Read The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies Online
Authors: Clark Ashton Smith
The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies
PENGUIN
 
Â
CLASSICS
THE DARK EIDOLON AND OTHER FANTASIES
CLARK ASHTON SMITH
(
1893
â
1961
) was a poet, a sculptor, a painter, and the author of more than one hundred tales of fantasy and horror. A disciple of George Sterling and a close friend of H. P. Lovecraft, Smith was a member of the famous Lovecraft circle and was a regular contributor to
Weird Tales
in the
1930
s. He began his writing career as a poet, composing more than one thousand poems over the course of more than fifty years, much of his work exploring the realms of fantasy, terror, wonder, and the supernatural. His noteworthy volumes of poetry include
The Star-Treader
,
Ebony and Crystal
, and
Sandalwood
. His stories, sometimes written in the Cthulhu Mythos, were lush and vivid, wildly speculative, reminiscent of the Symbolist and Decadent movements, and often deeply sardonic. Later in life, he wrote less and turned to visual art as his preferred mode of expression. Smith died in
1961
.
S. T. JOSHI
is a freelance writer and editor. He has edited Penguin Classics editions of H. P. Lovecraft's
The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
and
The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories
, as well as Algernon Blackwood's
Ancient Sorceries and Other Strange Stories
, Arthur Machen's
The White People and Other Weird Stories
, and
American Supernatural Tales
. He has also written critical studies on Lord Dunsany and H. P. Lovecraft; edited works by Ambrose Bierce, Clark Ashton Smith, and H. L. Mencken; and completed a two-volume history of supernatural fiction entitled
Unutterable Horror
. He was recently honored with the creation of the S. T. Joshi Endowed Research Fellowship at Brown University Library and was awarded the Robert Bloch Award by the Lovecraft Arts & Sciences Council at NecronomiCon
2013
.
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) LLC
375
Hudson Street
New York, New York
10014
USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China
A Penguin Random House Company
First published in Penguin Books
2014
Selection copyright ©
2014
by William Dorman, Executor of the Estate of Clark Ashton Smith
Introduction and notes copyright ©
2014
by S. T. Joshi
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
The selections in this book first appeared in issues of Academy, Acolyte, Arkham Sampler, Auburn Journal, Bohemia, Different, Fantasmagoria, Fantasy Fan, Kaleidograph, Live Stories, Lost Worlds, Measure, Overland Monthly, Poetry, Smart Set, Town Talk, Troubadour, Weird Tales, Wonder Stories, in the following volumes of Clark Ashton Smith's works: The Complete Poetry and Translations (Volume I), edited by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz (Hippocampus Press,
2007
â
08
), The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies (Auburn Journal Press,
1933
), Ebony and Crystal: Poems in Verse and Prose (Auburn Journal Press,
1925
), Nero and Other Poems (Futile Press,
1937
), Odes and Sonnets (Book Club of California,
1918
), Poems in Prose (Arkham House,
1965
), Selected Poems (Arkham House,
1971
), The Star-Treader and Other Poems (A. M. Robertson,
1912
), and in the anthologies Fire and Sleet and Candlelight, edited by August Derleth (Arkham House,
1961
) and Time to Come: Science-Fiction of Tomorrow, edited by August Derleth (Farrar, Straus & Young,
1954
). “The Hill of Dionysus” (
1961
) and “Cycles” (
1963
) were published as chapbooks by Roy A. Squires.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Smith, Clark Ashton,
1893
â
1961
.
[Works. Selections]
The Dark Eidolon and other fantasies / Clark Ashton Smith ; edited with an introduction and notes by S. T. Joshi.
pages cm
ISBN
978
-
0
-
14
-
310738
-
5
(pbk)
ISBN
978
-
0
-
698
-
13746
-
2
(eBook)
I. Joshi, S. T.,
1958
â editor of compilation. II. Title.
PS
3537
.M
335
A
6
2014
813
'.
