Forefathers of Sword and Sorcery: Rafael Sabatini
“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”
“But I like my madness. There is a thrill in it unknown to such sanity as yours.”
— Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche
"When is 'Scaramouche' coming to Brownwood? Or has it already been there?" --Robert E. Howard to Tevis Clyde Smith, 1924
"Basically I see [sword and sorcery] as a good old-fashioned sword and sandal or cloak and dagger drama with strong supernatural elements. Captain Blood meets Cthulhu" -- Michael Moorcock, 2010
Rafael Sabatini would've turned one hundred and forty-five as of last Wednesday. Aether-gremlins and their insidious machinations thwarted my attempt to post this blog entry at the time. Undaunted, I post this now and, I think, it's better for a few days' seasoning. Happy birthday, Rafe.
When I wrote my first post about Rafael Sabatini and his swashbuckling fiction, the concept for a series about the "Forefathers of Sword and Sorcery" here on the DMR Blog was still merely a glimmer in my eye. As with Arthur Machen, it's high time Sabatini received his own entry. In this post, I try not to retread too much ground. For a more complete picture of the man and his work, I recommend that you check out "Rafael Sabatini: King of the Swashbucklers".
The literary landscape of the 1920s, when it came to historical adventure fiction, was dominated by Rafael Sabatini. His books sold in the millions—in hardcover—and highly successful films were made of his works. Comparisons to Tom Clancy in 1990 wouldn't be totally out of place. This is the bloody milieu in which sword and sorcery took root.
As the quote above demonstrates, Robert E. Howard was eager to know--in 1924--whether the film adaptation of Sabatini's Scaramouche had made it to the nearby city of Brownwood. The recipient of the letter was Tevis Clyde Smith, Bob's best friend. While we can't say for sure whether REH had read Scaramouche at that point, it's very likely.
TCS gave Bob a copy of Sabatini's The Snare the next year for Christmas. It's too bad that The Snare is one of Sabatini's weakest novels. However, Smith choosing that novel as a Christmas gift--when hardcovers were at least as expensive, in relative terms, as now--indicates that he thought it would be a special gift that REH would appreciate.
Other than Scaramouche and The Snare, the most-likely Sabatini novel that Howard might've read is The Sea Hawk. As Infogalactic puts it:
"The story is set over the years 1588–1593 and concerns a retired Cornish seafaring gentleman, Sir Oliver Tressilian, who is villainously betrayed by a jealous half-brother. After being forced to serve as a slave on a galley, Sir Oliver is liberated by Barbary pirates. He joins the pirates, gaining the name 'Sakr-el-Bahr' (the hawk of the sea), and swears vengeance against his brother."
Right there, one can see the setting is almost exactly the same as that of Solomon Kane, with certain elements--not alluded to in that synopsis--being used in "The Moon of Skulls" and "The Blue Flame of Vengeance". In addition, Solomon Kane was also stated by REH to have once been a slave on a Muslim galley. Finally, the story features a Barbary Corsair by the name of "Biskaine-el-Borak". We know that Howard did not use the moniker of "El Borak" for Francis X. Gordon until much later than 1924.
The synopsis for The Sea Hawk quoted above serves as a fairly good example of the classic Sabatini plot, which nearly always contained three elements: Revenge, Romance and Ruthless Mayhem.
The Popular Library edition of The Sea Hawk, which is graced with a cover by the legendary Robert McGinnis.
In the case of Fritz Leiber, the influence of Sabatini is more shadowy. I swear that he made some reference to Scaramouche, but I can't find it at the moment. Darrell Schweitzer has stated that Sabatini should be considered as an influence on Fritz. I can say that Fritz's father had a supporting role in the 1940 cinematic rendition of The Sea Hawk--which bore scant resemblance to Sabatini's novel.
Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are certainly kindred to many of Sabatini's world-weary and worldly-wise protagonists. The emphasis on clever stratagems and clever swordplay is also shared. Can anyone not see it being said that the Gray Mouser “was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad”?
We can also see a shared sentiment betwixt Sabatini and Leiber in this quote from Rafe's intro to Honest Thieves:
"If this is true, as I suppose it is, in the smuggler, as in the pirate or the highwayman, what captivates our fancy and even evokes our sympathy is not the evil of his performances but the stoutness of spirit which his performances demand."
Whether Henry Kuttner's swashbuckling S&S hero, Elak, was an homage to Sabatini or something of a parody, it is almost impossible to argue that Kuttner didn't have Sabatini in mind when creating his wandering prince of Atlantis. Elak certainly shares scant literary DNA with Conan, Kull or Solomon Kane.
