jdworth Wrote:
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> I would heartily agree
> that one should read De la Mare before Benson, but
> then I don't tend to put him in the second tier,
> really. Much of his prose work is of the finest
> grade:...

I am sorry, do you mean Benson, or De la Mare?

jimrockhill2001 Wrote:
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> I would argue that Le Fanu is profound, in fact
> one of the most profound masters of supernatural
> we have seen thus far. I believe he ranks
> alongside James Hogg, Henry James (when his
> circumlocutory prose does not betray him), Edioth
> Wharton, Walter de la Mare, Arthur Machen, A. E.
> Coppard, and a few others as among the most
> profound and thought-provoking writers of
> supernatural fiction in English.

I agree with everything you say. I just said that Le Fanu is not "profound" in the sense I suspect Knygatin means---i.e., that his concerns are "spiritual." But he is an author of profoundly subversive black comedies of manners.

Kyngatin: Yes, I didn't phrase that very well, did I? I meant I don't see de la Mare in the second tier (and Benson at times just barely missing first).

On Le Fanu as a writer of "black comedies of manners"... I think my problem with that particular phrase is the impression it gives; but there is considerable truth to the idea, nonetheless. This is perhaps especially true in a piece such as "Schalken the Painter", where the rules of social politesse makes possible a spiritual kidnapping and rape. The spirit here is certainly one of the most comically grotesque in description, yet utterly horrible, and the events of the tale are anything but laughable, though pungent with a bitter humor.

So certainly on that level, the description fits; it is just the phrase itself is likely to have most people thinking there is less to Le Fanu than is there. I do think he is profound, though whether or not in a "spiritual" sense is difficult for me to say, really. Certainly he seems to be saying something about how such things work. This is even true with the title of his collection In a Glass Darkly, which I described elsewhere, calling the title "a deliberate misquotation of the Biblical passage ('For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known'; I Corinthians 13:12)", adding: "It is LeFanu's way of signalling the themes of his tales here, that in this life we see through the glass, darkly; but when we are in that other life (which some few unfortunates in his tales encounter) we will indeed be "face to face" and will know, even as we are known... but his vision is anything but the comforting one of the Epistles, as one of the themes of his stories is, practically speaking, the absence of an active god in the universe, but the very real presence of "the vast machinery of hell". The universe of his stories is a mindless machine in which there is no reason, no point, to the suffering of these unfortunates; it simply is."

(It was peculiar reading Sullivan's book when I had evolved such a view of Le Fanu's work, as I found much of what he was saying extremely similar, sometimes even to the phrasing. The difference is that he has gone into it much more profoundly and with a wider scope.)

At any rate, Le Fanu is certainly one to try, but be aware that his effects are often very subtle and understated, and many don't get them the first time around....

"Schalken the Painter" is a good example. There are plenty of Victorian stories about financially motivated arranged marriages between young women and older men. Le Fanu's perverse twist is to have a father sell his daughter into marriage with a walking corpse (or whatever that thing is---it is also suggested it could be wooden statue from a church).

Quote:

Le Fanu is certainly one to try, but be aware that his effects are often very subtle and understated, and many don't get them the first time around....

I would add that this statement is a fortiori true of Walter de la Mare's tales, as well.

jdworth Wrote:
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> At any rate, Le Fanu is certainly one to try, but
> be aware that his effects are often very subtle
> and understated, and many don't get them the first
> time around....

I glimpsed at a few stories, and the amount of descriptive details of the cultural life was enough to immediately catch my interest. I love being transported back to those times. Also, he doesn't seem to shy away from showing the ugly, harsh brutality of some people's unhappy destinies, and I appreciate that. If he will also be able to show beauty, then he has my highest regard for presenting the full spectrum.

I like the "subtle and understated". And I like the bombastic too, as long as it's done well and has a subtle sense of selective taste, like Merritt's The Metal Monster, or C.A. Smith's "The Red World of Polaris", or "The Dark Eidolon"!

I like the subtle, if it's not the involuntary result of lack of talent, or lack of imaginary vision, but a conscious choice to achieve a certain heightened effect.



