The dark eidolon and other fantasiesville characters

And Beauty The Corpse and the Skeleton A Dream of Lethe From the Crypts of Memory Ennui The Litany of the Seven Kisses In Cocaigne The Flower Devil The Shadows The Passing of Aphrodite To the Daemon The Abomination of Desolation The Mirror in the Hall of Ebony The Touch Stone The Muse of Hyperborea Poetry The Last Night Ode to the Abyss A Dream of Beauty The Star Treader Retrospect and Forecast Nero To the Daemon Sublimity Averted Malefice The Eldritch Dark Shadow of Nightmare Satan Unrepentant The Ghoul Desire of Vastness The Medusa of Despair The Refuge of Beauty The Harlot of the World Memnon at Midnight Love Malevolent The Crucifixion of Eros The Tears of Lilith Requiescat in Pace The Motes The Hashish Eater or.

Book The Dark Eidolon and Other fantasies

Clark Ashton Smith was a poet sculptor painter and author of fantasy horror and science fiction short stories It is for these stories and his literary friendship with H P Lovecraft from 1922 until Lovecrafts death in 1937 that he is mainly remembered today With Lovecraft and Robert E Howard also a friend and correspondent Smith remains one of the most famous contributors to the pulp magazine Weird Tales. The dark eidolon and other fantasies kindle download His site_link writings are posted at his official website Clark Ashton Smith was a poet sculptor painter and author of fantasy horror and science fiction short stories It is for these stories and his literary friendship with H P Lovecraft from 1922 until Lovecraft s death in 1937 that he is mainly remembered today With Lovecraft and Robert E Howard also a friend and correspondent Smith remains one of the most famous contributors to the pulp magazine Weird Tales. Epub the dark eidolon and other fantasies book His site_link writings are posted at his official website site_link A much awaited collection of prose and poetry from one of the great cosmic masters of the supernatural Not just any fantasy horror and science fiction author could impress H P Lovecraft into calling him perhaps unexcelled by any other writer dead or living or compel Fritz Lieber to employ the worthy term sui generis Clark Ashton Smith autodidact prolific poet amateur philosopher bizarre sculptor and unmatched storyteller simply wrote like no one else before or since This new collection of his very best tales and poems is selected and introduced by supernatural literature scholar S T Joshi and allows readers to encounter Smith s visionary brand of fantastical phantasmagorical worlds each one filled with invention terror and a superlative sense of metaphysical wonder The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies My imagination was excited and I began to indulge in some rather overheated fantasies We don t really have a Halloween tradition here in Romania trick or treating being reserved for the Christmas season and the singing of carols Yet after so many years on Goodreads I made it a habit to celebrate the month of October with a horror feast This year I started with Vathek by William Beckford a slightly dated Arabian Nights fantasy that finishes on a very dark note One thing leads to another and in tracking down how Vathek s demonic journey ripples over time into the next generation of writers I went from Lord Byron to Edgar Allan Poe and then to Clark Ashton Smith where I really hit the jackpot in terms of scary thrills and purple prose I refuse to submit to the arid earth bound spirit of the time and I think there is sure to be a romantic revival sooner or later a revolt against mechanization and over socialization etc Neither the ethics or the aesthetic of the ant hill have any attraction for me A poet influenced by Baudelaire and the British Romantics Smith turned to the pulp magazines out of necessity literally to put bread on the table But he refused to compromise on his aesthetic and on his use of language despite editors who put pressure on him to tone down his use of archaic or obscure terms and to replace his intellectual terrors with accessible adventure tales I Satampa Zeiros of Uzuldaroum shall write with my left hand since I had no longer any other the tale of everything that befell Tirouv Omphallios and myself in the shrine of the god Tsathounggua which lies neglected by the worship of man in the jungle taken suburbs of Commorion that long deserted capital of the Hyperborean rulers Still the influence of his by now famous pen pals H P Lovecraft and Robert E Howard is easy no notice in the stories collected here not surprising given the cross pollination of ideas and mythology between these three titans of the Weird Tales era Instead of sending cease and desist letters from lawyers specializing in intellectual property cases these authors worked with each other s characters and settings and we as readers should be grateful for this creative alembic What unimaginable horror of protoplastic life what loathly spawn of the primordial slime had come forth to confront us we did not pause to consider or conjecture The monstrosity was too awful to permit of even a brief contemplation also its intentions were too plainly hostile and it gave evidence of anthropophagic inclinations for it slithered toward us with an unbelievable speed and celerity of motion opening as it came a toothless mouth of amazing capacity Both Lovecraft and Howard can easily be identified by their themes and style so what is the contribution of Smith in the horror genre For me who is just discovering him through these tales the answer is in his use of special words to create a mood a certain emotional load that in