To wound the
autumnal city is to upset the balance between light and darkness.
The themes of
light and darkness run light a thread throughout every aspect of the book. A mirror
is quite meaningless, after all, without any light to reflect. The same holds
true for a lens or a prism, and light is defined by darkness.
In the
creation myth recounted in Genesis, the stellar luminaries of the sun and moon
divide the night from the day. In Bellona their enlarged twins loom large in
the heavens and are adopted by its citizens as part of the city’s mythology. George
is associated with the monstrous moon, the raw force of unrestrained sexuality.
Countering this is the civilizing force of June, who circles around George like
the moon ought to circle around the sun, but in Bellona all things are skewed
and many things reversed. June doesn’t represent the established order so much
as that which is entrenched within it, and it doesn’t seem quite right that she
should be associated with the gigantic sun that strikes terror into the hearts
of the inhabitants of the city (excepting Kidd). June, her name designating the
month of summer solstice but rhyming with “moon”, seems more to indicate the
moon’s moon, a satellite circling a satellite, not so much George’s consort as
his follower. George’s true consort is Bellona Herself, and it is She who
appears in the sky as a tremendous blazing light which stirs panic amongst the
natives, just as it is She who sets the buildings afire, and She who brings the
bombardment that finally causes Kidd to leave the city.
“But
the arcane and unspoken name of what rose on this so extraordinary day, for
which George is only consort, that alone will free you from this city!”
If
the solar force, typically associated with light, represents poetic vision in
both its creative and destructive aspects, the darker lunar force is more
visceral, animal, and immediate. It is the experience of raw sexuality and
violent impulse. Kidd maintains a foot in both worlds. He is truly a creature
of light and darkness. This is true even
in the color of his skin (people generally assume that he’s of Native American
descent). Part of the theme indicated by this particular chapter title is concerned
with cultural assumptions regarding race, about which there is so much to say
that it almost requires another set of essays to explore in full. Ambiguity is liberally
employed to highlight the reader’s own preconceptions about race and culture.
The
interplay of light and darkness is further demonstrated by the Scorpions, who
hide themselves with light forms, veiling their bodies with those of animals.
The shields used by the scorpions have little to do with the poet’s shield
referred to by Newboy. Rather, these shields are employed to conceal instead of
reveal. They form darkness out of light. If Calkins has a garden for each
month, the Scorpions are like a wayward zodiac, forever circling around the
house on the top of the hill, never allowed to enter except but once during the
celebration for the publication of Kidd’s book of poems. The celebration itself
appears to be a sort of equinox in which the light and the dark are brought
together in equal measure. Again, there is a sense of ambiguity – is it the
Scorpions or Calkins and crew who represent the darkness here? The Scorpions
operate with little to no foresight, bound to their instincts as they drift
rudderless along the shifting tides of the city of chaos. On the other hand,
they are the true eyes and ears of the city, while Calkins serves as a false
prophet of sorts, a beacon of misinformation desperately trying to maintain his
hold over the minds of the populace.
The
establishment and the counter-culture each maintain a hold on certain aspects
of the light, while yet grasping at the parts they cannot quite reach. Both
seem plunged, in equal measure, into their own particular darkness. Kidd
appears to play the part of the wounded hero (a cultural icon who did indeed
manage to manifest enough to make a discernible difference in the latter half
of the 1960s). He has come to wound the Autumnal city, to shift the balance of
light and darkness fortuitously against those who seek to control the flow of
information so as to impose rigid limitations upon the culture. Or perhaps he’s
simply another aimless wanderer, more at effect to the vacillations and
unpredictability of the city that at any sort of cause, having as little say in
the shifts of balance between light and darkness as the reader has in the
events that occur throughout the course of the narrative.
