SOURCE: Margarick, P. “Vardis Fisher and His Testament of Man.” American Book Collector 14, no. 1 (September 1963): 20-4.

[In the following essay, Margaret provides a brief overview of each of the twelve novels of Fisher's “Testament of Man” series.]

In 1940, when I was 33, a fellow book collector who specialized in Modern American Firsts introduced me to Vardis Fisher's tetralogy. I say “introduced,” a bland word that utterly fails to convey the enthusiasm of the Vardis Fisher fan.

I read In Tragic Life, the first volume of Fisher's tetralogy and the effect was stunning. This was a brutally honest picture of the life of an extremely sensitive, pioneer boy. It was one of the most intensely interesting books that I had ever read.

The next couple of months were spent in a frantic effort to acquire first editions of the other three volumes. I found Passions Spin The Plot and We Are Betrayed and read them both in four days. I was never so absorbed in a story or so identified myself with a character in a novel. I felt deeply the anguish of Neloa, for weeks.

It was another two weeks before I located the final volume No Villain Need Be and spent most of two nights reading it. This one was an anticlimax! The story was carried to a logical conclusion, despite some fairly long-winded theorizing. My reaction to the tetralogy, written in a diary at the time, was: “In judging the whole, a comparison with Wolfe is inevitable and in my opinion much to the detriment of Wolfe.” In straightforward excellent prose Vardis Fisher tells his story—and what a story!

During the next few years, I gradually acquired and read most of the other books that Vardis Fisher had written. Some I liked more, some a little less, but only one did I think was a failure. When Fisher attempted whimsy in his novel April, I felt that he had a heavy hand for the light touch.

Children of God, the story of the Mormons, proved Vardis Fisher's ability to write objectively. In winning the Harper Prize, he at last got some measure of recognition. I believe this was the only book of his that sold well. As usual his complete and utter honesty got him into trouble with those who believed that he was maligning the Mormon Church. This penchant for being misunderstood has plagued Fisher all his life and is, I believe, primarily responsible for the lack of recognition on the part of many reviewers.

Early in 1962, when I was browsing through some book stacks at Leary's, I came across Valley Of Vision an unfamiliar Vardis Fisher title. This book gave me an entirely new perspective on biblical lore as distinguished from history. Once again, I found myself immersed in fascinating and extremely thought-provoking reading and learned for the first time that this was one of the middle volumes of a twelve volume series entitled “The Testament of Man.”

From what I have read, I gather that this project originally developed in the mind of Fisher as a result of his dissatisfaction with his tetralogy. Fisher felt that neither he nor other modern American writers had gotten sufficiently under the skin of their contemporary characters to find out what really made them tick. He had already steeped himself in the study of psychology and found that this was not enough to give him the understanding that he felt he needed. What then, but to go back into history—back via anthropology to the very beginning of man himself.

Vardis Fisher makes a good case for his theory that it was revolutionary ideas rather than military battles that chiefly shaped our world of today. He is also convinced that certain basic concepts and drives existing in prehistoric times, and handed down through the generations, helped mold man of today; “that present-day man is not only in his childhood, but in his entire past history.” Probably the most provocative thought that runs through the latter volumes of the series is the realization of how different the present would be, but for the victory of some of the ideas of the past, and that the victorious ideas were not by any means necessarily the best.

Fisher apparently set out on his project with a twofold aim. 1) He wanted to highlight those periods in man's history which in his opinion most affected him and his development. 2) He felt that his years of study would give him a much better understanding of himself and would therefore enable him to rewrite his tetralogy with which he had become dissatisfied. This second motive will be discussed subsequently. Accordingly, he picked eleven periods preceding the present, starting with the earliest apeman hardly more aware than any other intelligent animal, carried the series through the various stages of man's early development, through the prebiblical, biblical and important historical periods down to the present day.

Let us briefly now review the individual volumes in the series:

Volume I, Darkness and the Deep, opens with the following paragraph:

Upon the geography of space, there are no boundaries where all is infinite, nor age where time is only the measure of change within the changeless, nor death where life is the indestructible pulse of energy in the hot and the cold. There is no morning or noon or evening for what has always been and always will be. There has been no beginning and there can be no end. But there is and has been and always will be that continuous change in the appearance of things which, in the small catalog of finite perceptions is known as birth and growth, evolution and progress, age and death.

In the first fifty pages of beautiful prose that often soars to poetic heights the author tells the story of the creation of the earth according to scientific gospel of the time. A later day may prove some of these theories fallacious, but it is highly unlikely that subsequent discoveries will give us a better understanding of early man than Vardis Fisher gives us in the first few volumes of his “Testament of Man” series.

