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Tales Of Horror and the Supernatural
by Arthur Machen
(Tartarus Press, $40.00, 2002.)
A storyteller of impressive imaginative power, startling authenticity,
and undeniable originality, Arthur Machen brought studied discipline
and a deep understanding of the uncanny to the craft of fiction, an
artistic medium through which he strived to communicate the terror and
joy of a world comprised of more than the five senses, the petty dictates
of logic, or the suppressing nature of organized religion through which
most men defined their realities; including that of the Christian Church,
which Machen belonged to while acknowledging its lack of ability to
supply modern citizens with the tools or desire to experience the infinite,
which the Welsh author felt waited instinctively beneath and/or
within the very fabric (or crust) of seemingly commonplace geographies
of flesh and spirit, knowledge and feeling.
An artist in both the interpretation and writing of fiction, Machen's
spiritual sentiments, personal aspirations, and work achieved a rare
state of interwoven harmony, resulting in near perfect weddings of content
and form, structure and the powerful ideas beneath which, much like
religious experience, were admittedly little more than symbolic forms
signifying even greater unexplainable mysteries. This sense of the undiscoverable
and the unclassifiable -- a mythical/mystical resonance of the eternal
beauty and magical possibility belonging to life yet disguised beneath
(or hidden within) exterior realties created and sustained by a species
unwilling and perhaps unable to comprehend the face of infinity, was
a constant theme running through Machen's fictions, and, coupled with
his daringly unique critical stance towards writing as an art form,
as well as his position as a decadent author in a time when Victorian
sentiments still held sway, made him one of the most interesting, significant,
and controversial (if oft overlooked) authors of the 19th century.
Tales Of Horror And The Supernatural, a generously thick collection
of the author's arguably best short macabre fiction is a celebration
of primal mysteries and complex human conflicts between psyche and soul
which serves as a fine, fitting tribute to a man whose life was as paradoxical
and mystifying as much of his fictions. Featuring such seminal, influential
weird classics as "The Great God Pan," "The Inmost Light," "The Shining
Pyramid," and "Novel Of The Black Seal," including selections from The
Three Imposters as well as future volumes of short expression (which
many critics feel were not up to his earlier efforts) Tartarus's presentation
of Machen's influential nightmares offers both a gift and a challenge
to an age where the common crux of mankind, still as hungry for dark
miracles and the salvation offered in unfettered imagination as they
were in Machen's era, is also just as unwilling to entertain possibilities
of experience, feeling, and spirit outside the prosaic doctrines taught
from the church pupil or within the recycled pages of the daily newspapers.
Math and science, the limiting scope of so-called logic and the importance
of symbol in art and everyday living are themes that consistently inform
Machen's writing. To appreciate the author's creative power and far-reaching
poetry one must be willing to first accept the possibility that life
is a labyrinthian puzzle-play of varied shades and dimensions rather
than the one-sided, black and white moral and/or physical construct
that many a conservative politician and media institution has long claimed.
Luckily, Machen's level of craft and infectious enthusiasm snares even
casual readers into subversive, shadowy border-lands of occult possibility,
making the impossible seem probable and the horrid appear quite attractive
if dangerous. One thing Machen never does is neglect to ask the reader
... why? The ability to frame within his entertainments questions
of ethics and perception (the very primer for reality) are captured
in several of the stories that comprise Tales Of Horror And The Supernatural,
at once both a textbook of esoteric thought, a map of wonder, and a
how-to manual of arousing terror and repulsion by first arousing the
harder-to-attain emotion of awe.
Borderlands are ever present in Machen's cannon of weird tales, playing
no less a role in the meaning and, at times, the purpose of his
narrative puzzles than do the flesh-and-blood characters in accounts
of lost civilizations, realities beyond realities, supernaturalism
embedded within the very fabric of so-called realistic experience, and
human minds in turmoil with themselves and appearances rarely
as well behaved or as fixed as the author's numerous artists and professors,
professionals and tradesman at first believe, and which often strike
the internal spark of altered perception in narratives encouraging transformations
of thought, emotion, and flesh. These "borderland experiences" between
the real and surreal, mind and body are one key towards better appreciating
Machen's craft, with philosophies and archaic symbols representing mysteries
more profane than any clergyman could hope to approach.
Society, an organism which is often characterized by sheep-like dependence
on the infallibility of mere appearances, is regularly depicted as a
harmful, ineffectual mechanism in such tales as "Novel Of The White
Powder" and "The Great God Pan." The average man of Machen's Victorian-tainted
society, much like the up-down/black-white citizenry of contemporary
life was content to look upon a symbol, say a crucifix or an altar,
and see only its shape -- its physical form and how it might best serve
a practical purpose. This one-sided, limited method of observing the
world and humanity's place within it are carefully interwoven in Machen's
fictions, which are as much about discovery as resulting transformation.
