Seed from the grave
Saat aus dem Grabe (English original title: The Seed from the Sepulcher ) is the title of a fantastic horror story by the American writer Clark Ashton Smith , which he completed in February 1932 and published in October 1933 in the Weird Tales magazine. Three years after his death, was the popular, in many anthologies represented story in the anthology Tales of Science and Sorcery of the publishing house Arkham House added.
A German translation by Friedrich Polakovics initiated the Saat collection from the grave of the Usher library in 1970 and was reprinted in 1982 in the Fantastic Library of Suhrkamp Verlag .
The story, told from an authoritative perspective , revolves around the fate of two adventurers who fall victim to a demonic plant in the depths of the jungle .
content
Falmer and Thone are on an expedition through the Venezuelan part of the Amazon rainforest and drive up a remote tributary of the Orinoco in dugouts . The orchid hunters accompanied by two Indians are not only tempted by the vast flora of the region, but also by a rumor that surrounds a mysterious ruined city. In the remains there is said to be a tomb with a treasure trove of jewels that were given to the dead in eternity.
Thone, weakened by the fever , stayed a day's journey while Falmer and an Indian explored the site and asks his friend to tell him something about the place. But he seems strangely closed, mumbles only a few words and grumpily rejects further questions. Thone notices a change in character, sees the sallow color of his haggard-looking face and is worried when his condition does not improve the next day either. So they pack their equipment and take the two canoes downriver towards the Orinoco. Left to the current, they slide for hours in the searing heat until Thone notices how Falmer rhythmically moves his head back and forth, begins to moan and finally screams. He clasps his head and is shaken by convulsive convulsions that almost capsize the boat . Driving towards the bank, Thone notices the fearful looks of the Indians, who, whispering, seem to suspect something and do not want to get any closer to the patient who has been brought ashore and calmed down with morphine . When Thone examines his head, he feels a bump under the as yet uninjured scalp. Then Falmer wakes up and begins to speak as if it was a matter of freeing himself from a burden:
While the Indian waited by the river, he walked between the ruins of the site and looked at the immense stone walls , which looked "as old as time and death", "as if their blocks had been carved and piled up by inhabitants of a strange planet " and the repulsive reliefs on bloated columns , not yet completely overgrown by tendrils . Since the stone slab of the grave was destroyed, he could see the whitish glowing ground and let himself down with a rope. In the light of the flashlight he saw that the floor of the vault was littered with bones and skeletons, poked around in the mess, but could not see any bracelets or other jewelry on the skeletons and was about to climb back up when he saw a structure above him saw it almost touched as he climbed down. It was a wattle of human bones , in the middle of which was the skeleton of a warrior. A pale plant growth sprouted from the skull and stretched to the ceiling, while the roots had crept down and penetrated another skull over the tips of the toes. Disgusted, he climbed hastily, but could not resist the temptation to look at the object again, accidentally touching the antler-like growths above the skull with his face . As if a seed pod had burst, he was suddenly enveloped in a cloud of dust that settled in his hair and entered his mouth.
After the description he lapses into a murmur and groan again, from which he wakes up again and speaks of a growing thing in his head that he has acquired through the spurs . Thone rejects the story, but sees his companion's bulging eyes , whose lids no longer close, and realizes to his horror that a bud is growing out of the top of his skull. To make matters worse, the Indians let them down and left with most of the supplies. Despite the fever breaking out again, he was able to drag the patient into the remaining canoe, get away from the bank and bring the boat into the current with the hope of reaching a trading post on the Orinoco downstream .
The next morning he was shocked by a horrific picture: Falmer sits frozen at the end of the boat, his skin has dried up as if he had been sucked out vampirically , while the monstrous plant has grown and now protrudes "six to seven inches from its motionless head". Its impulses penetrate from the mouth and eyes, twist and branch up into the air and seem to beckoning seductively to the terrified Thone. A moment ago, hoping that Falmer was dead and redeemed, he notices how his body moves back and forth and merges into a hypnotizing rhythm that influences himself. He pulls himself out of the freeze and fires six bullets from his revolver at the creature. Even this is not able to impress the teeming life, and resignedly he slips into delirium while the boat runs aground in the mud of an islet in the middle of the river.
Awakening, Thone finds himself in a world of lianas , orchids and shimmering butterflies and realizes that the plant has taken on gigantic proportions. A flower has opened above a tangle of sticky antennae , which gradually seems to take on Falmer's traits. Thone does not have the strength to destroy the being and believes he is hearing beguiling music , while whitish roots sprout from the dried up body as if they were looking for new food. The commanding siren song swells and he has to obey the "deadly beat of a dancing cobra". He sinks to his knees and crawls towards the creature until the roots drill through the pupils into his body. Over the embrace of the dead "with the still living", the being brings forth a new blossom in the sultry afternoon.