I ended up ordering the ol' Dover edition The Best Ghost Stories of J.S. Le Fanu. It's the best value for my money, and it collects all the stories I want, in one handy volume. Dover doesn't exactly make aesthetically pleasing books, but they are reliable, with a wide range of "household" publications of practical and usable subjects.
Only thing I regret is not having Robert Tracy's interesting introduction to In a Glass Darkly, where he discusses a bit on evolving the "inner eye" to see beyond the material world.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 14 Oct 10 | 04:21AM by Knygatin.

In that case, you should enjoy Le Fanu immensely. The Dover edition is a good selection, although (if I remember correctly) he uses the original magazine version of a couple of the stories, such as "The Familiar" and "Carmilla", rather than the revised versions from In a Glass Darkly. I think this was a wise choice for a collection of individual stories, as the changes might well weaken the effect if these tales were read out of the context of that volume. You might eventually want to pick up a copy of the companion Dover collection, Ghost Stories and Mysteries, as well. Though it is a lesser collection overall, it nonetheless has some fine pieces, such as "Wicked Captain Walshawe of Wauling", the "Ghost Stories of Chapelizod", "The Child That Went with the Fairies", "Dickon the Devil", "The Evil Guest", and the original of what would be expanded into Uncle Silas, "A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family". "The Room in the Dragon Volant" (also in that volume) isn't at all bad, either....

As a sidenote, film director Ingmar Bergman made a movie called Through a Glass Darkly (no relation to Le Fanu, as far as I know). In an interview he described why the Biblical passage says "glass darkly". In the old days mirrors were not made of glass. They were made of polished metal, and only gave a cloudy unclear image of the viewer. Thus "glass darkly".

Knygatin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> As a sidenote, film director Ingmar Bergman made a
> movie called Through a Glass Darkly (no relation
> to Le Fanu, as far as I know). In an interview he
> described why the Biblical passage says "glass
> darkly". In the old days mirrors were not made of
> glass. They were made of polished metal, and only
> gave a cloudy unclear image of the viewer. Thus
> "glass darkly".


While mirrors were usually made of metal (though people could also see their reflections in pools and the like), this does not mean they were necessarily capable only of a cloudy or unclear image. I've seen some polished brass mirrors which gave a very decent reflection. This is also apparently the case with a later passage, from 2 Corinthians 3:18: "But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord".

However, such mirrors certainly could deliver a cloudy, uncertain reflection, especially if they were "corrupted" in some way (tarnished, spotted, warped, etc.)... which may (possibly) also be a part of what the evangelist meant there: the world, according to the Christian view, being "fallen", the mirror in which we view things is itself distorted, flawed, perhaps even diseased.

I agree. It's relative. I am sure that some of those old mirrors, especially the more exclusive ones belonging to the upper class, were quite impressive, for the times. I have never looked into one myself. The majority of people though, probably did not have access to that kind of luxury.
Seeing your reflection in a pool, must also have been quite an event back then. (And it's often used in fantasy fiction of medieval times.)

The manner of speaking, the expression "glass darkly", however, came from the insufficient quality of the old mirrors. Of that I am convinced. The expression would not have formed with the glass mirrors we have today.

Today instead we have another sort of problem with mirrors. Their reflection is so perfect, that the illusion completely consumes and confuses us. Basically it's the same false image of ourselves as back then, but we cannot so easily define it anymore.

Pretty neat to read an author that Lovecraft really wanted to explore, but was unable to find prints of. I believe he only read a few stories by Le Fanu.

It seems from his correspondence that Lovecraft read the following Le Fanu titles:

"Le Fanu's anthology A STABLE FOR NIGHTMARES"
"Green Tea"
and
THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCHYARD.

The only one of these he is on record as liking was "Green Tea", which he enjoyed more than anything he had read by that author, but did not believe belonged in the "Poe-Blackwood-Machen class" (leter to CAS in 1932).

