Check this out:

[techgnosis.com].

: )

Scott

I hate to seem negative, but, despite the possibility that "there's no such thing as bad publicity", I fail to see much that is positive in this article. The writer seems to admire CAS, in his way, but, like most today who confess to liking those who write in the "grand style", he appears to feel compelled almost to apologize for this "guilty pleasure", or to qualify his admiration to the point of near-meaninglessness. I also find the tone of the article as a whole to be patronizing and condescending ("Smith is frequently a brilliant writer").

The writer's throw-away remark regarding the work of George Sterling is ignorant, and borders on the idiotic, as well. Still, if this piece somehow stimulates awareness (and sales) of CAS and The Hashish-Eater, then that is all to the good.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 31 Oct 08 | 09:36AM by Kyberean.

Smith also gets reprinted with somewhat less than enthusiastic marketing. As you may know, the University of Nebraska Press reprints of OUT OF SPACE AND TIME and LOST WORLDS both have new forewords by a Jeff VanderMeer, apparently a celebrated SF or fantasy writer.

VanderMeer does not seem to enjoy Smith very much, so one wonders why he was chosen for the task. In particular, Smith's humor is completely lost on VanderMeer. Consider the following passage from the foreword to LOST WORLDS.

Quote:

[. . .] "The Door to Saturn" contains beautiful description but also lines like "'Detestable sorcerer! Abominable heretic! I arrest you!' said Morghi with pontifical severity." What are we to make of such camp? Is it intentional? Is it intrinsic to writing this kind of story? I don't know the answer. I only know that Smith must have found it necessary, and that readers must forgive him for it if they want to enjoy the stories.

Yes, the VanderMeer prefaces are a good example, as well. In any case, inadequate as it is, I suppose that Davis's piece is better than our having another Blish on our hands.

I also like the fact that writers such as CAS and Sterling make apparent PoMo hipsters such as Davis ill at ease, on whatever level; that's another earmark of their quality, so far as I am concerned.

Remember that Mr Davis is coming to CAS not so much as a Fantasy Fan, but as a "mainstream" reader. That he is able to recognize Smith's merits despite all of the indoctrination he's received about what modern poetry "should" be is testimonial enough. But he remains uneasy about this, thus the snips at George Sterling as "unreadable"--in precisely the same way that Wagner was "unlistenable" to people brought up in the tradition of, say, Meyerbeer.
Scott

Scott:

I see what you mean, and, again, I suppose that some recognition of CAS's work on the part of such writers as Davis is better than none. It's interesting, though, that I first approached CAS in 1980 from the perspective of an undergraduate English major steeped in Romanticism and Surrealism, and not as a "fantasy fan", either. I actually first heard of CAS through a glossary entry in an anthology of writings by Andre Breton!

In any case, I find that Romanticism seems to be the common element or ingredient that gives most Post-Modern types a case of the hives. I can't understand that, myself, and I suppose that that is where the gulf between me and such types lies. From my perspective, if some blockhead nurtured intellectually at the teats of Foucault, Eco, and mass culture, for instance, wants to believe that his mind and understanding are more sophisticated than, say, Percy Bysshe Shelley's, then he is welcome to his delusions!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2 Nov 08 | 11:13AM by Kyberean.

Kyberean Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In any case, I find that Romanticism seems to be
> the common element or ingredient that gives most
> Post-Modern types a case of the hives. I can't
> understand that, myself

I think it is possibly at least partially due to the association of Romanticism with mass murder. We owe to the Romantics such things as environmentalism, vegetarianism, "animal rights," a peculiar obsession with a distorted view of Tibet and Buddhism, socialism, anti-Semitism, and, last but not least, the German Nazis. But, frankly, I do not see much Romanticism in Smith.

I've read some ignorant remarks about Romanticism in my time, but I must say, yours take the prize. I can only hope that you are joking.

If you see no influence of Keats, Shelley, et al. in CAS's poetry, then you cannot have read much of it carefully, if at all.

Kyberean Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I've read some ignorant remarks about Romanticism
> in my time, but I must say, yours take the prize.
> I can only hope that you are joking.

