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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/35515-8.txt b/35515-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fcbb92d --- /dev/null +++ b/35515-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1014 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Arthur Machen, by Vincent Starrett + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Arthur Machen + A Novelist of Ecstasy and Sin + + +Author: Vincent Starrett + + + +Release Date: March 7, 2011 [eBook #35515] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARTHUR MACHEN*** + + +E-text prepared by Marc D'Hooghe (http://www.freeliterature.org) from page +images generously made available by Internet Archive +(http://www.archive.org) + + + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive. See + http://www.archive.org/details/arthurmachennove00star + + + + + +ARTHUR MACHEN + +A Novelist of Ecstasy and Sin + +by + +VINCENT STARRETT + +With Two Uncollected Poems by + +ARTHUR MACHEN + + + + + + + +Chicago +Walter M. Hill +1918 + + + + +NOTE + + +With singular unanimity critics for thirty years have slighted the work +of Arthur Machen. A line suffices for him in Holbrook Jackson's "The +Eighteen Nineties," and Mr. Blaikie-Murdoch ignores him completely in +"The Renaissance of the Nineties"; yet those are the standard works on +the period to which, chronologically, at least, Machen belongs. Mr. +Turquet-Milnes, with greater appreciation, gives him a half-chapter in +his scholarly work, "The Influence of Baudelaire," but even that is made +up largely of quotations from "The Hill of Dreams," to prove Machen a +descendent of Baudelaire--an error to which I subscribed until Machen +himself disillusioned me, although the assertion is still partially +true. + +Because, in my opinion, Arthur Machen is the outstanding artist of his +time, and one of the great masters of all time, I wrote the following +paper, which first appeared in Reedy's _Mirror_ for October 5, 1917. +That issue is not now obtainable, and, as calls for it continue to come +to me and to the publisher, I find ground for a belief that Machen may, +at length, be coming into his own, a tardy phenomenon which I am happy +to hasten so far as it lies within my power. Mr. Walter M. Hill shares +this feeling and this brochure is the result. + +I am indebted to Mr. William Marion Reedy for permission to reprint +those parts of the article which appeared in his journal. + +V.S. + + + + +ARTHUR MACHEN + + +Some thirty odd years ago a young man of twenty-two, the son of a Welsh +clergyman, fresh from school and with his head full of a curiously +occult mediaevalism, privately acquired from yellowed palimpsests and +dog-eared volumes of black letter, wrote a classic. More, he had it +published. Only one review copy was sent out; that was to _Le Livre_, of +Paris. It fell into the hands of Octave Uzanne, who instantly ordered +Rabelais and Boccaccio to "shove over" on the immortal seats and make +room by their side for the author. The book was "The Chronicle of +Clemendy"; the author, Arthur Machen. + +Three years ago, about, not long after the great war first shook the +world, a London evening newspaper published inconspicuously a purely +fictional account of a supposed incident of the British retreat from +Mons. It described the miraculous intervention of the English archers of +Agincourt at a time when the British were sore pressed by the German +hordes. Immediately, churchmen, spiritualists, and a host of others, +seized upon it as an authentic record and the miracle as an omen. In the +hysteria that followed, Arthur Machen, its author, found himself a +talked-of man, because he wrote to the papers denying that the narrative +was factual. Later, when his little volume, "The Bowmen and Other +Legends of the War," appeared in print, it met with an extraordinary and +rather impertinent success. + +But what had Machen been doing all those long years between 1885 and +1914? + +In a day of haphazard fiction and rodomontade criticism, the advent of a +master workman is likely to be unheralded, if, indeed, he is fortunate +enough to find a publisher to put him between covers. Mr. Machen is not +a newcomer, however, as we have seen; no immediate success with a "best +seller" furnishes an incentive for a complimentary notice. He is an +unknown, in spite of "Clemendy," in spite of "The Bowmen," in spite of +everything. For thirty years he has been writing English prose, a period +ample for the making of a dozen reputations of the ordinary kind, and in +that time he has produced just ten books. In thirty years Harold +Bindloss and Rex Beach will have written one-hundred-and-ten books and +sold the moving picture rights of them all. + +Of course, it is exactly because he does not write books of the ordinary +kind that Arthur Machen's reputation as a writer was not made long ago. +His apotheosis will begin after his death. The insectial fame of the +"popular" novelist is immediate; it is born at dawn and dies at sunset. +The enduring fame of the artist too often is born at sunset, but it is +immortal. + +More than Hawthorne or Tolstoy, Machen is a novelist of the soul. He +writes of a strange borderland, lying somewhere between Dreams and +Death, peopled with shades, beings, spirits, ghosts, men, women, +souls--what shall we call them?--the very notion of whom stops vaguely +just short of thought. He writes of the life Satyr-ic. For him Pan is +not dead; his votaries still whirl through woodland windings to the mad +pipe that was Syrinx, and carouse fiercely in enchanted forest grottoes +(hidden somewhere, perhaps, in the fourth dimension!). His meddling with +the crucibles of science is appalling in its daring, its magnificence, +and its horror. Even the greater works of fictional psychology--"Dr. +Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," if you like--shrink before his astounding +inferences and suggestions. + +It is his theory that the fearful and shocking rites of the Bacchic +cultus survive in this disillusioned age; that Panic lechery and +wickedness did not cease with the Agony, as Mrs. Browning and others +would have us believe. + +Of Hawthorne, Arthur Symons wrote: "He is haunted by what is obscure, +dangerous, and on the confines of good and evil." Machen crosses those +perilous frontiers. He all but lifts the veil; himself, indeed, passes +beyond it. But the curtain drops behind him and we, hesitating to +follow, see only dimly the phantasmagoria beyond; the ecstasies of vague +shapes with a shining about them, on the one hand; on the other the +writhings of animate gargoyles. And we experience, I think, a distinct +sense of gratitude toward this terrible guide for that we are permitted +no closer view of the mysteries that seem to him so clear. + +We glimpse his secrets in transfiguring flashes from afar, as Launcelot +viewed the San Graal, and, like that tarnished knight, we quest vainly a +tangible solution, half in apprehension, always in glamour. But it is +like Galahad we must seek the eternal mysteries that obsess Arthur +Machen. There is no solution but in absolution, for it is the mysteries +of life and death of which he writes, and of life-in-death and +death-in-life. This with particular reference to Machen's two most +important books, "The House of Souls" and "The Hill of Dreams," in which +he reaches his greatest stature as a novelist of the soul. + +There are those who will call him a novelist of Sin, quibbling about a +definition. With these I have no quarrel; the characterizations are +synonymous. His books exhale all evil and all corruption; yet they are +as pure as the fabled waters of that crystal spring De Leon sought. They +are pervaded by an ever-present, intoxicating sense of sin, ravishingly +beautiful, furiously Pagan, frantically lovely; but Machen is a finer +and truer mystic than the two-penny occultists who guide modern +spiritualistic thought. If we are to subscribe to his curious +philosophy, to be discussed later, we must believe that there is no +paradox in this. + +But something of what we are getting at is explained in his own pages, +in this opening paragraph from his story, "The White People," in "The +House of Souls": "'Sorcery and sanctity,' said Ambrose, 'these are the +only realities. Each is an ecstasy, a withdrawal from the common life.'" +And, a little later, in this: "'There is something profoundly unnatural +about sin ... the essence of which really is in the taking of heaven by +storm.'" + +One gathers from a general vagueness on the subject that sin is not +popular in these times. There are, of course, new sins and advanced sins +and higher sins, all of which are intensely interesting. The chief +puzzle to the lay mind is why they should bear these names, since they +are usually neither new, advanced and high, nor particularly sinful. I +am speaking of sin as an offense against the nature of things, and of +evil in the soul, which has very little to do with the sins of the +statute book. Sin, according to the same Ambrose I have quoted, is +conceivable in the talking of animals. If a chair should walk across a +room, that would be sinful, or if a tree sat down with us to afternoon +tea. The savage who worships a conjurer is a far finer moralist than +the civilise who suspects him--and I use the name moralist for one who +has an appreciation of sin. + +This is not the sin of the legal code. _Ambrose_ I conceive to be Arthur +Machen. There are only two realities; sorcery and sanctity--sin and +sainthood--and each is an ecstasy. Arthur Machen's is the former. + +Perhaps his most remarkable story--certainly I think his most terrible +story, is "The Great God Pan," at first published separately with "The +Inmost Light"; now occurring in "The House of Souls." It is the story of +an experiment upon a girl, as a result of which, for a moment, she is +permitted a sight of the Great God, beyond the veil, with shocking +consequences. Yet it is told with exquisite reticence and grace, and +with a plausibility that is as extraordinary as it is immoral. Here is +the conclusion of that story: + + "What I said Mary would see, she saw, but I forgot that no human + eyes could look on such a vision with impunity. And I forgot, as I + have just said, that when the house of life is thus thrown open, + there may enter in that for which we have no name, and human flesh + may become the veil of a horror one dare not express.... The + blackened face, the hideous form upon the bed, changing and melting + before your eyes from woman to man, from man to beast, and from + beast to worse than beast, all the strange horror that you + witnessed, surprises me but little. What you say the doctor you + sent for saw and shuddered at, I noticed long ago; I knew what I + had done the moment the child was born, and when it was five years + old I surprised it, not once or twice, but several times, with a + playmate, you may guess of what kind.... And now Helen is with her + companions." + +There is the very quintessence of horror in the unutterable suggestion +of such passages. As for "The Hill of Dreams," I have found its reading +one of the most desolate and appalling experiences in literature. +Reading it, himself, years after publication, its author decided that it +was a "depressing book." That is undoubtedly true, but spiritually as +well as technically it marks to date the topmost pinnacle of his +tormented genius. It reaches heights so rarefied that breathing +literally becomes painful. To the casual reader this sounds absurd; +hyperbolical if not hypocritical rant; but in a day when a majority of +critics find it difficult to restrain themselves in speaking of Harold +Bell Wright, and place Jeffery Farnol beside Fielding and Thackeray, one +cannot go far wrong in indulging a few enthusiasms for so genuine an +artist as Arthur Machen. + +Of the reviewers into whose hands fell this remarkable book, in the year +of its publication, 1907, only one appears to have valued it at its real +worth--the editor of _The Academy_, who, carried away by the tale and +its telling, turned out a bit of critical prose which might have been +lifted from the book, itself. "There is something sinister in the beauty +of Mr. Machen's book," he wrote. "It is like some strangely shaped +orchid, the colour of which is fierce and terrible, and its perfume is +haunting to suffocation by reason of its intolerable sweetness. The +cruelty of the book is more savage than any of the cruelty which the +book describes. Lucian shuddered at the boys who were deliberately +hanging an ungainly puppy; he had thrashed the little ruffian who +kicked the sick cat, before he wrapped himself away from the contact of +such infamy in the shelter of his own imaginings. For in 'The Hill of +Dreams' you seem to be shown a lovely, sensitive boy who has fashioned +himself a white palace of beauty in his own mind. He has had time only +to realize its full beauty when disease lays its cold touch upon him, +and gathers him into her grasp, until he lies decaying and horrible, +seeing his own decay and seeing that his decay makes the white palace +foul. The boys did not chant songs as they looped the string round the +neck of the uncouth puppy. Mr. Machen fashions prose out of the +writhings of Lucian, who is dear to him: and his prose has the rhythmic +beat of some dreadful Oriental instrument, insistent, monotonous, +haunting; and still the soft tone of one careful flute sounds on, and +keeps the nerves alive to the slow and growing pain of the rhythmic +beat. Lucian in ecstacy of worship for the young girl whose lips have +given him a new life, pressed his body against sharp thorns until the +white flesh of his body was red with drops of blood. That, too, is the +spirit of the book. It is like some dreadful liturgy of self-inflicted +pain, set to measured music: and the cadence of that music becomes +intolerable by its suave phrasing and perfect modulation. The last long +chapter with its recurring themes is a masterpiece of prose, and in its +way unique." + +After that, there would seem to be no need for further comment on "The +Hill of Dreams." But there is--there is! + +Quite as important as what Mr. Machen says is his manner of saying it. +He possesses an English prose style which in its mystical suggestion and +beauty is unlike any other I have encountered. There is ecstacy in his +pages. Joris-Karl Huysmans in a really good translation suggests Machen +better, perhaps, than another; both are debtors to Baudelaire.