his manifesto is supposed to open the gates of imagination and to let something primordial something malefic and impenetrable in There are terrifying depths in human nature gulfs of instinct and impulse abhorrent than those of the jungle I am sure that somewhere in space there is the center from which all evil emanates Forced to write in the pulps for money Mr Smith tried to adapt his subjects to the popular themes rogues trying to steal treasure from ancient tombs magicians trying to resurrect the nubile girl they loved ages ago goat boys dreaming of lost kingdoms etc. Pdf the dark eidolon and other fantasies full text The poet trumps the storyteller here though which eventually led to debates with the editors about content Clark Ashton Smith makes full use of his photographic memory allegedly the self educated Smith read the whole Britannica encyclopaedia twice and if the reader may be sometimes baffled by terms like fulvous or lethiferous or others of their ilk he can rest assured their presence there is deliberate and a sort of programmatic protest against naturalism realism and introspection stream of conscience in literature Smith wears his late Romantic cape with pride going against the tides of fashion with similar poor monetary results as his friends Lovecraft and Howard Howbeit let us have another drink and return to the storytelling. The dark eidolon and other fantasies poetry review An eidolon is apparently a sort of ghost a spirit from the past that haunts the protagonist Choosing this term as emblematic for the whole collection seems appropriate since despite the various settings for the stories included antiquity medieval times contemporary or the far future all deal with a magical summoning gone wrong a haunted place or a spirit from the dark dimensions visiting Yes master replied the viper in a low but singularly penetrating hiss you are Malygris and all sorcerous or necromantic power is yours all incantations and spells and pentacles are known to you The visitations never end well the thieves are chased by re awakened monster gods the artists go crazy from their contact with the place infused by Evil the summoning goes wrong and the magician is possessed by the very demon he tried to control etc Reading about the man behind the stories I cannot help but notice that the one thing Lovecraft Howard and Smith had in common was their loneliness and their depression All three struggled with their inner demons and felt rejected by a society sick with consumerism and conformism I believe this is reflected in the tone and in the subject matter of the stories they wrote Existence had become the conserving of a fire menaced by inexorable night The soul of Malygris grew sick again with age and despair and the death of his evanescent hope He could believe no longer in love or youth or beauty and even the memory of these things was a dubitable mirage a thing that might or might not have been There was nothing left but shadow and greyness and dust nothing but the empty dark and the cold and a clutching weight of insufferable weariness of immedicable anguish Most of the contemporary stories included here feature an artist a writer or a painter as the lead character interested in the ancient texts or in the myths from the past The farthest they travel from modern times the horrible the manifestations of spirit become Smith s personal touch is to reference either the primordial slime that first gave birth to Life on Earth or the cosmic dimensions where the prime Evil dwells Stern and white as a tomb older than the memory of the dead and built by men or devils beyond the recording of myth is the mansion in which we dwell Each story can and should be considered on its own merits and in its own context but for me the experience of reading all of them gathered here produced an overall coherent vision similar to the Chtulhu myth or the Hyperborean Age That s why I don t mention any story by its title also because they are consistently good with no filler or dud for me. PDF The Dark Eidolon and Other fantasies book I have left for last my comments about the influence of Smith on future writers of speculative fiction his paying forward the heritage of Beckford and Baudelaire and Cabell enriched with Smith s own panache for a flowery phrase and with his deeply embedded pessimism On Zothique the last continent of Earth the sun no longer shone with the whiteness of its prime but was dim and tarnished as if with a vapor of blood New stars without number had declared themselves in the heavens and the shadows of the infinite had fallen closer And out of the shadows the older gods had returned to man Having read only a couple of weeks previously a book by Jack Vance it is extremely easy to draw comparisons between Zothique and the Dying Earth and also between Averoigne and Lyonesse and Poictesme Both the characters magicians thieves and demons and the language used link Smith and Vance in my imagination Other names are mentioned as being influenced by Smith Bradbury among them but my interest is piqued to continue reading the original stories of this poet of the darkness of the spirit and to fill in the gaps that remain in my mapping out the history of the speculative fiction genre The Dark Eidolon also includes samples of Smith s prose poems and poetry which I didn t have the time to include here before my self appointed Halloween deadline but I might do an update unless something shinier and newer catches my attention Weird Fiction Short Stories Poetry Confession I once underestimated Clark Ashton Smith I dismissed him as a second rate poet and a first