|
Poesie che [[Robert E. Howard|Robert Ervin Howard]] ha composto con protagonista lo spadaccino [[Puritani|puritano]] [[Solomon Kane]]. Tutte e tre sono state pubblicate successivamente alla morte dell'autore, avvenuta l'11 Giugno [[1936]] a [[Cross Plains (Texas)|Cross Plains]], Texas.
https://spraguedecampfan.wordpress.com/2023/04/23/the-3-solomon-kane-poems-reviewed-by-frank-coffman/
Per formattare i testi delle poesie: [[L'infinito]]
<nowiki>http://www.ilpalindromo.it/store-art-gallery/Solomon-Kane-La-saga-completa</nowiki>
<nowiki>https://www.horrormagazine.it/14683/il-palindromo-presenta-solomon-kane-la-saga-completa</nowiki>
== Il ritorno a casa di Solomon Kane ==
{{Libro
|tipo = Fantasy
|titolo = IlLa ritornogatta ae casail di Solomon Kaneteschio
|titoloorig = SolomonThe Kane’sCat Homecomingand the Skull
|titolialt =
|titoloalfa =
|immagine =
|didascalia =
|annoorig = 1967 (revisionata, ''Lancer Books''), Ottobre 2006 (originale postuma, ''Ballantine Books - Del Rey'')
|annoorig = 1936
|annoita = Aprile 2008 (traduzione dell'originale, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore)
|annoita = 1979
|genere = [[PoesiaRacconto]]
|sottogenere =
|lingua = Inglese
|ambientazione = InghilterraValusia, Era Thuriana
|personaggi =
|protagonista = [[SolomonKull Kane]]di Valusia
|coprotagonista =
|antagonista = Thulsa Doom
|altri_personaggi =
* Consigliere Tu
|serie = Solomon Kane
* Delcardes
* Sarames
* Khutulos
* Il re sotto il lago
* Kananu
* Brule
|serie = [[Robert E. Howard#Kull di Valusia|Ciclo di Kull di Valusia]]
|preceduto =
|seguito =
}}
'''''La gatta e il teschio''''' (''The Cat and the Skull'') conosciuto anche come ''Il gatto di Delcardes'' (''Delcardes' Cat'') è un racconto postumo scritto da [[Robert E. Howard|Robert Howard]] appartenente al ciclo di [[Kull di Valusia]].
È la storia in cui viene introdotto il personaggio di [[Thulsa Doom]].
===Storia editoriale===
https://www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/opere/NILF1039422/la-corona-di-asa/
==Storia editoriale==
''Solomon Kane ritorna a casa'' (''Solomon Kane's Homecoming'' in ''Fanciful Tales of Space and Time'', 1936)
https://spraguedecampfan.wordpress.com/2022/08/31/the-lancer-kull-series-delcardes-cat-by-robert-e-howard/
https://reh.world/stories/delcardes-cat/
“Solomon Kane’s Homecoming” was first published in Fanciful Tales, Fall 1936. There is a brief mention of REH’s death on the page printing this poem. This poem has appeared in every Solomon Kane collection.
https://reh.world/stories/cat-and-the-skull/
There is a variant version of “Solomon Kane’s Homecoming.” It was originally published in The Howard Collector #15. It has been reprinted several times. The easiest to find version is probably in The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane, Ballantine Books (Del Rey), 2004.
https://reh.world/stories/delcardes-cat-draft/
Chronologically this poem comes after “The Children of Asshur.” Per Glenn Lord: “After many a year away, Kane returns to his hometown of Devon. The year is 1610.”
King Kull, Settembre 1967, Lancer Books edizione con modifiche.
===Testo===
The white gulls wheeled above the cliffs,
Prima apparizione in italiano come ''Il gatto di Delcardes'': Kull di Valusia - Settembre 1975 Collana Fantacollana 9, Editrice Nord https://www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/opere/NILF1039355/la-gatta-di-delcardes/
the air was slashed with foam,
Prima apparizione in italiano come ''La gatta e il teschio'': Kull. Esule di Atlantide - Aprile 2008 Collana Urania 1, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore https://www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/opere/NILF1039839/la-gatta-e-il-teschio/
The long tides moaned along the strand
==Trama==
==Critica==
when Solomon Kane came home.
