Hello. Any CAS lovers on this forum? I'm nearing the end of The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies. Since Dunsany is on of my favourite authors, I knew I'd have some kinship with CAS. I was hesitant to start due his connection with Lovecraft, for which I have a love-hate relationship, but I'm glad I attempted this master of the imagination. I thought his writing would be juvenile and, like Lovecraft, almost entirely rooted in purple prose and detective-type stories whose every conceit is based on racial purity or some other tedious idea. Instead, Clark is a veritable god of language whose stories are as varied as his word use. And in the best possible way. The above mentioned book is dense with literary allusions and is just wholly rich and textured. Here are some of my favourite prose and verse lines for those who have never encountered him. My own style seems to be quite seriously indebted to this writer, I realise. "... and the moon smiles with a cold and marble smile on the blackened altar—then Amanon speaks to Amanon, with a voice of iron, and a voice of bronze. . . . Thus, and not otherwise, the image of iron speaks to the image of bronze: “Brother, when the censers which are wrought of single sapphires and rubies, had turned the air to a blue mist of perfume, and the red serpents of the fire were fed on the heart of the sacrifice, I dreamed a strange dream: Methought, in some far day,—a day as yet unprophesied of the stars, the temple and the city of Morm, the people thereof, and we, the images of its god, were one with the sand of the desert, and the sand of the sea." " "We were a sombre, secret, many-sorrowed people—we who dwelt beneath that sky of eternal twilight, pierced by the towering tombs and obelisks of the past. In our blood was the chill of the ancient night of time; and our pulses flagged with a creeping prescience of the lentor of Lethe." "The window was set in the top of the dome; but Namirrha had contrived, by means of his magic, that one entering by the last spiral of the stairs would suddenly seem to descend rather than climb, and, reaching the final step, would peer downward through the window while stars passed under him in a giddying gulf. There, kneeling, Namirrha touched a secret spring in the marble, and the circular pane slid back without sound. Then, lying prone on the curved interior of the dome, with his face over the abyss, and his long beard trailing stiffly into space, he whispered a pre-human rune, and held speech with certain entities who belonged neither to hell nor the mundane elements, and were more fearsome to invoke than the infernal genii or the devils of earth, air, water, and flame. With them he made his compact, defying Thasaidon’s will, while the air curdled about him with their voices, and rime gathered palely on his sable beard from the cold that was wrought by their breathing as they leaned earthward." "The Corpse: Where, then, with their multiform splendours, are the heavens of light and hells of fire, promised unto faith by the sybils and hierophants? The Skeleton: Ask of yonder cadaver, him whose corpulence diminishes momently, for the pampering of worms. He was once a priest, and spoke authentically of these matters, with all the delegated thunder of gods. As for myself, I have found nothing beyond this narrow charnel-vault." Bow down: I am the emperor of dreams; I crown me with the million-colored sun Of secret worlds incredible, and take Their trailing skies for vestment when I soar, ---- And all their stars and gulfs subservient, Dynasts of time, and anarchs of the dark— In closer war reverseless, and would set New discord at the universal core— A Samson-principle to bring it down In one magnificence of ruin. Yea, The monster, Chaos, were mine unleashed hound, And all my power Destruction’s own right arm! ---- Turn round, O Life, and know with eyes aghast The breast that fed thee—Death, disguiseless, stern: Even now, within my mouth, from tomb and urn, The dust is sweet. All nurture that thou hast Was once as thou, and fed with lips made fast On Death, whose sateless mouth it fed in turn. Kingdoms abased, and Thrones that starward yearn, All are but ghouls that batten on the past.
I love Clark Ashton Smith, both his verse and his prose works. I love him especially at his most image-dripping, uncompromisingly archaic and opulent. My favorite story is probably The Isle of the Torturers. His style is like an immense middle finger carved of porphyry, studded with opals and aventurines, jutting in the desert toward the sounding city of Modernism. Not that I necessarily hate modernism entirely but it is good to have an author like Klarkashton who is not afraid to use all the weird and wonderful words, to let the imagination roam unhindered by the concerns of "serious" literature.
