I just re-read this, and in light of the stimulating and salutary effects of the various discussions on this board, I looked at it with a somewhat different eye.

This is a very beautiful and wistful story, and the dialog between the two unconsumated lovers in the cemetary is really very tender. I was quite impressed with how evocative this story is in establishing an almost palpable mood. Since Smith is so good at this, it makes me wish I read poetry...but, alas! Like the lovers' carnal consumation in this story, I fear it is not to be!

I'm thinking that nowhere more than in this story is the influence of Poe more apparent: the whining over irretrievably lost loves that he (Poe) indulges in, combined with his rather morbid conception of death, and the confusion of the two (like a Woody Allen title: "Love and Death"), seems to be the obvious inspiration for this story.

But Smith is profoundly, but subtly, different!

Where Poe's "mortuary romances" *feel* like the fever dream of a maladjusted, doomed bohemian poet, Smith captures the dreamlike quality of impossible love without actually giving in to the morbidity of Poe--who would like to dwell there, it seems--and soon did.

We have Smith's main character true to Poe's pattern: a young dissolute profoundly unsatisfied with life, like an angst-ridden upper-middle class teenager from Palos Verdes, but instead of a spiritual object for his unfulfillable passion, he is duped by what amounts to a high-class courtesan on sabatical. The wistfulness of mood is by no means dissipated by the ultimate disappointment he feels when he discovers the reality of the situation, and Smith indulges in a neat trick: he essentially puts the filmstrip back on the spool, and replays a portion of the story, implying an infinite loop in the spirit world.

I wonder if the editors objected to Smith reusing the same 3 or 4 paragraphs, and tried to beat him down in price for this story?

So, we have the well-adjusted, but wry, bohemian poet (Smith) informing and extending Poe's concept of love that is impossible to consumate. I find this to be a profoundly satisfying experience!

As a side note, to the degree that I may surmise, Smith appears to me to have had a well-rounded and happy life, complete with the panziac enjoyment of that which the full living of life has to offer. I see little or no angst, nor self-destructive or excessive undercurrents, only a sort of detached amusement, and a deep understanding of human nature--or deeper, at least, that most other fantasy writers. I think Smith really did understand wine, women, and song, and knew, from personal experience, *why* this simple saying resonates across all times and cultures. I think he was a remarkably *wise* writer.

Your thoughts, fellow smith-o-philes?


--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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Some remarks in reply to the general comments at the end of your post:

I regret always, it seems, having to insert contrarian posts into these discussions, but our points of view here could not be more opposed. I think that the wisdom and originality of CAS resides in his desire to pass "beyond the human aquarium", in his misanthropy, in his understanding of the relative unimportance of the human race within the cosmos, and in his grasp of the great beauty that lies outside humanity and its petty concerns.

I also disagree that CAS's fiction predominantly reflects the kind of detached amusement you mention. It is there, to be sure, but the satire is often Juvenalian, not Horatian (see, for instance, "The Monster of the Prophecy"). With regard to CAS's life, while he was certainly no embittered hermit, and he did transcend his cicumstances, CAS lived a largely hard and poverty-ridden life, was greatly stressed at times, was at least at some point in his life a borderline alcoholic, had a serious nervous breakdown in his youth, and often suffered from chronic ill health--all a far cry from the kind of Arcadian bliss that your post implies.

Kyberean Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Some remarks in reply to the general comments at
> the end of your post:
>
> I regret always, it seems, having to insert
> contrarian posts into these discussions, but our
> points of view here could not be more opposed. I
> think that the wisdom and originality of CAS
> resides in his desire to pass "beyond the human
> aquarium", in his misanthropy, in his
> understanding of the relative unimportance of the
> human race within the cosmos, and in his grasp of
> the great beauty that lies outside humanity and
> its petty concerns.

Maybe, but the subject at hand, Morthylla, is hardly a vehicle for this sentiment. I don't see misanthropy as anything other than the most minor undercurrent in this story, nor do I see man's comparative nsignificance in the cosmos entering into the story, either.

I see terminal, pervasive ennui, like in Ballard's Vermillion Sands cycle, but richly leavened with wistful, impossible romantic love that, in reality is an illusion. It's dreamlike, and necessarily so.

The denouement--the looped filmstrip--is a sort of curve he throws us, like the 12 Monkeys timeline: it takes a bit of thought to wrangle through the recursion he's introducing.

So, does this make Morthylla an "outlier"?

>
> I also disagree that CAS's fiction predominantly
> reflects the kind of detached amusement you
> mention. It is there, to be sure, but the satire
> is often Juvenalian, not Horatian (see, for
> instance, "The Monster of the Prophecy").

Or Voyage of King Euvoran?

Both kinds are there in Smith corpus of work, for sure.

> With
> regard to CAS's life, while he was certainly no
> embittered hermit, and he did transcend his
> cicumstances, CAS lived a largely hard and
> poverty-ridden life, was greatly stressed at
> times, was at least at some point in his life a
> borderline alcoholic, had a serious nervous
> breakdown in his youth, and often suffered from
> chronic ill health--all a far cry from the kind of
> Arcadian bliss that your post implies.

No, I meant rather that he *seems*, as I said, "well-adjusted." Perhaps he was well-adjusted to these circumstances. I don't the details of his life; you seem to know the details of his life but perhaps not how well he coped with them.






--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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As I mentioned, I intended my remarks not to pertain to "Morthylla", but instead to the more general observations you made regarding CAS near the end of your post. I certainly don't mean to hijack your thread, but your general comments seem to invite comment, in return. I've written what I needed to write on that subject, however, and will try let those who wish to discuss "Morthylla", in particular, do so without too much general comment from me.

As for the details of his life, and how well CAS coped with his travails, his periods of excessive drinking and his occasional outbursts of explosive rancor in letters to friends suggest that--and I certainly don't mean to single out CAS for criticism in this respect--that he was far from being a model of equanimity at all times.

Kyberean Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> As I mentioned, I intended my remarks not to
> pertain to "Morthylla", but instead to the more
> general observations you made regarding CAS near
> the end of your post. I certainly don't mean to
> hijack your thread, but your general comments seem
> to invite comment, in return.

Agreed.

> I've written what I
> needed to write on that subject, however, and will
> try let those who wish to discuss "Morthylla", in
> particular, do so without too much general comment
> from me.
>
> As for the details of his life, and how well CAS
> coped with his travails, his periods of excessive
> drinking and his occasional outbursts of explosive
> rancor in letters to friends suggest that--and I
> certainly don't mean to single out CAS for
> criticism in this respect--that he was far from
> being a model of equanimity at all times.

I can see your point.

My point was that, as far as his establishment of voice permits us (or rather, me) to see, he didn't seem to dwell on any of these external problems, but was, in fact, almost upbeat, at times. Or, if not upbeat, amused, and he passed this along to the reader, I think. Or to me, at least. And when he wasn't upbeat, he was almost studiously cynical, but retained a healthy detachment from the sujects at hand.

So, his voice never contained that whiny note of the social observer who has an axe to grind (Dickens), or the compensatory "justice" meted out in stories by writers who felt that they weren't getting their due recognition (I'm tempted to "Howard" here).

Smith makes me chuckle a good deal when reading his fantastic short stories--and the older I've gotten, the more I chuckle. I can't stay that about Lovecraft, the fellow author with whom he seems to be most frequently associated, and the contrast between these two great masters of this limited genre are very intruiging to me.

I look forward to more fine and informed discussions with you.






--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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