much you can appreciate a weird, agrammatical, even otherworldly beauty. I guess it’s not for everyone.
But I think it must be for someone; I mean for someone else, as it was certainly for me. I hope you’ll seek it out. The best copy of Albion available online is the scan at HathiTrust (https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008668309). There’s one on archive.org, too, but I found it less legible. As I mentioned, both copies are missing two pages; when I said I was the only living human to have read it in its entirety, I did not mean that literally.
I know I’ve been overfond of quoting in this review, and I feel as though I should apologize; it is a vice difficult to resist. Few texts are as quotable as this one, so I’ll permit myself a last:
“…I harangue, brave lads be firm, laugh ocean spout, manly the dread hour battle; busy prepare nod, make way arrival valour, make way the king of terrors…”
Make way the king of terrors!