The Annotated Sandman
    
               Edited by Ralf Hildebrandt and largely written by Greg Morrow
      
                        Issue 39:  "Soft Places"
                      Neil Gaiman and John Watkiss

                Second story in anthology _Convergences_
                  Not yet reprinted in any other form

Themes:  _Convergences_ is about storytelling, as is _Sandman_ overall.  In
particular, _Convergences_ tells tales where the storyteller becomes the 
story, and where reality intersects with story and with fantasy.  And, it
may be noted, dreams are where reality and fiction converge.
	A common thread among the stories is the intersection (or 
convergence) of characters with their own divergent lives.  Another is the 
passage from the familiar to the unfamiliar, as happens to the central 
character in each story.  Also, in each tale, the central character is not
a native to the Dreaming but visits a portion of it in the process of the
tale.  One may also note the role of time in each tale, encompassing some
aspect of the past, the present, and the future.
	In "Soft Places", Marco Polo travels into a soft place unfamiliar
to him, as he also travels from familiar Europe to unfamiliar Orient. 
Additionally, we note the convergence between story and storyteller as
Marco meets his biographer.  The present, such as it is in a soft place, is
the meeting between two past men and a future man.
	This issue, otherwise, is fairly soft in the thematic area.

Page 1 panel 1:  Anno Domini:  Year of Our Lord, Latin, usually represented 
as the more familiar A.D.
	Marco is Marco Polo (c.1254-1324, making him about 17), a Venetian
traveler.  He is noted for having left a long and detailed account of his
travels to Cathay and the court of the Mongols.  Although there are records
of other Europeans having traveled to the Orient, notably Marco's father
and uncle, Marco's document was widely read and inspired much of the West's
later dealings with the Far East.

Page 4 panel 4:  This is the "standard" folkloric visualization of the 
Sandman - E. T. A. Hoffman wrote a short novel named "Der Sandmann"
(The Sandman) in which this picture of the Sandman is presented (Henrik Ågren
<Henrik.Agren@hist.uu.se>); can anyone fling me some other good refs?

Page 5 panel 3:  The song is an old jazz tune named "IŽll be
glad when youŽre dead, you rascal you". The most famous recordings of this 
song is by Louis Armstrong. It is said that the song was dedicated by him
to a police officer who once harrassed him at the way to the recordings. 
I donŽt know if this is true, but the story is told in Mezz Mezzrow's book 
about Chicago jazz "Really the blues". 
The point is that "IŽll be glad when youŽre dead, you rascal you" is from 
the same era as the other two songs.
I also know that Louis Armstrong has recorded "Bill Bailey". Maybe Marco
is passing the reflections (or something like that) of a jazz club of
the 20s or maybe even a Louis Armstrong show. (Henrik Ågren
<Henrik.Agren@hist.uu.se>)
       Panel 4:  "Bill Bailey Won't You Please Come Home?", by Hughie 
Cannon, 1902.
       Panel 5:  "How You Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm After They've 
Seen Paree?", lyrics Joe Young, music Walter Donaldson, 1919, a song of the
First World War, referring to rural soldiers who'd gotten their first look
at the sophistication of urban life.
	Panel 6:  The first song is "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?",
lyrics Edgar Y. Harburg, music Jay Gerney, 1932, a song of the Great
Depression.  The others are unknown.

Page 7 panel 1:  The Desert of Lop ("Lop Nar" or "Lap Nor") is located in
central China, and has been used as the People's Republic's nuclear testing
ground.

Page 7-8:  The quote is taken directly from _The Travels of Marco Polo_;
one useful edition (in which the translation is nearly word for word the
text here) is published by Penguin, translated by Ronald Latham.  In the
paperback edition, the quote starts on page 84.  The translator identified
the Desert of Lop as the current-day Gobi Desert.  Polo says the desert is
named after a nearby city, which the Penguin edition tentatively identifies 
as the city of Charklik in modern Turkestan.
	The lengthy introduction to this edition has quite a lot of 
information about Polo's life, and discusses Rustichello at some length.

Page 8 panel 3:  When Marco Polo was taken prisoner in a battle between
Venice and Genoa, he told the tales of his travels to his cell-mate,
Rustichello, who recorded them in the book _The Travels of Marco Polo_.

Page 9 panel 6:  No refs on Shangtu.  Presumably a city in China, possibly
an obsolete name.  There have been several systems of transliteration from
Chinese to English, complicating the issue.

