Canon in Front of Them

For the most part, I respect critics, and I find especially useful those who write about the historical context of a given work, or those who examine the techniques used in a given story. But I have no use for critics who set up a canon of "essential" writers, because I've often learned more about writing from people on the margins of a field than from any central figures.

And so, for example, I've learned more from individual stories by Shamus Frazer, Edward Lucas White, Charles G. D. Roberts, Bernard Capes, and Ralph Adams Cram, than I ever did from Lovecraft, Ligotti, Barker, King, or from any number of writers who are often considered important in the field of horror. I believe that we take away those details of craftsmanship we need to create our own stories in our own styles, and that the best way to find solutions to our creative challenges is to read widely. I also put my trust in random discoveries, in the joy of picking up a magazine, collection, or anthology, and of digging up treasure that might appeal to no one else, but might also show me what I need to do.

I leave canons to composers; they know how to use them. But I read for pleasure, and to learn.

Not only in the brain's grey spaces

Those who love Oscar Wilde's "The Sphinx," George Sterling's "A Wine of Wizardry," and Clark Ashton Smith's "The Hashish Eater," might want to read Mervyn Peake's "A Reverie of Bone," printed for the first time in its complete form in the FyfieldBooks / Carcanet Collected Poems.

Although it seems unlikely that Peake would have read Sterling or Smith, at one point he did read "The Sphinx," and like that poem, "Reverie" is a long meditation on a theme. But unlike Wilde, Sterling, or Smith, Peake draws his elaborate metaphors and riotous imagery not from the world of Romanticism, but from "vast and valid landscapes" of the world as we know it, and as he would later do in the Titus books, he discovers the fantastic in the down-to-earth:

There is a pearl white arabesque of bones
Behind my eyes where the harsh brow encloses
These bones my visions conjure; I can see
Them lying pranked across a brow of stones.
Beyond them a dramatic mountain raises
High flanks of cold and silver-coloured scree.

And yet not only in the brain's grey spaces
Which, at the imagination's astral touch
Flare into focus, all horizons failing...
Not only through the wastes of thought uprises
A ghosted mountain lit by the full torch
Of a sailing moon that never ceases sailing...

Not only in the brain, nor in the heart
Nor out of love, nor through untethered fancy,
Is that cold mountain littered with the white
Residue of the dead, as though its bright
Steep sides were dusted with dry leprosy --
Nor any other death-engendered sight

Which I envisage in deserted places --
But, in the ruthless regions of what's true --
And I can only hope to grasp the worth
From vast and valid landscapes, while Time passes
Beneath my pen-nib as it trails the blue
Thread of my thought behind each glimpse of truth.

Because fantasy is not a genre but a matter of perception, a shift in perspective, a construction of imagery and metaphor, "A Reverie of Bone" can hit the same nerves that Wilde and Sterling and Smith struck in their own fascinating ways, even as it remains true to this world of life and death and physical transformation by the slow artistry of time.

The Stars in Her Scowl

I can still see the splendid scowl and hear the gorgeously hectoring tone as my last girlfriend turned to me and said, "That's not the 'Big Dipper,' that's the Great Bear." Love, you knew I was a peasant when you kissed me.

That was years ago. Tonight, I thought of her as I biked home beside the Gatineau River, because the Bear stood right in front of me whenever a gap appeared between the branches. For a long time, the Bear never moved, until I veered away from the Gatineau and pursued Arcturus for the last few kilometres.

Alone with cold, clear stars and with 500 billion crickets, I felt happy... but not as happy as I was back in the years of that splendid scowl.

L'occulte hostilité de haineux paysages

Another attempted translation.

ARRIVAL
by Iwan Gilkin.

Towards new countries peopled by other faces, irretrievably dragged by steam, I shiver, I suffer: arrival frightens me. Through hypocritical omens, I forsee

Great castles that sour the bitterness of ages, walls mildewed with boredom from which a torpor oozes, and, despite their adorable, misleading smiles, the secret hostility of hateful landscapes.

-- Rocked by the carriage as by a vessel, I jerk up with a start at the moment of approach, in the same way that a sailor is jolted awake by fanfares.

O distant hearts, in the shadow of a hazardous night I see your fires glare like beacons, where voices call to me from shores unknown.

- - - - - -

L'ARRIVÉE

Vers des pays nouveaux, peuplés d'autres visages,
Irréparablement traîné par la vapeur,
Je frissonne, je souffre: arriver me fait peur.
Je devine, à travers d'hypocrites présages,

De grands châteaux qu'aigrit l'amertume des âges,
Des murs moisis d'ennui, d'où suinte une torpeur,
Et, malgré leur sourire adorable et trompeur,
L'occulte hostilité de haineux paysages.

-- Bercé par le wagon comme par un vaisseau,
Au moment d'aborder je me lève en sursaut,
Ainsi qu'un matelot qu'éveillent des fanfares.

Dans l'ombre de la nuit hasardeuse, je vois
Vos feux, ô cœurs lointains, briller comme des phares
Sur les bords inconnus où m'appellent des voix.

From
La nuit, by Iwan Gilkin, Second Edition. Mercure de France, Paris, 1911.

"J'ai vu. J'ai lu. J'ai su."

I'm always happy to find a writer even less cheerful than Leconte de Lisle, but I can't do justice to his words....

Thought
by Iwan Gilkin.

The black angel offered me a black onyx goblet
From which I drank, in sinister fashion, a cerebral liqueur.
I poured this death into the tomb of my mouth:
O, the charm of terrors! The splendors of despair!

Thought: acrid poison, ratlike nibbler of energies
That destroys happiness, love and health,
You dissolve every hope and desire
In the hearts transformed by your dark magic.

What a cadaver's reek from this horrible wine!
-- I viewed. I perused. I knew. I know that all is vain.
All of my pleasures die before birth.

What is the point of Spring to my Winter soul,
Which no longer feels joy, nor wants know,
Which would spurn a flower for the steel of a handgun?

"J'ai vu. J'ai lu. J'ai su." So simple and elegant. There was no way I could match it.

LA PENSÉE

L'ange noir m'a tendu la coupe d'onyx noir
Où bout sinistrement la liqueur cérébrale.
J'ai versé la mort dans ma bouche sépulcrale:
O charme des terreurs! Splendeurs du désespoir!

Pensée, âcre poison, rongeur des énergies,
Qui détruis le bonheur, l'amour et la santé,
Tu dissous tout espoir et toute volonté
Dans les cœurs altérés de tes sombres magies.

Quelle odeur de cadavre en cet horrible vin!
-- J'ai vu. J'ai lu. J'ai su. Je sais que tout est vain.
Tous les plaisirs pour moi meurent avant de naître.

Qu'importent les printemps à mon âme d'hiver
Qui ne peut plus jouir et ne veut plus connaître
Et qui préfère aux fleurs l'acier d'un revolver!

From
La nuit, by Iwan Gilkin, Second Edition. Mercure de France, Paris, 1911.