rate prose stylist who marred his work with an eccentric indulgence in obscure latinate diction even bizarre than his friend Lovecraft s I also find his fascination with evil particularly in his poetry rather second rate too redolent with faux nostalgia for the fin de siecle in decline. The dark eidolon and other fantasiesu characters T Joshi anthology I find this is only a small part of the story First of all although most of the poetry is second rate some of it isn t particularly the blank verse dramatic monologues Nero Satan Unrepentant The Hashish Eater which rely on close reasoning or gorgeous enumerations and the occasional isolated mood piece Memnon at Midnight The Old Water Wheel which does not allow its central idea to become buried in baroque detail and mellifluous phrases Second the stories at least the ones included here all succeed as stories and whatever they lose from Smith s showy occasionally bizarre diction they regain by the sonority and measured movement of his prose Like Algernon Blackwood the objective of this prose is to hypnotize creating the proper state of mind so that the disquieting visions may begin Even the worst of his stories which can seem like overly long mood pieces create memorable sensations and the best The Vaults of Yo Vombis The Dark Eidolon The Weaver in the Vault Xeethra The Mother of Toads are terrifying. The dark eidolon and other fantasiesmen In addition Joshi introduced me to an aspect of Smith of which I had not been aware the prose poems They are disciplined and closely crafted than either the poems or the stories and may well be Smith s best work. The dark eidolon and other fantasies ebook read online I conclude with one of those prose poems to give you a taste of the delights which await THE MIRROR IN THE HALL OF EBONYFrom the nethermost profound of slumber from a gulf beyond the sun and stars that illume the Lethean shoals and the vague lands of somnolent visions I floated on a black unrippling tide to the dark threshold of a dream And in this dream I stood at the end of a long hall that was ceiled and floored and walled with black ebony and was lit with a light that fell not from the sun or moon nor from any lamp The hall was without doors or windows and at the further extreme an oval mirror was framed in the wall And standing there I remembered nothing of all that had been and the other dreams of sleep and the dream of birth and of everything thereafter were alike forgotten And forgotten too was the name I had found among men and the other names whereby the daughters of dream had known me and memory was no older than my coming to that hall But I wondered not nor was I troubled thereby and naught was strange to me for the tide that had borne me to this threshold was the tide of Lethe. The dark eidolon and other fantasiesu characters Anon though I knew not why my feet were drawn adown the hall and I approached the oval mirror And in the mirror I beheld the haggard face that was mine and the red mark on the cheek where one I loved had struck me in her anger and the mark on the throat where her lips had kissed me in amorous devotion And seeing this I remembered all that had been and the other dreams of sleep and the dream of birth and of everything thereafter alike returned to me And thus I recalled the name I had assumed beneath the terrene sun and the names I had borne beneath the suns of sleep and of reverie And I marvelled much and was enormously troubled and all things were most strange to me and all things were as of yore Weird Fiction Short Stories Poetry Clark Ashton Smith 1893 1961 is surely one of America s most intriguing and unique authors a poet and writer of tales of horror fantasy and science fiction Born in a small town in Northern California and living nearly all his life in the log cabin build by his parents Smith didn t attend school beyond the eighth grade due to psychological problems rather all of his learning occurred at home he read voraciously and committed much to memory including an encyclopedia and a dictionary cover to cover he taught himself French and Spanish he devoured book after book such classics as Robinson Crusoe Gulliver s Travels and the works of Edgar Allan Poe As an adult along with H P Lovecraft and Robert E Howard Smith was a prime contributor to the pulp fiction magazine Weird Tales and like Lovecraft whom he befriended and carried on a live long correspondence Smith used his own nightmares as raw material for his fiction This fine Penguin edition is a treasure including many short stories prose poems and poems along with an informative Introduction by literary scholar S T Joshi As a way of sharing a taste of what a reader will discover in these pages I have focused on one short story from the collection Ubbo Sathla noting a number of themes from the tale themes that recur in much of the author s work Also included is my write up copied from one of my other reviews on yet another tale from this Penguin collection Mother of Toads. Book the dark eidolon and other fantasies characters UBBO SATHLA For Ubbo Sathla is the source and the end Before the coming of Zhothaqquah or Yok Zothoth or Kthulhut from the stars Ubbo Sathla dwelt in the steaming fens of the newmade Earth So begins this beguiling tale of metaphysical investigation told in arcane language by Clark Ashton Smith an author for whom fiction was as a way to explore the big philosophical questions Where do we come from What is the foundation of life Why are we here Where are we going Again these questions are asked in the most inscrutable language for as the author himself explains My own