Timing is Everything--Season of Mists

This is the written transcript of an audio essay recorded for The Cluttered Desk Podcast.  It is the fourth in a series of reflections on Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.

Have I mentioned that Dream once sentenced someone to an eternity in Hell?  It seems like a rather glaring omission, doesn’t it?

Once upon a time Dream of the Endless, our title character and apparent protagonist, fell in love with a human woman.  Nada, the beautiful and accomplished queen of an ancient kingdom, returned his affection—until she learned who he was.  Then, wisely deciding that perhaps it isn’t the best idea for mortals to become romantically involved with eternal and trans-dimensional personifications of elemental human experience, she rejected his offer to make her his queen.  There is no wound to pride quite like the wound of rejected love, and so Dream acted rashly.  He banished her to Hell until such a time as he would forgive her.  This story is alluded to in varying detail throughout the first three volumes of The Sandman, but in the fourth volume, Season of Mists, we finally confront it for the problem that it is.

Season of Mists is a volume filled with finally moments, not the least of which is the opportunity to see the family of the Endless gathered together.  As the volume opens, Destiny, the eldest, calls a family meeting with his siblings—or most of them, at least.  He meets together in his hall with Death, Dream, Desire, Despair, and Delirium.  We are missing only Destruction, who, we learn, has abandoned his realm and cut off all communication with his family.  This family reunion is rich with narrative and thematic significance, but its most important contribution to the story at hand is that it propels Dream on the mission that will give shape to this volume’s narrative.  Goaded on by his sibling Desire, Dream is led to the conclusion that his response to his former lover Nada was perhaps…well, less than magnanimous.  Convicted of his error, Dream embarks on a necessary but terrifying mission.  He will travel to Hell to forgive Nada and set her free. 

Upon arriving in the infernal realm expecting a deadly struggle, Dream finds something quite different.  He finds that Hell is utterly empty.  When he locates Lucifer, first of the fallen of the Host of Heaven and ruler of Hell, things only become more bizarre.  Lucifer has quit.  He is concluding the process of kicking the damned out of the place of their torture, and he seems quite happy to be leaving his position.  As he ushers the souls of the tormented out of the gate, I am consistently reminded of the line from the band Semisonic:  “Closing time.  You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”

As the two part ways, Lucifer leaves Dream with a less-than-benevolent gift:  He entrusts the Prince of Stories with the key to Hell.  “Perhaps I ought to have given it to you with my best wishes,” the former monarch of Hell explains.  “I could have told you that I hoped it would bring you happiness.  But somehow…somehow I doubt it will.”  The rest of the volume unfolds from this moment.  Prompted by the new availability of what Death calls the “most desirable plot of psychic real estate in the whole order of created things,” a crowd of hopeful claimants to the possession of Hell meets at the court of the Dream King.  Representatives from the Norse and Egyptian pantheons; as well as the realms of Order, Chaos, and Faerie; all plead their case for their right to possess the key, with two angelic emissaries from the Heavenly realms standing by to observe. 

What unfolds is the most gripping and engaging entry in The Sandman so far, and the plot of this volume will have incalculable ramifications for the future of the series.  I find, however, that Season of Mists is most interesting when considered as a contrasting study of two characters—two monarchs who must decide how they will hold their authority, their responsibility, and their identities. 

The first of these two characters is Lucifer, the erstwhile Lord of Hell.  It is notable that throughout this volume, as well as throughout the series, he is never referred to as Satan or even the devil.  He is always Lucifer, the light-bearer; the name that he bore as the first in power, beauty, and insight among the angels of Heaven.  Lucifer nurses a grudge against Dream stemming from events in the first volume of the series, and it is apparent that his gift of the key to Hell is strategically given as a retributive act.  But, like all trickster figures, Lucifer does not fit so easily into the role of villain.  As he relinquishes his domain, the fallen angel adopts a disposition that, within the thematic world of The Sandman, represents an indispensable form of wisdom.  In his final gestures as the monarch of Hell, Lucifer shows himself to be the light-bearer in a profoundly subtle way—he is one who bears himself lightly. 