Here is the prehistoric ape man—the wandering, herbiverous two-legged animal dimly striving and groping toward thought, memory, language and experience. He is motivated by fear, hunger, lust and the desire for power and acclaim. His frustrations are many, resulting in savage tantrums and murderous furies of a duration as short as his memory. Here is man when he first learned that a club could be a deadly extension of his arm, a stone could be a formidable projectile weapon and three men with a single purpose could be more powerful than one.

In Volume II, The Golden Rooms, man has progressed to the point where he has learned to make and control fire, unquestionably one of the greatest milestones in his development. He still has not learned that the male has anything to do with reproduction but has observed there is some connection between procreation and a woman's menses. Out of this discovery comes the conclusion that a woman who “wastes” her menstrual blood is to be ostracized and isolated.

Man has become omnivorous and the reader wonders why cannibalism wasn't more prevalent. Fisher has always been heavy on “blood and guts” realism, but never without justification and always to drive home a point. As a matter of fact, this desire to impress the reader with some basic truths or beliefs of the age leads to sometimes monotonous repetition of certain catch phrases.

As important to the reader as this discovery of the control of fire, is the author's illustration of the emotional reactions behind prejudice—man's earliest impulse to hate those that are of his species, but different from himself. Vardis Fisher carries man to a point of attempting his first rationalizations concerning events and dreams that he can't otherwise explain, leading him to his first fears and terrors of the supernatural and his first glimmers of concern for other beings.

Intimations of Eve, the third volume in the series, continues the story of prehistoric man. Once again, Fisher maintains his hold on our interest with characters that have only the most rudimentary aspects of humanity. Having groped his way to the point of questioning the many terrifying aspects of nature as manifested within his own body and the forces about him, and having rationalized these by the creation of a belief in evil spirits, man now had to go one step further in order to make life bearable—and that was to invent ways of propitiating the spirits so that they wouldn't harm him.

Fisher shows how the shrewd old women sharpened their cunning and became the masters of a magic that could bring or release the forces of good and evil, and how this alleged knowledge put them in a dominant position. Thus developed a matriarchal society where the grandmother ruled the family unit by dint of her magical powers over a ghost world and where almost every act of living depended on allaying the spirits of the death, animal as well as human. The force for good was the moon-woman whose span coincided with the menstrual cycle of the female and was proof positive of the superiority of the female. The miracle of fertility was the hub of the life of primitive man. Women had by then assumed duties in the community as well as in the family.

The first steps of the emerging struggle of male against female and the emergence of man's final domination are portrayed in Adam and the Serpent, the fourth volume of the series. The world is still beset with evil spirits which have now developed into shades of shades. Strong taboos have hardened from mere custom. Woman is still the dominant wielder of magic and the moon-goddess is still the most important figure in the magical cult. But now we see the early emergence of a sun-god, male, and heading toward supremacy if not invincibility. The first of the prophets does not come to a good end, but he does blaze a trail which others follow with more success.

Fisher hammers home the realization that “truth” and “knowledge” in any age may become the mere superstition and gross ignorance of another. He is a formidable enemy of fanaticism and dogma and therein may lie some of the cause for his lack of popularity.

The Divine Passion still deals with a prehistoric age but it is now known that many of the beliefs, rites and customs were still prevalent among the sun-worshiping tribes of Mexican and South American Indians as late as the time of the Conquistadores. Fisher has now reached an age in the development of man that enables him to create well rounded characters with whom the reader can relate. Adom, the leader of a small tribe, is an arrogant, stupid and avaricious strongman who logically brings about his own downfall. The battle between the contending powers has crystallized into a struggle between the temporal and religious authorities, between laissez-faire religion and fanaticism and here we see the emergence and domination of the fanatic prophet. His influence on man's development is one of Fisher's major tenets. Man has now associated sex with sin and has embarked on the road that leads him to practical as well as spiritual hell. Vardis Fisher creates positive characters that talk with a certitude that is at once ridiculous in the light of present knowledge, and startling in its implications for the future. In the name of religion, the prophets said with fiery certitude “Evil is woman and woman is evil.”

There is much more of importance in this book. Here we see the developing wiles of the female in the face of the continuing and hardening domination of the male, and many other nuances and subtleties that lead to a better understanding of the motives that shaped our past. What Mr. Fisher is saying now results in showing us what we are and why.

With The Valley of Vision the series emerges into the era of biblical times. We have been so steeped in biblical lore, that this book creates an entirely new vista. This is the story of King Solomon as it probably was, and not as recorded in the Bible. All of the absurd exaggerations of wealth and wisdom are exposed as the probable work of an exceedingly capable press agent. The brutality and ignorance of the age, the relatively minor position of Israel as a nation, the early gropings for religious unity, the advanced civilization of ancient Egypt and its influence on ancient Israel, are all depicted here in a fascinating historical novel that is a completely rounded work in itself.

