An interesting subject, to me, and one that has not been much explored, to my knowledge, is the relationshp between CAS, his works, and what has been called "Romantic Satanism".

To be clear from the outset: I am not talking about any sort of religious or "occult" Satanism. Rather, I refer to the famous (or infamous) "misreading" of Milton's Paradise Lost by the English Romantic poets, and the subesequent idealization of the attributes of Satan in much Romantic literature. This theme extends at least to the time of the Decadents.

My sense is that CAS has very strong affinities with this "Satanic school", both personal and literary, and that, if nothing has been written to date on the subject, I might shake off my habitual lethargy, when it comes to literary criticism, and try my hand at it.

Your thoughts regarding the subject, and regarding the potential value of such an article (assuming that I have not been preempted on the subject)?

You have a point. But to tell you the truth, I don't believe that he was that influenced by the Satanic school except to the extent that Baudelaire inspired him to write the two poems "Satan Unrepentant" and "A Vision of Lucifer." Had it not been for his great admiration for Baudelaire, I doubt that he would have dabbled in that sort of poetry as most of his more original poems (i.e. not obviously inspired by Baudelaire) are more of a fantasy, romantic, or traditionally Poe-like type.

We have seen the darkness
Where charnel things decay,
Where atom moves with atom
In shining swift array,
Like ordered constellations
On some sidereal way.
--from Nyctalops

I am not looking merely at the obvious. For example, Ashton Smith's Nero is a manifestly Satanic figure, in the Romantic sense of that term. There are also deeper affinities than the explicit to be explored here, I think. The formative influences of Bierce and of Anatole France's Revolt of the Angels come to mind.

I also believe that the influence of Baudelaire's work upon CAS's poetry is significantly less than is commonly supposed.

I definitely agree with you on that last point.

As for how influenced Smith was by the Satanic school of poetry, you may have something of a point; however, I always saw him leaning more towards imitating the Byronic hero (featured in some of Byron's works such as "Manfred") rather than Milton's Satan, but perhaps it was a combination of the two.

We have seen the darkness
Where charnel things decay,
Where atom moves with atom
In shining swift array,
Like ordered constellations
On some sidereal way.
--from Nyctalops

Yes, but there is a direct lineage between Milton's Satan and the Byronic hero, although, of course, they are not synonymous. There is an excellent discussion of this point in Mario Praz's critical study The Romantic Agony, a book that I cannot recommend highly enough to those who have the stomach for it!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 14 Apr 07 | 01:58PM by Kyberean.

Kyberean, I think that it would be a great project and one that would be very well done considering how long you've been thinking on this subject (I remember you mentioned it back in 2003 briefly).

I do see many elements of the "Satanic School" in CAS' poetry (one can see this dramatically in the "Hashish Eater"... the monologue, the power, is very much in line with the speeches of Satan in Milton but mixed with a sort of Blakean beauty and force as well (i.e. "Tyger Tyger burning bright"). I think to some extent this was inevitable since it is the darker side of Romanticism. The existential questions raised by Milton in Paradise Lost had profound effects on the likes of Byron, Shelley, and Keats. One has to remember that Paradise Lost was accused as being impious when it was written and one can hear this echoed in Southby's criticism of Byron as "impious, lewd, monsterous," etc. From what I've read, it was this precise criticism by Southby that only encouraged Byron to adopt more Satanic and rebellious themes. In Baudelaire, the poëte maudit comes straight from this Byronic hero.

A nice book on this subject is Romantic Satanism: Myth and the Historical Moment in Blake, Shelley, and Byron by Peter A. Schock, if anyone is interested. It is expensive, but then again, what an wonderful book to have on the shelf of any brooding soul.

Also, if you look at Sterling's poems, you can see a much closer relative to CAS' early work and influences. Look to Ambrose Bierce whom Sterling quotes at the beginning of the "Testimony of the Suns" and one can trace a strain of California Romanticism (from Bierce to Sterling to CAS) moving its eye, to what I can only term as a numinous Satanism.

Just my two cents.

Many thanks for your thoughts, NightHalo. The trajectories that you traced are among those that have crossed my mind, as well. The examples from CAS that you mention are certainly in point, too, and I think even of the tales, such as "The Devotee of Evil", one of whose alternative titles was "The Satanist". Certain of CAS's doomed, overweening heroes have a distinctly Satanic pride about them, and, as I mentioned, the eponymous speaker in the dramatic monologue "Nero" possesses this and other, similar qualities in abundance. At any rate, I am increasingly convinced that this would be a fruitful approach to CAS's work.

It's interesting that you mention Schock's Romantic Satanism book. I have borrowed a copy from the library (you aren't joking about the price!). While his somewhat reductionist historicizing approach does not convince me, so far, at least, it is an indispensable survey of the subject--the first book-length work on this topic, I think--and he appears to cover every relevant bit of text of the major English Romantics under discussion.