conscious ideal has been to delude the reader into accepting an impossibility or series of impossibilities by means of a sort of verbal black magic in the achievement of which I make use of prose rhythm metaphor simile tone color counter point and other stylistic resources like a sort of incantation Similar to young men entering antique shops filled with curios from around the globe Honor de Balzac s The Magic Skin and Th ophile Gautier s The Mummy s Foot come immediately to mind the tale s protagonist Paul Tregardis enters an antique shop and his eye is drawn to something in particular the milky crystal in a litter of oddments from many lands and eras And oh how that magically enchanted arcane object quickly becomes the nucleus of occult unfoldings Tregardis thinks of his own explorations in hidden lore he recalled The Book of Eibon that strangest and rarest of occult forgotten volumes which is said to have come down through a series of manifold translations from a prehistoric original written in the lost language of Hyperborea. The dark eidolon and other fantasiesu characters As per vintage Clark Ashton Smith that aforementioned remote secret book The Book of Eibon was purported to have been the handiwork of a great wizard in touch with the heart of the heart of all power within the universe This wizard who was mighty among sorcerers had found a cloudy stone orb like and somewhat flattened at the ends in which he could behold many visions of the terrene past even to the Earth s beginning when Ubbo Sathla the unbegotten source lay vast and swollen and yeasty amid the vaporing slime But of that which he beheld Zon Mezzamalech left little record and people say that he vanished presently in a way that is not known and after him the cloudy crystal was lost. The dark eidolon and other fantasiesm pdf The our young narrator peers into his newly purchased crystal the all of the normal boundaries of time and space expand and take on strange forms As if he looked upon an actual world cities forests mountains seas and meadows flowed beneath him lightening and darkening as with the passage of days and nights in some weirdly accelerated stream of time Is he in twentieth century London or some other past and future time Or as unfathomable as it might seem two or even all three together It is hard for poor Paul Tregardis to tell In this and in many other Clark Ashton Smith tales it is left to us as readers to fathom our own conclusions as nebulous as they might be. The dark eidolon and other fantasies short stories in order Paul feels something very strange as if he is under the influence of hashish The walls begin to wobble as if they are made of smoke all the men and women in the streets begin to appear as so many ghosts and shades the whole scene takes on the cast of a vast phantasm. Book the dark eidolon and other fantasies review Is Paul dreaming or hallucinating Could be But many the time in a Clark Ashton Smith tale a dream or vision quickly slides into an unending nightmare Recall the author mined his own nightmares during protracted illnesses to fuel his fantasies and tales of horror. Book the dark eidolon and other fantasies series order In such a nightmare what other evil or unforeseen event can happen Answer for Clark Ashton Smith a character s very identity can shift and change not only once but multiple times He seemed to live unnumbered lives to die myriad deaths forgetting each time the death and life that had gone before He fought as a warrior in half legendary battles he was a child playing in the ruins of some olden city of Mhu Thulan he was the king who had reigned when the city was in its prime the prophet who had foretold its building and its doom He became a barbarian of some troglodytic tribe fleeing from the slow turreted ice of a former glacial age into lands illumed by the ruddy flare of perpetual volcanoes Then after incomputable years he was no longer man but a man like beast roving in forests of giant fern and calamite or building an uncouth nest in the boughs of mighty cycads. Book the dark eidolon and other fantasies author Clark Ashton Smith such an imagination such psychedelic phantasmagorical visions not only can a man or woman plant or beast change the entire universe can compress itself into a grey formless mass of slime with the name Ubbo Sathla. The dark eidolon and other fantasiesu characters MOTHER OF TOADSThis tale begins with Pierre young apprentice of the village apothecary making one of his journeys to the secluded hut of M re Antoinette a big ugly witch for the purpose of returning with a mysterious brew for his master s secret concoction After giving Pierre what he came for the witch beckons the lad to stay We read his response Pierre tossed his head with the disdain of a young Adonis The witch was than twice his age and her charms were too uncouth and unsavory to tempt him for an instant She was repellently fat and lumpish and her skin possessed an unwholesome pallor Let s pause here and ask why do witches appear in so many Western fairy tales Robert Bly speaks of the tyranny of patriarchal monotheistic culture where what is good and pure and divine is male and what comes from nature is negative chaotic and destructive And since women are so closely aligned with nature and fertility their female nature is denied a place in the spiritual realm or godhead however their energy and power does not go away rather it goes underground and later emerges as the witch. Book the dark eidolon and other fantasies review Since village rumors abound regarding the witch s wickedness and her many toad servants doing her evil