52
âdc
23
2013047586
Version_1
Suggestions for Further Reading
The Image of Bronze and the Image of Iron
The Demon, the Angel, and Beauty
The Litany of the Seven Kisses
The Mirror in the Hall of Ebony
The Hashish-Eater; or, The Apocalypse of Evil
Clark Ashton Smith's prose fiction and poetry reveal to us realms, creatures, and events that never were and never could be, doing so in an idiom that utilized the linguistic resources of the English language to their fullest. This body of work embodies an exhilarating liberation of the imagination beyond the known and the mundane.
Clark Ashton Smith was born on January
13
,
1893
, in Long Valley, California, the son of Timeus and Fanny (Gaylord) Smith. In
1902
the Smith family moved to nearby Auburn, in the Sierra foothills, where Timeus and young Clark built a cabin about a mile outside of town. Smith remained there for most of his life. Smith's formal education was intermittentâseveral years' attendance at two different grammar schools in or near Auburn, and only a few days' attendance at Placer Union High Schoolâbut his prodigious self-education, which included teaching himself Latin and reading through
Webster's Unabridged Dictionary,
rendered him one of the most learned autodidacts of his time.
It was in his preteen years that Smith developed an interest in writing. At the age of eleven he began composing fairy tales and stories based on the
Arabian Nights.
Two long narratives, probably dating to
1907
or thereaboutsâ
The Black Diamonds,
nearly
100
,
000
words in length, and a slightly shorter work,
The Sword of Zaganâ
survive and have recently been published; they are longer than any of the fiction he would write as an adult. Although they do not generally involve the supernatural, these works evoke not only the
Arabian Nights
but also William Beckford's vivid Arabian novel,
Vathek
(
1786
).
In
1906
Smith discovered the work of Edgar Allan Poe, and Poe's poetry in particular fired his imagination. This discovery was fused with Smith's fascination for the
Rubaiyat
of Omar Khayyam, as translated by Edward FitzGerald, and by a long fantastic poem, George Sterling's “A Wine of Wizardry,” which appeared in the September
1907
issue of
Cosmopolitan.
Together, these works led to Smith's own early experiments in poetry.
Sterling (
1869
â
1926
) was then a relatively young poet whose first book,
The Testimony of the Suns and Other Poems
(
1903
), had created something of a stir in California for its cosmic perspective: its long title poem depicts the cosmic flux of stars and constellations and its implications for human life. A Long Island native transplanted to San Francisco, Sterling fell under the tutelage of the venerable Ambrose Bierce (
1842
â
1914
?), who spent years trying to find a publisher for “A Wine of Wizardry,” finally succeeding in placing it in the magazine for which he himself was a contributing editor. The poem was published with a laudatory article by Bierce and created an immense furor both locally and nationally, as Bierce's many literary and political enemies lambasted him for what they believed was his flamboyant praise of an esoteric poem devoted to fantastic and horrific imagery. Sterling's reputation was establishedâin California, at leastâand he became both the leader of a bohemian colony of writers and artists based in California and the uncrowned poet laureate of the Bay Area.
Smith's own early poetry was already tending toward the cosmic, so it is unlikely that Sterling was a direct influence on it; nevertheless, it made sense for Smith, in early
1911
, to send his verse to Sterling for comment and analysis. Sterling was understandably impressed. Smith had already published a few poems and even some short stories in magazines the year before, but the poetry he showed Sterling was of significantly higher quality. Perhaps recognizing the valuable aid Bierce had lent him as a young poet, Sterling took Smith under his wing and sought to promote his work as best he could. He quoted Smith's sonnet “The Last Night” in an interview in
Town Talk,
a San Francisco weekly paper that regularly featured articles about Sterling and his circle (which included Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Mary Austin, the photographer Arnold Genthe, the painter Xavier MartÃnez, and for a time the young Sinclair Lewis). He sent Smith's remarkable “Ode to the Abyss” to Bierce; the elderly curmudgeon's favorable comments on the poem were quotedâand misquotedâin several papers in the summer of
1911
.
