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Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 10, Spring 1946
Page 253
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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 253 Some Strange Stories by Harold Wakefield (Author's note: The genesis of this brief article is an old issue of Futurian War Digest, in which, answering J. Michael Rosenblum's request for readers to nominate the strangest stories they had ever read, Francis T. Laney named "The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan" by Clark Ashton Smith, Merritt's "Metal Monster" and Lovecraft's "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath." Certainly this is an intriguing selection, one to start others searching through their memories for tales containing the same element of strangeness.) In any roster such as this the names of Lovecraft and Smith would appear; however, assuming that nearly everyone is familiar with the work of these two authors, I shall pass on to those not quite as well known which have lingered in my mind because of some novel idea, bizarre theme or unusual plot-twist. Algernon Blackwood as one of the great masters of the weird and uncanny naturally has a number of stories that would fall into this category. Two of the strangest, which are probably not as well known as others he has written, are "The Man Whom the Trees Loved" and The Centaur. The latter, a full-length novel, expounds the author's queer belief that the earth itself is a conscious, living entity and that the monsters of fable and mythology are manifestations and projections of its mind. This is one of Blackwood's most serious work and perhaps one of the most subtle weird stories ever written. One is reminded by "The Man Whom the Trees Loved" of Alexander Laing's remark that the stories of Blackwood make nature-lovers very uneasy. Certainly the stealthy, inexorable approach of the trees toward the man they have determined to make their own conveys the feeling of utterly alien forces at work, the motives of which are incomprehensible to mankind in general. Strange is indeed the adjective which one thinks of when stories by the British author John Metcalfe are mentioned. His "Double Admiral," "Grey House" and "Mr. Meldrum's Mania" are superb examples in point. Oliver Onions' "Rooum" likewise has this same quality. One of the strangest stories in all literature is "Daughter of Fire" by the half-mad French writer Gerard de Nerval. Stranger still, perhaps, is the life of Nerval himself, which was characterized by the wildest of eccentricities. This author was once known to have led a lobster through the streets of Paris on the ends of ribbons---because, as he said, it knew the secrets of the ocean's depths and did not talk. Nerval finally met his end by hanging himself with a piece of rope which he claimed was the Queen of Sheba's garter. "Daughter of Fire" tells of the hero's love for a cheap little actress who passes by subtle degrees into the Queen of Sheba and the Egyptian goddess Isis, and has been described by Gautier as "cold reason seated by the bedside of hot fever, hallucination analyzing itself by a supreme philosopher's effort. An English critic has described Nerval's story as follows: What is curious about this narrative is that the opium dreamer has begun to write down his dreams while he was yet within their coils. His genius consisted in a power of materializing vision, and without losing the sense of mystery, or that quality which gives its charm to the intangible. Madness in him had hit, as by lightening, the hidden links of distant and diverging things in somewhat the same fashion as that in which the vision is produced, while the soul, sitting safe within the perilous circle of its own magic, looks out on the panorama which either raises out of the darkness before it or drifts from itself into the darkness.
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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 253 Some Strange Stories by Harold Wakefield (Author's note: The genesis of this brief article is an old issue of Futurian War Digest, in which, answering J. Michael Rosenblum's request for readers to nominate the strangest stories they had ever read, Francis T. Laney named "The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan" by Clark Ashton Smith, Merritt's "Metal Monster" and Lovecraft's "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath." Certainly this is an intriguing selection, one to start others searching through their memories for tales containing the same element of strangeness.) In any roster such as this the names of Lovecraft and Smith would appear; however, assuming that nearly everyone is familiar with the work of these two authors, I shall pass on to those not quite as well known which have lingered in my mind because of some novel idea, bizarre theme or unusual plot-twist. Algernon Blackwood as one of the great masters of the weird and uncanny naturally has a number of stories that would fall into this category. Two of the strangest, which are probably not as well known as others he has written, are "The Man Whom the Trees Loved" and The Centaur. The latter, a full-length novel, expounds the author's queer belief that the earth itself is a conscious, living entity and that the monsters of fable and mythology are manifestations and projections of its mind. This is one of Blackwood's most serious work and perhaps one of the most subtle weird stories ever written. One is reminded by "The Man Whom the Trees Loved" of Alexander Laing's remark that the stories of Blackwood make nature-lovers very uneasy. Certainly the stealthy, inexorable approach of the trees toward the man they have determined to make their own conveys the feeling of utterly alien forces at work, the motives of which are incomprehensible to mankind in general. Strange is indeed the adjective which one thinks of when stories by the British author John Metcalfe are mentioned. His "Double Admiral," "Grey House" and "Mr. Meldrum's Mania" are superb examples in point. Oliver Onions' "Rooum" likewise has this same quality. One of the strangest stories in all literature is "Daughter of Fire" by the half-mad French writer Gerard de Nerval. Stranger still, perhaps, is the life of Nerval himself, which was characterized by the wildest of eccentricities. This author was once known to have led a lobster through the streets of Paris on the ends of ribbons---because, as he said, it knew the secrets of the ocean's depths and did not talk. Nerval finally met his end by hanging himself with a piece of rope which he claimed was the Queen of Sheba's garter. "Daughter of Fire" tells of the hero's love for a cheap little actress who passes by subtle degrees into the Queen of Sheba and the Egyptian goddess Isis, and has been described by Gautier as "cold reason seated by the bedside of hot fever, hallucination analyzing itself by a supreme philosopher's effort. An English critic has described Nerval's story as follows: What is curious about this narrative is that the opium dreamer has begun to write down his dreams while he was yet within their coils. His genius consisted in a power of materializing vision, and without losing the sense of mystery, or that quality which gives its charm to the intangible. Madness in him had hit, as by lightening, the hidden links of distant and diverging things in somewhat the same fashion as that in which the vision is produced, while the soul, sitting safe within the perilous circle of its own magic, looks out on the panorama which either raises out of the darkness before it or drifts from itself into the darkness.
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