Travels of the Prince
A Fantasy
by
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Permit me not
To recount familiarly
Of what unfolds,
Since it is not a vision
Compassed but a
Unity apprehended.
I have taken no vows.
My theme is princely love.
Eight thousand pawns and two."
"I can see it."
"The lusty candle,
Slim and stark,
Dominates us in the dark
Like our own secret thunderbolt
And counterpart.
But look it in the eye -- straightly."
Midnight.
The Prince looked and yawned --
Saw in a flicker of flame
His very king checkmated
By a move so stealthy and shadowy,
That Hiranyaksha’s hand
Seemed not to stir.
"Fraud!" the Prince cried.
"A sleight-of-hand!" And he
And the Despot leaping up livid
Faced each other over
The tumbled board.
Sparkled the Golden Eye:
"Oh weigh your words.
Everything has its position,
But nothing is still.
Movement is the
"Decision of locale."
How then shall we
Settle our account?"
"The wise man has
Settled his accounts, Sir,
By calling the whole thing off.
He refuses to prosecute, he
Refuses to defend.
At any time,
Having settled his accounts,
He is ready to leave or to die.
It is all equal.
The main thing was
To settle the account.
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About the Book
TRAVELS OF THE PRINCE
The story begins when Prince Krishna, son of the Great Khan ruler of the Seven Realms that constitute the Empire, leaves his father’s castle and against his father’s wishes, begins a long adventurous journey from one realm to the next. This apparently rebellious action of the Prince, inspires Kaliya, the messianic leader of the autochthonous peoples, to rebel against the Empire and attack Baladev, Commander of the Imperial Army.
New characters now appear, the Lords of the Seven Realms: Hiranyaksha of the Golden Eye, "the jewel-flashing dandy", Lord of the Second Realm, Kaliya’s man; Phoibos Iskander, Duke of the Third realm, "a boy well made and fatal"; Arjuna Beak-o’-Bronze, Duke of the Fourth Realm; Narada "of the unhappy Consciousness, Lord of the Fifth Realm; Orlando, the Alchemist, Lord of the Sixth Realm; Hyperion, Lord of the Seventh Realm, "Held a secret so intense that no one dared to covet it".
The almost continuous war that ensues between Kaliya and Baladev is destined to involve all of the Seven Realms as first one side, then the other appear to be the victor, each side hoping to enlist the sympathies of the Prince. Whereas the Khan is an enlightened monarch with democratic ideals, Kaliya’s followers are of a static society, still mired in the past. On another level the war could be regarded as more a symbolic conflict between the mind-set of antiquity and the enduring quest of the individual for freedom of the creative spirit. The Prince, who has attachments for both Baladev and Kaliya, wavers between their opposing points of view. In the end, however, events bring him back, though under cloudy circumstances, to his father’s castle at the place called Worldsend.
About the Author
John Berry was born and educated in Southern California. He taught at the University of Southern California, and for several years at Visva Bharati University in India. Krishna Fluting, his first novel, won the 1959 Macmillan Fiction Award and was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Macmillan also published a story collection, Flight of White Crows, 1961; Gollanz in England, 1962. His work appeared in many fiction and poetry journals; stories in New World Writing, The Noble Savage, Harper’s Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Massachusetts Review, Chelsea, Denver Quarterly; poems in Beloit poetry Journal, Accent, Poetry, The Nation, Contact II, Michigan Quarterly, and others. He was awarded the Phelan Fellowship for Poetry, the Ingram Merrill grant for Poetry, a Guggenheim and a Fullbright for Fiction, and two MacDowell Fellowships. For several decades before his sudden death in 2000, he collaborated with his artist wife on sculpture. Many of the bronze sculptures he worked on have been exhibited in museums throughout the country including The Fresno Art Museum, California, The Kennedy Museum of American Art, Ohio, and the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, Connecticut. He continued to write during most of this period. He finished the final version of Travels of the Prince in 1997.