bidding we can also ask why the master sends young Pierre alone and unprotected to the witch s hut in the first place We read The old apothecary whose humor was rough and ribald had sometimes rallied Pierre concerning M re Antoinette s preference for him Remembering certain admonitory gibes witty than decent the boy flushed angrily as he turned to go Does the older man have the best interests of the young man at heart Robert Bly alludes to how the older generation of men in being too na ve themselves have betrayed younger men causing those younger men to be in turn too na ve and gullible. The dark eidolon and other fantasies kindle download So after Pierre refuses her offer to stay the witch proposes he drink a cup of her fine red wine Pierre smells the odors of hot delicious spices and tells the witch he will drink if the wine contains none of her concoctions Of course the witch assures him its sound good wine that will warm his stomach Did I mentioned na ve and gullible Pierre drinks the wine Big mistake All of Pierre s sense are radically transformed and distorted the big fat witch starts looking pretty good after all Do I hear echoes of how drinking can alter and dull our perceptions Anyway the deed is done the witch gets to have a handsome young lover for the night. Book the dark eidolon and other fantasies review Pierre wakes up sober sees what has happened and runs away But the evil witch possesses strange powers Thousands of her toad servants block his path and force him to return to the hut The witch again proposes Pierre stay with her and drink of the wine At this point here is the exchange I will not drink your wine he said firmly You are a foul witch and I loathe you Let me go. The dark eidolon and other fantasies book 2 Sorry Pierre it doesn t sound like you are using your wits when confronting powerful evil you don t win any points by being honest Even as children Hansel and Gretel knew what is needed in dealing with a wicked witch is not honesty but cleverness How does this tale end You will have to pick up this outstanding collection and read for yourself. Book the dark eidolon and other fantasies pdf download Here are a number of cover illustrations of tales from this Clark Ashton Smith collection Weird Fiction Short Stories Poetry A Saucerful of WeirdnessSoundscape 1 Soundscape 2 Soundscape 3 Soundscape 4 Favourite texts PROSE The Devotee of Evil markedly Poe like Also reminds me of The Music of Eric Zahn The Uncharted Isle this short story makes me imagine a Gulliver s Travels Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World gone mad where nobody understands what is happening It also reminds me of the mind racking mysteries of La Montagne morte de la vie The City of the Singing Flame riveting The Holiness of Az darac graced with quite an unpredictable end The Vaults of Yoh Vombis plainly one of the most carefully elaborated of the collection with certain features reminiscent of At the Mountains of Madness by H. The dark eidolon and other fantasies ebook free P Lovecraft Ubbo Sathla a perplexing and addictive tale of crazed time travel not unlike L Herbe rouge in the spirit The Double Shadow especially memorable for its outlandish locale Genius Loci not a little reminiscent of The Colour Out of Space or The Horla among others while boasting a style and spirit of its own The Dark Eidolon a dream like legend of cosmic proportions Xeethra a rewriting of Rip Van Winkle Baudelaire s La Chambre Double expanded A companion to HPL s The Shadow Out of Time Much exquisite Phoenix It is hardly surprising that CAS has been an major influence for Ray Bradbury See Kaleidoscope and other Short Stories The Martian Chronicles and other short stories from The Illustrated Man and Machineries of Joy I wonder if it might have given inspiration for the movie Sunshine too PROSE POEMS The Abomination of DesolationPOETRY The Hashish Eater or The Apocalypse of Evil The Hill of Dionysus CyclesFurther reading Manuscrit trouv SaragosseLes DiaboliquesContes CruelsLa Mare au diableBruges La MorteLe Horla et autres nouvelles fantastiquesMaldoror and the Complete WorksRimas y leyendasPedro P ramoThe King in Yellow and Other Horror StoriesThe House on the BorderlandThe Complete Fiction of H. Short stories the dark eidolon and other fantasies review P LovecraftConan 1 Le Cimm rienNiourkAnnihilation Weird Fiction Short Stories Poetry Let me let you in on a little cosmic secret Clark Ashton Smith s writing is better than Lovecraft s Way better Alright HPL got in on the game early and it s obvious that CAS looked up to him in some ways But let s not kid ourselves In terms of pure writing ability CAS HPL That s not to say he s perfect As you ll see in my notes below Smith stumbles from time to time But when considering the quality of his work as a whole I find him a notch above the old man from Providence. The dark eidolon and other fantasiesu characters The volume and Smith s world is introduced through The Tale of Satampra Zeiros a low adventure story that blends tropes associated with cosmic horror and sword and sorcery rather seamlessly One can already see in this story the influence Smith had on later writers Fred Saberhagen s Empire of the East comes to mind immediately. The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies ebooks free Smith out Lovecrafts Lovecraft with The Devotee of Evil THIS is true cosmic horror without the mis steps of HPL The mysterious remains so unspeakable things remain un uttered and no name is given to the dark vibrations collected and transmitted by the devotee The obfuscation ironically gives the horror