Page 10 panel 3:  This is Gilbert, aka Fiddler's Green, last seen in _The
Doll's House_.
	Panel 4:  Soft places:  Explained later.
	Panel 5:  Nicolo, Maffeo Polo:  These are indeed Marco's father and
uncle, respectively.  This is a return trip to the East for them; they had
previously visited Khaifeng in China.
	Panel 6:  Beaujolais:  A fruity Burgundy wine, named after the
region in France where it is produced.  Tokay:  See Annotation 38; a sweet
wine from Tokay in Hungary.  Note the convergence of storytellers.

Page 11 panel 2:  Jelly babies:  A soft chewy candy native to the British
Isles.  The fourth incarnation of the Doctor on the British series _Doctor
Who_ always carried a bagful of jelly babies as a well-known trademark.
Gilbert, though patterned after G.K. Chesterton, has some points of
appearance and manner in common with the Doctor.
	Panel 5:  Gilbert is a place, not a person, though he occasionally
takes human form.
	Panel 6:  In the last issue we saw Dream sympathetic to romance; 
here we learn that he is engaged in a new one, though the reciprocant of 
his affection is as yet unnamed.

Page 12 panel 1:  Constantinople:  Named after the Emperor Constantine, the
former name of the Turkish city Istanbul.  At this time, the city had
recently been retaken from the Crusaders by the Greeks, and was once again
the capital of the Byzantine Empire.
	Panel 2:  Kublai Khan:  Grandson of Genghis Khan and expander of
his empire, and founder of the Mongol dynasty of China.  The Khan is
familiar to Western audiences partly through the poem "Xanadu", which
came complete in a vision to the author, Samuel Coleridge, in an opium-induced
dream.
	Panel 5:  The Khan's request for one hundred Christian scholars and
technicians is historically accurate, including its answer.
	Gautama Buddha:  Indian religious leader and founder of Buddhism.

Page 13 panel 2:  Saint Joseph of Copertino [sic]:  From the Dictionary of
Saints:

    1602-1663. Joseph Desa was born in Cupertino, near Brindisi. He
    tried his vocation several places, but was summarily dismissed on
    account of his 'poor intelligence.' Finally he was received by the
    Conventional Franciscans of Grotella as a stable-hand and a lay
    tertiary. On account, however, of the rare spiritual gifts which
    now began to be manifest in him, he was professed as a friar and
    duly ordained priest. From this time on his life is an amazing,
    and perfectly authenticated, succession of preternatural
    phenomena. The most remarkable of these was his power of
    levitation: he would fly straight from the church door to the
    altar over the heads of the worshippers; once he flew to an olive
    tree and remained kneeling  on a branch for half an hour.
    Happenings like these were almost every day occurences, witnessed
    by hundreds of persons. Withal he was a simple,  gentle, humble
    follower of St Francis. His brethren, however, resented so much
    publicity, and on this account the saint had much to suffer from
    them. Canonized in 1767.

	His flights occured during heights of religious ecstasy; he was
known as the "flying friar".  He flew in public before popes and kings,
including the Duke of Bavaria, who converted after seeing the miracle.
	Additional information from _Powers of Darkness, Powers of Light_:
St. Joseph came from an area of Italy where the tarantala is performed, a
dance including many high leaps.  It is thought that this may have been
mistaken for flying.  In the practice of self-mutilation, he beat himself 
so severely there was blood on the walls of his cell, 20 years after his
death.  He placed black powder on all his food before he ate it, which
would cause anyone else who ate it to be violently ill.  It has been
suggested that the powder contained the fungus ergot, which causes
hallucinations.  He is also said to have regularly eaten leaves filled 
with the pus from lepers' sores.
	The Franciscan order is an order of monks affiliated with the Roman 
Catholic Church.  IQ of sixty:  Average IQ is by definition 100; sixty is in 
the barely-educable range.  Self-mutilation:  Here, the practice of whipping
or otherwise physically tormenting oneself to drive away sinful thoughts.
	Panel 3:  Dominican:  Another order of Catholic priests.

Page 14 panel 1:  There may be a reference to cheese and pickle sandwiches
in one of G.K. Chesterton's poems.
	Panel 4:  Consider "True World" in the context of last issue as
well as in the context of the confluence of reality and fantasy.