Fisher makes it very clear that he believes the struggle between king and prophet in the times of Solomon and the emerging victory of the fanatic and ignorant prophets, was one of the greatest forces that shaped our present world. This is an extremely thought provoking book that could lead to endless speculation on what might have been, and all of it authoritatively annotated with reference to scholarly source material.

The seventh volume of the series Island of the Innocent is concerned with the struggle between the Hellenists and the Orthodox Jews. Within the framework of this struggle, Vardis Fisher has created a beautiful and deeply moving love story. Because he is so firm in his belief that ideas more than military conquests shape our world of today, by far the greater part of this volume is devoted to an exposition of the conflict between the cultures and beliefs of the Greeks and Jews of the period around the third to the second century B. C. The Maccabean revolt plays an important, but only minor role in the conflict.

Again Fisher feels called upon to annotate his novel with source material. The research that went into this work is staggering, particularly when you realize that the period covered by this book is only a very small portion of the work as a whole. The measure of the author's stature is his ability to make the age and the individuals in it come alive as you read. The characters are well-rounded flesh and blood and the story is absorbing from the first page to the last. This book is a powerful plea for tolerance—the kind of tolerance that permits others to believe and worship as they please regardless of the merit, intelligence or lack of either which may be involved, as long as no one else is hurt in the process.

In Jesus Came Again, Vardis Fisher gives his interpretation of the story of Jesus as distinguished from what he calls the Christ myth. Once again, not even remotely resembling the biblical version, Fisher creates a story from the merest gossamer thread of history and his own fertile imagination.

The notes which annotate his book indicate that there is absolutely no mention of Jesus in contemporary writing of that period. The skeptic is accordingly left with two alternatives—either to deny the very existence of Jesus, or to accord him an exceedingly minor role in the history of his day, and Fisher chose the latter. It is obvious why he drew the wrath of the fundamentalists.

As source material for the origins of Christianity and some of its sects, the ninth volume in the series, A Goat for Azazel is invaluable. As a novel I believe that it is the weakest in the series. It is this novel that lends some credence to the general charge by some critics, that Vardis Fisher was writing a tract rather than a novel. It would be ridiculous to wave this book aside as unimportant merely because I believe it is a poor novel. While it is very true that each of the twelve books can stand alone as a novel complete unto itself, they are also tiles in the mosaic which Vardis Fisher has created in his overall “Testament of Man”. A Goat for Azazel is one of the largest pieces, and it plays one of the most important parts in the overall design.

Fisher says what many scholars have said for a long time. He has torn away the curtain, more impenetrable than iron, from around the origins of the Christian religion. His attempt to tell the truth has and will continue to alienate many people who accept faith in place of reason.

In Peace Like a River, the “Testament of Man” series comes alive again in a full-blown novel. Despite the fact that the scene of action seldom changes, the novel presents an interesting, well-rounded cast of characters in whose lives and problems the reader gets deeply involved. Fisher deals with the age of the Christian ascetics and with their interpretation of the doctrine of original sin. Mortification of the flesh became a frenzied method of attaining eternal salvation and renunciation of all physical comforts became a way of life. The age was a harsh one. Ignorance and superstition were glorified. The early Christian “retreats” for both men and women were horrid almost beyond belief, although in the latter part of his last volume Orphans in Gethsemane he explains how complete withdrawal from life can create a kind of peace otherwise unattainable.

Vardis Fisher is one of the few authors who can handle such lurid material as seduction, incest, torture and self-mutilation without sensationalism. His version of the temptation of Hareb (St. Anthony?) by the whore Thais, is as erotic a scene as I have ever read without being in the least obscene. He has the ability to develop reader interest which is not merely morbid, because he depicts brutality honestly and with a purpose. You may want to argue with some of his conclusions, but it is difficult to deny the source material with which he copiously annotates this novel.

The series approaches termination on a crescendo. In My Holy Satan Fisher has created one of the most powerful novels, about the dark ages of the thirteenth century. It is man's struggle for enlightenment against almost superhuman odds, in an era when ignorance was the norm, intolerance and bigotry the highest virtues, and superstition accepted as the only truth. It was an era of poverty, degradation and hopelessness for the vast majority of the people. It was a time when the European world wallowed in a morass of filth and disease, when cleanliness was considered unholy pampering of the flesh. The Church was powerful, corrupt and in its alliance with the feudal overlords, impregnable. Together, the clergy and the nobility kept the masses in complete servitude. Fisher has written of human courage pitted against man's ingenuity for evil. Evil however, which is committed in holy religious zeal and by monsters who considered themselves and honestly believed themselves to be saviours. It was an era when in the name of Christianity, the “Christians” almost destroyed it.