Smith himself became a media celebrity the next summer, when several San Francisco newspapers hailed the “boy poet of the Sierras” and compared his early poetic brilliance to that of Keats and Shelley. A local lawyer named Boutwell Dunlap claimed to have discovered Smith, but that honor surely rests with Sterling. It is true that Dunlap had introduced Smith to his first publisher, A. M. Robertson, but it was Sterling who ushered Smith's
The Star-Treader and Other Poems
into print in late
1912
. The book received fairly wide notice (including, belatedly, a favorable review from the great Anglo-Welsh fantasist Arthur Machen
1
) and also sold more than a thousand copiesâa remarkable figure for a first book of poetry, especially given that Sterling's own poetry volumes did not sell nearly as well. Smith seemed on the threshold of establishing a reputation for himself in the realm of poetry.
That reputation never materialized, however, partly because of Smith's extreme shyness as a youth and partly because of his problematical health. Although Smith had spent a month with Sterling in JuneâJuly
1912
, he was too diffident to meet Bierce and London, in spite of Sterling's repeated efforts to arrange a gathering of his closest literary colleagues. And from
1913
to
1921
Smith seemed to be in constant ill healthâindigestion, nervous troubles, and the like. There is good evidence that he was afflicted with tuberculosis; perhaps depressionâconjoined with, or perhaps partly caused by, the severe financial worries that would plague Smith for much of his lifeâwas also a factor. The result was that, even though the prestigious Book Club of California issued Smith's
Odes and Sonnets
in
1918
, his celebrity as a poet remained local. He was writing no fantastic fiction at this time.
Smith's financial worries were real. He was saddled not only with two aging parents who could not work but also with a mortgage on their property on which he could barely meet the interest payments. In
1917
Smith suggested that Sterling should try to encourage his many wealthy friends in the Bay Area to give him a lump sum of $
1500
to $
2000
to set up a chicken ranch. Sterling didn't think he could raise such a large sum of money, but he did attempt to persuade some wealthy socialites to give the Smith family a monthly stipend. One of the first to do so was Mrs. Celia Clark, the wife of a mining magnate, who (perhaps in conjunction with others) agreed to supply $
75
a month. This stipend appears to have lasted until the spring of
1920
, when Mrs. Clark inexplicably stopped giving (perhaps she simply forgot about the matter in planning for an upcoming tour abroad).
Smith himself, in spite of his health problems, did attempt workâbut for someone who did not even graduate from high school or attend college, such work was hard to come by. Smith actually became a migrant worker for a time, engaging in wood chopping, fruit picking, and other forms of manual labor; this work at least had the good effect of getting him out in the open air and causing his tuberculosis to go into remission.
 â¢Â â¢Â â¢Â
In
1920
Smith wrote a six-hundred-line poem, “The Hashish-Eater; or, The Apocalypse of Evil,” that caused Sterling to go into ecstasies:
“The Hashish-Eater” is indeed an amazing production. My friends will have none of it, claiming it reads like an extension of “A Wine of Wizardry.” But I think there are many differences, and at any rate, it has more imagination in it than any other poem I know of. Like the “Wine,” it fails on the esthetic side, a thing that seems of small consequence in a poem of that nature.
2
But a poem of this sortâwritten in strict iambic pentameter and portraying its protagonist's ventures into exotic realms of cosmic fantasyâwas not likely to be met with favor either by the general public or by the literati. Both Smith and Sterling had published some poems in Harriet Monroe's journal
Poetry
shortly after it was founded in
1912
, but their work was antipodal to that of such Modernists as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams. Although Smith was, over the course of his poetic career, occasionally praised by such poets as Vachel Lindsay and Edwin Markham, there was little chance he would establish a national reputation with work that already seemed old-fashioned, overly formalistic, and devoted to a kind of fantastic imagery that was increasingly coming to be regarded by Modernist poets and critics as an illegitimate form of literary expression. As Harriet Monroe wrote in a patronizing review: “Life will bring him down to earth, no doubt, in her usual brusque manner, and will teach him something more intimate to write about than winds and stars and forsaken gods.”