[1] + +The "ecstasy" one finds in Machen's work (of which more anon) is due in +no small degree to his beautiful English "style"--an abominable word. +But Machen is no mere word-juggler. His vocabulary, while astonishing +and extensive, is not affectedly so. Yet his sentences move to sonorous, +half-submerged rhythms, swooning with pagan color and redolent of +sacerdotal incense. What is the secret of this graceful English method? +It is this: he achieves his striking results and effects through his +noteworthy gift of selection and arrangement. I had reached this +conclusion, I think, before I encountered a passage from "The Hill of +Dreams," which clinched it: + + "Language, he understood, was chiefly important for the beauty of + its sounds, by its possession of words resonant, glorious to the + ear, by its capacity, when exquisitely arranged, of suggesting + wonderful and indefinable impressions, perhaps more ravishing and + further removed from the domain of strict thought than the + impressions excited by music itself. Here lay hidden the secret of + suggestion, the art of causing sensation by the use of words." + +Was it ever better expressed? He defines his method and exhibits its +results at the same time. And dipping almost at random into the same +volume, here is a further example of the method: + + "Slowly and timidly he began to untie his boots, fumbling with the + laces, and glancing all the while on every side at the ugly, + misshapen trees that hedged the lawn. Not a branch was straight, + not one was free, but all were interlaced and grew one about + another; and just above ground, where the cankered stems joined the + protuberant roots, there were forms that imitated the human shape, + and faces and twining limbs that amazed him. Green mosses were + hair, and tresses were stark in grey lichen; a twisted root swelled + into a limb; in the hollows of the rooted bark he saw the masks of + men.... As he gazed across the turf and into the thicket, the + sunshine seemed really to become green, and the contrast between + the bright glow poured on the lawn and the black shadows of the + brake made an odd flickering light in which all the grotesque + postures of stem and root began to stir; the wood was alive. The + turf beneath him heaved and sunk as with the deep swell of the + sea...." + +And: + + "He could imagine a man who was able to live on one sense while he + pleased; to whom, for example, every impression of touch, taste, + hearing, or seeing should be translated into odor; who at the + desired kiss should be ravished with the scent of dark violets, to + whom music should be the perfume of a rose garden at dawn." + +This is not prose at all, but poetry, and poetry of a high order. And it +is from such beautiful manipulation of words, phrases, and rhythms that +Machen attains his most clairvoyant and arresting effects in the realms +of horror, dread, and terror; from the strange gesturings of trees, the +glow of furnace-like clouds, the somber beauty of brooding fields, and +valleys all too still, the mystery of lovely women, and all the terror +of life and nature seen with the understanding eye. + +So much for Arthur Machen as a novelist. It is a fascinating subject, +but it is also an extensive one, and the curious, tenuous quality of his +work may lead one into indiscretions. + + * * * * * + +The peculiar philosophy of Arthur Machen is set down in "Hieroglyphics" +and in "Dr. Stiggins: His Views and Principles." The first chapter of +the latter work is a scathing satire on certain foibles and +idiosyncracies of the American people--such as lynching, vote-buying, +and food-adulteration--but as it is, on the whole, a polemical volume +which, by the nature of the subjects it treats, can have less permanent +interest than the author's other work, it may be put to one side; +although as a specimen of Machen's impeccable prose it must not be +ignored. + +In "Hieroglyphics" he returns to those ecstasies mentioned in "The White +People" and gives us further definitions. The word ecstasy is merely a +symbol; it has many synonyms. It means rapture, adoration, a withdrawal +from common life, the other things. "Who can furnish a precise +definition of the indefinable? They (the 'other things') are sometimes +in the song of a bird, sometimes in the whirl of a London street, +sometimes hidden under a great, lonely hill. Some of us seek them with +most hope and the fullest assurance in the sacring of the mass, others +receive tidings through the sound of music, in the color of a picture, +in the shining form of a statue, in the meditation of eternal truth." + +"Hieroglyphics" is Arthur Machen's theory of literature, brilliantly +exposited by that "cyclical mode of discoursing" that was affected by +Coleridge. In it he promulgates the admirable doctrine that fine +literature must be, in effect, an allegory and not the careful history +of particular persons. He seeks a mark of division which is to separate +fine literature from mere literature, and finds the solution in the one +word ecstasy (or, if you prefer, beauty, wonder, awe, mystery, sense of +the unknown, desire for the unknown), with this conclusion: "If ecstasy +be present, then I say there is fine literature, if it be absent, then, +in spite of all the cleverness, all the talents, all the workmanship and +observation and dexterity you may show me, then, I think, we have a +product (possibly a very interesting one) which is not fine literature." + +Following this reasoning, by an astonishing sequence of arguments, he +proceeds to the bold experiment of proving "Pickwick" possessed of +ecstasy, and "Vanity Fair" lacking it. The case is an extreme one, he +admits, deliberately chosen to expound his theory to the _n_th. degree. +The analytical key to the test is found in the differentiation between +art and artifice, a nice problem in such extreme instances as Poe's +"Dupin" stories and Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," as Mr. Machen +points out. By this ingenious method the "Odyssey," "Oedipus," "Morte +D'Arthur," "Kubla Khan," "Don Quixote," and "Rabelais" immediately are +proven fine literature; a host of other esteemed works merely, if you +like, good literature. + +"Pantagruel" by a more delicate application of the test becomes a finer +work than "Don Quixote," and in the exposition of this dictum we come +upon one of the mountain peaks of Machen's amazing philosophy. + +He begins the discussion with a jest about the enormous capacity for +strong drink exhibited by _Mr. Pickwick_ and his friends, and reminds us +that it was the god of wine in whose honor Sophocles wrote his dramas +and choral songs, who was worshipped and invoked at the Dionysiaca; and +that all the drama arose from the celebration of the Bacchic mysteries. +He goes on to the "Gargantua" and "Pantagruel," which reek of wine as +Dickens does of brandy and water. + +The Rabelaisian history begins: "_Grandgousier estoit bon raillard en +son temps, aimant à boire net_," and ends with the Oracle of the Holy +Bottle, with the word "_Trinch ... un mot panomphée, celebré et entendu +de toutes nations, et nous signifie, beuvez_." "And I refer you," +continues Machen, "to the allocution of Bacbuc, the priestess of the +Bottle, at large. 'By wine,' she says, 'is man made divine,' and I may +say that if you have not got the key to these Rabelaisian riddles, much +of the value--the highest value--of the book is lost to you." + +Seeking the meaning of this Bacchic cultus, this apparent glorification +of drunkenness in all lands and in all times, from Ancient Greece +through Renascent France to Victorian England, by peoples and persons +not themselves given to excess, he finds it again in the word ecstasy. + + "We are to conclude that both the ancient people and the modern + writers recognized ecstasy as the supreme gift and state of man, + and that they chose the Vine and the juice of the Vine, as the most + beautiful and significant symbol of that Power which withdraws a + man from the common life and the common consciousness, and taking + him from the dust of earth, sets him in high places, in the + eternal world of ideas ... Let us never forget that the essence of + the book ('Pantagruel') is in its splendid celebration of ecstasy, + under the figure of the Vine." + +At this point Mr. Machen places the "key" in our hands and declines +further to reveal his secrets. In _Mr. Pickwick's_ overdose of milk +punch we are to find, ultimately, "a clue to the labyrinth of mystic +theology." + +By his own test we are enabled to place Arthur Machen's greatest works +on the shelf with "Don Quixote" and "Pantagruel"; by his own test we +find the ecstasy of which he speaks in his own pages, under the symbol +of the Vine, and under figures even more beautiful and terrible. For +minor consideration he finds in Rabelais another symbolism of ecstasy: + + "The shape of gauloiserie, of gross, exuberant gaiety, expressing + itself by outrageous tales, outrageous words, by a very cataract of + obscenity, if you please, if only you will notice how the obscenity + of Rabelais transcends the obscenity of common life; his grossness + is poured out in a sort of mad torrent, in a frenzy, a very passion + of the unspeakable." + +In Cervantes he finds the greater deftness, the finer artifice, but he +believes the conception of Rabelais the higher because it is the more +remote. _Pantagruel's_ "more than frankness, its ebullition of grossness +... is either the merest lunacy, or else it is sublime." And the +paragraph that succeeds this one in the book, perhaps it is part of the +same paragraph, sums up this astonishing philosophy with a conclusion +calculated to shock the Puritanic. Thus: + + "Don't you perceive that when a certain depth has been passed you + begin to ascend into the heights? The Persian poet expresses the + most transcendental secrets of the Divine Love by the grossest + phrases of the carnal love; so Rabelais soars above the common + life, above the streets and the gutter, by going far lower than the + streets and the gutter: he brings before you the highest by + positing that which is lower than the lowest, and if you have the + prepared, initiated mind, a Rabelaisian 'list' is the best preface + to the angelic song. (!) All this may strike you as extreme + paradox, but it has the disadvantage of being true, and perhaps you + may assure yourself of its truth by recollecting the converse + proposition--that it is when one is absorbed in the highest + emotions that the most degrading images will intrude themselves." + +And so on.... The sense of the futility almost of attempting to explain +Machen becomes more pronounced as I progress. You will have to read him. +You will find his books (if you are fortunate) in a murky corner of some +obscure second-hand bookshop. + +Arthur Machen was born in Wales in 1863. He