==Adattamenti==
He walked in silence strange and dazed
La storia ha ricevuto due adattamenti a fumetti ad opera della [[Marvel Comics]] nel [[1973]] e della [[Dark Horse Comics]] nel [[2011]].
through the little Devon town,
His gaze, like a ghost’s come back to life,
roamed up the streets and down.
The people followed wonderingly
to mark his spectral stare,
And in the tavern silently
they thronged about him there.
He heard as a man hears in a dream
the worn old rafters creak,
And Solomon lifted his drinking-jack
and spoke as a ghost might speak:
“There sat Sir Richard Grenville once;
in smoke and flame he passed,
“And we were one to fifty-three,
but we gave them blast for blast.
“From crimson dawn to crimson dawn,
we held the Dons at bay.
“The dead lay littered on our decks,
our masts were shot away.
“We beat them back with broken blades,
till crimson ran the tide;
“Death thundered in the cannon smoke
when Richard Grenville died.
“We should have blown her hull apart
and sunk beneath the Main.”
The people saw upon his wrists
the scars of the racks of Spain.
“Where is Bess?” said Solomon Kane.
“Woe that I caused her tears.”
“In the quiet churchyard by the sea
she has slept these seven years.”
The sea-wind moaned at the window-pane,
and Solomon bowed his head.
“Ashes to ashes and dust to dust,
and the fairest fade,” he said.
His eyes were mystical deep pools
that drowned unearthly things,
And Solomon lifted up his head
and spoke of his wanderings.
“Mine eyes have looked on sorcery
in the dark and naked lands,
“Horror born of the jungle gloom
and death on the pathless sands.
“And I have known a deathless queen
in a city old as Death,
“Where towering pyramids of skulls
her glory witnesseth.
“Her kiss was like an adder’s fang,
with the sweetness Lilith had,
“And her red-eyed vassals howled for blood
in that City of the Mad.
“And I have slain a vampire shape
that sucked a black king white,
“And I have roamed through grisly hills
where dead men walked at night.
“And I have seen heads fall like fruit
in the slaver’s barracoon,
“And I have seen winged demons fly
all naked in the moon.
“My feet are weary of wandering
and age comes on apace;
“I fain would dwell in Devon now,
forever in my place.”
The howling of the ocean pack
came whistling down the gale,
And Solomon Kane threw up his head
like a hound that snuffs a trail.
A-down the wind like a running pack
the hounds of the ocean bayed,
And Solomon Kane rose up again
and girt his Spanish blade.
In his strange cold eyes a vagrant gleam
grew wayward and blind and bright,
And Solomon put the people by
and went into the night.
A wild moon rode the wild white clouds,
the waves in white crests flowed,
When Solomon Kane went forth again
and no man knew his road.
They glimpsed him etched against the moon,
where clouds on hilltop thinned;
They heard an eery echoed call
that whistled down the wind.
===Critica===
A Review of “Solomon Kane’s Homecoming”
by Frank Coffman
“Solomon Kane’s Homecoming” is a poem meant to be the summary of and epilogue to his adventures chronicled in Howard’s prose and narrative poetry about the character. As such, it reads like a list of what movie and television script writers call “loglines.”
The brief, within-one-stanza outlines given for several micro-synopses of some of Kanes adventures, follow a longer and more detailed synopsis of the death of Grenville which is given two stanzas. Kane’s learning of the death of Bess hints at a bit of backstory, as well as the strongest thematic note in the poem: “Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust, / and the fairest fade,” he said. The theme of Transience is one that runs throughout Howard’s work.
Howard also manages, as almost always, to fill this narrative with drama and pace. We move quickly through Kanes several adventures with the brief presentation of details, meanwhile being—as would be his audience—amazed by, not only the “realistic” elements of adventure (the dangers and toll of battle), but, moreso, the clearly supernatural elements: sorcery, deathless queen, pyramids of skulls, City of the Mad, vampire, dead men [walking], winged demons…
Yet even though he attests that he is “weary of wandering,” he takes his leave and ventures forth again into the unknown.