here a crystalline clarity This is among the best cosmic horror stories I ve read. Ebook the dark eidolon and other fantasies review Perhaps The Uncharted Isle loses some of its original power because the tropes used in it are now well tropes It is a luxurious story but easily predictable with little new to offer those who have been steeped in weird fiction Still it s a good read Perhaps if I had read this earlier in life it would have stood out to me As it is it s not bad not great. The dark eidolon and other fantasiesu characters The Face By the River rises above 50s horror comic hackneyed tropes only by mere inches The last paragraph was the best part of the story I only wish the rest was that good The City of the Singing Flame is one of the better stories of cosmic horror I have ever read Tonally it reminds me most of A Voyage to Arcturus There is a beautiful ecstacy to this brand of horror something terrifying not because of its darkness but because of its chromatic refulgent light I am reminded of the carousel in Logan s Run Here s a little snippet Wall on beetling wall and spire on giant spire it soared to confront the heavens maintaining everywhere the severe and solemn lines of a wholly rectilinear architecture It seemed to whelm and crush down the beholder with its stern and crag like imminence. The dark eidolon and other fantasiesu characters I wonder if Dan O Bannon was inspired by The Vaults of Yoh Vombis when he wrote the screenplay for Alien At least one important element seems to have been snatched right from these pages It s an effective tale of horror mixed with science fiction Heck I might steal this idea next time I run the Mothership RPG This is some good stuff Ubbo Sathla is another story of curiosity turning to obsession to doom but with the twist of something akin to transmigration of souls metempsychosis This was a good old fashioned weird story and I quite liked it A step above Lovecraft in terms of writerly control and evocation of atmosphere with the same level of weirdness. The dark eidolon and other fantasiesy review The Double Shadow is what one traditionally thinks of when one thinks of CAS sorcerous deviltries from time immemorial necromantic rites ages long since past so long ago in fact that a long dead ghost must be compelled to travel even further back into its pre birth past and dark abominations that even the greatest of sorcerers dare not invoke Cosmic horror and ancient sorcery make for a heady admixture. The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies book The Maze of the Enchanter speaks in the same voice as Jack Vance Maybe that s coincidence but the resemblance is uncanny The same sort of strangeness replete with transformations and hideous consequence as well as winsome villains resonates strongly with The Dying Earth These are all good things laudable and slip into the dreamer s mind quite easily Did I say dreamer s Perhaps I mean reader s Or no. The dark eidolon and other fantasies short stories in order The title story The Dark Eidolon is everything the weird fiction connoisseur could hope for Mad wizards decadent empires gargantuan architecture extravagant sin devil patrons gigantic skeletons crowned mummies of long dead kings and an age old morality tale though seemingly devoid of morals except on the part of a devil make for heady reading that one drinks and drowns in rather than simply reads. The dark eidolon and other fantasies epub free download The banal predictability of The Weaver in the Vault is than offset by the luxuriant language and clever turns of phrase used to describe the setting and the action of three ill fated warriors sent by their king to retrieve the mummy of his dynastic ancestor from the ruins of a fabled city of the dead The Shakespearean affectations of the men s speech adds to the feeling of antiquity Weirdness ensues could it be any other way. The dark eidolon and other fantasies poetry foundation Xeethra is a story of dream of yearning and of dashed hopes and the inevitability of decay and ruin If I were to pick a tale to represent nihilistic weird fiction this might be it It s a devastating story made even so by Smith s ability to lure the reader into a sense of comfort and even luxuriance before stripping away the idyllic innocence he had already bestowed. Book the dark eidolon and other fantasies characters I would consider The Treader of the Dust a minor story in Smith s canon There s nothing terribly original here though it is weird and creepy The mummy cum grey alien space baby was a nice touch but it was probably the only extraordinary thing here The rest are pretty well hackneyed weird fiction tropes It ll do if you need a fix but no one is going to get addicted to Smith through this one I m afraid. The dark eidolon and other fantasiesx characters The moral of Mother of Toads don t allow women who look and smell and sound like gigantic toads ensorcel you then sleep with you Got it Check Not my favorite story though it would make a great 1950 s horror comic Phoenix is a classic piece of science fiction A beautiful story with a predictable outcome but told in such a soothing almost solemn way It s a joy to read. The dark eidolon and other fantasiesx characters All of the Prose Poems in this volume are excellent I find myself increasingly fond of those two genre oddballs novellas and prose poems Smiths prose poems rank up there with Arthur Machen s Ornaments in Jade for sheer beauty eloquence evocation and conciseness The ideas behind the words are expansive beyond the page. Ebook the dark eidolon and other fantasies pdf download The Hashish Eater