Pioneers in this realm, however, have not been wanting. Having an academic affiliation means, among other things, that I can now raid JSTOR with impunity, and search for older articles on the subject, as well. One excellent article on the topic that I read recently is "The Romantic Mind Is Its Own Place", by Peter L. Thorslev, Jr., in Comparative Literature, Vol. 15, No. 3. (Summer, 1963).

Just for fun, here are some of my favorite quotations from Milton's Satan. "Hail Horrors, hail infernal world", indeed! ;-)


Farewell happy Fields
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail Horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself,
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
(Paradise Lost 1: 249-55)

Me miserable! Which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep
Still threat'ning to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav'n.
(Paradise Lost 4: 73-78)

the more I see
Pleasures about me, so much more I feel
Torment within me, as from the hateful siege
Of contraries; all good to me becomes
Bane, and in Heav'n much worse would be my state.
But neither here seek I, no nor in Heav'n
To dwell, unless by maistring Heav'n's Supreme;
Nor hope to make myself less miserable
By what I seek, but others to make such
As I, though thereby worse to me redound:
For only in destroying I find ease
To my relentless thoughts.
(Paradise Lost 9: 119-30)

If I wasn't so busy, I would love to spend some time looking over CAS' poetry for these elements. I would also love to become more familiar with CAS' stories. I've had his books on my shelves for years but the lovely world of academia steals all my time for personal reading.

As for the Schock book, I must admit that I have a personal bias against anything that ever wants to attribute a whole body of poetry as a reaction to society. Yet, I think some of his arguements are compelling, especially considering the rise of social consciousness and the need for a new vision of society (i.e. Blake's criticisms and vision in "London," would necessarily need a Satanic voice to pose itself against normal values and the Church). However, I think for every 'reaction against society' arguement there can be a counter point for the individuality that was also espoused at this time period. One must remember that in this period the old family structures were breaking down and the individual came to be more important as traditional, family work began to dissapear. So any arguements for the individual can also be valid and very essential to understanding these "Satanic" sentiments.

~Alycia

PS. JSTOR is awesome. I've found some wonderful articles there before.

NightHalo, regarding Schock's thesis: I agree that it has value, and that it is a very well done and worthwhile exploration of a somewhat neglected aspect of the Romantic Satanist theme. As we discussed in a different context, however, while it may have been an exaggeration to over-emphasize the isolato in the context of Romantic Satanism, Schock's book, being somewhat reactive to this interpretation, pushes too hard in the opposite direction. As I am sure we agree, distorted views in one direction or the other fail to yield an accurate portrayal of the phenomenon as a whole.

I don't want to stray too far from the subject of Ashton Smith and Romantic Satanism, but, on the topic of individualism and Romanticism, in general, David Wright offers some excellent observations on the subject in his introduction to the anthology English Romantic Verse that are worth quoting at length.


"By [...] about the time Wordsworth was born [...] the Industrial Revolution [was] [...] under way. [It] made possible the kind of conglomerate rather than organic society we now live in, of which the nineteenth century was to see the birth. Among other things, the Industrial Revolution destroyed the family as an economic unit and converted the working individual into an impersonal labour force, to be used, as W.H. Auden put it, 'like water or electricity for so many hours a day'. The organic society of small towns and villages where everybody knew his neighbour began to be replaced by vast congeries in which individuals lost identity. Our mass society was born; a mass society fed and clothed by mass production and informed--if that is the word--by mass communications. [...] [T]he more sensitive intelligences, which usually turn out to belong to poets and artists--'the antennae of the race', in Pound's phrase--began to react, and in most cases to record disquiet.

[...] [R]omanticism was a birth of a new kind of sensibility which had to do with the new kind of environment that man was in the process of creating for himself. If the individual was on his way to being regimented, then poets and artists, as it were, by intuitive prescience, began to seek to rebalance the scale by giving the greatest value to individual consciousness. [...] In La Rebelion de las Masas (The Revolt of the Masses), 1930, [Ortega y Gasset] says, 'The mass is all that sets no value upon itself--good or ill--based on specific grounds, but which feels itself "just like everybody" [...]. The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is individual, qualified, and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated'. The figure of the Solitary begins to occur in poetry about the same time as the advent of the Industrial Revolution that produced Ortega y Gasset's 'mass man'".


To show greater credibility, works such as Schock's must better account for this very pronounced aspect of Romanticism, and Romantic Satanism, as well.

I would add that CAS echoed many of the criticisms of mass society that Wright mentions, above. For instance, who can forget CAS's memorable critique of "the annals of the ant hill", and his professed aversion in his letters to any sort of "ant-like" economic and political organization?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 15 Apr 07 | 11:56AM by Kyberean.

