Genius Loci (Smith)
Genius Loci is the title of a short story by the American writer Clark Ashton Smith , which he completed on September 2, 1931 and published in 1933 in the pulp magazine Weird Tales . In 1948 he took it on, giving the title to his third anthology, Genius Loci and Other Tales , which was published by Arkham House . A German translation ( pond landscape with alders and willow ) by Friedrich Polakovics appeared in 1970 in the collection of short stories Saat aus dem Grabe in the library of the Usher book series and in 1982 as a reprint in the Fantastic Library of Suhrkamp Verlag .
The fantastic and eerie tale belongs next to the city of the singing flame , Des magician recurrence (The Return of the Sorcerer) and seed from the grave (The Seed from the Sepulcher) known to Smith's stories. Based on the term genius loci , it revolves around the deadly influence of a place to which several people fall victim.
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The landscape painter Amberville has quartered himself in the house of the writer and first-person narrator Murray and reports of a gloomy place that seems to radiate something evil and which he has captured in two drawings : A swampy meadow framed by three slopes with a pond , some of which are crippled Alder trees and a dead willow that leans over the water as if its fall had "been stopped by mysterious forces".
When the narrator looks at the pictures, he perceives a strange evil that he can hardly put into words. Despite the threatening atmosphere, the painter wants to visit the place again and immortalize it in an oil painting. In the following days he visits the meadow with his utensils, increasingly comes under its fatal influence and undergoes a change of character. He only grumpily answers the worried questions of Murray, who tries unsuccessfully to keep him away from the ominous place.
The stretch of land, the previous owner of which Chapman mysteriously died there, appears to have its own vampiric being and to be inhabited by what the ancients called a genius loci. To get an impression, Murray follows one Day and at first sight of the village cannot imagine that something horrific could be hidden there. This changes when he looks over the shoulder of the frozen painter and sees the meadow in the picture like a lurking demon . When he looks at the landscape again, it suddenly appears darkened and eerie, and he gets the feeling that the branches of the alder are beckoning him temptingly and he could sink into the muddy ground.
As Amberville continues to shut itself off under the spell of the landscape and appears increasingly repellent, Murray asks his fiancée in a letter for help. She appears after a few days and can initially cheer up and distract the painter until she is drawn into the action herself and can no longer achieve anything. When the two of them cannot resist the morbid temptation to visit the meadow in the moonlight one night, the narrator suspects the threat. He hurries after them and can already hear screams of horror in the distance. The depression is filled with strangely twisting clouds of mist , through which Murray runs down. Horrified, he sees the two of them floating motionless in the pool. A pale exhalation floats up and lets the faces of the dead and the previous owner emerge, a terrible sight that prevents the narrator from recovering the corpses .
Background and origin
In contrast to Smith's fantasy stories , which take place in exotic, fictional or stylized landscapes such as Averoigne or Zothique , Hyperborea or Atlantis , the plot of this story begins in reality, which connects it with the short stories Des Magier Wiederkehr or Aforgomon's chain , which can also be assigned to fantasy are.
After laborious and tedious work, Smith questioned the quality and saleability of the work. At first he thought it was an experiment and didn't know what to do with it. In a letter to August Derleth he wrote that his story describes a " landscape with an evil and vampiric personality that both scares and attracts people" and ultimately annihilates them. After these doubts, he was all the more surprised that editor Farnsworth Wright accepted the narrative. Since Wright had acquired other stories from him, he was not able to publish Genius Loci until June 1933.
Influence and reception
To Smith's delight, HP Lovecraft reacted positively and praised the work's “dark fascination”. He congratulated him and wrote that Smith had succeeded in “capturing the vague geographic horror” that he had tried in vain to create himself. He also spoke the essay “The Vampire. His Kith and Kin ”by the eccentric Montague Summers , which provided many ideas for Smith's short story. In fact, it is possible that Smith, who owned a copy of the scriptures, was influenced by it.
Summers, a connoisseur of horror literature and fantasy, mentioned the harmful exhalations and fog in bogs and swamps , which can lead to different interpretations. In China, for example, one would interpret will- o'-the-wisps as a sign that “blood has been shed” in a place and associate them with ghosts and vampires that transmit diseases. The feverish attacks of malaria sufferers could provoke delusions that later, in legend, take the form of evil creatures that suck the life of the victims.
Even Algernon Blackwood , in whose work takes on the uncanny often naturdämonische forms Smiths may have influenced history. While in his well-known tale The Willows (The Willows) two friends who spend the night on a willow-covered island are influenced by a force that emanates from the trees, The Transfer is about a stretch of land that gives hikers the life force of a soul-robbing one Vampire withdraws. For Rein A. Zondergeld , Genius Loci is one of Smith's most convincing stories, along with The Seed from the Sepulcher .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Quoted from: Clark Ashton Smith: Genius Loci. Collected Stories Volume 3, Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2013, p. 221
- ↑ Quoted from: Clark Ashton Smith: Genius Loci. Collected Stories Volume 3, Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2013, p. 226
- ↑ Quoted from: Scott Connors and Ron Hilger, notes on the stories. In: Clark Ashton Smith, Genius Loci. Collected stories Volume 3, Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2013, p. 398
- ↑ Scott Connors and Ron Hilger, Notes on the Stories. In: Clark Ashton Smith, Genius Loci. Collected stories Volume 3, Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2013, p. 399
- ↑ Quoted from: Scott Connors and Ron Hilger, notes on the stories. In: Clark Ashton Smith, Genius Loci. Collected Stories Volume 3, Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2013, p. 400
- ^ Rein A. Zondergeld: Summers, Montague. In: Lexikon der phantastischen Literatur , Suhrkamp, Fantastische Bibliothek, Frankfurt 1983, p. 230
- ↑ Scott Connors and Ron Hilger, Notes on the Stories. In: Clark Ashton Smith, Genius Loci. Collected Stories Volume 3, Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2013, p. 400
- ^ Rein A. Zondergeld: Blackwood, Algernon . In: Lexikon der phantastischen Literatur , Suhrkamp, Fantastische Bibliothek, Frankfurt 1983, p. 38
- ↑ Scott Connors and Ron Hilger, Notes on the Stories. In: Clark Ashton Smith, Genius Loci. Collected Stories Volume 3, Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2013, p. 400
- ^ Rein A. Zondergeld: Lexikon der phantastischen Literatur , Clark Ashton Smith, Suhrkamp, Fantastische Bibliothek, Frankfurt 1983, p. 230