Or The Apocalypse of Evil is the type of epic poem you see tattooed across someone s back or airbrushed on the side of a conversion van or presented in an incredibly expensive edition book with gold leaf impressions and silk ribbons To quote teenage me it rules I would spend good money for a beautifully produced book containing this poem alone Apparently CAS didn t like it much feeling it too derivative of other poets particularly Flaubert and inadequate in presenting the true horror of understanding the vastness of the cosmos But well he was wrong If you re going to read any one piece of writing by Clark Ashton Smith make it this poem All in all this is a worthy collection Though it lacks the tight cogency of say Zothique it shows Smith s breadth of writerly skill and subject matter and is a fantastic introduction to this criminally under rated writer There s a reason that this book has become one of the Penguin Classics Here s to hoping that Penguin continues to produce in this vein Weird Fiction Short Stories Poetry

The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies By Clark Ashton Smith

0143107380

9780143107385

English

370

Paperback

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Clark Ashton Smith was one of the great triumvirate of Weird Tales the other two being his friends H. The dark eidolon and other fantasies kindle edition It seems that of the three Clark Ashton Smith is the least well known I m been hoping for a Clark Ashton Smith revival and this recently published book by Penguin might ignite it. Book the dark eidolon and other fantasies pdf download The stories I ve read before The stories selected it appears is a sample of the different types of fiction that Clark Ashton Smith wrote science fiction adventure fantasy and supernatural horror Most of the stories take place in the distant past or even the far future and take place in imaginary realms such as Hyperborea This approach differed from that of his friend H. Book the dark eidolon and other fantasies series order What is new to me the poetry the prose poems and that Clark Ashton Smith painted The cover of this book is one of Clark Ashton Smith s paintings Joshi says that there was even an exhibit of Smith s paintings I would have liked to see of Smith s painting reproduced. The dark eidolon and other fantasiesmen The 1 2 page prose poems are not plot driven stories but like vignettes mood pieces parables These prose poems have striking imagery I still can recall them days after I ve read these prose poems. The dark eidolon and other fantasiesman pdf A good amount of the poems are rhyming verse Some poems are about an individual such as his mentor the poet George Sterling Many poems have fantastical subject matter The poem The Hashish Eater Or The Apocalypse of Evil begins Bow down I am the emperor of dreams I crown me with the million colored sunOf secret worlds incredible and takeTheir trailing skies for vestment when I soarThroned on the mounting zenith and illumeThe spaceward flown horizon infinite I bow down before the emperor of dreams Clark Ashton Smith Weird Fiction Short Stories Poetry I m reading it very slowly and it is freaking FABULOUS I love the Introduction which is of great length because the Penguin editors felt that this would be a book that is the first time experience with CAS for many readers I love the Notes at the back of the book with passages from letters by CAS and H P Lovecraft I have been influenced as an author by this fiction but I haven t really concentrated on it as I do with Lovecraft s excellent stories I am doing very slow and careful readings with this book reading some pages two or three times just to drink in the feel and flow of language A common complaint about Clark Ashton Smith is his use of rare and difficult words but so far I have encountered very few that are so incomprehensible that they stop my flow of reading and leave me baffled S T was over last night and we did a YouTube vlog about the book It was incredible because during the recording S T read aloud Smith s poem in memory of H P Lovecraft and Joshi got so moved by the poem that he began to softly weep I felt the tears brimming in my eyes as well But then woe o woe just as we were finishing the video we LOST OUR INTERNET CONNECTION Bah I could not figure out how to retrieve what we had recorded and the video was utterly lost Oy oy oy I was so upset I slept badly kept waking up and cursing fate S T will be over again this week end Saturday or Sunday March 29th or 30th not certain which and we will try again to record a promotional video for the book on YouTube He will again read ye poem and this time I shall be certain to wear my strongest waterproof mascara Weird Fiction Short Stories Poetry I throneless hear the discords of the darkAnd roar of ruin uncreate 4. The dark eidolon and other fantasies book summary 5 stars This collection of short stories prose poems and poetry was haunting and majestic I thoroughly enjoyed Clark Ashton Smith s writing style and his elegant use of language though I must admit that at times it was a bit too flowery for me Smith s imagination was incredible and the works included in this collection are generally dark eerie sinister and very fucking weird In short they are great fun Some of my favorites include The Devotee of Evil The Vaults of Yoh Vombis Ubbo Sathla The Double Shadow and The Treader of the Dust. Kindle the dark eidolon and other fantasies summary Also I d recommend that you read this exclusively at night so as to obtain the proper atmosphere for these ghastly tales Then you too might observe that the