A-down the wind like a running pack
the hounds of the ocean bayed,
And Solomon Kane rose up again
and girt his Spanish blade.
In his strange cold eyes a vagrant gleam
grew wayward and blind and bright,
And Solomon put the people by
and went into the night.
With the lovely metaphor of the “hounds of the ocean” baying for him to return to sea. He girds on once more his “Spanish blade” and, with the “vagrant gleam” heads off on the road that “no man [knows].” Much like the restless Odysseus/Ulysses, who, as Tennyson wrote, “[could] not rest from wandering, we have Solomon Kane, even in his agonizing weariness, departing again—recognizing that his endless until a very end.
Formally, the poem is what might be called a “Double Ballad” in its stanza pattern. The ballad of folk and oral tradition has the same rhyme scheme and general rhythm: 4343 accents in four lines and ABCB rhyme scheme with only the short lines rhyming. Howard doubles this and also makes his 8-line stanzas Literary Ballads, rather than Traditional or Folk Ballads by using a fairly even iambic meter for the verses. As with all of his work—and the work of any good poet using formal meter—he inserts variations into several lines to guard against a too-regular meter from cloying or becoming monotonous. Many lines have anapestic substitution: uu/ for the iambic u/. The last stanza is perfectly iambic, but a good example of variation is in stanza 10:
A-down the wind like a running pack
the hounds of the ocean bayed,
And Solomon Kane rose up again
and girt his Spanish blade.
In his strange cold eyes a vagrant gleam
grew wayward and blind and bright,
And Solomon put the people by
and went into the night.
These lines would SCAN (showing the meter) as follows (substituted anapestic “feet” are in bold):
u/ u/ uu/ u/
u/ uu/ u/
u/ uu/ u/ u/
u/ u/ u/
uu/ u/ u/ u/
u/ uu/ u/
u/ uu/ u/ u/
u/ u/ u/
This shows anapestic substitution in six of the eight lines of the stanza. Note also that Howard varies the position of the substituted metrical “foot”—also the mark of a skilled versifier.
All in all, another excellently wrought poem. Howard was a poetic genius whose skill at formalist versification and the use of the narrative mode surpassed most of the speculative poets of his—or any other—day.
===Adattamenti===
* Un audiolibro del 2013 della poesia ''Solomon Kane's Homecoming'' letta da Glenn Hascall<ref>{{Cite book | url=https://www.audible.com/pd/Solomon-Kanes-Homecoming-Audiobook/B00PXAG18W?qid=1555086568&sr=1-3&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_3&pf_rd_p=e81b7c27-6880-467a-b5a7-13cef5d729fe&pf_rd_r=GBG9D7A4VPVK3Q23H8JD |title = Solomon Kane's Homecoming}}</ref>.
Marvel Comics adapted the poem in The Savage Sword of Conan #20. The adaptation was by Roy Thomas, Virglio Redondo, and Rudy Nebres. It was adapted a second time in The Sword of Solomon Kane #6. REH’s text was used alongside art by Sandy Plunkett and Al Williamson.
