"Genius Loci," "The Charnel God" and "The Weaver in the Vault" by Clark Ashton Smith

When I lived in Ohio, through the Grandview Heights Public Library I got hooked up with the hoopla service which allows you to "borrow" e-books to read on your computer.  I haven't lived in the Buckeye State for a while, but my hoopla account lives on.  Today let's read three stories from an e-text of the fourth volume of Night Shade Books' five-volume series The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, 2009's The Maze of the Enchanter. 

The cover of The Maze of the Enchanter is a wacky collage by Jason Van Hollander that integrates a portrait of Smith, one of those gorgeous Demetre Chiparus sculptures of a super-skinny girl, a photo of Saturn, and other images I can't easily identify.  (A visit to Van Hollander's website is worth your time if you are into horror and the weird.)  The introduction is by Gahan Wilson.  I actually don't like Gahan Wilson's work, but this intro is pretty good; besides praising Smith, Wilson talks about his own youthful reading and relates a fun little second- or third-hand anecdote about Smith.

Smith was often forced to make alterations to his stories demanded by editors in order to secure sales--as the editors of The Maze of the Enchanter, Scott Connors and Ron Hilger, tell us, Smith needed the money to support his infirm parents, and so was in no position to refuse such requests.  Connors and Hilger have endeavored in this book to present versions of the stories whose texts are as close as possible to Smith's original intent--this, and all the interesting notes they provide on each of the stories, makes the book worth a look for all you fans of the weird out there. 

I have already blogged about the Weird Tales versions of four stories in The Maze of the Enchanter, "The Isle of the Torturers" and "The Dark Eidolon," in one post and in another "The Ice-Demon" and "The Voyage of King Euvoran," the latter of which appeared in Weird Tales under the title "The Quest of Gazolba."  (I guess as the result of an oversight, "The Ice-Demon" is missing from the e-book of The Maze of the Enchanter.)  Three other pieces, "The Dweller in the Gulf," "The Flower-Women" and "Vulthoom" I read in Xiccarph, a 1972 collection edited by Lin Carter.   

"Genius Loci" (1933)

"Genius Loci," like all the stories we are talking about today, first appeared in Weird Tales and then was included in the 1948 Arkham House collection Genius Loci and Other Tales, and since then has won the nod from Peter Straub and Ann and Jeff Vandermeer for inclusion in big important anthologies, the kinds of anthologies that are trying to prescribe a canon.

I know I don't need to mansplain to the well-educated audience of MPorcius Fiction Log that, in the religion of ancient Rome, every person, place, group, institution, or thing had a sort of guiding or protective spirit inextricably linked to it, its genius, and that the genius of a place is called a "genius loci."  I will note that whenever this concept comes up I think of Casanova; in his memoirs, when Casanova has bad luck or does something foolish on a whim, he often says that he was "led by his evil genius," and, conversely, when he has an idea that brings about a welcome outcome or when he meets good fortune, sometimes he credits his "good genius."  I always have found this idea clever and fun, and of course a useful way for a guy who travels all over Europe cheating and stealing and getting into trouble to abdicate responsibility for his actions.

The narrator of "Genius Loci" is a writer who lives in the country, on an "uncultivated ranch."  His friend, landscape painter Francis Amberville, is visiting for two weeks.  Amberville has found a meadow where dead trees sit around a stagnant pond, a place where no birds or insects seem to go, a place that somehow scares him but also fascinates him.  Our narrator can sense the evil of the place in Amberville's drawings of it, which are a contrast to Amberville's typical work, which is warm and cheery.  The meadow, the writer surmises from Amberville's description, is on land owned by the Chapman family that is now vacant; old man Chapman, a surly unfriendly sort, died a few months ago, apparently quite near this meadow.

Amberville keeps going to the meadow to paint, and goes from being an amiable and affable guy to a sullen jerk--it seems the meadow is having a negative effect on his personality.  Amberville has a sweet and kind fiancé, and the writer invites her to join them, thinking her presence will snap Amberville out of his funk.  Instead, a terrible tragedy occurs.  The fiancé is not strong-willed, and when the spirit of the evil meadow finally breaks Amberville and he drowns himself in the scummy pool, he brings the girl with him.  The narrator arrives at the meadow shortly after the disaster, and sees a sort of vision of the two young couple's souls rising from their floating corpses to join the soul of old man Chapman--"they merged in one, becoming an androgynous face, neither young nor old..."--and then be absorbed by whatever malign spirit dwells in the unhealthy trees and stagnant water of the meadow.  The narrator, having seen this horrifying phenomenon and being in possession of Amberville's powerful and evocative drawings and paintings of the evil meadow, fears he will eventually be drawn to a similar death.

This story is well-written and well constructed, but somehow it didn't really move me.  Nothing really surprising or crazy happens, there is no sex or gore, the characters don't have any interesting quirks or relationships.  It works, there is nothing wrong with it, but it is no where near as striking and memorable as what I consider Smith's best work, like "The Dweller in the Gulf," "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" or "The Testament of Athammaus."    

Back in late 2013 I sat in a public library and read the quite good Tanith Lee story in 
The Weird and wrote a rave review of it

"The Charnel God" (1934)        

In our last episode we read the Hugh B. Cave story in the March 1934 Weird Tales, and today we read Smith's piece from that issue, "The Charnel God," which is a great title.  The story's magazine appearance is illustrated by Smith himself, which is fun, though the drawing is sort of amateurish--I guess the polite term is naïve.  

