Arthur Machen: Mist and Mystery

Darkly Bright Press recently issued a volume of stories, essays, and book reviews by Arthur Machen, most of which had not previously been reprinted.  Edited and with an informative introduction by Christopher Tompkins, the book includes three main sections, plus some appendices.

The first section is that of fiction, though it contains only three items:  “Scrooge and the Spirit” (a light satire),  “Many Tower’d Camelot” (also known as “Guinevere and Lancelot” in the rare 1926 volume Notes and Queries), and “Out of the Earth” (an early version of the story which appears in a few Machen volumes). The second section contains seventeen articles and reviews, while the third section consists of extracts from Machen’s “Literary Week” columns from T.P.’s Weekly from 1908 through 1910. Some appendices highlight shorter pieces and cover bibliographical matters.

Rather than analysing the contents, I’m going to let Machen speak for himself, and include a number of quotations that struck me as nice observations, or as ideas nicely worded. The book is available from the usual sources as a trade paperback (US$ 15.00), ISBN  9798986390413.

“I have always been convinced of the fact that Poe’s work is supremely great, that the charm of it is unique in letters.” (pp. 65-66)

“George Bernard Shaw is, in fact, an instance of the most brilliant intellect exercised chiefly on false premises, and Mr. Chesterton shows, it seems to me, how such an antinomy became possible.” (p. 71)

“And behind all this there is, in my opinion, the last and fatal objection: that literature is finally to be judged by literary canons, and that the social or religious opinions of men of letter are not of importance.” (p. 73)

“It is long, I think, since I have read a sadder book than this biography, by Charlotte Fell Smith, of ‘John Dee,’ the famous ‘magician' of the Elizabethan age. . . . It stands to me, I confess, as a symbol, as a concrete illustration of infinite waste and folly and delusion, of the certain and melancholy doom that awaits the men who adventure forth in that quest which is called ‘occult.’” (p. 86)

“This I will say, that anyone who has really taken one of the great undoubted masterpieces to his heart, who has read and re-read it, so that it has become a familiar inhabitant of his mind, will never admire rubbish.” (p. 115)

“Many years ago a brilliant essayist said that Mr. James wrote as if writing were a painful duty. There is truth in the criticism, but it is not all the truth. Personally, I like Mr. James’s best work in spite of his manner, rather than because of it; but his best is certainly very good indeed. . . .  Mr. James is at his happiest in dealing with personalities of men of letters. But his ‘Turn of the Screw’ is one of the very best horror stories ever written.”  (p. 116)

“I have not read ‘John Silence,’ but if it is anything like ‘The Listener,’ by the same writer, it must be very good indeed. I should place that story of the men on the island amongst the whispering, mysterious voice of the willow lushes in the very first rank of tales of terror.”  (p. 116)

“All fine art is essentially and necessarily symbolical.  Art is the presentation of images which symbolise ideas or emotions. A Turner picture is not the mere likeness of a certain scene; the mere likeness could be more perfectly achieved by the camera. It is rather a symbol of the artist’s emotion on beholding a particular landscape, expressed in paint. And poetry, too, is symbolical: it is a collection of sensuous images which are really ‘words’ in the secret language of the spirit.” (p. 130)

“The mass of criticism and cross-criticism already called forth by the event of Edgar Allan Poe’s Centenary would perhaps have been spared were it generally realised that Poe, whose grandfather was a native Irishman, displayed, in life and work, simply the traits which make the Irish always the subject of misunderstanding. . . .  His characteristic mood is eminently Celtic. He was ever brooding on a faint and haunting dream of a past splendour, and he allowed his life to be directed by his dreams. He responded to the moods of Nature, but he saw the world chiefly in its autumn humour. He was oppressed by fear of some impending disaster, conscious of Fate, whose remote trafficking seemed ruthless to the individual, but he sometimes rose to a spiritual exultation that was almost prophetic.”  (p. 137)