Gene
Wolfe’s Soldier of the Mist is the
intriguing story of a mercenary soldier living in ancient Greece befuddled by
anterograde amnesia. Each night’s sleep
wiping his memory of everything but his youth and instinct, each morning brings
a new beginning. And the perpetual fresh
start was evident in the relative lightness of the book’s tone. Meeting gods, being everyday in a new place,
and forever meeting fresh faces (even though he may have already met them),
Latro remained optimistic throughout that despite his memory problem he would find
his way home. At the conclusion of Mist he experienced a wake up call, of a
sort, however. Segueing into the next
novel, Soldier of Arete (1989) digs
itself deeper into Latro’s mind as he attempts to come to terms with the
realities of length: the road home, and how he will handle his memory issues if
there is no cure.
The scene
at the end of Soldier of the Mist a
major event in Latro’s life, the opening of Soldier
of Arete nevertheless finds the slave-soldier in the same company. Watched
over by the faithful child Io and befriended by the trustworthy Seven Lions, he
and the army he is owned by continue to make their way across the seas of
ancient Greece to worthy destinations.
Witness to a brutal execution at the story’s start, a figurative
execution closes the novel, leaving Latro to have acquired a great deal in the
middle. Spending time amongst the
Amazons, gleaning memory and scroll trying to uncover plots against his life,
pawn to others when his memory fails, and always unaware who is and isn’t a
god, his adventures are no less intriguing than Mist.
But
beneath the journey, more of the man Latro is exposed. His quest for home leading inside, what he
discovers is key to the novel’s outcome.
Hinting at this outcome, Latro voices the following opinion in
conversation midway through Soldier of
Arete:
“In the morning of life,” I said, “a young man goes forth as
though mounted, becase he is carried upon the shoulders of his parents. By midday their support has vanished, and he
must walk for himself. In the evening of
life, he can hold up his head only because he is supported by the memory of
what once he was.” (524-525)
Soldier of Arete thus has the very
delicate feel of a man achieving a new stage in his development—tabula rasa in more ways than just his
morning state of memory. One of the more
difficult transitions in life (some, in fact, never wholly making it), Wolfe
portrays it as a worthwhile goal—the title’s ‘arete’ making it clear what
precisely that goal is. But, as Wolfe is
so deceivingly simple in presenting, the reader is led by the hand to the cusp
of this goal, what lies on the other side a wide vista of possibility.
Thus in a
change of pace from Mist, Soldier of Arete rightfully puts less
emphasis on the process of reading and writing in the scrolls and focuses more
on the story. Readers already accustomed
to the pattern in Mist need not be
reminded innumerable times again in the second volume of Latro’s ailment, thus
clearing the way for Wolfe to further the Shining God’s prophecy that Latro
believes will see his way home.
Mortality
part of Latro’s road home (as evidenced by the execution at the outset),
ancient Greece feels a natural backdrop to key in on another aspect of the lost
soldier’s development. In one
conversation Latro states : “It was not
given to men to escape death, Themistocles said, but to the immortal gods
alone; for a man the sole question was whether his death brought good or evil
to his fellows.” (557) Indeed, with
death the only end for the altruistic and criminal alike, how does a person
stand with their moral head high? Like
many of Wolfe’s protagonists, Latro, even while parsing out his own ethical
stance, becomes an example setter, and subsequently tying in to the ‘arete’ of
the title. (See Able in The Wizard Knight—particularly the
second half The Wizard; see Silk in
the Book of the Long Sun, and of
course see Severian, particularly in the Citadel of the Autarch and Urth of the New Sun.)
In the
end, Soldier of Arete is the dark to Soldier of the Mist’s light. A dark that is painfully cathartic yet
ultimately accepting, Latro’s journey toward existential and civil freedom
continues, but at a price some would consider greater than his memory. Given Wolfe continues to integrate story into
setting in subtle fashion (rather than vice versa as so much historical fantasy
does, e.g. Guy Gavriel Kay), there is a strong impression of verisimilitude to
the everyday life of a Greek soldier-slave and the army Latro is a part
of. Those who read and enjoyed Mist will thus relish Arete.
The only questions that remains is, with Soldier of Arete ending as it does, will Soldier of Sidon indeed see Latro take that third and final step?
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