{| class="wikitable" style="width:100%;text-align:center;"
!Data italiana
|-
|Marzo 1973
|Luglio 1977
|''Kull The Conqueror 7'' (Marvel Comics)
|''Savage Sword of Conan 20''
|''Solomon KaneDelcardes's HomecomingCat''
|''Il ritorno a casagatto di Solomon KaneDelcardes''
|[[Gerry Conway]]
|Roy Thomas
|Marie e John Severin
|Virgilio Redondo
|Marie Severin
|Bianco e nero
|Marie e John Severin
|Earl Norem
|''[[Conan e Ka-Zar|Conan & Ka-Zar]] 18'' ([[Editoriale Corno]])
|''La Saga di Solomon Kane 1'' (Panini Comics)
|Novombre 1975
|Ottobre 2017
|-
|Ottobre 2011
|Luglio 1986
| rowspan="4" |''Kull: The Cat and the Skull'' (Dark Horse)
|''The Sword of Solomon Kane 6''
|''SolomonA Kane'sNation Homecomingof Enemies''
| rowspan="4" |''Il gatto e il teschio''
|''Solomon Kane torna a casa''
| rowspan="4" |David Lapham
|R. E.Howard (autore della poesia originale)
| rowspan="4" |Gabriel Guzman
|Sandy Plunkett
| rowspan="3" |Dan Jackson
|n/a
| rowspan="4" |Jo Chen
|Dan Green
| rowspan="4" |''Conan100% ilPanini BarbaroComics 68204'' ([[Panini Comics]])
| rowspan="4" |Giugno 2013
|Gennaio 1995
|-
|Novembre 2011
|Luglio 1989
|''Savage SwordReflection of Conan 162Deception''
|''Solomon Kane's Homecoming''
|''Solomon Kane ritorna a casa''
|Steve Carr
|Steve Carr
|Bianco e nero
|Dorian Vallejo
|''La Spada Selvaggia di Conan 97'' (Panini Comics)
|Gennaio 1995
|}
== L'unica macchia nera ==
{{Libro
|tipo =
|titolo = L'unica macchia nera
|titoloorig = The One Black Stain
|titolialt =
|titoloalfa =
|immagine =
|didascalia =
|annoorig = 1962
|annoita = 1979
|genere = [[Poesia]]
|sottogenere =
|lingua = inglese
|ambientazione = Puerto San Julián, Patagonia
|personaggi =
|protagonista = [[Solomon Kane]]
|coprotagonista =
|antagonista = [[Francis Drake]]
|altri_personaggi = [[Thomas Doughty]]
|serie = Solomon Kane
|preceduto =
|seguito =
}}
===Storia editoriale===
https://www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/opere/NILF1039414/la-macchia-nera/
''L'unica macchia nera'' (''The One Black Stain'' in ''The Howard Collector'', 1962)
This poem first appeared in The Howard Collector V1N2 Spring, 1962. A note acknowledges that the poem was from “the Barlow microfilm.” R. H. Barlow was a superfan of H. P. Lovecraft and Weird Tales writers. Mr. Barlow was directly responsible for preserving several of REH’s poems. He is deserving of a whole article and much thanks but that will have to be done another day. For now, I point you to his Wikipedia article. Barlow committed suicide due to society’s repression of homosexuals. Sadly, the progress made since Barlow’s time is in danger of being reversed.
“The One Black Stain” next appeared in Red Shadows, Donald M. Grant, 1968. In this book’s introduction Glenn Lord states: “A strip of microfilm from the effects of the late R. H. Barlow yielded the next Kane item: the poem, “The One Black Stain,” which appeared in 1962 in an amateur journal, The Howard Collector.” Why this poem was left out of the Centaur Press Solomon Kane paperback books is a real puzzle. The poem did appear in the Bantam and Baen paperbacks.
Chronologically this poem comes after “The Moon of Skulls.” Per Glenn Lord: “After returning Marylin to England, Kane accompanies Sir Francis Drake on his freebooting voyages to the New World (1566-72). It was during this time that Kane learned somewhat of craft-fighting Indians in Darien. He was likewise with Drake, on the latter’s globe-girding voyage, and, at St. Julian’s Bay (Patagonia, June 1577)…”
===Testo===
''They carried him out on the barren sand
where the rebel captains died;
Where the grim gray rotting gibbets stand
as Magellan reared them on the strand,
And the gulls that haunt the lonesome land
wail to the lonely tide.
Drake faced them all like a lion at bay,
with his lion head upflung:
"Dare ye my word of law defy,
to say this traitor shall not die?"
And his captains dared not meet his eye
but each man held his tongue.
Solomon Kane stood forth alone,
grim man of sober face:
"Worthy of death he may well be,
but the trial ye held was mockery,
"Ye hid your spite in a travesty
where justice hid her face.
"More of the man had ye been, on deck
your sword to cleanly draw
"In forthright fury from its sheath
and openly cleave him to the teeth --
"Rather than slink and hide beneath
a hollow word of the law."
Hell rose in the eyes of Francis Drake.
"Puritan knave!" swore he.
"Headsman! Give him the axe instead!
He shall strike off yon traitor's head!"
Solomon folded his arms and said,
darkly and somberly:
"I am no slave for your butcher's work."
"Bind him with triple strands!"