We have already mentioned THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCHYARD here - the two chapters dealing with ghostly doings in the Tiled House are very effective, but no one looking for supernatural thrills is otherwise going to be impressed by this sprawling book, which is the one book that I think fits Jojo's "black comedy of manners" best.

A STABLE FOR NIGHTMARES is a very frustrating book. I do not believe either of the two editions identify the authors of the specific stories, even though the edition (with slightly different contents), which appeared in the US in 1897 at least states that the stories are by "J. Sheridan Le Fanu . . . Sir Charles Young, Bart. and Others" on the full-title page. None of the authors for the 11 stories in the first edition of 1867 are identified. Nor are the seven stories carried from this book to the 1896 American edition.

Unfortunately, the American edition has Le Fanu's name on the spine and the front cover, even though only one of the stories in the book is known to be his ("Dickon the Devil"), and he had died 23 years too early to edit this edition. This has not kept editors and even a few scholars from assuming that at least some of the other stories in the book are Le Fanu's (though none of them are very good, and I do not think any of them resemble Le Fanu in theme, characterization, prose, setting, employment of atmosphere, or execution).

It is, as Lovecraft realized, an anthology not a collection. He would have recognized, I believe, that "What Was It?" was written by Fitz-James O'Brien, even if he thought the rest may have been by Le Fanu. The authors of seven of the stories (all borrowed from the earlier edition) remain anonymous, and the author of the last is thought to be Sir Charles Young, partially because his is the only other story new to the book whose authorship was unknown.

If Lovecraft based his initial assessment of Le Fanu on STABLE, after reading such lavish praise of his work, then read the long, rambling THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCHYARD (an enjoyable book, but not guaranteed to stimulate Lovecraft's imagination), one can see why he rather dismisses him in the essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature". What surprises me is that he continued to under-estimate Le Fanu's work after reading "Green Tea". Perhaps the Christian elements in the story "weakened" it for him?

Jim

P.S. I spoke too soon re: Lovecraft on Le Fanu. He did indeed recognize the Fitz-James O'Brien story in A STABLE FOR NIGHTMARES, which means that he would have had access to the American edition of this book via Donald Wandrei, and he did also wonder at one point who had written which stories ("I see that Le Fanu collection has Fitz-James O'Brien's 'What Was It?' - have you been able to identify any others?'), though in the same letter (2/10/1927) he writes, "Now for Le Fanu - who seems to have the cheerful rambling style of the average Victorian. Let's hope he's blacker than he looks!"). Here is one place where Joshi's annotations could have clarified matters - he adds no annotation regarding the contents of A STABLE FOR NIGHTMARES, and even though he does note that Lovecraft read THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCHYARD and "Green Tea" later - his first encounter with the author seems to have been via a book labeled as Le Fanu's, which contained only one rather slight story of his, and even that story does not have a "cheerful and rambling style". It would be like finding one of those paperback selections from Weird Tales featuring one public domain story by Smith, or Howard, or Lovecraft, thinking that all of the contents were by one of these authors and judging that author accordingly.

He hunted the libraries in Providence and New York for Le Fanu, but was never able to get a hold of anything.

He did not have much to go on then -- except for "Green Tea", which is one of Le Fanu's most celebrated stories.

It will be a thrill to read the stories and imagine what Lovecraft would have thought of each individual one. We are kind of his "extended arm", completing his quest for him.

Knygatin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I ended up ordering the ol' Dover edition The Best
> Ghost Stories of J.S. Le Fanu... Dover doesn't exactly
> make aesthetically pleasing books, but they are
> reliable, with a wide range of "household"
> publications of practical and usable subjects.

This trade paperback book is actually surprizingly attractive. Much better than the hasty-looking design in the online pictures. A fine ghostly green cover. Solid sturdy spine that won't crack, excellent quality paper, and good print. (As James Rockhill also points out in his Amazon review).

A hefty book. The very best of the best, of Le Fanu's supernatural tales, I gather. Together with my other unread books this tome will be enough for a lifetime. Especially so if some of the stories merit re-reading.

Oh, my GOD!.... I can feel the book trembling in my hands. This is really gonna be somethin'!!