No, I am not joking, of course; I gave a fairly standard summary of the intellectual legacy of Romanticism, outside of the arts. Perhaps you could elaborate on what it is you object to, specifically?

Jojo Lapin X Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Kyberean Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > In any case, I find that Romanticism seems to
> be
> > the common element or ingredient that gives
> most
> > Post-Modern types a case of the hives. I can't
> > understand that, myself
>
> I think it is possibly at least partially due to
> the association of Romanticism with mass murder.
> We owe to the Romantics such things as
> environmentalism, vegetarianism, "animal rights,"
> a peculiar obsession with a distorted view of
> Tibet and Buddhism, socialism, anti-Semitism, and,
> last but not least, the German Nazis. But,
> frankly, I do not see much Romanticism in Smith.

As a scholar and admirer of the Romantics, I, along with Kyberean, stand in frank amazement at what you have just said. Surely you do realize that what you are saying is over-simplification to an almost pathological degree? I am assuming, for instance, that you are associating Wagner with the Nazis and that sort of thing; but I really fail to see how even if Wagner was associated with the Nazis, how that association could taint the entire movement of Romanticism. And I would be very much interested to learn how Shelley, Byron, Keats and Blake -- arguably the four most important figures of the Romantic movement in England -- could have been associated with anti-Semitism, environmentalism, etc. (I do believe that you're getting the Romantics mixed up with the 1960's Guiness-type hippie movement.) Another thing: if the Romantics were so anti-Semitic, then why did they take typical figures such as the Wandering Jew and portray them so sympathetically? Also, the Romantics were very anti-war -- consider how anti-imperialist Shelley was, even going so far as to be one of the few Englishmen of his time to publicly deplore Britain's treatment of Ireland.

Also, Kyberean is one hundred percent correct in saying that it is absolutely impossible to read Smith and not to perceive the extensive influence that the Romantics had on him. His use of the motifs of the Medusa, his romantic perception of Milton's Satan, and his portrayal of Nature and Otherness in both his poetry AND his prose are all blatant proofs of his association with English Romanticism.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2 Nov 08 | 04:23PM by ArkhamMaid.

Brava, ArkhamMaid. I should add that some of JoJo's farrago of nonsense likely stems from the ideas of the French so-called "New Philosophers" from the late '70's-early '80's, whose brainless "argument" runs something along the lines of, "Hegel was a product of the Romantic era. His thought leads to the works of Marx, which lead directly to Stalin, which leads to the Gulags. Ergo, Romanticism leads to mass murder". I haven't read JoJo's rejoinders so far, if any, but again, I can only hope that his grotesque caricature of Romanticism was a joke.

Anyway, I doubt that there are many individuals here, other than JoJo, who may need a refresher regarding the basic concepts of the Romantic movement, but those who do will find them here. With all due respect, anyone who fails to see not only the influence of the English Romantics upon the works of CAS, but also the clear relationship of CAS's works to the major themes of Romanticism (the primacy of imagination; the author as an individual and a creator in his own right; nature, landscapes, and their description; emotion; lyricism) quite likely needs to have his shoes tied for him, as well.

A writer does not become a Romantic just because he writes about flowers. The most obvious influence on Smith is that of the Decadents, who wrote in reaction to Romanticism. Remember, Smith translated Baudelaire, and in general displays a thoroughly materialist obsession with sexual matters that is highly un-Romantic in nature. Furthermore, as in the writings of, e.g., Villiers de l'Isle Adam, there are rarely, if ever, any triumphant Romantic heroes in Smith's stories. On the contrary, his stories often end in some kind of ironic disaster for the protagonist.

Well this is a curious place to start this Monday morning before election day here in the States. I thought all the debates I'd be engaging in this morning would be political.

First off, let's go back to Mr. Davis CAS article at his very nice website. Mr. Davis comes out of the WIRED magazine crowd and there is an undercurrent of scifi interest in that community as I recall (I stopped reading after the dotcom bust for reasons I won't go into here). My reaction to Mr. Davis article on CAS was that it was a delight to see anyone NOT in fantasy and horror even acknowledge that CAS existed. The fact that he also provided some positive and interesting reasons for new readers to sample Smith is all the more surprising. I think we are missing the forest for the trees here.