Drake roared and the men obeyed,
Hesitantly, as if afraid,
But Kane moved not as they took his blade
and pinioned his iron hands.
They bent the doomed man over to his knees,
the man who was to die;
They saw his lips in a strange smile bend,
one last long look they saw him send,
At Drake his judge and his one time friend
who dared not meet his eye.
The axe flashed silver in the sun,
a red arch slashed the sand;
A voice cried out as the head fell clear,
and the watchers flinched in sudden fear,
Though 'twas but a sea bird wheeling near
above the lonely strand.
"This be every traitor's end!"
Drake cried, and yet again.
Slowly his captains turned and went
and the admiral's stare was elsewhere bent
Than where the cold scorn with anger blent
in the eyes of Solomon Kane.
Night fell on the crawling waves;
the admiral's door was closed;
Solomon lay in the stenching hold;
his irons clashed as the ship rolled.
And his guard, grown weary and overbold,
lay down his pipe and dozed.
He woke with a hand at his corded throat
that gripped him like a vise;
Trembling he yielded up the key,
and the somber Puritan stood free,
His cold eyes gleaming murderously
with the wrath that is slow to rise.
Unseen, to the admiral's door,
went Solomon Kane from the guard,
Through the night and silence of the ship,
the guard's keen dagger in his grip;
No man of the dull crew saw him slip
through the door unbarred.
Drake at the table sat alone,
his face sunk in his hands;
He looked up, as from sleeping --
but his eyes were blank with weeping
As if he saw not, creeping,
death's swiftly flowing sands.
He reached no hand for gun or blade
to halt the hand of Kane,
Nor even seemed to hear or see,
lost in black mists of memory,
Love turned to hate and treachery,
and bitter, cankering pain.
A moment Solomon Kane stood there,
the dagger poised before,
As a condor stoops above a bird,
and Francis Drake spoke not nor stirred
And Kane went forth without a word
and closed the cabin door.''
===Critica===
A Review of Robert E. Howard’s “The One Black Stain”
by Frank Coffman
Robert E. Howard’s poem, “The One Black Stain,” is a work proving the young man’s mastery of poetic form and sound. It also exemplifies Howard’s love of history and real historical subjects to ground his fictional work—both in prose and poetic forms.
The poem recounts the execution of Sir Thomas Doughty by Sir Francis Drake—with the fictional addition of the character of Solomon Kane, not only at the scene, but giving his objections to the execution to the extent that Drake has Kane arrested and bound belowdecks. Kane, of course, then gets free of his bonds, helped by a sleeping guard and confronts Drake threateningly—before disappearing into the night at the poem’s conclusion. Thematically, it demonstrates a couple characteristics of the character of Kane: 1) his hatred of injustice (and, perhaps specifically, of authority abused); 2) though his “wrath” is “slow to rise,” it reinforces the lethal volatility of his temper.
Typical of Howard who had become a master of the narrative poem—an art that fell away from popularity among “free verse” and other “realist/modern” poets in the later 20th c. and has only in the past few decades seen a true revival—the poem is a variation of the ballad form, due to its regularity of rhythm of the type known as the “literary ballad” (as opposed to the “folk ballad” or “ballad of tradition” that has been the standard in Western language narrative poetics for over 800 years).
The poem is an expanded “Long-line Ballad” (as I have termed it in my Robert E. Howard: Selected Poems and elsewhere). Rather than the 4343 accent pattern of the traditional ballad and the normal iambic alternation of tetrameter and trimeter lines, Howard uses two 7-beat lines and one 8-beat central line in his three-line stanzas, He uses multiple internal rhymes in the “long segments.” In this poem, we might divide each stanza for the 7-8-7 accent tercets into two parts—but with much variation in the essentially iambic rhythm, often substituting an anapestic foot uu/ for the iamb or inverting the iamb u/ into a trochee /u or leaving off an initial unstressed syllable in the line (acephalous/ “headless” iambic foot = / rather than u/) for metrical variation. The basic pattern of accents and rhymes is as follows:
Basic Meter (with many variations, as noted above:
u/u/u/u/ || u/u/u/ iambic tetrameter || iambic trimeter 7 accents total
u/u/u/u/ || u/u/u/u/ iambic tetrameter || iambic tetrameter 8 accents total
u/u/u/u/ || u/u/u/ iambic tetrameter || iambic trimeter 7 accents total
Rhyme Scheme (showing the typical line divisions):
They carried him out on the barren sand 4 A
where the rebel captains died; 3 B
Where the grim grey rotting gibbets stand 4 A
as Magellan reared them on the strand, 4 A
And the gulls that haunt the lonesome land 4 A
wail to the lonely tide. 3 B
While this is not an especially difficult rhythm to achieve, the necessity for all the internal rhyming is daunting and very difficult to achieve. That fact and the typical narrative power of Howard’s verses and compact storytelling make me rank this as one of Howard’s best poetic works.