A pretty common theme of horror stories is premature burial--a person has some rare malady that makes him appear dead, and he gets buried and wakes up to find himself in a coffin or tomb or whatever.  In "The Charnel God," one of Smith's tales of Zothique, a far future dying earth setting full of magicians and people who fight with swords, a young woman has one of these maladies, and she gets carried off by the authorities for disposal even though her husband insists she is still alive.

The people of the city of Zul-Bha-Sair worship the god Mordiggian, and all who die within the city become the god's property.  It is said that Mordiggian eats the dead, though rumors run rampant that the priests abuse the bodies in all manner of ways before, or instead of, feeding them to Mordiggian.  Phariom and his wife Elaith were just passing through when, in the inn, Elaith has one of her spells and doctors pronounce her dead and the priests of Mordiggian come to collect their god's property.  Phariom tries to fight the masked and gloved priests, but they are expert fighters and beat him senseless.  When he wakes up he hurries to the mysterious temple, hoping to somehow rescue Elaith.

"The Charnel God," like 14 pages in its Weird Tales appearance, is split into four chapters.  Chapter III is devoted to a necromancer, Abnon-Tha.  As we expect of all people with authority and power, the priests of Mordiggian are corrupt and Abnon-Tha often bribes them so they will permit him to conduct experiments on the corpses brought in to the temple.  He has never been permitted to leave the temple with a person who has died, however, even when he has managed to reanimate them. 

Abnon-Tha desires a beautiful noblewoman, Arctela, and has hatched a scheme to make her his slave.  He has slain her with a spell that leaves no mark on her body, and plans to reanimate her and then abscond with her from the city.  

In the fourth chapter Phariom and Abnon-Tha meet in the temple at the long table upon which the dead await Mordiggian.  Arctela lies beside the still living but inert Elaith.  Our cast learns the truth about the god, and his preternaturally agile priests, and struggle to escape the temple alive.

This is a good grim unheroic sword and sorcery horror story.  Because in a Clark Ashton Smith story there is no expectation of justice or an ending which sees the protagonist triumph, I had no idea what was going to happen, which makes every scene in which a guy whips out a dagger or sword or starts casting a spell compelling because you have no idea who is going to come out on top and who is going to be killed and/or humbled, though looking back on the story now, on all three of these stories, in fact, I wonder if they don't share a theme of the futility of resisting fate and authority, no matter how alien or cruel. 

In France, Genius Loci and Other Tales was retitled and split into two volumes.
On the covers we see the priests of Mordiggian without their masks and gloves, 
and poor Arctela, who has been reanimated as an automaton with
no will but to serve the necromancer Abnon-Tha.

            

"The Weaver in the Vault" (1934)

Here's an issue of Weird Tales we haven't looked into before, one which is adorned by one of Margaret Brundage's more amazing BDSM covers.  Brundage's work often looks flat and static, but those attributes are appropriate for this theme and composition.  A better than average performance from her.

"The Weaver in the Vault" is another tale of Zothique.  Speaking of the canon, "The Weaver in the Vault" is one of the stories that is included in the 2014 Penguin Classics collection of Smith tales, The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies.  Clark Ashton Smith has arrived!    

Famorgh is the fifty-ninth king of Tasuun.  He sends three fighting men on a quest to retrieve the remains of the founder of his dynasty, which lie in a tomb ninety miles away in the long-abandoned city of Chaon Gacca.  En route to this desolate destination, the three men share grim rumors, theories and anecdotes about why Chaon Gacca was abandoned, the fate of those who have visited the place since it was deserted, and why the king wants them to collect the mummy or bones of his ancestor.  

The men enter the ruined city and explore the tomb, where an outré tragedy befalls them.  An earthquake strikes, and the three warriors are crushed in a cave-in, two killed at once while the third lies immobilized, his legs shattered and under a huge chunk of stone.  As he dies over a period of days, this last survivor watches a truly alien monster, a floating sphere of energy, absorb his friends and with the energy it has stolen from them weave a glowing construction of filaments and strands, like a spider's web of shifting colors, that fills the tomb before fading away, a sort of ephemeral art installation.  We readers know that when he eventually dies this third warrior will too serve as the raw material for a short-lived alien work of art. 

"The Weaver in the Vault" is well-written, but after all the engaging stuff about the journey and the exploration of the city and tomb, the surreal ending is a little anti-climactic.  The ending certainly qualifies as weird, as it depicts an incomprehensible other and a black fate from which there is no hope of escape and which can in no way be said to represent any kind of justice or moral order, but is it entertaining?  Not very.   

**********

Three well-written downers in which people, no matter how talented, brave or innocent they may be, are destroyed by their social superiors or forces that are beyond comprehension.  "Genius Loci" and "The Weaver in the Vault" are both mildly good (a step above my oft-used grade of "acceptable,") though very different in that the former sort of hews closely to what we expect while the latter is truly strange but not in a particularly exciting way.  For me "The Charnel God" is the most satisfying of the three pieces we are looking at today, a good mix of sex, violence, terror and surprise, with characters who act in explicable ways in a compelling setting.