Students and academics, poor men or those of great means -- all, for
the most part, are content to simply perceive and enjoy an outward shell
or semblance of life by simplistic, unquestioning adherence to an outward
appearance of shapes and rules, customs and brightly-lit pathways. It
is interesting to note that the most adventurous of Machen's characters,
the most intelligent personas are the artists and authors, the thinkers
and philosophers -- men neither with their feet firmly on the ground
nor with their heads fully in the clouds, but, rather, men who are explorers,
traveling heroes of old in new skins who are able to meet the demands
of everyday survival while willing to consider the possibilities of
alternative modes of logic and experience. The professor in "The Novel
Of The Black Seal," the author in "Novel Of The White Powder," and the
artists in The Three Imposters are all creatively inclined characters
not only able to hear the song of outward spheres but, indeed, are each
eager to escape their limited senses and psychological constraints,
hungry for the pleasures of revelation to be had in their respective
spiritual and mental journeys (most often accompanied by physical dangers).
The very concept of a journey immediately leads one to contemplate
a proposed destination. The road has an end, the map leads to something
of value ... or does it? Better yet, must it? Not in Machen's fascinating
universe of introspection, subversion, and paradox. To Machen, and particularly
so in his supernatural fiction, the journey towards the sublime and
unearthly, the internal or external movement towards inexplicable nightmares
or truths too horrible to behold were the whole and sum of the narrative
experience. Just as the author thought sacred mysteries of being and
spirit were beyond final comprehension, so to are the gods, monsters,
deities and little people of his modern experiments in myth-making.
The process of wonder and imagination, the labor of intellectual and/or
physical change leads to transformation but never, ever to a decisive
answer or final solution. This as both a literary concept and philosophy
was of course impossible for a majority of Machen's contemporaries and
fellows to understand yet alone embrace, leading to the author's status
as an outsider in the rather fickle world of letters.
Perhaps one of the greatest stigmata attached to the author's writing
was critics' placement of him alongside the decadents for his shocking
treatment of sexuality and unapologetic depictions of pagan-like instincts
in the socially and imaginatively rigid moral temperamental structure
of the Victorian mind. By 1891, Machen had proved that he could write
popular fiction. Receiving a small degree of temporary financial independence
after his father's death, Machen moved into the country with his first
wife, Amy. It was there that he wrote "The Great God Pan," his first
major tale of destructive pagan impulses, nature symbolism, and "hidden"
forces in what would become a series of stories and, later, novels and
autobiographies all touching upon the twisted, threatening process of
attempting to better understand and celebrate the unknown, mystical
aspects of existence situated somewhere beyond the recognizable world.
First published in the influential Keynote series, Machen's
"The Great God Pan" was and remains a shocker of implied sexual excess,
the paradoxical freedom and dangers of animalistic impulses, the emotional
effects of horror, and humankind's frailty in the yawning possibility
of the unknown. The tale's unfettered themes of sensuality and spiritual/sensual
terror stretched the literary freedoms of expression and outraged the
puritanical temperament. Regardless, "The Great God Pan" has stood the
test of time, its structural build-up of letters, documents, and confessions
in part influencing H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call Of Cthulu." More importantly,
its initial scandalous success saw Machen placed into the company of
the Decadent writers of the 19th century. A group of authors and artists
who practiced a form of aestheticism whose primary impulse had initially
came from France, the Decadents, rebelling against the false order and
plastic-coated morals of a society and life which in their eyes could
only devolve, sought pleasure and debauchery largely for its own sake.
While Machen's fiction had at its core a seed of sustaining belief and
purpose more complex than a majority of those authors whose camp he
had been placed in, including the infamous playwright Oscar Wilde, the
excess of "Pan," the loosely connected novel The Three Imposters
(an ode of sorts to Machen's literary hero, Robert Louis Stevenson),
and later, such tales as "The White People" placed him amongst their
ranks in terms of brazen imagery and a decidedly non-conformist attitude.
While Machen would move to non-fiction and a gentler form of mysticism
in The House Of Souls and in The Hill Of Dreams,
a largely autobiographical work, the mellowness of later years couldn't
erase his belief in the profound, nor his ability to discover awe in
words that, much like their fictional counterparts of hill and glen
and city, were but mere symbols for experiences beyond and within
the puzzle of the secret fabric of the world -- an occult, mystic geography
that Tales Of Horror and The Supernatural offers to a new generation
of readers.
Review by William P Simmons.
Elsewhere in infinity plus:
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