The city of the singing flame

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Clark Ashton Smith (1912)

The city of the singing flame (English title: The City often the Singing Flame ) is the title of a short story by American writer Clark Ashton Smith , he wrote in January 1931, in July of the same year in Hugo gladly Backs science fiction magazine Wonder Stories published . A German translation by Friedrich Polakovics appeared in 1970 in the anthology Saat from the grave of the library of the House of Usher and in 1982 as a reprint in the Fantastic Library of Suhrkamp Verlag .

The story is one of Smith's best-known works, combines science fiction with fantasy elements and was so successful that he wrote a sequel entitled Beyond the Singing Flame , which was completed on June 30, 1931 and published again in Wonder Stories in November could be.

Structure and content

The first-person narrator Philip Hastane reports on the disappearance of the writer Giles Angarth and his friend Ebbonly, which has been speculated about in numerous newspaper articles and which will probably remain a mystery. After Angarth reappeared, Hastane presented his diary , which contained a seemingly fantastic story, the facts of which he was now able to verify. He wants to leave it to the reader to believe the reports or dismiss them as pipe dreams.

In his notes, Angarth describes a hike through the northern California mountainous landscape of Crater Ridge, which is not far from the summit near his log cabin . As he wandered through a scree field in search of curiously shaped stones, he noticed a strange constellation. Two boulders resemble each other and are reminiscent of the bases of old columns that have almost completely weathered over time.

He steps between the two remains, loses the ground under his feet and falls into a black abyss. When he recollects himself after a dizzying fall, he sees a strange landscape, which with its amber-colored sky, the purple grass and the purple plants seems to lie outside the solar system . Not far away rises a gloomy city whose towers and walls protrude into the firmament. Behind him are two pillars, the distance between which corresponds to that of the two boulders and which indicate the beginning of a road that leads into the city. Apparently he has discovered a portal through which he can get to another planet . When he steps between the pillars again, he lands back in his world after an equally turbulent fall.

A few days later, he goes into the other dimension again. On the huge street lined with monoliths , he notices strange beings who take no notice of him and how he strives towards the city. At some point he perceives seductive music that seems to come from its center. He considers himself unmusical and is therefore amazed at how deeply it penetrates him and casts its spell. Her otherworldly sounds are overwhelming, seem to promise wonderful things and make him believe in a space of “unearthly joy and freedom”. In front of the city walls he tears himself free and returns, but is followed by the echoes.

In the hope of being able to withstand the music, he sets off again two days later and enters the city. Following the intoxicating melody, he penetrates “deeper into the jungle of those monumental buildings” and reaches a gigantic temple, from whose entrance the masses of sound pour out. As he strolls along the colonnades, the music seems to him like an elixir transformed into sound , which “gives superhuman life [...] gives the immortals the soaring, great dreams” and increases in him to “a divine intoxication”. In a dark foreboding he stuffs cotton wool into his ears, as if he wanted to protect himself from a beguiling danger - similar to Odysseus before the siren song . In the center of the building he finally reaches the source of the music: a flame flaring up from the ground that rises like a fountain and seems to grow steadily.

Many extraterrestrial, beautiful and majestic creatures have gathered around the singing flame and perform prayer-like gestures. As the fountain continues to grow and the music reaches ever new dimensions of expression, he feels the sudden desire to plunge into the blazing fire to enjoy all the glories of the world for a short and last moment of his life. Although he can withstand the music and tear himself away, he has to watch how some of the beings cannot resist a presumably similar desire and sacrifice themselves to the flame, whose light now fills the whole hall.

After a few days he returns to the city through the portal with his friend Ebbonly, who has a “penchant for the bizarre and unearthly”. The friend rejects his warning to plug his ears because he does not want to weaken the sensations. Initially enthusiastic about numerous architectural and other details, he increasingly fell for the music and, under its deafening influence, no longer reacts to Angarth's warnings, who cannot free him from the trance-like state even with violent shaking.

Even more powerfully than last time, the singing flame tells of the "rapture of the moth that died in its blaze". Angarth has to watch in horror as his friend runs forward from the crowd of ecstatic believers and throws himself into the fire in front of him. He escapes and returns to his world, but confesses that he can no longer defend himself against the music and revisits the city.

Emergence

Donner Pass in the 1870s

One day Smith found an oddly shaped stone near Thunder Pass in Northern California that reminded him of creatures from Lovecraft's stories. He sent him the stone, which was delighted by Lovecraft, who jokingly named the object "The Unnameable Eikon" and "The One Who Waits". These remarks may have moved Smith to begin writing his new story on January 15, 1931.

During a multi-day tent excursion into the mountains of Donner Pass, Smith hiked again to Crater Ridge with his girlfriend Genevieve K. Sully . There he examined the grotesquely shaped stones and was fascinated by the landscape, the details of which, according to Sully, he later used for The City of the Singing Flame .

Background and details

Between 1928 and 1937, Smith wrote about a hundred stories. He often wrote them on the back of older typescripts that he no longer wanted to use. Around half of his short stories can be assigned to specific narrative cycles, the actions of which play in fantastic worlds and imaginatively equipped cultures with their own language and a differentiated mythological background. In addition to Atlantis and Hyperborea, a prehistoric continent, Mars and Venus as well as extrasolar planets , two fictional regions offered a grateful background for the often macabre events, enriched with elements of horror: The medieval stylized Averoigne, in which vampires wreak havoc, and Zothique, the last still inhabited continent on earth .