As Lucifer tells it, his drive and conviction as ruler of Hell have been fueled by despair and resentment over one simple fact:  That he will never return to the Heaven from which he fell.  But as he continues to narrate the rationale for his abdication, it becomes clear that he has reached a novel conclusion.  Just because he may never return to Heaven does not mean that he must stay in Hell.  “I grew weary, Dream Lord,” he explains, “mightily weary.  And I ceased to care.”  From this newfound sense of apathy, it seems, has arisen a sense of the possibilities that existence would present to him if he let go of what he has always thought himself to be.  “I could lie on a beach somewhere, perhaps?  Listen to music?  Build a house?  Learn how to dance, or to play the piano?”  Lucifer encounters holdouts among the damned, tormented souls who seem to be clinging to their sins as if they were badges, as if they would have no identities without these crimes.  For them he has one simple message:  It doesn’t matter.  You did these things a long time ago, and no one remembers you.  Stop defining yourself by who you have been, and leave this place.  As a final, brutal display of his commitment to moving on, Lucifer submits himself to a brief but painful rite of passage—he has Dream cut off his wings.

The narrative holds out the possibility that this is all an act, all part of an elaborate ploy to get the revenge on Dream that Lucifer has so desperately wanted.  And maybe it is.  But, you see, for the purposes of this story, it doesn’t matter.  Not at all.  Because regardless of his intention, in his final moments as the ruler of Hell Lucifer becomes the sort of monarch that Dream cannot be.  But it is the sort of monarch that Dream must become if he is to transcend himself and his own limitations.

The second of the two characters in question is, of course, Dream.

If Lucifer embodies the possibility available to one who holds oneself lightly, Dream is always encumbered by his own perception of himself and his responsibilities.  He sees every choice that he makes as an inevitable fulfillment of his role as the Lord of the Dreaming.  When someone steals a portion of his power, as John Dee did, he sets right what the other has wrought through misuse.  When one of his creations goes rogue, as the Corinthian did, he punishes that creation and undoes the wrong that has been inflicted.  This is all as it should be, but this unflinching sense of self and duty also dictates that when someone rejects his affections, as Nada did, that person must be punished in a way that is commensurate to the pain that it has caused him.  It is mathematical, and if the equation is balanced according to mathematical principles then there is no further responsibility.  And the equation must be balanced according to mathematical principles.  But at the end of this sweeping drama concerning the ownership of Hell, Dream must attempt an essential gesture of reconciliation—he must apologize to the one he has wronged.  By the terms of the sentencing, it is he who must forgive Nada, but Dream finds the roles appropriately reversed.  It is he who must implore her forgiveness.  When his apology earns him the slap in the face that he deserves, Dream is forced to grapple with the essential enigma of human relationships.  Nothing is mathematical.  Nada forgives him, but this forgiveness is not in response to what he has offered.  It is gratuitous, as grace always is. 

The title of Season of Mists comes from John Keats’s poem “To Autumn.”  For a long time I thought that this was simply an appropriately evocative allusion, helping to strike a particular mood.  I was wrong in this assessment.  As he agonizes over the decision he must make about the ownership of Hell, Dream risks a moment of vulnerability with his servant Matthew the Raven.  “Everything keeps shifting and changing, Matthew.  It’s like treading a path through mist.”  Mist is an evocative metaphor, often standing in for the seasons and situations that obscure from us who we are or what we are doing.  But so often it is the other way around.  So often it is the seeming clarity of our self-perception that hides from us the truth of ourselves and the world of flux through which we move.  Sometimes it is that which we would deem to be solid that is the mist, keeping us from seeing the process of becoming that is the essence of our lives.  This is the lesson that Dream must learn.  This is the lesson that, regardless of his motive, Lucifer would teach him.  Our last glimpse of Lucifer in this volume sees him making good on his promise.  He is sitting on a beach enjoying a sunset, even offering the Creator a grudging acknowledgment of the beauty of the natural wonder that he beholds.  The next time we see him, he will be playing piano in a night club of which he is the proprietor.  Dream, on the other hand, ends this volume beginning an assay into undoing the harm that his self-consistency has caused. 

There is so much more to say about Season of Mists.  There is the evocative collection of meditations on each member of the family when the Endless gathers together.  There is the toast offered by Hob Gadling, the stubborn immortal human.  There is Charles Rowland and the completion of his education.    There is Lyta Hall and her unborn son, Daniel.  There is Loki.  There is so much to say about Loki.  But timing is everything, and for now we will say what is necessary for our time.  For now we will depart with the picture we have painted.  A picture of two kings:  One who lives in a hell of his own making, and one who has begun to realize that you don’t have to stay anywhere forever.