Cosmic Egg and Infant Demiurge: Antecedents of McCarthy’s Judge Holden (Blood Meridian)

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In the four and a half decades since the publication of Blood Meridian archetypes and models for non-historical aspects of Holden have been sought over a scale from the elemental to the human: a representation of nihilism; the Manichean power of darkness; the archons of Gnostic religious tradition (Rick Wallach, “Blood Meridian‘s Evil Archon,” in Wade Hall and Rick Wallach, Sacred Violence: A Reader’s Companion to Cormac McCarthy, Texas Western Press, 1995, pp. 125–36); Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction; Greek Hephaestus (Mitch Ploskonka, “‘Inversions without End:’ The Judge as Hephaestus in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian,” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction; vol. 59, 2018, pp. 235–242); Milton’s Satan; Mephistopheles generally; the Fool of Tarot cards (Emily J. Stinson, “Blood Meridian‘s Man of Many Masks: Judge Holden as Tarot’s Fool,” Southwestern American Literature, vol. 33, 2007, pp. 9–21); Captain Ahab of Moby Dick or even the whale itself (Harold Bloom, “Introduction,” Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian: or the Evening Redness in the West, New York, Modern Library, 2010); the Kurz of Heart of Darkness—even the conflicted spirit of American expansionism at the cost of peoples and places (adapted from William Sayers, “Óðinn’s Avatar: Judge Holden in McCarthy’s Blood Meridian,” forthcoming).

2. Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian: or the Evening Redness in the West, with an introduction by Harold Bloom, New York, Modern Library, 2010, p. 322.

3. Haroold Bloom, “Introduction,” Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian: or the Evening Redness in the West, New York, Modern Library, 2010, p xii.

4. See Sayers, forthcoming.

5. Elias Lönnrot, The Kalevala or Poems of the Kaleva District, trans. Francis Peabody Magoun, Jr., Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1963; see further Juha Y. Pentikäinen, Kalevala Mythology, trans. Ritva Poom, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1999, pp. 131–146, and Uno Holmberg, Finno-Ugric, Siberian, The Mythology of All Races, ed. John Arnott MacCullough, New York, Cooper Square Publishers, 1964, p. 242.

6. Lönnrot, p. 3.

7. The judge later states: “… that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate” (208). We may consider his views on a comparable essential matter in a conversation with the gang around a campfire.

It makes no difference what men think of war, said the Judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was war, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way. … All other trades are contained in that of war. … It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not. … This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is go. (259–61).

It makes no difference what men think of war, said the Judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was war, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way. … All other trades are contained in that of war. … It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not. … This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is go. (259–61).

8. Also to be noted among archetypical figures is the Coyote trickster of the myths of native Americans in California. They include the Coyote as an embodiment of evil, at odds with the Earth Creator. Also relevant is Norse Loki, half brother of Odin. On the judge’s reappearances and his prestidigitation, note the gold coin : bad penny correspondence.

9. See a few leads in Barsch. Cloud, made of egg-white in Finnish myth (is there a meringue [dish with egg-whites] and merengue [dance] connection?); akkount, cf. Fi. Ukko supreme god, god of thunder; kules < Fi. koulu “school” (Finn mac koulu). The faux-Finnish toponym Kroukaparka comprises several overlapping puns with Nordic points of reference; Fi. krouka “pitcher” is a reflex of German Krug and has a Danish equivalent krukke “pot,” and these have an accessory in Da. kop “cup” and Finnish koppi; Finnish parka means “poor;” a different syllable division reveals Fi. kauppaa “trade;” parka suggests Eng. park, which has equivalent in Da. hegn; thus, the semantically dense Scando-Finnic assembly (pot/cup, trade, grove) punningly echoes København, whose “true” origin lies with Old Norse Kaupmannahǫfn “merchants” harbor;’ another combination, jug, merchant, poor, yields up Earwicker, HCE, and his public house in Chapelizod (a hint of Copen-); if krouka points to Norse kráka “crow,” here standing for another bird, a synonymic device of Norse skaldic poetry, we can even read Phoenix Park, scene of Earwicker’s crime/sin; oving, for “owing” but suggestive of Lat. ovum “egg;” kodseoggs suggesting the plural of Eng. codex but open to dislocation as Fi. kodse “at home” and Eng. egg, and thus recalling the cosmic egg, generative of the home of us all; Kalatavala, punning on Kalevala “matter pertaining to the Kaleva District,” but also < Fi. kala “fish” + tavala “in a way,” thus “fishy; whale; waifish.” Finally, just like Holden, the giant Finn mac Cool overshadows the Wake.

10. Dianne C. Luce and Zachary Turpin, “Cormac McCarthy’s Interviews in Tennessee and Kentucky, 1968–1980,” The Cormac McCarthy Journal, vol. 20(2), 2022, pp. 108–35.

11. For a companion correspondence, note Odin (Old Norse Óðinn) and Holden.

12. Magoun’s translation of The Kalevala would have further illustrated for McCarthy the possibilities of a slow-moving, markedly linear, hieratic style of writing, exemplified in the Finnish work by the two-part line of verse, with the second member generally paraphrasing the first, even in the case of landscape description, this in addition to the shared lack of interiority of characters.