is married and has two +children. That is an astonishing thought, after reading "The Inmost +Light." It is surprising indeed to learn that he was _born_. He is High +Church, "with no particular respect for the Archbishop of Canterbury," +and necessarily subconsciously Catholic, as must be all those "lonely, +awful souls" who write ecstasy across the world. He hates puritanism +with a sturdier hatred than inspires Chesterton; for a brilliant +exposition of this aversion I commend readers to his mocking +introduction to "The House of Souls." That work, "The Hill of Dreams," +and "Hieroglyphics" were written between 1890 and 1900, after which +their author turned strolling player and alternated for a time between +the smartest theatres in London and the shabbiest music halls in +London's East End. For the last six years or so he has been a +descriptive writer on the London _Evening News_. + +His works not before mentioned comprise a translation (the best) +of the "Heptameron"; "Fantastic Tales," a collection of mediaeval +whimsies, partly translated and partly original and altogether +Rabelaisian and delightful; "The Terror," a "shilling shocker" (his own +characterization), but a finer work withal than most of the "literature" +of the day, and "The Great Return," an extraordinary short tale which +may find place some day in another such collection as "The House of +Souls." + +I have mentioned "The Chronicle of Clemendy," calling it a classic, and +something further should be said about that astonishing book. It is the +Welsh "Heptameron," a chronicle of amorous intrigue, joyous drunkenness, +and knightly endeavor second to none in the brief muster of the world's +greatest classics. In it there is the veritable flavour of mediaeval +record. Somewhat less outspoken than Balzac in his "Droll Stories," and +less verbose than Boccaccio, Machen proves himself the peer of either in +gay, irresponsible, diverting, unflagging invention, while his diction +is lovelier than that of any of his forerunners, including the nameless +authors of those rich Arabian tapestries which were the parent tales of +all mediaeval and modern facetiae. + +The day is coming when a number of serious charges will be laid against +us who live in this generation, and some severe questions asked, and the +fact that we will be dead, most of us, when the future fires its +broadside, has nothing at all to do with the case. + +We are going to be asked, _post-mortem_, why we allowed Ambrose Bierce +to vanish from our midst, unnoticed and unsought, after ignoring him +shamefully throughout his career; why Stephen Crane, after a few +flamboyant reviews, was so quickly forgotten at death; why Richard +Middleton was permitted to swallow his poison at Brussels; why W.C. +Morrow and Walter Blackburn Harte were in our day known only to the +initiated, discriminating few; their fine, golden books merely rare +"items" for the collector. Among other things, posterity is going to +demand of us why, when the opportunity was ours, we did not open our +hearts to Arthur Machen and name him among the very great. + + +[Footnote 1: I have let this last assertion stand as part of the original +article, although Mr. Machen writes me that I am in error. "I never read +a line of Baudelaire," he says, "but I have read deeply in Poe, who, I +believe, derives largely from Baudelaire." Of course, it is the other +way 'round, Baudelaire derives from Poe, but my own assumption is +rendered clear.--V.S.] + + + * * * * * + + + THE REMEMBRANCE OF THE BARD + + + In the darkness of old age let not my memory + fail: + Let me not forget to celebrate the beloved land + of Gwent. + If they imprison me in a deep place, in a house + of pestilence, + Still shall I be free, remembering the sunshine + upon Mynydd Maen. + There have I listened to the song of the lark, + my soul has ascended with the song of the + little bird: + The great white clouds were the ships of my + spirit, sailing to the haven of the Almighty. + Equally to be held in honour is the site of the + Great Mountain. + Adorned with the gushing of many waters-- + sweet is the shade of its hazel thickets. + There a treasure is preserved which I will not + celebrate; + It is glorious and deeply concealed. + If Teils should return, if happiness were restored + to the Cymri, + Dewi and Dyfrig should serve his Mass; then a + great marvel would be made visible. + O blessed and miraculous work! then should my + bliss be as the joy of angels. + I had rather behold this offering than kiss the + twin lips of dark Gwenllian. + Dear my land of Gwent: _O quam dilecta tabernacula_. + Thy rivers are like precious golden streams of + Paradise, thy hills are as the Mount Syon. + Better a grave on Twyn Barlwm than a throne + in the palace of the Saxons at Caer-Ludd. + + ARTHUR MACHEN + + + + + THE PRAISE OF MYFANWY + + + O gift of the everlasting: + O wonderful and hidden mystery. + Many secrets have been vouchsafed to me, + I have been long acquainted with the wisdom + of the trees; + Ash and oak and elm have communicated to me + from my boyhood, + The birch and the hazel and all the trees of + the greenwood have not been dumb. + There is a caldron rimmed with pearls of whose + gifts I am not ignorant; + I will speak little of it; its treasures are known + to the Bards. + Many went on the search of Caer-Pedryfan, + Seven alone returned with Arthur, but my spirit + was present. + Seven are the apple-trees in a beautiful orchard; + I have eaten of their fruit which is not bestowed + on Saxons. + I am not ignorant of a Head which is glorious + and venerable; + It made perpetual entertainment for the warriors, + their joys would have been immortal; + If they had not opened the door of the south, + they would have feasted for ever, + Listening to the song of the fairy Birds of + Rhiannon. + Let not anyone instruct me concerning the Glassy + Isle; + In the garments of the saints who returned from + it were rich odours of Paradise. + All this I knew, and yet my knowledge was + ignorance. + For one day, as I walked by Caer-rhiu in the + principal forest of Gwent, + I saw golden Myfanwy as she bathed in the + brook Tarogi, + Her hair flowed about her; Arthur's crown had + dissolved into a shining mist. + I gazed into her blue eyes as it were into twin + heavens, + All the parts of her body were adornments and + miracles. + O gift of the everlasting: + O wonderful and hidden mystery: + When I embraced Myfanwy a moment became + immortality. + + ARTHUR MACHEN + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARTHUR MACHEN*** + + +******* This file should be named 35515-8.txt or 35515-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/5/5/1/35515 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: Arthur Machen</p> +<p> A Novelist of Ecstasy and Sin</p> +<p>Author: Vincent Starrett</p> +<p>Release Date: March 7, 2011 [eBook #35515]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARTHUR MACHEN***</p> +<p> </p> +<h4>E-text prepared by Marc D'Hooghe<br /> + (<a href="http://www.freeliterature.org">http://www.freeliterature.org</a>)<br /> + from page images generously made available by<br /> + Internet Archive<br /> + (<a href="http://www.archive.org/">http://www.archive.org</a>)</h4> +<p> </p> +<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10"> + <tr> + <td valign="top"> + Note: + </td> + <td> + Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive. See + <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/arthurmachennove00star"> + http://www.archive.org/details/arthurmachennove00star</a> + </td> + </tr> +</table> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h1>ARTHUR MACHEN</h1> + +<h4>A NOVELIST OF ECSTASY AND SIN</h4> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>VINCENT STARRETT</h2> + + +<h4>WITH TWO UNCOLLECTED POEMS BY</h4> + +<h4>ARTHUR MACHEN</h4> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h5>CHICAGO</h5> + +<h5>WALTER M. HILL</h5> + +<h5>1918</h5> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>NOTE</h3> + + +<p>With singular unanimity critics for thirty years have slighted the work +of Arthur Machen. A line suffices for him in Holbrook Jackson's "The +Eighteen Nineties," and Mr. Blaikie-Murdoch ignores him completely in +"The Renaissance of the Nineties"; yet those are the standard works on +the period to which, chronologically, at least, Machen belongs. Mr. +Turquet-Milnes, with greater appreciation, gives him a half-chapter in +his scholarly work, "The Influence of Baudelaire," but even that is made +up largely of quotations from "The Hill of Dreams," to prove Machen a +descendent of Baudelaire—an error to which I subscribed until Machen +himself disillusioned me, although the assertion is still partially +true.</p> + +<p>Because, in my opinion, Arthur Machen is the outstanding artist of his +time, and one of the great masters of all time, I wrote the following +paper, which first appeared in Reedy's <i>Mirror</i> for October 5, 1917. +That issue is not now obtainable, and, as calls for it continue to come +to me and to the publisher, I find ground for a belief that Machen may, +at length, be coming into his own, a tardy phenomenon which I am happy +to hasten so far as it lies within my power. Mr. Walter M. Hill shares +this feeling and this brochure is the result.</p> + +<p>I am indebted to Mr. William Marion Reedy for permission to reprint +those parts of the article which appeared in his journal.</p> + +<p>V.S.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>ARTHUR MACHEN</h3> + + +<p>Some thirty odd years ago a young man of twenty-two, the son of a Welsh +clergyman, fresh from school and with his head full of a curiously +occult mediaevalism, privately acquired from yellowed palimpsests and +dog-eared volumes of black letter, wrote a classic. More, he had it +published. Only one review copy was sent out; that was to <i>Le Livre</i>, of +Paris. It fell into the hands of Octave Uzanne, who instantly ordered +Rabelais and Boccaccio to "shove over" on the immortal seats and make +room by their side for the author. The book was "The Chronicle of +Clemendy"; the author, Arthur Machen.</p> + +<p>Three years ago, about, not long after the great war first shook the +world, a London evening newspaper published inconspicuously a purely +fictional account of a supposed incident of the British retreat from +Mons. It described the miraculous intervention of the English archers of +Agincourt at a time when the British were sore pressed by the German +hordes. Immediately, churchmen, spiritualists, and a host of others, +seized upon it as an authentic record and the miracle as an omen. In the +hysteria that followed, Arthur Machen, its author, found himself a +talked-of man, because he wrote to the papers denying that the narrative +was factual. Later, when his little volume, "The Bowmen and Other +Legends of the War," appeared in print, it met with an extraordinary and +rather impertinent success.</p> + +<p>But what had Machen been doing all those long years between 1885 and +1914?</p> + +<p>In a day of haphazard fiction and rodomontade criticism, the advent of a +master workman is likely to be unheralded, if, indeed, he is fortunate +enough to find a publisher to put him between covers. Mr. Machen is not +a newcomer, however, as we have seen; no immediate success with a "best +seller" furnishes an incentive for a complimentary notice. He is an +unknown, in spite of "Clemendy," in spite of "The Bowmen," in spite of +everything. For thirty years he has been writing English prose, a period +ample for the making of a dozen reputations of the ordinary kind, and in +that time he has produced just ten books. In thirty years Harold +Bindloss and Rex Beach will have written one-hundred-and-ten books and +sold the moving picture rights of them all.</p> + +<p>Of course, it is exactly because he does not write books of the ordinary +kind that Arthur Machen's reputation as a writer was not made long ago. +His apotheosis will begin after his death. The insectial fame of the +"popular" novelist is immediate; it is born at dawn and dies at sunset. +The enduring fame of the artist too often is born at sunset, but it is +immortal.</p> + +<p>More than Hawthorne or Tolstoy, Machen is a novelist of the soul. He +writes of a strange borderland, lying somewhere between Dreams and +Death, peopled with shades, beings, spirits, ghosts, men, women, +souls—what shall we call them?