Once we move beyond the First Dynasty of Sword and Sorcery, Sabatini's influence actually becomes a bit easier to discern, in some ways. Gardner Fox, the creator of Kothar, Kyrik and Niall was undoubtedly influenced by Sabatini when it came to writing historical adventure. What is possibly his best novel, The Borgia Blade, is full-on Sabatini homage. The protagonist is named "Ilarion", very close to Sabatini's Bellarion the Fortunate. Even more telling, Fox's portrayal of Cesare Borgia is quite in sync with that of Sabatini's.. Sabatini did not agree with the incredibly lurid portrayal of Cesare that has been propagated for the last five hundred years. Rafe wrote a collection of tales about Borgia entitled The Banner of the Bull. They have a dark, Howardian air to them and the collection gets my hearty recommendation.
One sees the Sabatini influence on Fox in several more novels. One of the most blatant is Tom Blood, Highwayman. In it, we find Tom Blood, an Irishman--as is Sabatini's Peter Blood in Captain Blood--who is forced into a career as a highwayman. Here we see Fox combining several Sabatinian tropes to create another exciting tale.
Was Poul Anerson influenced by Sabatini? I would say so, one way or another. His S&S protagonist,Cappen Varra, shares many traits with various Sabatinian heroes. So does Dominic Flandry. In my opinion, Poul's classic novel of historical adventure, Rogue Sword, is far more Sabatinian than it is Howardian.
Jack Vance has been compared to Sabatini numerous times. Once again, a hard paper trail is lacking. That said, I challenge anyone to read Scaramouche or Master-at-Arms and not see some resemblance to Vance's "Demon Princes" novels. Sabatini’s retellings of incidents from Casanova’s memoirs—collected in The Fortunes of Casanova and Other Stories—portray an amoral, swindling swordsman who could give Cugel the Clever a run for his money.
Without a doubt, Gordon R. Dickson, a fine author who wrote far too few S&S tales, was a Sabatini fan. Check it out here. In addition, Dickson was a good friend of Jack Vance's, so we know Vance had heard of Sabatini, at minimum.
Amongst more recent authors of Sword and Sorcery, Adrian Cole--the creator of the Voidal--is outspoken in his praise of Rafe:
"I'm a fan of Sabatini (as was my dad) given his wonderful story-telling, as action-packed as REH, with enough swordplay to satisfy the most demanding fan of high adventure."
James Reasoner is a master at crafting tales of adventure in various genres ranging from Westerns to thrillers to S&S novels like The Fyredrake's Prey. This is what he had to say about Sabatini:
"I read quite a bit of historical adventure fiction by the likes of Frank Yerby and Rafael Sabatini (SCARAMOUCHE was a favorite of mine, a great swashbuckler)."
Tim Powers, author of The Drawing of the Dark, is a Sabatini fan, as is Steven Brust, the creator of the Vlad Taltos heroic fantasy series.
Henry Ram, whose tale, “Honour Served”, appears in Warlords, Warlocks and Witches, is a long-time fan of Rafe:
"It's hard not to think of Sabatini, the master of swashbuckling swordplay and court intrigue, as one of the important early inspirations for the great S&S writers who were to make their mark in that genre."
In the "S&S-adjacent" category, Sabatini has many devoted and notable followers as well. George MacDonald Fraser—who knew more than a thing or two about swashbuckling—had this to say regarding the immortal Sabatini in 1994:
"No writer, not Scott nor Dumas nor Stevenson, has brought the past to life more vividly. [Sabatini] is to be learned from by any who seek instruction in the craft of writing or the matter of history. This century has seen no greater expert in the two combined "
S.M. Stirling dedicated his The Peshawar Lancers to Sabatini. Arturo Perez-Reverte, author of the "Captain Alatriste" series, mentions Sabatini several times in his novel, The Club Dumas.
In his introduction to the 2009 edition of Scaramouche, Bernard Cornwell had these words of praise for ol’ Rafe:
“Scaramouche is a wonderfully adventurous story... a splendid novel, whose author fully deserved the fame and fortune it brought him... He gave us great stories and this one, for me, is his best.”
Sabatini was, most likely, a victim of his own (belated) massive success when it came to S&S authors acknowledging his influence. He was such a household name in the '20s and '30s that any "edgy" author worth his salt must have felt mentioning Rafe's influence to somehow be an admission of mediocrity and conformity. Also, the slant of movies like Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk, with Erroll Flynn reinforcing the stereotype of the charming "heigh ho!" swashbuckler, tended to give audiences a distorted vision of what Sabatini's stories were actually like.
A fine website dedicated to Rafael Sabatini can be found here. Many of Rafael’s early works—well worth reading—can be found for free at Gutenberg. and elsewhere on the Net. In addition, Amazon offers plenty of affordable e-books and used hardcopies of Sabatini’s fiction. What are you waiting for?
Previous installments in the "Forefathers" series: