THE BLAZING WORLD
As Part of Beehive Book’s Second Edition of Collectible Classics, I had the greatest of pleasures Illustrating THE BLAZING WORLD, the fictional half of a two novel set by 17th century Philosopher, Margaret Cavendish. In this book of prose Cavendish dreams up what one could call the All-Mother of modern science fiction. The Blazing World is a place of animalistic scientists, spineless kings, multiverses, frightening military technology and wandering spirits. The girl who later become’s Empress takes it all for herself when flung through a rip in space-time, she finds that her captor’s ship has blown into an alternate dimension of peaceful beings.
On my part I delved deeply into her descriptions of the world’s inhabitants, the musings the morally grey Empress espouses on creativity as a reality bending force and the Queer undertones that seem to ring loudly when read in present times. As images, they are meant to bridge the gap and make space for readers to enter this world that rightly feels foreign, not because of its fantastical dressings, but because of the writer herself who bleeds contradictions. Cavendish swings wildly between imperialistic power fantasy and anti-violence sentiment. So far from wanting to depict a character meant to be a one note aspiration, I was more interested in indulging the hunger and genius of a woman born into a world that hadn’t caught up to her yet.
The Immaterial Spirits & Bear-men (Astronomer)
The Empress & Her Many Advisors
The Spider-men as Mathematicians & Clergy
“... we met those Spirits in a very good condition, and acquainted them that your Majesty was very much troubled at their sudden departure, and fear’d they should be buried in the darkness of the earth:
whereupon the Spirits answered us, that they were sorry for having occasioned such sadness and trouble in your Majesty; and desired us to tell your Majesty, that they feared no darkness; for their Vehicles were of such a sort of substance as Cats-eyes, Glow-worms tails, and rotten wood, carrying their light along with them...”
The Bird-men & The Fish-men
“...without any consideration of the Emperess’s soul, [the Duchess] left her aereal Vehicle and entered into her Lord. The Empress’s soul perceiving this, did the like: And then the Duke had three Souls in one Body; and had there been but some such Soul’s more, the Duke would have been like the Grand-Signior in his Seraglio, only it would have been a Platonic Seraglio.
But the Duke’s soul being wise, honest, witty, complaisant and noble, afforded such delight and pleasure to the Empress’s soul by her conversation, that these two souls became enamored of each other; which the Duchess’s soul perceiving, great jealous at first, but then considering that no Adultery could be committed amongst Platonic Lovers, and that Platonism was Divine...Then the Conversation of these three souls was so pleasant, that it cannot be expressed...”
The Herbalists & Ape-Men (Chemist)
“But we wonder, proceeded the Spirits, that you desire to be Empress of a Terrestrial World, when as you can create your self a Celestial World if you please. What, said the Empress, can any Mortal be a Creator? Yes, answered the Spirits; for every humane Creature can create an Immaterial World fully inhabited by immaterial Creatures, and populous of immaterial subjects, such as we are, and all this within the compass of the head or scull...”
“By this Poetical Description, you may perceive, that my ambition is not only to be Empress, but Authoress of a whole World;…If any should like the World I have made, and be willing to be my Subjects, they may imagine themselves such, and they are such; I mean, in their Minds, Fancies or Imaginations; but if they cannot endure to be subjects, they may create Worlds of their own, and Govern themselves as they please: But yet let them have a care, not to prove unjust Usurpers, and to rob me of mine; ”