—the very notion of whom stops vaguely +just short of thought. He writes of the life Satyr-ic. For him Pan is +not dead; his votaries still whirl through woodland windings to the mad +pipe that was Syrinx, and carouse fiercely in enchanted forest grottoes +(hidden somewhere, perhaps, in the fourth dimension!). His meddling with +the crucibles of science is appalling in its daring, its magnificence, +and its horror. Even the greater works of fictional psychology—"Dr. +Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," if you like—shrink before his astounding +inferences and suggestions.</p> + +<p>It is his theory that the fearful and shocking rites of the Bacchic +cultus survive in this disillusioned age; that Panic lechery and +wickedness did not cease with the Agony, as Mrs. Browning and others +would have us believe.</p> + +<p>Of Hawthorne, Arthur Symons wrote: "He is haunted by what is obscure, +dangerous, and on the confines of good and evil." Machen crosses those +perilous frontiers. He all but lifts the veil; himself, indeed, passes +beyond it. But the curtain drops behind him and we, hesitating to +follow, see only dimly the phantasmagoria beyond; the ecstasies of vague +shapes with a shining about them, on the one hand; on the other the +writhings of animate gargoyles. And we experience, I think, a distinct +sense of gratitude toward this terrible guide for that we are permitted +no closer view of the mysteries that seem to him so clear.</p> + +<p>We glimpse his secrets in transfiguring flashes from afar, as Launcelot +viewed the San Graal, and, like that tarnished knight, we quest vainly a +tangible solution, half in apprehension, always in glamour. But it is +like Galahad we must seek the eternal mysteries that obsess Arthur +Machen. There is no solution but in absolution, for it is the mysteries +of life and death of which he writes, and of life-in-death and +death-in-life. This with particular reference to Machen's two most +important books, "The House of Souls" and "The Hill of Dreams," in which +he reaches his greatest stature as a novelist of the soul.</p> + +<p>There are those who will call him a novelist of Sin, quibbling about a +definition. With these I have no quarrel; the characterizations are +synonymous. His books exhale all evil and all corruption; yet they are +as pure as the fabled waters of that crystal spring De Leon sought. They +are pervaded by an ever-present, intoxicating sense of sin, ravishingly +beautiful, furiously Pagan, frantically lovely; but Machen is a finer +and truer mystic than the two-penny occultists who guide modern +spiritualistic thought. If we are to subscribe to his curious +philosophy, to be discussed later, we must believe that there is no +paradox in this.</p> + +<p>But something of what we are getting at is explained in his own pages, +in this opening paragraph from his story, "The White People," in "The +House of Souls": "'Sorcery and sanctity,' said Ambrose, 'these are the +only realities. Each is an ecstasy, a withdrawal from the common life.'" +And, a little later, in this: "'There is something profoundly unnatural +about sin ... the essence of which really is in the taking of heaven by +storm.'"</p> + +<p>One gathers from a general vagueness on the subject that sin is not +popular in these times. There are, of course, new sins and advanced sins +and higher sins, all of which are intensely interesting. The chief +puzzle to the lay mind is why they should bear these names, since they +are usually neither new, advanced and high, nor particularly sinful. I +am speaking of sin as an offense against the nature of things, and of +evil in the soul, which has very little to do with the sins of the +statute book. Sin, according to the same Ambrose I have quoted, is +conceivable in the talking of animals. If a chair should walk across a +room, that would be sinful, or if a tree sat down with us to afternoon +tea. The savage who worships a conjurer is a far finer moralist than +the civilise who suspects him—and I use the name moralist for one who +has an appreciation of sin.</p> + +<p>This is not the sin of the legal code. <i>Ambrose</i> I conceive to be Arthur +Machen. There are only two realities; sorcery and sanctity—sin and +sainthood—and each is an ecstasy. Arthur Machen's is the former.</p> + +<p>Perhaps his most remarkable story—certainly I think his most terrible +story, is "The Great God Pan," at first published separately with "The +Inmost Light"; now occurring in "The House of Souls." It is the story of +an experiment upon a girl, as a result of which, for a moment, she is +permitted a sight of the Great God, beyond the veil, with shocking +consequences. Yet it is told with exquisite reticence and grace, and +with a plausibility that is as extraordinary as it is immoral. Here is +the conclusion of that story:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"What I said Mary would see, she saw, but I forgot that no human +eyes could look on such a vision with impunity. And I forgot, as I +have just said, that when the house of life is thus thrown open, +there may enter in that for which we have no name, and human flesh +may become the veil of a horror one dare not express.... The +blackened face, the hideous form upon the bed, changing and melting +before your eyes from woman to man, from man to beast, and from +beast to worse than beast, all the strange horror that you +witnessed, surprises me but little. What you say the doctor you +sent for saw and shuddered at, I noticed long ago; I knew what I +had done the moment the child was born, and when it was five years +old I surprised it, not once or twice, but several times, with a +playmate, you may guess of what kind.... And now Helen is with her +companions." </p></blockquote> + +<p>There is the very quintessence of horror in the unutterable suggestion +of such passages. As for "The Hill of Dreams," I have found its reading +one of the most desolate and appalling experiences in literature. +Reading it, himself, years after publication, its author decided that it +was a "depressing book." That is undoubtedly true, but spiritually as +well as technically it marks to date the topmost pinnacle of his +tormented genius. It reaches heights so rarefied that breathing +literally becomes painful. To the casual reader this sounds absurd; +hyperbolical if not hypocritical rant; but in a day when a majority of +critics find it difficult to restrain themselves in speaking of Harold +Bell Wright, and place Jeffery Farnol beside Fielding and Thackeray, one +cannot go far wrong in indulging a few enthusiasms for so genuine an +artist as Arthur Machen.</p> + +<p>Of the reviewers into whose hands fell this remarkable book, in the year +of its publication, 1907, only one appears to have valued it at its real +worth—the editor of <i>The Academy</i>, who, carried away by the tale and +its telling, turned out a bit of critical prose which might have been +lifted from the book, itself. "There is something sinister in the beauty +of Mr. Machen's book," he wrote. "It is like some strangely shaped +orchid, the colour of which is fierce and terrible, and its perfume is +haunting to suffocation by reason of its intolerable sweetness. The +cruelty of the book is more savage than any of the cruelty which the +book describes. Lucian shuddered at the boys who were deliberately +hanging an ungainly puppy; he had thrashed the little ruffian who +kicked the sick cat, before he wrapped himself away from the contact of +such infamy in the shelter of his own imaginings. For in 'The Hill of +Dreams' you seem to be shown a lovely, sensitive boy who has fashioned +himself a white palace of beauty in his own mind. He has had time only +to realize its full beauty when disease lays its cold touch upon him, +and gathers him into her grasp, until he lies decaying and horrible, +seeing his own decay and seeing that his decay makes the white palace +foul. The boys did not chant songs as they looped the string round the +neck of the uncouth puppy. Mr. Machen fashions prose out of the +writhings of Lucian, who is dear to him: and his prose has the rhythmic +beat of some dreadful Oriental instrument, insistent, monotonous, +haunting; and still the soft tone of one careful flute sounds on, and +keeps the nerves alive to the slow and growing pain of the rhythmic +beat. Lucian in ecstacy of worship for the young girl whose lips have +given him a new life, pressed his body against sharp thorns until the +white flesh of his body was red with drops of blood. That, too, is the +spirit of the book. It is like some dreadful liturgy of self-inflicted +pain, set to measured music: and the cadence of that music becomes +intolerable by its suave phrasing and perfect modulation. The last long +chapter with its recurring themes is a masterpiece of prose, and in its +way unique."</p> + +<p>After that, there would seem to be no need for further comment on "The +Hill of Dreams." But there is—there is!</p> + +<p>Quite as important as what Mr. Machen says is his manner of saying it. +He possesses an English prose style which in its mystical suggestion and +beauty is unlike any other I have encountered. There is ecstacy in his +pages. Joris-Karl Huysmans in a really good translation suggests Machen +better, perhaps, than another; both are debtors to Baudelaire.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<p>The "ecstasy" one finds in Machen's work (of which more anon) is due in +no small degree to his beautiful English "style"—an abominable word. +But Machen is no mere word-juggler. His vocabulary, while astonishing +and extensive, is not affectedly so. Yet his sentences move to sonorous, +half-submerged rhythms, swooning with pagan color and redolent of +sacerdotal incense. What is the secret of this graceful English method? +It is this: he achieves his striking results and effects through his +noteworthy gift of selection and arrangement. I had reached this +conclusion, I think, before I encountered a passage from "The Hill of +Dreams," which clinched it:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Language, he understood, was chiefly important for the beauty of +its sounds, by its possession of words resonant, glorious to the +ear, by its capacity, when exquisitely arranged, of suggesting +wonderful and indefinable impressions, perhaps more ravishing and +further removed from the domain of strict thought than the +impressions excited by music itself. Here lay hidden the secret of +suggestion, the art of causing sensation by the use of words." </p></blockquote> + +<p>Was it ever better expressed? He defines his method and exhibits its +results at the same time. And dipping almost at random into the same +volume, here is a further example of the method:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Slowly and timidly he began to untie his boots, fumbling with the +laces, and glancing all the while on every side at the ugly, +misshapen trees that hedged the lawn. Not a branch was straight, +not one was free, but all were interlaced and grew one about +another; and just above ground, where the cankered stems joined the +protuberant roots, there were forms that imitated the human shape, +and faces and twining limbs that amazed him. Green mosses were +hair, and tresses were stark in grey lichen; a twisted root swelled +into a limb; in the hollows of the rooted bark he saw the masks of +men.... As he gazed across the turf and into the thicket, the +sunshine seemed really to become green, and the contrast between +the bright glow poured on the lawn and the black shadows of the +brake made an odd flickering light in which all the grotesque +postures of stem and root began to stir; the wood was alive. The +turf beneath him heaved and sunk as with the deep swell of the +sea...." </p></blockquote> + +<p>And:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"He could imagine a man who was able to live on one sense while he +pleased; to whom, for example, every impression of touch, taste, +hearing, or seeing should be translated into odor; who at the +desired kiss should be ravished with the scent of dark violets, to +whom music should be the perfume of a rose garden at dawn." </p></blockquote> + +<p>This is not prose at all, but poetry, and poetry of a high order. And it +is from such beautiful manipulation of words, phrases, and rhythms that +Machen attains his most clairvoyant and arresting effects in the realms +of horror, dread, and terror; from the strange gesturings of trees, the +glow of furnace-like clouds, the somber beauty of brooding fields, and +valleys all too still, the mystery of lovely women, and all the terror +of life and nature seen with the understanding eye.</p> + +<p>So much for Arthur Machen as a novelist. It is a fascinating subject, +but it is also an extensive one, and the curious, tenuous quality of his +work may lead one into indiscretions.