The Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers
October 30th 2006 05:22
The Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers
The siege of Vienna is regularly described as the most significant event in the conflict of Europe against the Ottoman Turks. The war continued for another 16 years but the decisive blow was struck here. When the Turkish army failed here, it marked the beginning of the end of the Ottoman Empire.
In less academic circles, this event was also romanticised as the turning point in history where the West was able to repel the advance of the East. In more modern times, the clash of civilzations debate has all but colored this event with a backward nostalgia, the kind of victory that has to be repeated when the West feels itself to be under siege once again.
Tim Powers' novel The Drawing of the Dark was written much before any of these debates became urgent matters of the day. It was one his early novels, written before The Anubis Gates, the novel which established him as a leading a voice in science fiction fantasy. Brian Duffy is a middle-aged Irish mercenary, whiling his time away in Vienna. One day he gets entangled in a fight with three aristocratic youths. Wishing to leave the city to avoid any further trouble he jumps at the chance from an enigmatic Aurelianus who offers him the job as a bouncer in a beer club at Vienna. His voyage to Vienna is more eventful than he wished for, filled with parties Bacchic parties and a parade with mythic creatures.
When Brian reaches Vienna, these supernatural encounters become more common. Just as Vienna is the focus of struggle between Turkish armies and the West, there is a spiritual battle going on between Ibrahim, the chief magician of the Orient and Aurelianus. Brian slowly realises that he has to play a more decisive role in this portentous battle.
The novel is basically written in a tongue-in-cheek manner that besets science fiction before nineties. Imagine Irish mercenary called Brian Duffy in the middle of the Viennese siege! Nevertheless, Powers is a master of plotting and his no nonsense, vivid desrciptive style is breath-taking. The moonlit parade of Brian, for instance, is an amazing sequence.
When it was written, this book I am sure could have been read innocuously. With our present climate, it is hard to read it innocently like that. But, for all the unease you might feel, it is undeniable that there is a confrontation, if not an outright clash between East and West and this fantasy written more than 25 years ago, has acquired a sense of uneasy poignancy for our times.
Not to mention the fact that Powers is a great habit to cultivate. To imagine he wrote this book when he was just 25 years old!
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