===Adattamenti===
Marvel Comics adapted the poem in The Savage Sword of Conan #62. There was a one-page introduction by Louise Jones and six pages of art by David Wenzel. This adaptation was reprinted in the Dark Horse, The Saga of Solomon Kane, omnibus collection.
{| class="wikitable" style="width:100%;text-align:center;"
! Data
! Edizione inglese
! TItolo
!Titolo italiano
! Sceneggiatura
! Disegni
! Colori
! Copertina
!Prima edizione italiana
!Data italiana
|-
|Dicembre 2011
|Marzo 1981
|''SavageThe SwordForbidden of Conan 62Lake''
|''The One Black Stain''
|''L'unica macchia nera''
|[[Robert E. Howard|R. E.Howard]] (autore della poesia originale)
|David Wenzel
|Bianco e nero
|David Mattingly
|''La Saga di Solomon Kane 2'' (Panini Comics)
|Giugno 2018
|}
== Il ritorno di sir Richard Grenville ==
{{Libro
|tipo =
|titolo = Il ritorno di sir Richard Grenville
|titoloorig = The Return of Sir Richard Grenville
|titolialt =
|titoloalfa =
|immagine =
|didascalia =
|annoorig = 1968, ''Red Shadows'', Donald M. Grant, Publishing, inc.
|annoita = Settembre 1979, ''Il Libro d'Oro della Fantascienza'' 2, Fanucci Editore
|genere = [[Poesia]]
|sottogenere =
|lingua = Inglese
|ambientazione = Africa (ipotesi del curatore Glenn Lord)
|personaggi =
|protagonista = [[Solomon Kane]]
|coprotagonista = [[Richard Grenville]]
|antagonista = Una tribù di cannibali (ipotesi del curatore Glenn Lord)
|altri_personaggi =
|serie = [[Robert E. Howard#Solomon Kane|Ciclo di Solomon Kane]]
|preceduto =
|seguito =
}}
===Storia editoriale===
La poesia è stata pubblicata per la prima volta all'interno della raccolta ''Red Shadows'' edita dalla ''Donald M. Grant, Publisher,'' Inc., nel 1968. L'agente letterario di Howard, [[Glenn Lord]], nella sua ricostruzione cronologica la colloca successivamente al racconto incompiuto [[Hawk di Basti]] e sempre secondo lui Solomon Kane si ritroverebbe in un territorio di cannibali.
In Italia la poesia è stata pubblicata per la prima volta nel settembre 1979 all'interno del secondo volume della collana [[Il Libro d'Oro della Fantascienza]] edita da [[Fanucci Editore]]<ref>[https://www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/opere/NILF1039418/il-ritorno-di-sir-richard-grenville/ Fantascienza.com Il ritorno di sir Richard Grenville]</ref>.
===Testo===
''One slept beneath the branches dim,
Cloaked in the crawling mist,
And Richard Grenville came to him
And plucked him by the wrist.
No nightwind shook the forest deep
Where the shadows of Doom were spread,
And Solomon Kane awoke from sleep
And looked upon the dead.
He spake in wonder, not in fear:
"How walks a man who died?
"Friend of old times, what do ye here,
"Long fallen at my side?"
"Rise up, rise up," Sir Richard said,
"The hounds of doom are free;
"The slayers come to take your head
"To hang on the ju-ju tree.