3
Smith's poetry, in the course of the
1910
s, was in fact evolving beyond the emotionally remote cosmicism that typified his earliest work. Increasingly, he was producing powerful yet delicate verse focusing on romantic love, natural beauty, and other elements aside from the dance of the stars and galaxies. Sterling welcomed this development and actively worked to get Smith into the pages of H. L. Mencken's
Smart Set
and other periodicals. Whether some of Smith's elegiac poems were inspired by actual love affairs is unclear; some of themâsuch as his poignant “Requiescat in Pace” (
1917
), written on the death of Mamie Lowe Millerâclearly are. He seemed to enjoy creating the impression of the dashing poet-lover who liked to shock the staid bourgeoisie of Auburn; as he once wryly wrote to Sterling, “Marriage is an error I was never tempted to commit: I have not been in love with an unmarried woman since I was fifteen!”
4
But how many affairs with married womenâif anyâhe actually carried on is not known.
It was a sign of Smith's flagging reputation that he had to publish his next book of poetry,
Ebony and Crystal: Poems in Verse and Prose
(
1922
), himself. He subsidized its publication by his local newspaper, the
Auburn Journal,
and when sales of the book failed to meet printing costs, Smith had to write a column for the paper as reimbursement. Sterling vigorously promoted this book and its successor,
Sandalwood
(
1925
), also published by the
Auburn Journal,
but to little avail.
But one fortuitous result was that some of these books were placed in the hands of H. P. Lovecraft (
1890
â
1937
), who in August
1922
sent Smith what could only be called a fan letter expressing wonderment at the exquisite beauty and imaginative power of his verse. As a result, Smith established a correspondence with the Rhode Island writer that would only lapse with the latter's death. The next year, the pulp magazine
Weird Tales
was founded, and Lovecraft found a ready haven for his weird fiction there. He later claimed that he had persuaded the magazine's first editor, Edwin Baird, to renounce his “no poetry” policy, and some of Smith's poems began appearing there as well.
Whether it was through constant rereading of Lovecraft's tales (many of which he requested directly from the author) or from his disenchantment with the progressâor, at least, the recognitionâof his poetry, Smith began pondering a return to prose fiction, something he had not attempted in a decade and a half. He had written some prose poems (included in
Ebony and Crystal
) in
1914
â
15
, but these were closely allied to his poetry and were chiefly inspired by Baudelaire's
Petits poèmes en prose
and Stuart Merrill's translations of French prose poetry, published as
Pastels in Prose
(
1890
). Now, in
1925
, Smith undertook the writing of more extended narratives; one of the first was “The Abominations of Yondo.” He was taken aback at Sterling's hostile response:
All highbrows think the “Yondo” material outworn and childish. The daemonic is done for, for the present, so far as our contemporaries go, and imagination must seek other fields. You have squeezed every drop from the weird (and what drops!) and should touch on it only infrequently, as I on the stars. The swine don't want pearls: they want corn; and it is foolish to hope to change their tastes.
5
Smith shot back: “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 laterâa revolt against mechanization and over-socialization, etc. . . . Neither the ethics or the aesthetic of the ant-hill have any attraction for me.”
6
But Sterling was making a valid enough point: mainstream literature was in the process of outlawing expressions of weirdness, fantasy, or supernaturalism almost in toto, as social realismâembodied in the work of Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulknerâbecame the dominant and, in the eyes of many, the only aesthetically respectable literary mode. This is why writers like Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard were forced to publish their tales in the pulp magazines: there was no other professional market for what they chose to write.