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>The peculiar philosophy of Arthur Machen is set down in "Hieroglyphics" +and in "Dr. Stiggins: His Views and Principles." The first chapter of +the latter work is a scathing satire on certain foibles and +idiosyncracies of the American people—such as lynching, vote-buying, +and food-adulteration—but as it is, on the whole, a polemical volume +which, by the nature of the subjects it treats, can have less permanent +interest than the author's other work, it may be put to one side; +although as a specimen of Machen's impeccable prose it must not be +ignored.</p> + +<p>In "Hieroglyphics" he returns to those ecstasies mentioned in "The White +People" and gives us further definitions. The word ecstasy is merely a +symbol; it has many synonyms. It means rapture, adoration, a withdrawal +from common life, the other things. "Who can furnish a precise +definition of the indefinable? They (the 'other things') are sometimes +in the song of a bird, sometimes in the whirl of a London street, +sometimes hidden under a great, lonely hill. Some of us seek them with +most hope and the fullest assurance in the sacring of the mass, others +receive tidings through the sound of music, in the color of a picture, +in the shining form of a statue, in the meditation of eternal truth."</p> + +<p>"Hieroglyphics" is Arthur Machen's theory of literature, brilliantly +exposited by that "cyclical mode of discoursing" that was affected by +Coleridge. In it he promulgates the admirable doctrine that fine +literature must be, in effect, an allegory and not the careful history +of particular persons. He seeks a mark of division which is to separate +fine literature from mere literature, and finds the solution in the one +word ecstasy (or, if you prefer, beauty, wonder, awe, mystery, sense of +the unknown, desire for the unknown), with this conclusion: "If ecstasy +be present, then I say there is fine literature, if it be absent, then, +in spite of all the cleverness, all the talents, all the workmanship and +observation and dexterity you may show me, then, I think, we have a +product (possibly a very interesting one) which is not fine literature."</p> + +<p>Following this reasoning, by an astonishing sequence of arguments, he +proceeds to the bold experiment of proving "Pickwick" possessed of +ecstasy, and "Vanity Fair" lacking it. The case is an extreme one, he +admits, deliberately chosen to expound his theory to the <i>n</i>th. degree. +The analytical key to the test is found in the differentiation between +art and artifice, a nice problem in such extreme instances as Poe's +"Dupin" stories and Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," as Mr. Machen +points out. By this ingenious method the "Odyssey," "Oedipus," "Morte +D'Arthur," "Kubla Khan," "Don Quixote," and "Rabelais" immediately are +proven fine literature; a host of other esteemed works merely, if you +like, good literature.</p> + +<p>"Pantagruel" by a more delicate application of the test becomes a finer +work than "Don Quixote," and in the exposition of this dictum we come +upon one of the mountain peaks of Machen's amazing philosophy.</p> + +<p>He begins the discussion with a jest about the enormous capacity for +strong drink exhibited by <i>Mr. Pickwick</i> and his friends, and reminds us +that it was the god of wine in whose honor Sophocles wrote his dramas +and choral songs, who was worshipped and invoked at the Dionysiaca; and +that all the drama arose from the celebration of the Bacchic mysteries. +He goes on to the "Gargantua" and "Pantagruel," which reek of wine as +Dickens does of brandy and water.</p> + +<p>The Rabelaisian history begins: "<i>Grandgousier estoit bon raillard en +son temps, aimant à boire net</i>," and ends with the Oracle of the Holy +Bottle, with the word "<i>Trinch ... un mot panomphée, celebré et entendu +de toutes nations, et nous signifie, beuvez</i>." "And I refer you," +continues Machen, "to the allocution of Bacbuc, the priestess of the +Bottle, at large. 'By wine,' she says, 'is man made divine,' and I may +say that if you have not got the key to these Rabelaisian riddles, much +of the value—the highest value—of the book is lost to you."</p> + +<p>Seeking the meaning of this Bacchic cultus, this apparent glorification +of drunkenness in all lands and in all times, from Ancient Greece +through Renascent France to Victorian England, by peoples and persons +not themselves given to excess, he finds it again in the word ecstasy.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"We are to conclude that both the ancient people and the modern +writers recognized ecstasy as the supreme gift and state of man, +and that they chose the Vine and the juice of the Vine, as the most +beautiful and significant symbol of that Power which withdraws a +man from the common life and the common consciousness, and taking +him from the dust of earth, sets him in high places, in the +eternal world of ideas ... Let us never forget that the essence of +the book ('Pantagruel') is in its splendid celebration of ecstasy, +under the figure of the Vine." </p></blockquote> + +<p>At this point Mr. Machen places the "key" in our hands and declines +further to reveal his secrets. In <i>Mr. Pickwick's</i> overdose of milk +punch we are to find, ultimately, "a clue to the labyrinth of mystic +theology."</p> + +<p>By his own test we are enabled to place Arthur Machen's greatest works +on the shelf with "Don Quixote" and "Pantagruel"; by his own test we +find the ecstasy of which he speaks in his own pages, under the symbol +of the Vine, and under figures even more beautiful and terrible. For +minor consideration he finds in Rabelais another symbolism of ecstasy:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"The shape of gauloiserie, of gross, exuberant gaiety, expressing +itself by outrageous tales, outrageous words, by a very cataract of +obscenity, if you please, if only you will notice how the obscenity +of Rabelais transcends the obscenity of common life; his grossness +is poured out in a sort of mad torrent, in a frenzy, a very passion +of the unspeakable." </p></blockquote> + +<p>In Cervantes he finds the greater deftness, the finer artifice, but he +believes the conception of Rabelais the higher because it is the more +remote. <i>Pantagruel's</i> "more than frankness, its ebullition of grossness +... is either the merest lunacy, or else it is sublime." And the +paragraph that succeeds this one in the book, perhaps it is part of the +same paragraph, sums up this astonishing philosophy with a conclusion +calculated to shock the Puritanic. Thus:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Don't you perceive that when a certain depth has been passed you +begin to ascend into the heights? The Persian poet expresses the +most transcendental secrets of the Divine Love by the grossest +phrases of the carnal love; so Rabelais soars above the common +life, above the streets and the gutter, by going far lower than the +streets and the gutter: he brings before you the highest by +positing that which is lower than the lowest, and if you have the +prepared, initiated mind, a Rabelaisian 'list' is the best preface +to the angelic song. (!) All this may strike you as extreme +paradox, but it has the disadvantage of being true, and perhaps you +may assure yourself of its truth by recollecting the converse +proposition—that it is when one is absorbed in the highest +emotions that the most degrading images will intrude themselves." </p></blockquote> + +<p>And so on.... The sense of the futility almost of attempting to explain +Machen becomes more pronounced as I progress. You will have to read him. +You will find his books (if you are fortunate) in a murky corner of some +obscure second-hand bookshop.</p> + +<p>Arthur Machen was born in Wales in 1863. He is married and has two +children. That is an astonishing thought, after reading "The Inmost +Light." It is surprising indeed to learn that he was <i>born</i>. He is High +Church, "with no particular respect for the Archbishop of Canterbury," +and necessarily subconsciously Catholic, as must be all those "lonely, +awful souls" who write ecstasy across the world. He hates puritanism +with a sturdier hatred than inspires Chesterton; for a brilliant +exposition of this aversion I commend readers to his mocking +introduction to "The House of Souls." That work, "The Hill of Dreams," +and "Hieroglyphics" were written between 1890 and 1900, after which +their author turned strolling player and alternated for a time between +the smartest theatres in London and the shabbiest music halls in +London's East End. For the last six years or so he has been a +descriptive writer on the London <i>Evening News</i>.</p> + +<p>His works not before mentioned comprise a translation (the best) of the +"Heptameron"; "Fantastic Tales," a collection of mediaeval whimsies, +partly translated and partly original and altogether Rabelaisian and +delightful; "The Terror," a "shilling shocker" (his own +characterization), but a finer work withal than most of the "literature" +of the day, and "The Great Return," an extraordinary short tale which +may find place some day in another such collection as "The House of +Souls."</p> + +<p>I have mentioned "The Chronicle of Clemendy," calling it a classic, and +something further should be said about that astonishing book. It is the +Welsh "Heptameron," a chronicle of amorous intrigue, joyous drunkenness, +and knightly endeavor second to none in the brief muster of the world's +greatest classics. In it there is the veritable flavour of mediaeval +record. Somewhat less outspoken than Balzac in his "Droll Stories," and +less verbose than Boccaccio, Machen proves himself the peer of either in +gay, irresponsible, diverting, unflagging invention, while his diction +is lovelier than that of any of his forerunners, including the nameless +authors of those rich Arabian tapestries which were the parent tales of +all mediaeval and modern facetiae.</p> + +<p>The day is coming when a number of serious charges will be laid against +us who live in this generation, and some severe questions asked, and the +fact that we will be dead, most of us, when the future fires its +broadside, has nothing at all to do with the case.</p> + +<p>We are going to be asked, <i>post-mortem</i>, why we allowed Ambrose Bierce +to vanish from our midst, unnoticed and unsought, after ignoring him +shamefully throughout his career; why Stephen Crane, after a few +flamboyant reviews, was so quickly forgotten at death; why Richard +Middleton was permitted to swallow his poison at Brussels; why W.C. +Morrow and Walter Blackburn Harte were in our day known only to the +initiated, discriminating few; their fine, golden books merely rare +"items" for the collector. Among other things, posterity is going to +demand of us why, when the opportunity was ours, we did not open our +hearts to Arthur Machen and name him among the very great.</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> +I have let this last assertion stand as part of the original +article, although Mr. Machen writes me that I am in error. "I never read +a line of Baudelaire," he says, "but I have read deeply in Poe, who, I +believe, derives largely from Baudelaire." Of course, it is the other +way 'round, Baudelaire derives from Poe, but my own assumption is +rendered clear.—V.S.</p></div> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em; font-weight: bold;">THE REMEMBRANCE OF THE BARD</span><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In the darkness of old age let not my memory</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">fail:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Let me not forget to celebrate the beloved land</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">of Gwent.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">If they imprison me in a deep place, in a house</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">of pestilence,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Still shall I be free, remembering the sunshine</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">upon Mynydd Maen.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">There have I listened to the song of the lark,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">my soul has ascended with the song of the</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">little bird:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The great white clouds were the ships of my</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">spirit, sailing to the haven of the Almighty.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Equally to be held in honour is the site of the</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Great Mountain.