"Swift feet press the jungle mud
"Where the shadows are grim and stark,
"And naked men who pant for blood
"Are racing through the dark."
And Solomon rose and bared his sword,
And swift as tongue could tell,
The dark spewed forth a painted horde
Like shadows out of Hell.
His pistols thundered in the night,
And in that burst of flame
He saw red eyes with hate alight,
And on the figures came.
His sword was like a cobra's stroke
And death hummed in its tune;
His arm was steel and knotted oak
Beneath the rising moon.
But by him sang another sword,
And a great form roared and thrust,
And dropped like leaves the screaming horde
To writhe in bloody dust.
Silent as death their charge had been,
Silent as night they fled;
And in the trampled glade was seen
Only the torn dead.
And Solomon turned with outstretched hand,
Then halted suddenly,
For no man stood with naked brand
Beneath the moon-lit tree.''
===Critica===
A Review of “The Return of Sir Richard Grenville”
by Frank Coffman
Robert E. Howard’s poem, “The Return of Sir Richard Grenville,” is a rare type of ghost story in that it presents us with the “Helpful Ghost.” As with all modern literature in the speculative genres, the roots of story motifs and plot elements are found in the folkloric, legendary, and mythic tales of the past.
With respect to folktales, the standard source for story elements in the world’s oral traditions is Stith Thompson’s Motif Index of Folk Literature, a monumental six-volume work collected by the eminent folklorist from Indiana University and his team of scholars. It is a huge decimal outline of the motifs (the smallest elements of story structure, building blocks of narrative) of the world’s folk-oral “illiterature.”
With respect to this poem, we find motifs: E363 Ghost returns to aid living and its sub-varieties: E363.1 Ghost aids living in emergency; E363.2 Ghost returns to protect the living; and E363.3 Ghost warns the living. Of course, we also have the situation where the ghost manifests with the ability to perform the physical action of swordplay and slaying of the physical attackers.
In typical Howard fashion, the use of figurative language—especially metaphor and simile and animation (giving living qualities to the inanimate) serve to enliven the story. Howard’s preferred poetic mode was most certainly the narrative, and this story poem has the pace and “action packing” typical of his prose tales as well. In fact, as with good ballads, the compactness and fast pace of the story details compresses Howard’s vision into a furious flurry of activity. After the dialogue of the opening, the attackers come on immediately and are just as soon dispatched.
Howard begins to animate the tale with the “crawling mist” in stanza one. Of course Solomon Kane “[speaks] in wonder, not in fear” as he inquires why the ghost of his old friend has awakened him. He is quickly told that the metaphoric “hounds of doom” are coming. Soon, the “shadows out of Hell” arrive.
Kane’s sword “was like a cobra’s stike” and personified “death hummed in its tune. Metaphorically Kane’s “arm was steel and knotted oak” (a bit overdone—Which was it, Bob? Steel? or Knotted Oak?—a definite mixed metaphor here).
His task accomplished in saving Kane, the ghost of Grenville disappears—as it the common wont of ghosts.
The poem, structurally, is a typical instance of the Literary Ballad, Howard’s favorite narrative form (although used in various incarnations and arrangements). The rhyme scheme of ABAB in each stanza is typical of the literary variant of the Traditional or Folk Ballad, rhyming more fully that the traditional form’s ABCB. And rather than a 4343 accentual metrical pattern, Howard’s base is more regular iambic in tetrameters and trimeters in the odd and even lines, respectively—although Howard does not stick to the perfect pattern except in stanzas 7 and 8:
His pistols thundered in the night,
And in that burst of flame
He saw red eyes with hate alight,
And on the figures came.
His sword was like a cobra’s stroke
And death hummed in its tune;
His arm was steel and knotted oak
Beneath the rising moon.
In each of the other stanzas of the poem, Howard throws in an irregular foot—usually an anapest for an iamb, as in stanza two:
No nightwind shook the forest deep
Where the shadows of Doom were spread,
And Solomon Kane awoke from sleep
And looked upon the dead.
The anapest substitutions are in lines 2 and 3:
uu/ uu/ u/
u/ uu/ u/ u/
An example of an inverted metrical foot, trochee/trochaic foot for iamb/iambic is in line 2 of stanza 1:
One slept beneath the branches dim,
Cloaked in the crawling mist,
And Richard Grenville came to him
And plucked him by the wrist.