Calonlan wrote:

Quote:

you may find my memoir enlightening and useful regarding the current conversation on Romantic Satanism (which I prefer not to discuss at this point)

Having little interest in CAS's juvenalia (I am not a "completist"), I did not purchase the volume that contains the memoir, and therefore I have not read it. Since Calonlan prefers not to join this discussion, can anyone else who has read it "enlighten" me as to the bearings its contents have on the subject at hand?

Well, it looks as if that's all for this one. I suppose that I'll have to troll for a used copy of Zagan, sometime, to see for myself how Dr. Farmer's remarks relate to this thread.

Thanks to Nighthalo for her constructive and useful comments. Thanks also to those who were less encouraging, whether explicitly or implicitly. Both sets of replies have their value, and they convince me more than ever that there is something to this line of inquiry. Whether I ever have the time or inspiration to devote to such explorations is, of course, another matter.

As an aside, it is also interesting to see the responses, at times Pavlovian, that any mention of the "S-word" may bring. This last is just a general observation, mind you, so no one here ought to take it personally, unless, of course, it fits.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 19 Apr 07 | 10:57AM by Kyberean.

Kyberean Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> As an aside, it is also interesting to see the
> responses, at times Pavlovian, that any mention of
> the "S-word" may bring. This last is just a
> general observation, mind you, so no one here
> ought to take it personally, unless, of course, it
> fits.

That's because of the peculiar potency of the S-word. ;) When I think of a Satanic author, I usually think of poets like Baudelaire who actually wrote paens in praise of evil and suffering. Smith never did that in either his poetry or his prose; it's interesting, in fact, to note how he scrupulously seemed to avoid translating many of Baudelaire's more repugnant opuses. If you ask me, Clark Ashton Smith's Baudelaire is better than Baudelaire's Baudelaire!

I hope that will explain my hesitancy when it comes to heading any of Smith's works as belonging to the school of Romantic Satanism. I can indeed see the influences of Milton's depiction of Satan in certain aspects of Smith's works, but as a general rule, I still believe the epithet is a bit extreme for a man whose works do, despite what his prudish neighbours in Auburn might have thought, adhere to a moral sense of right and wrong.

We have seen the darkness
Where charnel things decay,
Where atom moves with atom
In shining swift array,
Like ordered constellations
On some sidereal way.
--from Nyctalops



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 21 Apr 07 | 06:00PM by ArkhamMaid.

I think French Romantic Satanism as embodied by the likes of Baudelaire and Rimbaud is a form of the genre but certainly not the same as the English vein. From my study of the Romantics such as Blake, Shelley, and Byron, their sense of morality always seems very level. Their characters (or poems) may explore one horn of a dillemma but when it comes to the end of the story or the conclusion, there tends to be justice of some sort which most would term "good." For Blake, I see criticisms of morality all over the Songs of Innocence and Experience. In poems like "London" as I invoked above, he takes the Romantic Satanism approach through his tone, gross images, and his failing belief in humanity: we get little images of various people in the city and their suffering is certainly not endorsed, rather the poem critizes the typical good like the Church which commits crimes against these people. This, in my opinion, is one of the most important aspects of Romantic Satanism.

Through the eyes or voice of a rebellious and/or dark figure the poet is allowed to speak out against things he sees as social wrongs (in "London" above, we see his criticism of the structure of the city, wars, poverty, and marriage customs). Shelley's "The Cenci" is another interesting case in point and then if one looks to Byron, particularly in "Darkness" for instance, you see his wide sweeping across the earth and the criticism he has for humanity, for consumption, etc. I think it is poems like "Darkness" which would have influencesd CAS the most because you not only get a movement toward the cosmic and the apocalyptic but you also get a beautiful form to judge and assess human triumphs and (perhaps more noticable) failings.

PS. I just wanted to note that I think Baudelaire is a wonderful poet but I think what made him revolutionary is just this schism we see between his vision and morality and the Romantics' sense of it. He will write things that are in the voice of "evil" and he will make things beautiful which no one else would dare to (i.e. "The Corpse") which is in line with the Romantics' form of Satanism (one could have just as well named this something else, but if I am not mistaken it is a term used in reference to the first acknowledged piece of the form, Milton's "Paradise Lost"), however he goes farther and he is more radical in his approach...that is why he is so important, he made a new playing field and opened new doors of possibility(for good or evil).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 21 Apr 07 | 07:30PM by NightHalo.

ArkhamMaid:

Thank you for your comments. Although I appreciate and respect your perspective, I could not possibly disagree with you more.