Having read the eleven preliminary volumes, I was once again prepared to read the rewritten tetralogy, now condensed into the three-book first half of Orphans In Gethsemane. Once again I walked with Vridar through the child hell of a sensitive, highly intelligent boy amidst the lonely, brutal, vulgar and harsh life of an Idaho pioneer family. I read again of the fanatic dedication and determination of the poor, ignorant “Hunters” that their children would be the first in the family to get an education and of the hardships that parents and children endured to make their dream come true. I lived again with Vridar, his fears, his frustrations, his urges and his loves, and no one who remembers the torments and the ecstasies of young love can ever again use the words puppy-love or childish infatuation after reading this book.

As the story progresses into Vridar's college years, the rest of his family recedes to the point of almost complete disappearance. Even Marion, his brother, who lived with him during Vridar's second year of college, and who, we are told in one laconic paragraph, underwent at least three operations to correct his eye condition, is hardly mentioned during this part of the story. It is only in the last pages of the second part of the book that we learn of his deep attachment to his brother, after his brother dies.

I think this focusing of attention on Vridar to the exclusion of almost everyone and everything else around him was deliberate. He had become fully involved with his boyhood sweetheart in a completely unreasoning love affair that filled every cell of his being. His need for Neloa was, as he said, as compulsive as drinking is for the alcoholic. It is obvious that during this period, he could think of little beside his love and what he considered as his betrayal. His mind was shut to all advice and suggestion. As a result he rages through these pages in a wild tumult headed for ruin or destruction. It comes to a climax with his marriage to the beautiful amoral animal who was as unsuited to become his wife as he was to satisfy her as a husband.

Vardis Fisher does not spare himself in the latter part of this section. It reads in fact as though he was trying to atone for his sin—the sin of selfishness to a degree that creates revulsion in the reader. This is deliberate expiation. The story leading up to Neloa's death is agonizingly heartrending.

In rewriting the original tetralogy, the author has smoothed out some of the rough spots and tightened it up considerably. In attempting to get “under the skin” of the protagonist, he occasionally falls into the trap of putting thoughts in the mind of his character which he obviously acquired at a more mature age. It is, frankly, hard for me to be objective concerning this rewritten portion of Orphans because I was so deeply impressed with the original tetralogy.

The second half of Orphans in Gethsemane is more than an autobiographical novel—it is in effect a dissection. Layer by layer, he reveals tissue, fat, muscle, nerve and cell. He lays himself bare with a thoroughness and candor seldom previously equalled. When he sets out to accomplish something, be it physical or mental, his singlemindedness and drive is almost frightening for the average person to contemplate. While he had already chosen the road to destruction, and comes close to it on several occasions, he fortunately does not quite make it. He continues to wrestle with his fears, but is never free of his frustrations—the frustrations brought about by an honesty that permits no compromise, least of all with himself.

The second half of Orphans is also an excellent though rambling and overlong introduction to “The Testament of Man” series. Here he describes in detail the factors which motivated his writings; the reading, study and preparation that were distilled into the novels, and the difficulties he encountered in getting them published. These were the labor pains that accompanied the birth of a giant. No thinking human being could possibly reveal himself so completely without arousing mixed emotions in the reader. I have previously mentioned what I thought were the author's primary motives for writing “The Testament of Man” series. In the introduction to Orphans In Gethsemane Vardis Fisher says:

If mankind is ever to build a civilization worthy of that devotion which it seems richly endowed to give, it will first have to accept in full light of its mind and soul, the historical facts of its past, and the mutilations and perversions which its hostility to those facts had made upon its spirit.

The author set himself an almost impossible task. It is difficult enough to get some part of his readers to accept what he says with an open mind. To get these same readers to understand history in the light that he sheds upon it and to accept from this the lessons to be learned, is even more difficult. Add to this Fisher's attempt to create novels that will live as literature and it is obvious that he has set a goal that is almost beyond reach. If he has not quite reached the stars, he has indeed made a magnificent effort.

To sum it up then, what did Fisher in this series do for me, an average reader. He gave me an education that I might not otherwise have obtained, despite the fact that some of his insights did elude me, and he gave me an understanding of history that I might otherwise never have acquired. He gave me an understanding of some of the motives and drives of people about whom I care, and the ability to be more tolerant of their weaknesses as well as more understanding of my own. He caused me to realize and correct a few of the errors that I have been committing which might help to keep me from compounding the errors already committed on me. Finally, he gave me many hours of extremely interesting and profitable, if not always enjoyable, reading.

Vardis Fisher is one of the most remarkable of American authors. Viewing himself, in effect, as the reincarnation of conflicting personalities of many generations, the recipient of the transmitted subconscious memories of centuries. Fisher went back in his “Testament of Man” to the ape-man progenitor and came up the long, uncertain booby-trapped path. He projected himself into the emerging, rising human being, and went with him through thousands of years of progressions, crises, setbacks, emotions, surges to get at understanding, if he could, of the basic motivations today in the conduct of the heir of all the human race … the whole sequence is one of the most extraordinary feats in imaginative divination in original Occidental literature.

Clark Kinnaird King Features Syndicate