A reader's comment I saw contrasts the suggestiveness of the best Victorian horror fiction to the heavy-handed horrors in the tales of Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. How might this long-familiar criticism apply to particular stories by Smith? I wonder if he knew of or had seen the passage Poe removed from "Berenice", in which the narrator describes her corpse lying in state prior to the interment. Poe erred on the side of caution I think-- it is a powerful passage that builds the psychological treatment to maximum effect. Two examples from Smith that go in opposite directions are his final changes to "The Return of the Sorcerer" and "The Satyr". In the former, he followed Lovecraft's advice and rewrote the ending to be less explicit, enhancing the effect of spellbound horror. Most people will agree it was an improvement, but I'm not so sure. Conversely, Smith rewrote the ending of "The Satyr" to explicitly bring the fabled creature onstage, replacing the violent murder of the lovers from his first version. I think that in this case editors Connors and Hilger made the wrong decision in restoring the original. The revised version, in which the Satyr abducts the woman, is much better in my opinion. In any case, it seems to me that Smith was a bit more amenable to radical revision than was Lovecraft (and not just for commercial reasons). Being primarily a poet, revision was a process he was constantly aware of. He wisely didn't revise "The Double Shadow" after Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright rejected it, but thanks to the Night Shade edition of the tales, we see many instances of his painstaking revisionary process.

jkh

Rape themes must be managed cautiously in weird fiction, or they overwhelm. That's my purely-subjective opinion. Machen managed this trick somehow. CAS, who is influenced by Machen, struggles to find the right balance when he dances around rape themes, and I'm not sure he entirely succeeds.

I think I prefer the manuscript version of THE SATYR. It is more unambiguously a tale of horror. The abduction ending does not feel to follow as naturally from what precedes it.

Did all versions published in CAS' lifetime have the abduction ending? I know it appeared in 1931 and 1948.

It may be worth pointing out that the text of the story foreshadows the death of the poet: "a young poet who might in time have rivalled Ronsard as one of the most brilliant luminaries of the Pleiade, if it had not been for an unforeseen but fatal circumstance." But the poet survives in the published version.

I could not find the text from LA PAREE STORIES. But I guess it was the revised ending. I found other issues of that magazine online, and it is clearly an erotic-themed magazine for men, which might explain the temptation to alter the ending in order to make a sale.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 19 Jun 22 | 06:37PM by Platypus.

Platypus Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It may be worth pointing out that the text of the
> story foreshadows the death of the poet: "a young
> poet who might in time have rivalled Ronsard as
> one of the most brilliant luminaries of the
> Pleiade, if it had not been for an unforeseen but
> fatal circumstance." But the poet survives in the
> published version.
>
> I could not find the text from LA PAREE STORIES.
> But I guess it was the revised ending. I found
> other issues of that magazine online, and it is
> clearly an erotic-themed magazine for men, which
> might explain the temptation to alter the ending
> in order to make a sale.

You are correct. The implicit death of the young poet was retained in the published version. And the story was only revised after numerous rejections. I prefer the revised ending, and the unrevised ending of "The Return of the Sorcerer". I see your point about the murder in "The Satyr," but feel the surprise appearance of the creature is even more dramatic in its own way. Smith's revision of "Sorcerer" is excellent, but again I prefer the explicitness of the original. What do you think of the expurgated descriptive passage in "Berenice"? Clearly belongs, in my view. Mabbott and Quinn approved of the self-imposed censorship, but I've always thought the ending merely confuses rather than horrifies without the insane narrator's vigil at her bedside.

Kipling Wrote:
> What do
> you think of the expurgated descriptive passage in
> "Berenice"? Clearly belongs, in my view. Mabbott
> and Quinn approved of the self-imposed censorship,
> but I've always thought the ending merely confuses
> rather than horrifies without the insane
> narrator's vigil at her bedside.

Not sure. Arguably, the story is punchier without it.

From what I can tell, people seem to connect expurgation of these paragraphs with the criticism the story received for being too horrific. I don't see that. Seems to me that Poe left all the most horrific parts in.

He had already given us one "false death" clue with the reference to her epileptic fits. Did he need to give us another? Maybe he just looked at those 4 paragraphs and asked himself "what am I really accomplishing here?"

I guess I can see that the paragraphs do protract the discomfort of an already-uncomfortable story. But I'm not sure what, if anything, is being clarified, that helps the reader understand the ending.

I'm not familiar with Mabbott & Quinn's opinions.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 20 Jun 22 | 06:59PM by Platypus.

Platypus Wrote:
----------------------------------------
>
> From what I can tell, people seem to connect
> expurgation of these paragraphs with the criticism
> the story received for being too horrific. I
> don't see that. Seems to me that Poe left all the
> most horrific parts in.
>
> He had already given us one "false death" clue
> with the reference to her epileptic fits. Did he
> need to give us another? Maybe he just looked at
> those 4 paragraphs and asked himself "what am I
> really accomplishing here?"
>
> I guess I can see that the paragraphs do protract
> the discomfort of an already-uncomfortable story.
> But I'm not sure what, if anything, is being
> clarified, that helps the reader understand the
> ending.
>
> I'm not familiar with Mabbott & Quinn's opinions.

Thanks, Platypus. You've discerned a plausible factor in the suppression of the passage. T.O. Mabbott's introductory notes reveal the removal of the paragraphs was--seemingly-- after negative criticism of the first publication. Poe "wrote apologetically" to editor T.H. White, confessing that "it approaches the very verge of bad taste", but this does not in itself prove anything against your speculation. Anyway, Poe's revisions would have been of interest to CAS. From Smith's letters to Samuel Loveman I get the impression he frowned upon anything suggesting a squeamish attitude toward the risque, whether from editors or the poets themselves. Perhaps "The Epiphany of Death" (dedicated to HPL), was also influenced by Poe's gruesome story.

jkh