Creation and publication
Steve Behrends reported on a short version entitled A Bottle on the Amazon from the summer of 1931, which already contained the essential plot patterns and is considered to be the origin of the story. According to this template, a whiskey bottle is fished from the mouth of the Amazon river , in which there is a manuscript in which the experiences of two researchers in a remote jungle region of Venezuela are reported. An evil plant bites one of the adventurers, who gradually transforms into it and finally attacks the companion who is about to leave him behind.
Smith began drafting the short story in January 1932 and completed it on February 10th. In a letter to August Derleth he wrote that it was the most successful of all of his stories because of "its inventiveness" and that he wanted to publish it in Strange Tales magazine. It deals with "a monstrous plant that grows out of a man's skull, eyes, etc. and its roots entwine around all his bones while he is still alive." In the future, however, he wants to say goodbye to the "subject of the demonic plant." ”So as not to ride it“ to death ”.
The release itself was a bit bumpy. Harry Bates accepted and edited the narrative for Strange Tales after Smith made some changes, but stated that payment could not be made until later. As if that weren't enough, the company soon threatened with bankruptcy and prompted publisher William Clayton to instruct Bates to discontinue the magazine with the last issue in January 1933, shedding Smith's hope. When he offered it to Farnsworth Wright for the magazine Weird Tales , enriched with certain details and stylistically corrected, he was initially rejected because the story "had excellent qualities", but was too long. Smith revised his work again, shortening it to 4,500 words, a version that Wright eventually adopted.
Although The Seed from the Sepulcher was found in anthologies more often than any other short story by Smith , the work did not appear in the anthology Tales of Science and Sorcery until 1964 . While The Magician's Return reached five and The City of Singing Flame reached four imprints, seeds from the tomb were printed eight times.
Background and reception
In contrast to Smith's fantasy stories , which are set in fictional or stylized landscapes such as Averoigne or Zothique , Hyperborea or Atlantis , the plot takes place in reality (a jungle), which connects it with the short stories Genius Loci , The Magician's Return or Aforgomons Chain , which are also assigned to the fantastic.
HP Lovecraft had been in lively correspondence with Smith for years and was initially fascinated by his poetry and later also by the dazzling prose , which he extensively praised in his essay Supernatural Horror in Literature . The long-term exchange meant that both authors adopted certain details and motifs from the other in their own work.
In a letter to F. Lee Baldwin, Lovecraft was also able to comment on Smith's father Timeus, who had lost a lot of money while gambling and on his travels.
He described him as a “soldier of fortune” traveling the world, who had also explored the tropical rainforest of the Amazon and told his young son about it. The young Clark was particularly impressed by the details of the flora and fauna and were part of this story.
For the literary scholar Rein A. Zondergeld , The Seed from the Sepulcher is one of Smith's most convincing stories, along with Genius loci .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Clark Ashton Smith: Seeds from the Grave. In: Seed from the grave. Fantastic stories. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1970, p. 10.
- ↑ Clark Ashton Smith: Seeds from the Grave. In: Seed from the grave. Fantastic stories. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1970, p. 15.
- ↑ Clark Ashton Smith: Seeds from the Grave. In: Seed from the grave. Fantastic stories. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1970, p. 20.
- ↑ Clark Ashton Smith: Seeds from the Grave. In: Seed from the grave. Fantastic stories. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1970, p. 21.
- ↑ Scott Connors, Ron Hilger, Notes on the Tales. In: Clark Ashton Smith: Collected Stories. Volume 2: The vaults of Yoh-Vombis. Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2011, ISBN 978-3-86552-089-0 , p. 402.
- ↑ Scott Connors, Ron Hilger, Notes on the Tales. In: Clark Ashton Smith: Collected Stories. Volume 2: The vaults of Yoh-Vombis. Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2011, ISBN 978-3-86552-089-0 , pp. 402-403.
- ↑ Scott Connors, Ron Hilger, Notes on the Tales. In: Clark Ashton Smith: Collected Stories. Volume 2: The vaults of Yoh-Vombis. Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2011, ISBN 978-3-86552-089-0 , p. 403.
- ↑ Scott Connors, Ron Hilger, Notes on the Tales. In: Clark Ashton Smith: Collected Stories. Volume 2: The vaults of Yoh-Vombis. Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2011, ISBN 978-3-86552-089-0 , p. 401.
- ↑ Clark Ashton Smith. In: Rein A. Zondergeld : Lexicon of fantastic literature. (= Fantastic Library. Volume 91). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1983, ISBN 3-518-37380-3 , p. 230.
- ↑ Sunand T. Joshi, David E. Schultz: Smith, Clark Ashton. In: An HP Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Hippocampus Press, Westport 2001, p. 247.
- ↑ Scott Connors, Ron Hilger, Notes on the Tales. In: Clark Ashton Smith: Collected Stories. Volume 2: The vaults of Yoh-Vombis. Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2011, ISBN 978-3-86552-089-0 , pp. 401-402.
- ↑ Clark Ashton Smith. In: Rein A. Zondergeld: Lexicon of fantastic literature. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1983, p. 230.