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Adorned with the gushing of many waters—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">sweet is the shade of its hazel thickets.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">There a treasure is preserved which I will not</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">celebrate;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">It is glorious and deeply concealed.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">If Teils should return, if happiness were restored</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">to the Cymri,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Dewi and Dyfrig should serve his Mass; then a</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">great marvel would be made visible.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">O blessed and miraculous work! then should my</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">bliss be as the joy of angels.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I had rather behold this offering than kiss the</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">twin lips of dark Gwenllian.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Dear my land of Gwent: <i>O quam dilecta tabernacula</i>.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Thy rivers are like precious golden streams of</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Paradise, thy hills are as the Mount Syon.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Better a grave on Twyn Barlwm than a throne</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">in the palace of the Saxons at Caer-Ludd.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">ARTHUR MACHEN</span><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em; font-weight: bold;">THE PRAISE OF MYFANWY</span><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">O gift of the everlasting:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">O wonderful and hidden mystery.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Many secrets have been vouchsafed to me,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I have been long acquainted with the wisdom</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">of the trees;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ash and oak and elm have communicated to me</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">from my boyhood,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The birch and the hazel and all the trees of</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">the greenwood have not been dumb.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">There is a caldron rimmed with pearls of whose</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">gifts I am not ignorant;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I will speak little of it; its treasures are known</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">to the Bards.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Many went on the search of Caer-Pedryfan,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Seven alone returned with Arthur, but my spirit</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">was present.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Seven are the apple-trees in a beautiful orchard;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I have eaten of their fruit which is not bestowed</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">on Saxons.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I am not ignorant of a Head which is glorious</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">and venerable;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">It made perpetual entertainment for the warriors,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">their joys would have been immortal;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">If they had not opened the door of the south,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">they would have feasted for ever,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Listening to the song of the fairy Birds of</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Rhiannon.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Let not anyone instruct me concerning the Glassy</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Isle;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In the garments of the saints who returned from</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">it were rich odours of Paradise.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">All this I knew, and yet my knowledge was</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">ignorance.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">For one day, as I walked by Caer-rhiu in the</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">principal forest of Gwent,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I saw golden Myfanwy as she bathed in the</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">brook Tarogi,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Her hair flowed about her; Arthur's crown had</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">dissolved into a shining mist.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I gazed into her blue eyes as it were into twin</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">heavens,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">All the parts of her body were adornments and</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">miracles.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">O gift of the everlasting:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">O wonderful and hidden mystery:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">When I embraced Myfanwy a moment became</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">immortality.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">ARTHUR MACHEN</span><br /> +</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARTHUR MACHEN***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 35515-h.txt or 35515-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/5/5/1/35515">http://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/5/1/35515</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Arthur Machen + A Novelist of Ecstasy and Sin + + +Author: Vincent Starrett + + + +Release Date: March 7, 2011 [eBook #35515] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARTHUR MACHEN*** + + +E-text prepared by Marc D'Hooghe (http://www.freeliterature.org) from page +images generously made available by Internet Archive +(http://www.archive.org) + + + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive. See + http://www.archive.org/details/arthurmachennove00star + + + + + +ARTHUR MACHEN + +A Novelist of Ecstasy and Sin + +by + +VINCENT STARRETT + +With Two Uncollected Poems by + +ARTHUR MACHEN + + + + + + + +Chicago +Walter M. Hill +1918 + + + + +NOTE + + +With singular unanimity critics for thirty years have slighted the work +of Arthur Machen. A line suffices for him in Holbrook Jackson's "The +Eighteen Nineties," and Mr. Blaikie-Murdoch ignores him completely in +"The Renaissance of the Nineties"; yet those are the standard works on +the period to which, chronologically, at least, Machen belongs. Mr. +Turquet-Milnes, with greater appreciation, gives him a half-chapter in +his scholarly work, "The Influence of Baudelaire," but even that is made +up largely of quotations from "The Hill of Dreams," to prove Machen a +descendent of Baudelaire--an error to which I subscribed until Machen +himself disillusioned me, although the assertion is still partially +true. + +Because, in my opinion, Arthur Machen is the outstanding artist of his +time, and one of the great masters of all time, I wrote the following +paper, which first appeared in Reedy's _Mirror_ for October 5, 1917. +That issue is not now obtainable, and, as calls for it continue to come +to me and to the publisher, I find ground for a belief that Machen may, +at length, be coming into his own, a tardy phenomenon which I am happy +to hasten so far as it lies within my power. Mr. Walter M. Hill shares +this feeling and this brochure is the result. + +I am indebted to Mr. William Marion Reedy for permission to reprint +those parts of the article which appeared in his journal. + +V.S. + + + + +ARTHUR MACHEN + + +Some thirty odd years ago a young man of twenty-two, the son of a Welsh +clergyman, fresh from school and with his head full of a curiously +occult mediaevalism, privately acquired from yellowed palimpsests and +dog-eared volumes of black letter, wrote a classic. More, he had it +published. Only one review copy was sent out; that was to _Le Livre_, of +Paris. It fell into the hands of Octave Uzanne, who instantly ordered +Rabelais and Boccaccio to "shove over" on the immortal seats and make +room by their side for the author. The book was "The Chronicle of +Clemendy"; the author, Arthur Machen. + +Three years ago, about, not long after the great war first shook the +world, a London evening newspaper published inconspicuously a purely +fictional account of a supposed incident of the British retreat from +Mons. It described the miraculous intervention of the English archers of +Agincourt at a time when the British were sore pressed by the German +hordes. Immediately, churchmen, spiritualists, and a host of others, +seized upon it as an authentic record and the miracle as an omen. In the +hysteria that followed, Arthur Machen, its author, found himself a +talked-of man, because he wrote to the papers denying that the narrative +was factual. Later, when his little volume, "The Bowmen and Other +Legends of the War," appeared in print, it met with an extraordinary and +rather impertinent success. + +But what had Machen been doing all those long years between 1885 and +1914? + +In a day of haphazard fiction and rodomontade criticism, the advent of a +master workman is likely to be unheralded, if, indeed, he is fortunate +enough to find a publisher to put him between covers. Mr. Machen is not +a newcomer, however, as we have seen; no immediate success with a "best +seller" furnishes an incentive for a complimentary notice. He is an +unknown, in spite of "Clemendy," in spite of "The Bowmen," in spite of +everything. For thirty years he has been writing English prose, a period +ample for the making of a dozen reputations of the ordinary kind, and in +that time he has produced just ten books. In thirty years Harold +Bindloss and Rex Beach will have written one-hundred-and-ten books and +sold the moving picture rights of them all. + +Of course, it is exactly because he does not write books of the ordinary +kind that Arthur Machen's reputation as a writer was not made long ago. +His apotheosis will begin after his death. The insectial fame of the +"popular" novelist is immediate; it is born at dawn and dies at sunset. +The enduring fame of the artist too often is born at sunset, but it is +immortal. + +More than Hawthorne or Tolstoy, Machen is a novelist of the soul. He +writes of a strange borderland, lying somewhere between Dreams and +Death, peopled with shades, beings, spirits, ghosts, men, women, +souls--what shall we call them?