Re: Sawfish's list of recommended CAS stories
Posted by:
Sawfish (IP Logged)
Date: 9 April, 2020 12:01PM
Dale Nelson Wrote:
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> I'm not saying Clark Ashton Smith should have
> tried to "be" Thomas de Quincey, of course.
>
> Here's the passage from the Opium-Eater that I had
> in mind. The "Malay" was a sailor from that
> region whom de Quincey happened to see in the
> British place where he was living. Under the
> influence of the drug, the unsuspecting sailor
> haunted de Quincey....
>
>
> May 1818
> The Malay has been a fearful enemy for months. I
> have been every night, through his means,
> transported into Asiatic scenes. I know not
> whether others share in my feelings on this point;
> but I have often thought that if I were compelled
> to forego England, and to live in China, and among
> Chinese manners and modes of life and scenery, I
> should go mad. The causes of my horror lie deep,
> and some of them must be common to others.
> Southern Asia in general is the seat of awful
> images and associations. As the cradle of the
> human race, it would alone have a dim and
> reverential feeling connected with it. But there
> are other reasons. No man can pretend that the
> wild, barbarous, and capricious superstitions of
> Africa, or of savage tribes elsewhere, affect him
> in the way that he is affected by the ancient,
> monumental, cruel, and elaborate religions of
> Indostan, &c. The mere antiquity of Asiatic
> things, of their institutions, histories, modes of
> faith, &c., is so impressive, that to me the vast
> age of the race and name overpowers the sense of
> youth in the individual. A young Chinese seems to
> me an antediluvian man renewed. Even Englishmen,
> though not bred in any knowledge of such
> institutions, cannot but shudder at the mystic
> sublimity of castes that have flowed apart, and
> refused to mix, through such immemorial tracts of
> time; nor can any man fail to be awed by the names
> of the Ganges or the Euphrates. It contributes
> much to these feelings that southern Asia is, and
> has been for thousands of years, the part of the
> earth most swarming with human life, the great
> officina gentium. Man is a weed in those regions.
> The vast empires also in which the enormous
> population of Asia has always been cast, give a
> further sublimity to the feelings associated with
> all Oriental names or images. In China, over and
> above what it has in common with the rest of
> southern Asia, I am terrified by the modes of
> life, by the manners, and the barrier of utter
> abhorrence and want of sympathy placed between us
> by feelings deeper than I can analyse. I could
> sooner live with lunatics or brute animals. All
> this, and much more than I can say or have time to
> say, the reader must enter into before he can
> comprehend the unimaginable horror which these
> dreams of Oriental imagery and mythological
> tortures impressed upon me. Under the connecting
> feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlights I
> brought together all creatures, birds, beasts,
> reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and
> appearances, that are found in all tropical
> regions, and assembled them together in China or
> Indostan. From kindred feelings, I soon brought
> Egypt and all her gods under the same law. I was
> stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by
> monkeys, by parroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into
> pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the summit
> or in secret rooms: I was the idol; I was the
> priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I
> fled from the wrath of Brama through all the
> forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me: Seeva laid wait
> for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I
> had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the
> crocodile trembled at. I was buried for a
> thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and
> sphynxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of
> eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous
> kisses, by crocodiles; and laid, confounded with
> all unutterable slimy things, amongst reeds and
> Nilotic mud.
>
> I thus give the reader some slight abstraction of
> my Oriental dreams, which always filled me with
> such amazement at the monstrous scenery that
> horror seemed absorbed for a while in sheer
> astonishment. Sooner or later came a reflux of
> feeling that swallowed up the astonishment, and
> left me not so much in terror as in hatred and
> abomination of what I saw. Over every form, and
> threat, and punishment, and dim sightless
> incarceration, brooded a sense of eternity and
> infinity that drove me into an oppression as of
> madness. Into these dreams only it was, with one
> or two slight exceptions, that any circumstances
> of physical horror entered. All before had been
> moral and spiritual terrors. But here the main
> agents were ugly birds, or snakes, or crocodiles;
> especially the last. The cursed crocodile became
> to me the object of more horror than almost all
> the rest. I was compelled to live with him, and
> (as was always the case almost in my dreams) for
> centuries. I escaped sometimes, and found myself
> in Chinese houses, with cane tables,& c. All the
> feet of the tables, sofas, &c., soon became
> instinct with life: the abominable head of the
> crocodile, and his leering eyes, looked out at me,
> multiplied into a thousand repetitions; and I
> stood loathing and fascinated. And so often did
> this hideous reptile haunt my dreams that many
> times the very same dream was broken up in the
> very same way: I heard gentle voices speaking to
> me (I hear everything when I am sleeping), and
> instantly I awoke. It was broad noon, and my
> children were standing, hand in hand, at my
> bedside—come to show me their coloured shoes, or
> new frocks, or to let me see them dressed for
> going out. I protest that so awful was the
> transition from the damned crocodile, and the
> other unutterable monsters and abortions of my
> dreams, to the sight of innocent human natures and
> of infancy, that in the mighty and sudden
> revulsion of mind I wept, and could not forbear
> it, as I kissed their faces.
If I understand this correctly, this is living within the influence of opium--an opium dream.
I liked it...but would the publishers of Weird Tales like it, do you think?
--Sawfish
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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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