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Post by Deleted on May 23, 2018 13:43:57 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on May 23, 2018 13:59:31 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on May 23, 2018 14:02:19 GMT -5
Solomon Kane’s Homecoming (SSOC 162): Conclusion.
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Mar 15, 2020 6:54:26 GMT -5
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Post by keith on Jul 29, 2021 6:09:53 GMT -5
This is a great poem of Howard's and it closes out SK's saga on a sad, haunted note. He wanted to take it easy in his old age, which he said himself came on apace, but his obsession kicked in and he was compelled to leave again.
Like a lot of people, I've given thought to the enigmatic lines:
"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."
I don't believe that refers to Elizabeth I. It's unlikely that Solomon Kane would have caused her to weep. I don't think he would have been saddened if he had; he liked neither Queen Bess nor her sister Bloody Mary. I've theorized that "Bess" was a Devon girl from Brixham who came to Solomon's home town of Salcombe (my theory again) and became a servant of the Taferal family. Like Solomon, she knew Marylin Taferal when Marylin was a little girl and before she was kidnapped ("The Moon of Skulls").She was a love of Solomon's youth and she loved him, but his obsessions (and a dangerous secret or two, like the fact that Solomon was in fact the one who killed the Earl of Essex in Dublin Castle in 1576, to avenge the massacre of Rathlin Island; my theory again) kept coming between them. Bess had hopes of a life with Solomon, and when he killed Sir John Taferal in a duel and they discovered that Marylin was alive, Solomon undertook to go and find her, a project which had Bess's fervent support.
When he returned with Marylin, though, his obsession with wandering and fighting evil grown even stronger, and could not in the end settle down but left Devon yet again, I suspect that Bess said in despair, "Solomon, are you a cursed spirit that you can never rest?" and decided to call it a day. There may have been things that happened between him and Queen Nakari that he never told Bess, and that left an ineradicable mark on him. After all, he says in the poem that "Her kiss was like an adder's fang, with the sweetness Lilith had," and you'd suppose there was only one way he could have found that out. I also suspect he was longer in "that city of the mad" than the REH story tells us, finding its secret ways and devising a way to get Marylin out, while walking a tightrope with that terrible queen, who may have been an actual vampire.
I like to suppose that Bess married a good honest loving man in the end, quite likely a Taferal, and was happy most of the time before she died, though she never forgot Solomon. But before that happened he would have definitely, if I'm guessing rightly, "caused her tears."
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Post by karasuthecrow on Jul 29, 2021 12:07:09 GMT -5
I always loved Howard poetry and "Solomon Kane Homecoming" so wonderful, I also enjoyed "Cimmeria" . Never read the adaptation but was wonderful, SSOC its sow flawless.
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