Now as for the comments "if some blockhead nurtured intellectually at the teats of Foucault, Eco, and mass culture, for instance, wants to believe that his mind and understanding are more sophisticated than, say, Percy Bysshe Shelley's, then he is welcome to his delusions!"....well I am not sure where this comes out of. I did not see references to that effect in Mr. Davis article. The shift to a different type of language (e.g.Hemingway) in literature and popular fictions preceded, and was orthogonal to, the emergence of structuralism, semiotics and deconstruction. Generally, criticism lags new directions in art. Mr. Davis reflects accurately that Smith's style is no longer practiced today, and yet he finds it not without charm and interest. As an aside, I know for a fact that at least Lovecraft was read and admired by Mr. Umberto Eco (I've been to some of his lectures and met him) and folks in that circle (Thomas Sebeok and his wife, Michael Riffaterre, etc.). It seems to me that the blaming critical theory for artistic trends is to deny the power of the artists themselves.

Trying to create a debate that Romanticism is better than Post-Modernism or that adherents to one or the other are blockheads is not so useful. There is no question the world moves on, tastes and theories evolve. Great artists capture somethings specific to their time and culture, and at the same time succeed in somewhat transcending those constraints. I have a livelong friend stuck on Blake and Northrop Frye's interpretation of Blake. He is frozen in that 'snapshot'. It resonates with him in some profound way. I don't see it, but I what do I know? What I can say is that if you allow create such a snapshot you also become a figure in its static world.

As for the last posts between Kyborean and JoJo and Arkham Maid on Romanticism and CAS, I am not sure where this one is going exactly. It does seem to me that Lovecraft and CAS are both a part of preceding movements and somewhat out of synch with those same movements. Yeats was deeper in the occult than either HPL or CAS and his writing is so thick with it that you could drown, yet, nonetheless his poems transcend even the strange tastes that inform them in a way that neither HPL nor CAS could approach. Everyone who practices any art from within a culture has some relation to the movements before. No-one can avoid doing so. If CAS and HPL were NOT emergent out of the last days of Romanticism, what tradition do they belong to? In their day there was Dada and Surrealisn for example. Are they part of that tradition? Narrowing to CAS in particular, if he is not emergent from Romanticism or Dadaism or Surrealism or Realism or Symbolism or Imagism then what? Surely CAS has more affinity with some of these more than others?

That being said, I've lost the connection between why that matters in terms of a intriguing write-up on CAS from a well read modern blogger who did more in his post to expand CAS readership than probably all of our posts in this forum over the past year.

Steve

Well, I finally read that blog post, and found it very interesting. In particular, I note that, contrary to what some earlier posts in this thread would seem to indicate,

1. the essay is very enthusiastic about Smith, and

2. it points out the anti-Romantic nature of Smith's poem.

Sverba, I agree with you that there has been a little too much parsing of that blog post. I fear as well that this thread had turned into a discussion of whether Clark Ashton Smith was a Romantic or not -- but I think that such a discussion is important and ought to be clarified rather than ignored, in spite of the awkwardness of its position in this thread.

Jojo, I have something that I want you to read: [www.eldritchdark.com]

After reading Smith's poetic love letter to Romanticism, also consider this quote from a letter to Virgil Finlay:

"I believe that you should congratulate yourself on being, as you say, "out of tune with your generation." Undoubtedly a serious condition of unbalance is prevalent at the present time, as indicated by exclusive or excessive preoccupation with drink, amorous orgies, etc. This seems to be part of the intense materialism, "realism," or whatever you want to call it, of the age. Modern science, philosophy and invention are at least partly responsible. Some day there will be a return toward mysticism, a recovery of spiritual values. The question is, will it come before - or after Armageddon? I am not making any predictions; but the query is more than pertinent."

(The letter in its entirety may be read here: [www.eldritchdark.com])

A very unusual paragraph to be written by an anti-Romantic who is preoccupied with portraying the grosser material side of sexuality!



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 3 Nov 08 | 12:08PM by ArkhamMaid.