“From poetry the reader justly expects, and from good poetry always obtains, the enlargement of his comprehension and elevation of his fancy…”
–Samuel Johnson. Lives of the English Poets: Waller.

I first heard of the fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin last September, and have now read all five extant volumes: A Game of Thrones (1996), A Clash of Kings (1999), A Storm of Swords (2000) , A Feast for Crows (2005), and A Dance with Dragons (2011). (Two more are projected to complete the series.) It is a long, engrossing skillfully told tale It tells of a war for power. The continent of Westeros had seven kingdoms which were united under the Targaryen dynasty, masters of dragons.. This dynasty was overthrown by one Robert Baratheon. Upon his death, wars break out amongst claimants to the throne and also a rebellion or two by those who want to break away. The social order and technology approximate the mediaeval age of Europe. There is no romanticizing of knighthood, however. The struggle to gain and retain power is shown to be brutal and debased.

Mr. Martin juggles many characters and subplots as well as the complexities of his main plot very well. (A weakness, though, is that some of the major characters are adolescents with amazing poise and insight—so amazing as to be unbelievable. It is one thing for a novel to require a willing suspension of disbelief concerning magic, quite another, in my opinion, to require it regarding basic human psychology.) He depicts a wide range of characters with varying mixtures of good and evil though some are villainous through and through and one or two are impeccably noble. While this makes the tale not unrelievedly dark, it is still decidedly gloomy overall. There are many very violent scenes and far fewer sexually explicit ones. The various religions (which include, in part, a pagan-like worship of tree gods, a religion of one god with seven aspects somewhat reminiscent of kabbalistic Judaism, Christianity, and Hinduism, and a missionary dualistic creed) sometimes elevate their followers but at least as often serve, or are made to serve, their darker desires. One of these desires, notably, is the lust to dominate others, a passion, it seems to me, little discussed openly in modern democratic cultures, perhaps because doing so would be thought to question political participation which is regarded as a self-evident and unqualified good. Though the world of this series is not merely one of unbridled human appetites, it does not miss it by very much. Indeed this is echoed by the scenes of animals devouring each other and of human corpses being eaten by ravens and maggots. It is also echoed by the frequent—to the point of tedium—lists of menu items on various meals. So complex and grimly realistic is Mr. Martin’s portrayal of political struggle that even undoubtedly good actions (the overthrow of a mad and vicious king, the abolition of slavery) can have consequences both unforeseen and unwelcome. This is a dark world that would not surprise the historians Thucydides or Tacitus, the writers of the Hebrew Bible, or the theologian and political theorist Reinhold Niebuhr.

There are certainly other facets of this extended tale. There are times when the reader so disposed can enjoy the chess-like complexity of the political maneuvering. especially when the witty dwarf, Tyrion Lannister occupies center stage. I also see I have barely mentioned the fantasy elements of the tale. In truth they are a bit slow to strongly manifest themselves. In the first book, they barely exist. In its most portentous form, the fantastic exists in the far north of Westeros, beyond a giant man-made wall of ice. North of the wall live men called by the Westerosi wildings and by themselves free folk; but also resident there are mysterious beings called the Others who cause dead men to rise as murderous automatons. The Others seem to be gathering their strength because the free folk are fleeing before them and the revivified corpses, threatening to invade Westeros proper. It is unclear how and if Mr. Martin will integrate this increasingly important plot element with the theme of the brutality of the struggle for power.

Yet the tale, thus far, is mostly about the struggle for political power, mainly in Westeros but also in lands to the east. A Song of Ice and Fire can be fairly said to enlarge our comprehension of politics and human nature, or at least to make what we already know more vivid. Yet, at the same time, this is largely done through the scenes of brutality and sexual explicitness I have mentioned which coarsen the imagination rather than elevate it.. This is a terrible irony. I wonder if it is intentional. The argument can be made, I suppose, that only through these sorts of scenes can the dark side of human nature and the amorality of politics be brought home. Yet I wonder. No one can fairly accuse the Greek tragedians of seeing the world through rose-colored glasses, yet they were careful not to have debasing scenes occur on the stage. The murder of Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover occurs off stage, as does Oedipus gouging out his eyes. A tale with the same plot as A Song of Ice and Fire but following the Greek path would be quite a different thing than the current series, but I am not at all certain it would necessarily be less effective. It would, admittedly, take a great deal of skill but Mr. Martin is a skillful storyteller, and it might elevate our fancy, or at least not debase it, while enlarging our comprehension.