Page 16 panel 6:  Hwen T'sang (c.605-664):  Also known as Xuan Zang or 
Hsuan-Tsang.  Buddhist monk, born in China, who travelled to India in 629
to learn at the roots of Buddhism, despite the ban against crossing the
frontiers.  He went, alone, via the Gobi Desert, Samarkand, Tashkent, and
Kashmir.  In 645, he returned to China, where he wrote his memoirs.  Like
Polo, he described quasi-supernatural horrors, including ghost armies, in
the Gobi.  He is also credited with translating many Buddhist texts from
Sanskrit to Chinese, and the Tao te Ching ("Book of Changes") from Chinese
to Sanskrit.  He is also known as Tripitaka, a Sanskrit name denoting the
three baskets in which the Buddhist texts were kept in ancient times.
	Abu Abdullah ben Battuta Lahuati (1304-1378) was an Arab born in
Tangiers who traveled to Arabia, Ethiopia, Egypt, Bulgaria, the southern
Russian steppes, India, the Maldives, China, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and
western Africa (Timbuktu) over the course of 25 years, in part for the
purpose of visiting every Muslim country in the world.  He wrote a
narrative of his travels after returning to Morocco.  There is an article
on him in the December 1991 issue of _National Geographic_.

Page 17 panel 4:  Taklamakan:  Also Taklimakan, Taklimakan Shomo:  A
327,000 sq. km sandy desert in the Xinjiang (Sinkang) Autonomous Region 
of China, between the Tien Shan and Kunlin Mountains.  It is the largest 
desert in China and entirely uninhabited.
	Turkik:  Probably Turkic, a family of languages of Central-SE Asia.
	Panel 7:  For more on Fiddler's Green, see references in _The
Doll's House_ Annotations.

Page 20 panel 3:  This is the Dream of _Sandman_ #1-2, if we needed more
proof of the loops and whorls of time in a soft place.  We may note that
Gregory the Gargoyle found Dream in the "Shifting Zones" in _Sandman_ #2;
Dream's speech in page 21 panel 3-4 indicates that the Shifting Zones are 
the same as the soft places.  The shifting sands of the desert also 
metaphorically echo its state as a soft place.

Page 21	panel 5:  Recall that Dream's appearance is most often dictated by
the expectations of the observer.

Page 24 panel 7:  Another comment on the value of dreams, a motif found
extensively in #38.

Release history:             
Version 1.0 released 13 Dec 92
Version 2.0 released and archived 30 April 93

Contributors include:
	Greg Lord Drizzan McElhatton (stu_glmcelha@vax1.acs.jmu.edu) caught
the reference to the Shifting Zones and explained jelly babies.
	The Theme Team consulted on the literary deconstruction of
_Convergences_, and consisted of:
		David Pautler (pautler@ils.nwu.edu)
		Lance Smith (lsmith@cs.umn.edu)
		Enrique Conty (jester@ihlpm.att.com)
		Chuck Jordan (jordan@castor.cs.uga.edu)
		Andrew Moran (andrew@cs.chalmers.se)
		Deborah Ginsberg (debg@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu)
		Robert A. Carlin (carlinra@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu)
		Soren Petersen (speterse@peruvian.utah.edu)
	Michael S. Schiffer  gave many wonderfully
varied historical notes.
	Paul Watts (watts@Csa3.LBL.Gov) ID'ed Ibn Battuta.
	Michael Gemar (michael@psych.toronto.edu) cited the Penguin edition
of _Travels_ extensively and IDed the WWI song.
	Michael Bowman (bvmi@odin.cc.pdx.edu) corrected a misperception of
Polo's role, IDed St. Joseph, Ibn Battuta, Hwen T'sang, and Taklimakan, and
spotted a reference to the value of dreams.
	Lance Smith  IDed some songs and St. Joseph,
and spotted a Chesterton ref.
	Ian Lance Taylor (ian@airs.com) recalled the Coleridge poem.
	Alexx@world.std.com IDed ibn Battuta.
	S.Ward-Smith (pcxsws@unicorn.nott.ac.uk) IDed St. Joseph.
	Jim W Lai  opined on the difficulties
inherent in identifying things Chinese from English refs, saw a metaphor or
two, and gave many different historical notes.
	"Patrick Paul"  IDed the desert of
Lop, the Polos, and St. Joseph.