--the very notion of whom stops vaguely +just short of thought. He writes of the life Satyr-ic. For him Pan is +not dead; his votaries still whirl through woodland windings to the mad +pipe that was Syrinx, and carouse fiercely in enchanted forest grottoes +(hidden somewhere, perhaps, in the fourth dimension!). His meddling with +the crucibles of science is appalling in its daring, its magnificence, +and its horror. Even the greater works of fictional psychology--"Dr. +Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," if you like--shrink before his astounding +inferences and suggestions. + +It is his theory that the fearful and shocking rites of the Bacchic +cultus survive in this disillusioned age; that Panic lechery and +wickedness did not cease with the Agony, as Mrs. Browning and others +would have us believe. + +Of Hawthorne, Arthur Symons wrote: "He is haunted by what is obscure, +dangerous, and on the confines of good and evil." Machen crosses those +perilous frontiers. He all but lifts the veil; himself, indeed, passes +beyond it. But the curtain drops behind him and we, hesitating to +follow, see only dimly the phantasmagoria beyond; the ecstasies of vague +shapes with a shining about them, on the one hand; on the other the +writhings of animate gargoyles. And we experience, I think, a distinct +sense of gratitude toward this terrible guide for that we are permitted +no closer view of the mysteries that seem to him so clear. + +We glimpse his secrets in transfiguring flashes from afar, as Launcelot +viewed the San Graal, and, like that tarnished knight, we quest vainly a +tangible solution, half in apprehension, always in glamour. But it is +like Galahad we must seek the eternal mysteries that obsess Arthur +Machen. There is no solution but in absolution, for it is the mysteries +of life and death of which he writes, and of life-in-death and +death-in-life. This with particular reference to Machen's two most +important books, "The House of Souls" and "The Hill of Dreams," in which +he reaches his greatest stature as a novelist of the soul. + +There are those who will call him a novelist of Sin, quibbling about a +definition. With these I have no quarrel; the characterizations are +synonymous. His books exhale all evil and all corruption; yet they are +as pure as the fabled waters of that crystal spring De Leon sought. They +are pervaded by an ever-present, intoxicating sense of sin, ravishingly +beautiful, furiously Pagan, frantically lovely; but Machen is a finer +and truer mystic than the two-penny occultists who guide modern +spiritualistic thought. If we are to subscribe to his curious +philosophy, to be discussed later, we must believe that there is no +paradox in this. + +But something of what we are getting at is explained in his own pages, +in this opening paragraph from his story, "The White People," in "The +House of Souls": "'Sorcery and sanctity,' said Ambrose, 'these are the +only realities. Each is an ecstasy, a withdrawal from the common life.'" +And, a little later, in this: "'There is something profoundly unnatural +about sin ... the essence of which really is in the taking of heaven by +storm.'" + +One gathers from a general vagueness on the subject that sin is not +popular in these times. There are, of course, new sins and advanced sins +and higher sins, all of which are intensely interesting. The chief +puzzle to the lay mind is why they should bear these names, since they +are usually neither new, advanced and high, nor particularly sinful. I +am speaking of sin as an offense against the nature of things, and of +evil in the soul, which has very little to do with the sins of the +statute book. Sin, according to the same Ambrose I have quoted, is +conceivable in the talking of animals. If a chair should walk across a +room, that would be sinful, or if a tree sat down with us to afternoon +tea. The savage who worships a conjurer is a far finer moralist than +the civilise who suspects him--and I use the name moralist for one who +has an appreciation of sin. + +This is not the sin of the legal code. _Ambrose_ I conceive to be Arthur +Machen. There are only two realities; sorcery and sanctity--sin and +sainthood--and each is an ecstasy. Arthur Machen's is the former. + +Perhaps his most remarkable story--certainly I think his most terrible +story, is "The Great God Pan," at first published separately with "The +Inmost Light"; now occurring in "The House of Souls." It is the story of +an experiment upon a girl, as a result of which, for a moment, she is +permitted a sight of the Great God, beyond the veil, with shocking +consequences. Yet it is told with exquisite reticence and grace, and +with a plausibility that is as extraordinary as it is immoral. Here is +the conclusion of that story: + + "What I said Mary would see, she saw, but I forgot that no human + eyes could look on such a vision with impunity. And I forgot, as I + have just said, that when the house of life is thus thrown open, + there may enter in that for which we have no name, and human flesh + may become the veil of a horror one dare not express.... The + blackened face, the hideous form upon the bed, changing and melting + before your eyes from woman to man, from man to beast, and from + beast to worse than beast, all the strange horror that you + witnessed, surprises me but little. What you say the doctor you + sent for saw and shuddered at, I noticed long ago; I knew what I + had done the moment the child was born, and when it was five years + old I surprised it, not once or twice, but several times, with a + playmate, you may guess of what kind.... And now Helen is with her + companions." + +There is the very quintessence of horror in the unutterable suggestion +of such passages. As for "The Hill of Dreams," I have found its reading +one of the most desolate and appalling experiences in literature. +Reading it, himself, years after publication, its author decided that it +was a "depressing book." That is undoubtedly true, but spiritually as +well as technically it marks to date the topmost pinnacle of his +tormented genius. It reaches heights so rarefied that breathing +literally becomes painful. To the casual reader this sounds absurd; +hyperbolical if not hypocritical rant; but in a day when a majority of +critics find it difficult to restrain themselves in speaking of Harold +Bell Wright, and place Jeffery Farnol beside Fielding and Thackeray, one +cannot go far wrong in indulging a few enthusiasms for so genuine an +artist as Arthur Machen. + +Of the reviewers into whose hands fell this remarkable book, in the year +of its publication, 1907, only one appears to have valued it at its real +worth--the editor of _The Academy_, who, carried away by the tale and +its telling, turned out a bit of critical prose which might have been +lifted from the book, itself. "There is something sinister in the beauty +of Mr. Machen's book," he wrote. "It is like some strangely shaped +orchid, the colour of which is fierce and terrible, and its perfume is +haunting to suffocation by reason of its intolerable sweetness. The +cruelty of the book is more savage than any of the cruelty which the +book describes. Lucian shuddered at the boys who were deliberately +hanging an ungainly puppy; he had thrashed the little ruffian who +kicked the sick cat, before he wrapped himself away from the contact of +such infamy in the shelter of his own imaginings. For in 'The Hill of +Dreams' you seem to be shown a lovely, sensitive boy who has fashioned +himself a white palace of beauty in his own mind. He has had time only +to realize its full beauty when disease lays its cold touch upon him, +and gathers him into her grasp, until he lies decaying and horrible, +seeing his own decay and seeing that his decay makes the white palace +foul. The boys did not chant songs as they looped the string round the +neck of the uncouth puppy. Mr. Machen fashions prose out of the +writhings of Lucian, who is dear to him: and his prose has the rhythmic +beat of some dreadful Oriental instrument, insistent, monotonous, +haunting; and still the soft tone of one careful flute sounds on, and +keeps the nerves alive to the slow and growing pain of the rhythmic +beat. Lucian in ecstacy of worship for the young girl whose lips have +given him a new life, pressed his body against sharp thorns until the +white flesh of his body was red with drops of blood. That, too, is the +spirit of the book. It is like some dreadful liturgy of self-inflicted +pain, set to measured music: and the cadence of that music becomes +intolerable by its suave phrasing and perfect modulation. The last long +chapter with its recurring themes is a masterpiece of prose, and in its +way unique." + +After that, there would seem to be no need for further comment on "The +Hill of Dreams." But there is--there is! + +Quite as important as what Mr. Machen says is his manner of saying it. +He possesses an English prose style which in its mystical suggestion and +beauty is unlike any other I have encountered. There is ecstacy in his +pages. Joris-Karl Huysmans in a really good translation suggests Machen +better, perhaps, than another; both are debtors to Baudelaire.[1] + +The "ecstasy" one finds in Machen's work (of which more anon) is due in +no small degree to his beautiful English "style"--an abominable word. +But Machen is no mere word-juggler. His vocabulary, while astonishing +and extensive, is not affectedly so. Yet his sentences move to sonorous, +half-submerged rhythms, swooning with pagan color and redolent of +sacerdotal incense. What is the secret of this graceful English method? +It is this: he achieves his striking results and effects through his +noteworthy gift of selection and arrangement. I had reached this +conclusion, I think, before I encountered a passage from "The Hill of +Dreams," which clinched it: + + "Language, he understood, was chiefly important for the beauty of + its sounds, by its possession of words resonant, glorious to the + ear, by its capacity, when exquisitely arranged, of suggesting + wonderful and indefinable impressions, perhaps more ravishing and + further removed from the domain of strict thought than the + impressions excited by music itself. Here lay hidden the secret of + suggestion, the art of causing sensation by the use of words." + +Was it ever better expressed? He defines his method and exhibits its +results at the same time. And dipping almost at random into the same +volume, here is a further example of the method: + + "Slowly and timidly he began to untie his boots, fumbling with the + laces, and glancing all the while on every side at the ugly, + misshapen trees that hedged the lawn. Not a branch was straight, + not one was free, but all were interlaced and grew one about + another; and just above ground, where the cankered stems joined the + protuberant roots, there were forms that imitated the human shape, + and faces and twining limbs that amazed him. Green mosses were + hair, and tresses were stark in grey lichen; a twisted root swelled + into a limb; in the hollows of the rooted bark he saw the masks of + men.... As he gazed across the turf and into the thicket, the + sunshine seemed really to become green, and the contrast between + the bright glow poured on the lawn and the black shadows of the + brake made an odd flickering light in which all the grotesque + postures of stem and root began to stir; the wood was alive. The + turf beneath him heaved and sunk as with the deep swell of the + sea...." + +And: + + "He could imagine a man who was able to live on one sense while he + pleased; to whom, for example, every impression of touch, taste, + hearing, or seeing should be translated into odor; who at the + desired kiss should be ravished with the scent of dark violets, to + whom music should be the perfume of a rose garden at dawn." + +This is not prose at all, but poetry, and poetry of a high order. And it +is from such beautiful manipulation of words, phrases, and rhythms that +Machen attains his most clairvoyant and arresting effects in the realms +of horror, dread, and terror; from the strange gesturings of trees, the +glow of furnace-like clouds, the somber beauty of brooding fields, and +valleys all too still, the mystery of lovely women, and all the terror +of life and nature seen with the understanding eye. + +So much for Arthur Machen as a novelist. It is a fascinating subject, +but it is also an extensive one, and the curious, tenuous quality of his +work may lead one into indiscretions. + + * * * * * + +The peculiar philosophy of Arthur Machen is set down in "Hieroglyphics" +and in "Dr. Stiggins: His Views and Principles." The first chapter of +the latter work is a scathing satire on certain foibles and +idiosyncracies of the American people--such as lynching, vote-buying, +and food-adulteration--but as it is, on the whole, a polemical volume +which, by the nature of the subjects it treats, can have less permanent +interest than the author's other work, it may be put to one side; +although as a specimen of Machen's impeccable prose it must not be +ignored. + +In "Hieroglyphics" he returns to those ecstasies mentioned in "The White +People" and gives us further definitions. The word ecstasy is merely a +symbol; it has many synonyms. It means rapture, adoration, a withdrawal +from common life, the other things. "Who can furnish a precise +definition of the indefinable? They (the 'other things') are sometimes +in the song of a bird, sometimes in the whirl of a London street, +sometimes hidden under a great, lonely hill. Some of us seek them with +most hope and the fullest assurance in the sacring of the mass, others +receive tidings through the sound of music, in the color of a picture, +in the shining form of a statue, in the meditation of eternal truth." + +"Hieroglyphics" is Arthur Machen's theory of literature, brilliantly +exposited by that "cyclical mode of discoursing" that was affected by +Coleridge. In it he promulgates the admirable doctrine that fine +literature must be, in effect, an allegory and not the careful history +of particular persons. He seeks a mark of division which is