walls quiver like a thin veil in the black breath of remote abysses Oh and I d like to add that Smith provides the best current theory as to how life began on our planet just kidding or am I There in the grey beginning of Earth the formless mass that was Ubbo Sathla reposed amid the slime and the vapors Headless without organs or members it sloughed from its oozy sides in a slow ceaseless wave the amoebic forms that were the archetypes of earthly life Horrible it was if there had been aught to apprehend the horror Sounds about right Weird Fiction Short Stories Poetry IntroductionSuggestions for Further ReadingA Note on the Texts Short Stories The Tale of Satampra Zeiros The Last Incantation The Devotee of Evil The Uncharted Isle The Face by the River The City of the Singing Flame The Holiness of Az darac The Vaults of Yoh Vombis Ubbo Sathla The Double Shadow The Maze of the Enchanter Genius Loci The Dark Eidolon The Weaver in the Vault Xeethra The Treader of the Dust Mother of Toads Phoenix Prose Poems The Image of Bronze and the Image of Iron The Memnons of the Night The Demon the Angel The Apocalypse of Evil A Psalm to the Best Beloved The Witch with Eyes of Amber We Shall Meet On Re reading Baudelaire To George Sterling A Valediction Anterior Life Hymn to Beauty The Remorse of the Dead Exorcism Nyctalops Outlanders Song of the Necromancer To Howard Phillips Lovecraft Madrigal of Memory The Old Water Wheel The Hill of Dionysus If Winter Remain Amithaine CyclesExplanatory Notes Weird Fiction Short Stories Poetry Bow down I am the emperor of dreams I crown me with the million colored sunOf secret worlds incredible and takeTheir trailing skies for vestment when I soarThroned on the mounting zenith and illumeThe spaceward flown horizons infinite Clark Ashton Smith The Hashish Eater or the Apocalypse of Evil Far too long neglected among American writers of the weird Clark Ashton Smith has finally been granted a compilation of his best work by Penguin The result is nothing short of revelatory As can be deducted from my started and finished dates I took considerable time devouring this volume This was intentional Admittedly Smith s prose style does tend to veer to the flowery side It s rather dense in terms of the sometimes obscure and archaic vocabulary and references He makes you work for it In Smith s case however I find it fits the subject matter perfectly well Actually for me it works better than Lovecraft s prose style whose literary indulgences didn t always quite mesh with every tale of his It lends to Smith s tales a strange mix of old fantasy and cosmic horror even of an otherworldly trance inducing aspect In short reading it straight through can get mighty laborious so I recommend tackling it at a measured pace Primary attention has been given to the short stories and with good reason The City of the Singing Flame The Vaults of Yo Vombis Genius Loci The Dark Eidolon The Weaver in the Vault Xeethra and the darkly comedic The Mother of Toads are simply sublime pairing pure fantasy with pure terror to great effect They re like nothing else in the field Thankfully Smith s prose poems and poetry are also given a generous treatment although poetry doesn t sell Penguin momentarily ignored financial considerations and allowed Joshi to include it Personally I prefer the former over the latter Of all literary forms he practised the prose poem might be the one he actually mastered His talents are best represented there I feel S. The dark eidolon and other fantasiesx characters T Joshi s elucidating notes at the end are just the icing on the cake making this particular edition indispensable to the library of the weird fiction aficionado Weird Fiction Short Stories Poetry.

: Poetry the dark eidolon and other fantasies summary The funny thing is I still believe all this to be true but recently reading this J: Book the dark eidolon and other fantasies pdf download After leaving the shop crystal in hand little does Tregardis know he now holds an enchanted object that will bring the book of his very own memories to life, Book the dark eidolon and other fantasies review With a wizard and sorcery added to the equation our narrator is in for unexpected twists to his adventures: Book The Dark Eidolon and Other fantasies meaning Why do you loathe me croaked M re Antoinette I can give you all that other women give and , The dark eidolon and other fantasies book 2 You are not a woman said Pierre You are a big toad I saw you in your true shape this morning I d rather drown in the marsh waters than stay with you again: Book the dark eidolon and other fantasies author The Last Incantation would be heartbreaking if the heart in question wasn t already broken beyond all repair and recognition: Poetry the dark eidolon and other fantasies summary Besides the short stories outlined or critiqued above there is a healthy dose of Prose Poems and Poetry. The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies booker The poetry is good some of it excellent some of it repetitious almost to the point of self referentiality, The dark eidolon and other fantasies book series T Joshi who made the editorial decision on the stories poems and prose poems to reprint: Book the dark eidolon and other fantasies summary P Lovecraft and perhaps differs from most writers of the weird tale since, The dark eidolon and other fantasies kindle download One the one hand I would have liked to see stories included but I can understand that the editor might have had space constraints.Let s start with the short stories.P Lovecraft and Robert E Howard.The Introduction of this book is by S