I have an recording of howl being read in 1959 some ten plus years before I was born. But it still feels live to me so I cant agree that it stuck in a particular time, or even place, seems relevant to me here in New Zealand.

Poetry is the most timeless of the written arts its raw humanity is understood from Cro-Magnon man to modern man.

B.

Francis' point about the age of the person who finds "Howl" touches
him, and Boyd's mentioning his age at reading reinforce my point about
"frozen in time" - I do not refer only to the "60's" - who continues
to find "hickory, dickory dock" a meaningful intellectual exercise
once beyond the nursery? I have found that as time has passed, many
things which I found moving and profound as a younger person, no
longer have that power - this is not to demean their importance at
that point in one's life - There are other works which can be
revisited again and again, and as one matures intellectually and
spiritually, continue to be sources of wisdom and wonder, and are,
indeed, inexhaustible resources: The Organ fugues of Bach; Shakespeare;
Milton;Spenser; Jonson; Tolkien; Lewis -- to mention just a few.
Even the satirical songs of Tom Lehrer are (at least so far) still
a delight to the new college student as well as those of us who
heard him "live at the Hungry I". Somewhere along the line,
the person who is growing moves beyond the phase of perpetually
misunderstood adolescence and its self-obsession and develops a
a life in which the transcendent becomes ascendant - Dr. Arthur
Bestor once wrote that there are two kinds of persons who reach
60: those with 40 years of experience, and those who have had
one experience, 40 times. I do not deny the power of the experience
one may derive from any poem that moves them, I would only suggest that,
historically when looking across the entire history of poetry from,say
the Psalms, through Homer and Virgil and on to today, an analysis of
the contemporaries of those such as I just mentioned will reveal that in the majority of cases those
works in which the poet is the center of the poem did not
generally survive the cut.

I am a newcomer to this message board, although not to the works of Clark Ashton Smith.

I cannot speak for others, but I come to the work of Ashton Smith precisely because it represents an alternative to the "human aquarium". As a Nietzschean, my view is that "man is something to be overcome". As few others have done, Ashton Smith has created a literature beyond time, a cosmic, extra-human poetry for a "Superhumanity" to come. On the other hand, the measure of mediocrity of a poem is the number of times the words "I" or "you" appear in it; how many "I"s, relatively speaking, does one find in the poetry of Shelley or Ashton Smith? The work of the "Beats" may or may not be tethered to a particular era in American history, but it is certainly tethered to a naive anthropocentrism, and thus is, to me, at least, "all too human".

Thanks for the comments on the map. I just sent a minimum (~84K) version to Boyd, just in case he doesn't want to keep serving the larger one.

It's would be nice to see an interest in CAS in the gaming community. There's always spillover into the literary community when that happens, even though some of it is parody.

And I don't mean to downplay the quality of parodies out there. http://www.s-p-o-n-g-e.com, a Lovecraftian parody, is one of my favorite sites.

its avalable here:

http://www.eldritchdark.com/art/inspired/zothique_complete2.gif

1800*1165 83k

When You brought up using Zothique as a setting for roleplaying I remembered that I had been playing around with that idea some years ago. It turned out my notes whern't very extensive but I put them up on this site

http://www.angelfire.com/empire/zothique

Perhaps I'll even get to do some serious writing on this. I guess it would be usefull to have some info on locations, important people, culture, history, creatures, spells.

Quit off topic, but while talking of roleplaying games, this is something else i wrote a while ago.

http://www.mysticages.com/thousand/legacy/

btw, thanks for a truly excellent site Boyd!

The map of Zothique is really quite good, Thanks!
I noticed that you've placed "Yondo" off to the side, as a sort of peripherally connected region. This idea seems pretty logical as the story involved, "The Abominations of Yondo" is quite similar in theme to the Zothique series. When I drew up a map of Averoigne I placed "Malneant" just outside the boundaries of Averoigne for the same reasons, It being quite similar in style and theme yet not part of the series proper.
I'm not familiar with role-playing games, but it seems to me that someone has already used Averoigne for this purpose. Anyone able to shed some light on this?
-Ron

The EldritchDark's "Art Inspired" area has some Averoigne files from a commercial ED&D (Expert Dungeons and Dragons) campaign, which has probably been long out of print. I never played ED&D, and today "ED&D" is only found on lists of obsolete acronyms.

I included Yondo on the map because the story is completely compatible with the later Zothique series, except that the continent of Zothique was never mentioned in Abominations of Yondo. Both worlds have dry desolation, forgotten layers of antiquity, necromantic magic, and a cataclysmic "edge of the world" off to the west. Though I'm certain that Yondo was the inspiration for Zothique, I'm not sure why CAS didn't refer to it as a Zothique tale (the Black Book list). Perhaps the fact that the name "Zothique" hadn't been determined when Yondo was written was reason enough; or that later he decided to have the ocean flow into the western cataclysm, rather than have it reachable by land.

Ron,
There was Castle Amber (Chateau d' Amberville) (X2) D&D expert module (by Tom Moldvay) based loosely on Averoigne I remember playing it in the 80's (before i had herd of or read CAS) and still have our copy. Some of its illustrations are in the art section.


The bibliography in the module recommends the following:

The Enchantress of Sylaire
The Colossus of Ylourgne
The Disinterment of Venus
The Satyr
The Beast of Averoigne
The Holiness of Azedarc
The Mandrakes
The End of the Story
A Rendezvous in Averoigne
The Maker of Gargoyles
Mother of Toads

The complete module (sans cover) is now available here:

REMOVED FOR COPYRIGHT REASONS



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 31 Dec 05 | 03:46PM by Boyd.

I hope the maps needed to play the Castle Amber adventure are added at some point in the future.
I've never read any of the Averoigne stories. Is the bibliography above a good list to start with? Are there other Averoigne stories that should be on the list?

Have a look here:
http://www.eldritchdark.com/misc/cycle/index.html#Averoigne

contains the list of the stories that make up the cycle and some other info.

Is anyone here familiar with the Arduin gaming system? Arduin is a fantasy gaming system similar to D&D. I've read that the creator of Arduin, David Hargrove(?), was heavily influenced by Tales of Zothique. I believe for awhile it was out of print, but now some Arduin materials are being published by Emperor's Games(?). I as yet have not read any Arduin literature and was hoping that maybe someone here could tell me more. Is the fantasy world of Arduin similar to Zothique?

Almost forgot...
thanks, Boyd, for the Averoigne info.