Hyperion

Colonel Fedmahn Kassad has the bearing of a high-ranking military officer: He is disciplined and competent, willing to do violence if necessary. The Consul’s first description of him is hard and militaristic: “His face was all angles: shadows, planes, and facets […] carved from cold stone. A thin line of beard along his jawline served to accent the sharpness of his countenance as surely as blood on a knife blade” (13).

The New Bushido code is central to Kassad’s life as a military man; it emphasizes acting honorably—“an ancient vein of honor in the young Kassad’s soul secretly resonated to the thought of a samurai class whose life and work revolved around duty, self-respect, and the ultimate value of one’s word” (131). During the bloody battle in South Bressia, however, he had to set aside the code and rely more on his background of street-fighting. It earned him the name “The Butcher of South Bressia” (13). This was a double-edged sword: He was a victor honored by Meina Gladstone and other sworn enemies of the Ousters, but a war criminal who those horrified by his tactics could court-martial.

His encounters with Moneta show that he is a man capable of getting swept up in emotion and lust, but who also maintained pristine habits outside of their encounters. He never pursued any other romantic or sexual conquests. The novel suggests that some of his feeling for Moneta stemmed from a sense that she understood and appreciated his warrior side and also showed expertise in fighting. Only her allegiance to the Shrike—possibly being a Shrike herself—and her urging him to be part of a war that could kill billions makes him recall the New Bushido code. He turns against war, but very little is said about that aspect of his life, perhaps because he was more effective fighting in a war than against one.

Martin Silenus is “impish,” ready to make ribald jokes and slicing commentary. His face is described:

As mobile and expressive as an Earth primate’s. His voice was a loud, profane rasp. There was something […] almost pleasantly demonic about Martin Silenus, with his ruddy cheeks, broad mouth, pitched eyebrows, sharp ears, and constantly moving hands sporting fingers long enough to serve a concert pianist. Or a strangler (14).

This description highlights the poet’s ability to entertain, as well as to provoke, annoy, or verbally excoriate. He has a range of experience, from being the pampered son of an Old Earth family, a hard laborer in slum canals, and a bioengineered satyr bringing decadence to Hyperion; thus, he has seen many situations and types of people in life. To the annoyance of some of the pilgrims, he often offers this perspective in verse; it is sometimes his own but often the verse of long-dead poets.

What bothers the other pilgrims most, aside from Silenus’s leering and heavy drinking, is his flippant attitude. However, his glibness hides a deep sensitivity to the human plight. Even his decision to devote himself to poetry springs out of a sense that someone needed to capture what was lost: “[…] the dying beauty all about breathed its last breath in me and commanded that I be doomed to play with words the rest of my days, as if in expiation for our race’s thoughtless slaughter of its crib world” (182).

Though a heavy drinker, Silenus does not actually want to dull his experience of the world and of life in general. This is suggested through his relationship with the drug Flashback. His wife becomes increasingly inaccessible to him while she uses it, and his own Flashback experience of finding his mother essentially dead to the world while using it horrified him. He wants to live and explore life, from the gritty to the sublime, and one cannot do that if simulations and other untruths dominate.