to separate +fine literature from mere literature, and finds the solution in the one +word ecstasy (or, if you prefer, beauty, wonder, awe, mystery, sense of +the unknown, desire for the unknown), with this conclusion: "If ecstasy +be present, then I say there is fine literature, if it be absent, then, +in spite of all the cleverness, all the talents, all the workmanship and +observation and dexterity you may show me, then, I think, we have a +product (possibly a very interesting one) which is not fine literature." + +Following this reasoning, by an astonishing sequence of arguments, he +proceeds to the bold experiment of proving "Pickwick" possessed of +ecstasy, and "Vanity Fair" lacking it. The case is an extreme one, he +admits, deliberately chosen to expound his theory to the _n_th. degree. +The analytical key to the test is found in the differentiation between +art and artifice, a nice problem in such extreme instances as Poe's +"Dupin" stories and Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," as Mr. Machen +points out. By this ingenious method the "Odyssey," "Oedipus," "Morte +D'Arthur," "Kubla Khan," "Don Quixote," and "Rabelais" immediately are +proven fine literature; a host of other esteemed works merely, if you +like, good literature. + +"Pantagruel" by a more delicate application of the test becomes a finer +work than "Don Quixote," and in the exposition of this dictum we come +upon one of the mountain peaks of Machen's amazing philosophy. + +He begins the discussion with a jest about the enormous capacity for +strong drink exhibited by _Mr. Pickwick_ and his friends, and reminds us +that it was the god of wine in whose honor Sophocles wrote his dramas +and choral songs, who was worshipped and invoked at the Dionysiaca; and +that all the drama arose from the celebration of the Bacchic mysteries. +He goes on to the "Gargantua" and "Pantagruel," which reek of wine as +Dickens does of brandy and water. + +The Rabelaisian history begins: "_Grandgousier estoit bon raillard en +son temps, aimant a boire net_," and ends with the Oracle of the Holy +Bottle, with the word "_Trinch ... un mot panomphee, celebre et entendu +de toutes nations, et nous signifie, beuvez_." "And I refer you," +continues Machen, "to the allocution of Bacbuc, the priestess of the +Bottle, at large. 'By wine,' she says, 'is man made divine,' and I may +say that if you have not got the key to these Rabelaisian riddles, much +of the value--the highest value--of the book is lost to you." + +Seeking the meaning of this Bacchic cultus, this apparent glorification +of drunkenness in all lands and in all times, from Ancient Greece +through Renascent France to Victorian England, by peoples and persons +not themselves given to excess, he finds it again in the word ecstasy. + + "We are to conclude that both the ancient people and the modern + writers recognized ecstasy as the supreme gift and state of man, + and that they chose the Vine and the juice of the Vine, as the most + beautiful and significant symbol of that Power which withdraws a + man from the common life and the common consciousness, and taking + him from the dust of earth, sets him in high places, in the + eternal world of ideas ... Let us never forget that the essence of + the book ('Pantagruel') is in its splendid celebration of ecstasy, + under the figure of the Vine." + +At this point Mr. Machen places the "key" in our hands and declines +further to reveal his secrets. In _Mr. Pickwick's_ overdose of milk +punch we are to find, ultimately, "a clue to the labyrinth of mystic +theology." + +By his own test we are enabled to place Arthur Machen's greatest works +on the shelf with "Don Quixote" and "Pantagruel"; by his own test we +find the ecstasy of which he speaks in his own pages, under the symbol +of the Vine, and under figures even more beautiful and terrible. For +minor consideration he finds in Rabelais another symbolism of ecstasy: + + "The shape of gauloiserie, of gross, exuberant gaiety, expressing + itself by outrageous tales, outrageous words, by a very cataract of + obscenity, if you please, if only you will notice how the obscenity + of Rabelais transcends the obscenity of common life; his grossness + is poured out in a sort of mad torrent, in a frenzy, a very passion + of the unspeakable." + +In Cervantes he finds the greater deftness, the finer artifice, but he +believes the conception of Rabelais the higher because it is the more +remote. _Pantagruel's_ "more than frankness, its ebullition of grossness +... is either the merest lunacy, or else it is sublime." And the +paragraph that succeeds this one in the book, perhaps it is part of the +same paragraph, sums up this astonishing philosophy with a conclusion +calculated to shock the Puritanic. Thus: + + "Don't you perceive that when a certain depth has been passed you + begin to ascend into the heights? The Persian poet expresses the + most transcendental secrets of the Divine Love by the grossest + phrases of the carnal love; so Rabelais soars above the common + life, above the streets and the gutter, by going far lower than the + streets and the gutter: he brings before you the highest by + positing that which is lower than the lowest, and if you have the + prepared, initiated mind, a Rabelaisian 'list' is the best preface + to the angelic song. (!) All this may strike you as extreme + paradox, but it has the disadvantage of being true, and perhaps you + may assure yourself of its truth by recollecting the converse + proposition--that it is when one is absorbed in the highest + emotions that the most degrading images will intrude themselves." + +And so on.... The sense of the futility almost of attempting to explain +Machen becomes more pronounced as I progress. You will have to read him. +You will find his books (if you are fortunate) in a murky corner of some +obscure second-hand bookshop. + +Arthur Machen was born in Wales in 1863. He is married and has two +children. That is an astonishing thought, after reading "The Inmost +Light." It is surprising indeed to learn that he was _born_. He is High +Church, "with no particular respect for the Archbishop of Canterbury," +and necessarily subconsciously Catholic, as must be all those "lonely, +awful souls" who write ecstasy across the world. He hates puritanism +with a sturdier hatred than inspires Chesterton; for a brilliant +exposition of this aversion I commend readers to his mocking +introduction to "The House of Souls." That work, "The Hill of Dreams," +and "Hieroglyphics" were written between 1890 and 1900, after which +their author turned strolling player and alternated for a time between +the smartest theatres in London and the shabbiest music halls in +London's East End. For the last six years or so he has been a +descriptive writer on the London _Evening News_. + +His works not before mentioned comprise a translation (the best) +of the "Heptameron"; "Fantastic Tales," a collection of mediaeval +whimsies, partly translated and partly original and altogether +Rabelaisian and delightful; "The Terror," a "shilling shocker" (his own +characterization), but a finer work withal than most of the "literature" +of the day, and "The Great Return," an extraordinary short tale which +may find place some day in another such collection as "The House of +Souls." + +I have mentioned "The Chronicle of Clemendy," calling it a classic, and +something further should be said about that astonishing book. It is the +Welsh "Heptameron," a chronicle of amorous intrigue, joyous drunkenness, +and knightly endeavor second to none in the brief muster of the world's +greatest classics. In it there is the veritable flavour of mediaeval +record. Somewhat less outspoken than Balzac in his "Droll Stories," and +less verbose than Boccaccio, Machen proves himself the peer of either in +gay, irresponsible, diverting, unflagging invention, while his diction +is lovelier than that of any of his forerunners, including the nameless +authors of those rich Arabian tapestries which were the parent tales of +all mediaeval and modern facetiae. + +The day is coming when a number of serious charges will be laid against +us who live in this generation, and some severe questions asked, and the +fact that we will be dead, most of us, when the future fires its +broadside, has nothing at all to do with the case. + +We are going to be asked, _post-mortem_, why we allowed Ambrose Bierce +to vanish from our midst, unnoticed and unsought, after ignoring him +shamefully throughout his career; why Stephen Crane, after a few +flamboyant reviews, was so quickly forgotten at death; why Richard +Middleton was permitted to swallow his poison at Brussels; why W.C. +Morrow and Walter Blackburn Harte were in our day known only to the +initiated, discriminating few; their fine, golden books merely rare +"items" for the collector. Among other things, posterity is going to +demand of us why, when the opportunity was ours, we did not open our +hearts to Arthur Machen and name him among the very great. + + +[Footnote 1: I have let this last assertion stand as part of the original +article, although Mr. Machen writes me that I am in error. "I never read +a line of Baudelaire," he says, "but I have read deeply in Poe, who, I +believe, derives largely from Baudelaire." Of course, it is the other +way 'round, Baudelaire derives from Poe, but my own assumption is +rendered clear.--V.S.] + + + * * * * * + + + THE REMEMBRANCE OF THE BARD + + + In the darkness of old age let not my memory + fail: + Let me not forget to celebrate the beloved land + of Gwent. + If they imprison me in a deep place, in a house + of pestilence, + Still shall I be free, remembering the sunshine + upon Mynydd Maen. + There have I listened to the song of the lark, + my soul has ascended with the song of the + little bird: + The great white clouds were the ships of my + spirit, sailing to the haven of the Almighty. + Equally to be held in honour is the site of the + Great Mountain. + Adorned with the gushing of many waters-- + sweet is the shade of its hazel thickets. + There a treasure is preserved which I will not + celebrate; + It is glorious and deeply concealed. + If Teils should return, if happiness were restored + to the Cymri, + Dewi and Dyfrig should serve his Mass; then a + great marvel would be made visible. + O blessed and miraculous work! then should my + bliss be as the joy of angels. + I had rather behold this offering than kiss the + twin lips of dark Gwenllian. + Dear my land of Gwent: _O quam dilecta tabernacula_. + Thy rivers are like precious golden streams of + Paradise, thy hills are as the Mount Syon. + Better a grave on Twyn Barlwm than a throne + in the palace of the Saxons at Caer-Ludd. + + ARTHUR MACHEN + + + + + THE PRAISE OF MYFANWY + + + O gift of the everlasting: + O wonderful and hidden mystery. + Many secrets have been vouchsafed to me, + I have been long acquainted with the wisdom + of the trees; + Ash and oak and elm have communicated to me + from my boyhood, + The birch and the hazel and all the trees of + the greenwood have not been dumb. + There is a caldron rimmed with pearls of whose + gifts I am not ignorant; + I will speak little of it; its treasures are known + to the Bards. + Many went on the search of Caer-Pedryfan, + Seven alone returned with Arthur, but my spirit + was present. + Seven are the apple-trees in a beautiful orchard; + I have eaten of their fruit which is not bestowed + on Saxons. + I am not ignorant of a Head which is glorious + and venerable; + It made perpetual entertainment for the warriors, + their joys would have been immortal; + If they had not opened the door of the south, + they would have feasted for ever, + Listening to the song of the fairy Birds of + Rhiannon. + Let not anyone instruct me concerning the Glassy + Isle; + In the garments of the saints who returned from + it were rich odours of Paradise. + All this I knew, and yet my knowledge was + ignorance. + For one day, as I walked by Caer-rhiu in the + principal forest of Gwent, + I saw golden Myfanwy as she bathed in the + brook Tarogi, + Her hair flowed about her; Arthur's crown had + dissolved into a shining mist. + I gazed into her blue eyes as it were into twin + heavens, + All the parts of her body were adornments and + miracles. + O gift of the everlasting: + O wonderful and hidden mystery: + When I embraced Myfanwy a moment became + immortality. + + ARTHUR MACHEN + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARTHUR MACHEN*** + + +******* This file should be named 35515.txt or 35515.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/5/5/1/35515 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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