First, with respect to CAS himself.... He was a misanthrope, an adulterer, and, I believe, a law-breaker (manufacture and distribution of alcoholic beverages was against the law during the Prohibition era, from around 1920-1933). He spoke of his "disgust mechanism", and how he felt tempted, at times, to create mayhem across the countryside. He describes himself as an outsider of the most profound sort. Of course, he had his own personal code, or pattern of personal ethics--everyone does, from the ordinary citizen to the serial killer--but that fact hardly makes him or anyone else a pillar of conventional morality.

When one speaks of morality--a term I rather dislike because of its religious taint--it is always wise to follow Nietzsche's advice and ask, "whose morality?" You speak as if "right" and "wrong" were objective, rather than subjective, qualities, whereas even Aristotle was astute enough to observe, in his Nicomachean Ethics, that "Fire burns in both Hellas and Persia, but men's ideas of right and wrong vary from place to place". Recognizing this principle, the malleability and subjectivity of morality, Milton's Satan states, "Evil, be Thou my Good". The fundamental principle behind Romantic Satanism, as I see it, is that right and wrong, good and evil, depend upon who has the power to define them, and to impose their definitions upon others.

I agree with NightHalo that there are fundamental differences between English and Romantic literary Satanism. The former is Miltonic and Promethean; the latter is Gothic and tied quite intimately to Catholicism, its authority and its rites. The French version is a much weaker strain, in my opinion. For instance, there is something distinctly whiny to me about the Baudelairean narrator's supplications to Satan in "Litanies of Satan", a point of view that contrasts dramatically with the grandeur of the Romantics' vision of the subject, which culminates in Byron's Manfred's deathbed renunciation of the authorty of both God and the demonic spirits who have been his familiars.

You also need to be more wary of attributing the points of view expressed in poems to their authors, or otherwise making inferences about their personal views merely from their literary works. There is no evidence that Baudelaire was speaking for himself in any poems he may have written that actively advocate "evil" (whatever that is, and whatever poems they may be), and there is no evidence that CAS explicitly disavowed the perspectives of the "villains" of his pieces--which, in any case, in the tales are often amoral agents who care nothing for humanity and its concerns.

With regard to CAS's versions of Baudelaire, I have argued this point in another forum, and I don't wish to drag the controversy into this one. That said, I feel that, as adaptations, CAS's renderings of Baudelaire are interesting. As translations, however, they are travesties. CAS's archaisms, and his frequent bad habit of choosing exotic and antiquated English words for common French ones, completely distort Baudelaire's tone. CAS's adaptations impose his own style upon Baudelaire, and they transmogrify an urban and urbane, modern (for his time, of course), and often coolly ironic poet into a decadent, slightly overwrought Sir Philip Sidney.

With respect to CAS's not having translated some of Baudelaire's more "repugnant" pieces (interesting choice of word, there!), you seem to overlook the possibility that he may have been working from a bowdlerized edition of the French versions. As you know, Les Fleurs du Mal encountered censorship problems from its inception. In any case, I doubt seriously that CAS felt any moral qualms about tackling those poems, and I really do not believe that Baudelaire's more extreme poems are any "worse", from the perspective of "repugnance", than, say, the tacit and explicit strains of necrophilia that form the undercurrent of such works as the Zothique cycle and The Dead Will Cuckold You.

In summary, I think that you don't really quite grasp what is intended by the term "Romantic Satanism", especially since you seem to view the latter part of the phrase primarily in terms of Judeo-Christian concepts of "good" and "evil". Romantic Satanism is a term of art in literary criticism that has been applied for some time to the works of the English Romantics. Although, as I have stated, I disagree with aspects of it, you might profit from taking a look at Schock's book about Romantic Satanism, in order to learn a bit more about the subject, and what that term really means. In any case, i want to be clear that I am not proposing Romantic Satanism as the Rosetta stone, or, perhaps more approppriately, as the skeleton key to the work and thought of CAS. I merely think that it is but one lens, previously unused, that would illuminate aspects of CAS's work.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 22 Apr 07 | 08:46AM by Kyberean.

Nighthalo:

Thank you for your (as usual) astute and informed comments, as well. I apologize for the brevity of my reply, but that is because I have little to add to your observations.

With respect to Baudelaire, his originality lies in taking Poe's approach to beauty and horror, their intermingling, to new and exotic extremes. As you mention, however, there are significant differences between the English and French literary Satanism. You are also quite on the mark in interpreting the Romantics' use of the Satanic figure and concepts as serving to question the established dogma of the day, be it aesthetic or moral.

The quintessential qualities of Romantic Satanism, to me, are Promethean pride, perspectivism, original thought and imagination, a desire to seek the forbidden in search of enlightenment, an insatiable thirst for exploration, and the transgression of limits. Romantic Satanism was the first "movement" of sorts to encompass these qualities, and how anyone could fail to see the relevance of these themes to the work of CAS is quite beyond me.