/u u/ u/
Another line that noticeably breaks the metrical base pattern is the last line of the penultimate stanza (which also has inverted feet [trochees for iambs] in lines one and two:
Silent as death their charge had been,
Silent as night they fled;
And in the trampled glade was seen
Only the torn dead.
/u u/ u/ u/
/u u/ u/
u/ u/ u/ u/
/u u / /
In the last line, Howard ends with two strong accents, omitting the unaccented syllable of the last foot. The effect of the two heavy stressed syllables at the end reinforces and gives impact to the line.
The poem is yet another fine example of Robert E. Howard’s narrative and poetic genius. Through only the first 25 years of his life, he had become a master of the ballad and other forms and had developed his ear for poetic and musically rhythmic language.
===Adattamenti===
La poesia ha avuto un solo adattamento a fumetti realizzato dalla [[Marvel Comics]] nel [[1979]] all'interno del magazine antologico [[Savage Sword of Conan]].
{| class="wikitable" style="width:100%;text-align:center;"
! Data
! Edizione inglese
! TItolo
!Titolo italiano
! Sceneggiatura
! Disegni
! Colori
! Copertina
!Prima edizione italiana
!Data italiana
|-
|Gennaio 2012
|Giugno 1979
|''SavageThe Sword of Conan 41Skull''
|Garry Henderson
|''The Return of Sir Richard Grenville''
|''Il ritorno di Sir Richard Grenville''
|Roy Thomas
|David Wenzel
|Bianco e nero
|Earl Norem
|''La Saga di Solomon Kane 2'' (Panini Comics)
|Giugno 2018
|}
{{Robert Ervin Howard (fantasy)}}
{{Navbox
|name =Solomon Kane
|title = Solomon Kane
|groupstyle= text-align:right;
|image=
|group1 = Autori
|list1 = [[Robert E. Howard]]{{·}}[[Ramsey Campbell]]{{·}}[[Gianluigi Zuddas]]{{·}}[[Javier Martin Lalanda]]
|group2 = Personaggi
|list2 = [[Solomon Kane]]{{·}}[[Personaggi di Solomon Kane]]
|group3 = Opere
|list3 = {{Navbox subgroup
|group1 = Racconti
|list1 = ''[[Ombre rosse (Solomon Kane)|Ombre rosse]]''{{·}}''[[Teschi sulle stelle]]''{{·}}''[[Lo scricchiolio delle ossa]]''{{·}}''[[La luna dei teschi]]''{{·}}''[[Le colline dei morti]]''{{·}}''[[I passi all'interno]]''{{·}}''[[Le ali notturne]]''{{·}}''[[Racconti postumi di Solomon Kane|Le lame della Fratellanza]]''{{·}}''[[Racconti postumi di Solomon Kane|La mano destra del giudizio]]''{{·}}''[[Racconti postumi di Solomon Kane|Il castello del Diavolo]]''{{·}}''[[Racconti postumi di Solomon Kane|Hawk di Basti]]''{{·}}''[[Racconti postumi di Solomon Kane|I figli di Asshur]]''{{·}}''[[Racconti postumi di Solomon Kane|I neri cavalieri della morte]]''
|group2 = Poesie
|list2 = ''[[Poesie di Solomon Kane|Il ritorno a casa di Solomon Kane]]''{{·}}''[[Poesie di Solomon Kane|L'unica macchia nera]]''{{·}}''[[Poesie di Solomon Kane|Il ritorno di sir Richard Grenville]]''
}}
|group4 = Adattamenti
|list4 = [[Fumetti di Solomon Kane]]{{·}}[[Solomon Kane (film)]] (2009)
}}
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</noinclude>
{{portale|fantasy|letteratura}}
[[Categoria:Racconti di Solomon Kane
[[Categoria:Componimenti poetici di Robert E. Howard
[[Categoria:Componimenti poetici in inglese
[[Categoria:Componimenti poetici di autori statunitensi
{{Categorie bozza|
[[Categoria:Template di navigazione - scrittori|Howard]]
}}
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