Elric of Melniboné or Elric by Michael Moorcock
Elric of Melniboné is a fictional character created by Michael Moorcock, and the antihero of a series of sword and sorcery stories centring in an alternate Earth. The proper name and title of the character is Elric VIII, 428th Emperor of Melniboné. Later novels by Moorcock mark Elric as a facet of the Eternal Champion.
Elric first appeared in print in Moorcock's novella, "The Dreaming City" (Science Fantasy No. 47, June 1961); subsequent novellas were reformatted as the novel Stormbringer (1965), but his first appearance in an original novel wasn't until 1972 in Elric of Melniboné. Moorcock's albino character is one of the better known in fantasy literature, having crossed over into multimedia, such as comics and film, though efforts towards the latter stalled over the years. The novels have been continuously in print since the 1970s
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Elric is described by his creator, in the first book, Elric of Melniboné, as follows:
It is the colour of a bleached skull, his flesh; and the long hair which flows below his shoulders is milk-white. From the tapering, beautiful head stare two slanting eyes, crimson and moody, and from the loose sleeves of his yellow gown emerge two slender hands, also the colour of bone.
Elric was the last emperor of the stagnating island civilisation of Melniboné. Physically weak and frail, the albino Elric must take drugs—later retconned to mean special herbs—to maintain his health. In addition to herb lore, his character becomes an accomplished sorcerer and summoner, able to summon powerful, supernatural allies by dint of his royal Melnibonéan bloodline. Unlike most others of his race, Elric possesses something of a conscience; he sees the decadence of his culture, and worries about the rise of the Young Kingdoms, populated by humans (as Melniboneans do not consider themselves such) and the threat they pose to his empire. Because of his introspective self-loathing of Melnibonéan traditions, his subjects find him odd and unfathomable, and his cousin Yyrkoon (next in the line of succession, as Elric has no heirs) interprets his behaviour as weakness and plots Elric's death.
As emperor of Melniboné, Elric wears the Ring of Kings, also called the Ring of Actorios, and is able to call for aid upon the traditional patron of the Melniboné emperors, Arioch, a Lord of Chaos and Duke of Hell. From the first story onwards, Elric is shown using ancient pacts and agreements with not only Arioch but various other beings—some gods, some demons—to assist him in accomplishing his tasks.
Elric's finding of the sword Stormbringer serves as both his greatest asset and greatest disadvantage. The sword confers upon Elric strength, health and fighting prowess but must be fed by the souls of those struck with the black blade. In the end, the blade takes everyone close to Elric and eventually Elric's own soul as well. Most of Moorcock's stories about Elric feature this relationship with Stormbringer, and how it—despite Elric's best intentions—brings doom to everything the Melnibonéan holds dear.
Influences
Moorcock acknowledges the work of Bertolt Brecht, particularly Threepenny Novel and The Threepenny Opera, as "one of the chief influences" on the initial Elric sequence; he dedicated the 1972 Elric of Melnibone to Brecht. In the same dedication, he cited Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions and Fletcher Pratt's The Well of the Unicorn as similarly influential texts. Moorcock has referred to Elric as a type of the 'doomed hero', one of the oldest character-types in literature, akin to such hero-villains as Mervyn Peake's Steerpike in the Titus Groan trilogy, Poul Anderson's Scafloc in The Broken Sword, T.H. White's Lancelot in The Once and Future King, and Jane Gaskell's Zerd in The Serpent.
The story of Kullervo from Finnish Mythology contains elements similar to Elric's story, such as a talking magic sword and fatal alienation of the hero from his family. Besides Elric, Kullervo has been proposed as having influence on Poul Anderson's 1954 novel The Broken Sword, Elric, and J.R.R. Tolkien's Túrin Turambar. Moorcock has stated that "Anderson's a definite influence [on Elric], as stated. But oddly, the Kalevala was read to us at my boarding school when I was about seven." and "from a very early age I was reading Norse legends and any books I could find about Norse stories" Moorcock in the same posting stated "one thing I'm pretty sure of, I was not in any way directly influenced by Prof. Tolkien".
Elric's albinism appears influenced by Monsieur Zenith, an albino villain who used a sword cane, who Moorcock appreciated enough to write into later multiverse stories.[10] Moorcock read Zenith stories in his youth, and has contributed to their later reprinting, remarking "took me forty years to find another copy of Zenith the Albino! In fact it was a friend who found it under lock and key and got a copy of it to Savoy who are, at last, about to reprint it! Why I have spent so much energy making public the evidence of my vast theft from Anthony Skene, I'm not entirely sure... ". Moorcock later said "As I've said in my introduction to Monsieur Zenith: The Albino , the Anthony Skenes character was a huge influence. For the rest of the character, his ambiguities in particular, I based him on myself at the age I was when I created Elric, which was 20" The influence of Zenith on Elric is often cited in discussions of Zenith.
Kudos to Wikipedia for the Text.
Replies
Thank you very much! Have a couple of the ones you uploaded but not all and am glad to get them. Thank you very much. Have been an Elric fan for a long time.
May you get much pleasure out of them. ------------------------------------------------------------ R