On August 12, 1922, Lovecraft responded with an enthusiastic letter to Smith's books of poetry Odes and Sonnets , Ebony and Crystal and Sandalwood , which over the years developed into a pen-friendship that lasted until Lovecraft's death. While Lovecraft was initially fascinated by Smith's poetry , he soon appreciated his colorful, inspired prose and praised it in his essay Supernatural Horror in Literature . They exchanged ideas and adopted certain details and motifs from each other in their own work. For example, Smith integrated elements of the Cthulhu myth into some of his stories - for example in The Return of the Sorcerer - and responded with the "book of Eibon" to the Necronomicon Lovecrafts, which the latter put into the pen of the "mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred mentioned as a leitmotif in numerous stories . Lovecraft in turn used Smith's book title in the stories Dreams in the Witch's House and The Man of Stone and borrowed the "Tsathoggua" invented by him for The Whisperer in the Dark .

With the "rapture of the moth that died in its blaze" Smith took up a traditional motif . The image of the flame that attracts and burns a butterfly was processed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in one of his most famous poems, Blessed Sehnsucht from the West-Eastern Divan . It corresponds to the topos of the "burning in and through love," which in a (falsely) Hafiz attributed Ghazal in Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall found translation and is an integral part of Persian poetry.

reception

Ray Bradbury (1975)

The story attracted enthusiastic responses and impressed various authors of fantastic literature such as HP Lovecraft , Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison .

Smith announced a story to his pen pal Lovecraft about the scene of Crater Ridge, the strange area where he found the "unnameable Eikon". At some point he wanted to look for the stones that were reminiscent of the pedestals of dilapidated columns, and if you don't hear from him afterwards, his fate would be easy to guess. Lovecraft reacted euphorically and wrote that he had "landed a direct hit" with his new work. It has been a long time since Lovecraft had suffered a story like this. It resembles dreams "with the kind of fall into a foreign dimension that I often imagine in the face of a blazing and apocalyptic sunset".

Bradbury praised Smith's colorful style and stylistic abilities. He had also published some of his early stories with Arkham House and described the deep impression that the imaginative world of narrative had on him and which influenced his own work for the rest of his life.

literature

  • Steve Behrends: Clark Ashton Smith, A critical guide to the man and his work. Second Edition, Chapter Eight, Science Fantasies, Wildside Press LLC 2013, pp. 115-119

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sunand T. Joshi, David E. Schultz: Smith, Clark Ashton. In: An HP Lovecraft Encyclopedia, Hippocampus Press, Westport 2001, p. 247
  2. ↑ Scott Connors and Ron Hilger, Notes on the Stories. In: Clark Ashton Smith: The City of the Singing Flame. Collected stories Volume 1, Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2011, p. 363
  3. ↑ Quoted from: Clark Ashton Smith: The City of the Singing Flame. Collected Stories Volume 1, Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2011, p. 60
  4. ↑ Quoted from: Clark Ashton Smith: The City of the Singing Flame. Collected Stories Volume 1, Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2011, p. 63
  5. ↑ Quoted from: Clark Ashton Smith: The City of the Singing Flame. Collected Stories Volume 1, Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2011, p. 64
  6. ↑ Quoted from: Clark Ashton Smith: The City of the Singing Flame. Collected Stories Volume 1, Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2011, p. 68
  7. ↑ Quoted from: Clark Ashton Smith: The City of the Singing Flame. Collected Stories Volume 1, Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2011, p. 71
  8. ↑ Quoted from Scott Connors and Ron Hilger, notes on the stories. In: Clark Ashton Smith: The City of the Singing Flame. Collected stories Volume 1, Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2011, p. 363
  9. ↑ Scott Connors and Ron Hilger, Notes on the Stories. In: Clark Ashton Smith: The City of the Singing Flame. Collected stories Volume 1, Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2011, p. 363
  10. ^ Genevieve K. Sully: Letter on Clark Ashton Smith , eldrichdark.com
  11. ↑ Stephen Jones: The Forgotten Worlds of Klarkash Clay. In: Clark Ashton Smith: The City of the Singing Flame. Collected stories Volume 1, Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2011, pp. 18-19
  12. ↑ Sunand T. Joshi, David E. Schultz: Smith, Clark Ashton. In: An HP Lovecraft Encyclopedia, Hippocampus Press, Westport 2001, p. 247
  13. ↑ Michael Böhler and Gabriele Schwieler. In: Schöpferischer moment, interpretations, poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, p. 206.
  14. ↑ Steve Behrends: Clark Ashton Smith, A critical guide to the man and his work. Second Edition, Chapter Eight, Science Fantasies, Wildside Press LLC 2013, p. 115
  15. ↑ Quoted from Scott Connors and Ron Hilger, notes on the stories. In: Clark Ashton Smith: The City of the Singing Flame. Collected stories Volume 1, Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2011, p. 363
  16. ^ [1] Letter on Clark Ashton Smith, Ray Bradbury