At this point Mr. Machen places the “key” in our hands and declines further to reveal his secrets. In Mr. Pickwick’s overdose of milk punch we are to find, ultimately, “a clue to the labyrinth of mystic theology.”
By his own test we are enabled to place Arthur Machen’s greatest works on the shelf with Don Quixote and Pantagruel; by his own test we find the ecstasy of which he speaks in his own pages, under the symbol of the Vine, and under figures even more beautiful and terrible. For minor consideration he finds in Rabelais another symbolism of ecstasy:
“The shape of gauloiserie, of gross, exuberant gaiety, expressing itself by outrageous tales, outrageous words, by a very cataract of obscenity, if you please, if only you will notice how the obscenity of Rabelais transcends the obscenity of common life; his grossness is poured out in a sort of mad torrent, in a frenzy, a very passion of the unspeakable.”
In Cervantes he finds the greater deftness, the finer artifice, but he believes the conception of Rabelais the higher because it is the more remote. Pantagruel’s “More than frankness, its ebullition of grossness… is either the merest lunacy, or else it is sublime.” And the paragraph that succeeds this one in the book, perhaps it is part of the same paragraph, sums up this astonishing philosophy with a conclusion calculated to shock the Puritanic. Thus:
“Don’t you perceive that when a certain depth has been passed you begin to ascend into the heights? The Persian poet expresses the most transcendental secrets of the Divine Love by the grossest phrases of the carnal love; so Rabelais soars above the common life, above the streets and the gutter, by going far lower than the streets and the gutter: he brings before you the highest by positing that which is lower than the lowest, and if you have the prepared, initiated mind, a Rabelaisian ‘list’ is the best preface to the angelic song. (!) All this may strike you as extreme paradox, but it has the disadvantage of being true, and perhaps you may assure yourself of its truth by recollecting the converse proposition—that it is when one is absorbed in the highest emotions that the most degrading images will intrude themselves.”
And so on… The sense of the futility almost of attempting to explain Machen becomes more pronounced as I progress. You will have to read him. You will find his books (if you are fortunate) in a murky corner of some obscure second-hand bookshop.
* * * *
Arthur Machen was born in Wales in 1863. He is married and has two children. That is an astonishing thought, after reading The Inmost Light. It is surprising indeed to learn that he was born. He is High Church, “with no particular respect for the Archbishop of Canterbury,” and necessarily subconsciously Catholic, as must be all those “lonely, awful souls” who write ecstasy across the world. He hates puritanism with a sturdier hatred than inspires Chesterton; for a brilliant exposition of this aversion I commend readers to his mocking introduction to The House of Souls. That work, The Hill of Dreams, and Hieroglyphics were written between 1890 and 1900, after which their author turned strolling player and alternated for a time between the smartest theatres in London and the shabbiest music halls in London’s East End. For the last six years or so he has been a descriptive writer on the London Evening News.
His works not before mentioned comprise a translation (the best) of the Heptameron; Fantastic Tales, a collection of mediaeval whimsies, partly translated and partly original and altogether Rabelaisian and delightful; The Terror, a “shilling shocker” (his own characterization), but a finer work withal than most of the “literature” of the day, and The Great Return, an extraordinary short tale which may find place some day in another such collection as The House of Souls.
I have mentioned The Chronicle of Clemendy, calling it a classic, and something further should be said about that astonishing book. It is the Welsh Heptameron, a chronicle of amorous intrigue, joyous drunkenness, and knightly endeavor second to none in the brief muster of the world’s greatest classics. In it there is the veritable flavour of mediaeval record. Somewhat less outspoken than Balzac in his Droll Stories, and less verbose than Boccaccio, Machen proves himself the peer of either in gay, irresponsible, diverting, unflagging invention, while his diction is lovelier than that of any of his forerunners, including the nameless authors of those rich Arabian tapestries which were the parent tales of all mediaeval and modern facetiae.
The day is coming when a number of serious charges will be laid against us who live in this generation, and some severe questions asked, and the fact that we will be dead, most of us, when the future fires its broadside, has nothing at all to do with the case.
We are going to be asked, post-mortem, why we allowed Ambrose Bierce to vanish from our midst, unnoticed and unsought, after ignoring him shamefully throughout his career; why Stephen Crane, after a few flamboyant reviews, was so quickly forgotten at death; why Richard Middleton was permitted to swallow his poison at Brussels; why W. C. Morrow and Walter Blackburn Harte were in our day known only to the initiated, discriminating few; their fine, golden books merely rare “items” for the collector. Among other things, posterity is going to demand of us why, when the opportunity was ours, we did not open our hearts to Arthur Machen and name him among the very great.
1 I have let this last assertion stand as part of the original article, although Mr. Machen writes me that I am in error. “I never read a line of Baudelaire,” he says, “but I have read deeply in Poe, who, I believe, derives largely from Baudelaire.” Of course, it is the other way round, Baudelaire derives from Poe, but my own assumption is rendered clear.—V. S.
THE REMEMBRANCE OF THE BARD
In the darkness of old age let not my memory fail:
Let me not forget to celebrate the beloved land of Gwent.
If they imprison me in a deep place, in a house of pestilence,
Still shall I be free, remembering the sunshine upon Mynydd Maen.
There have I listened to the song of the lark, my soul has ascended with the song of the little bird:
The great white clouds were the ships of my spirit, sailing to the haven of the Almighty.
Equally to be held in honour is the site of the Great Mountain.
Adorned with the gushing of many waters—sweet is the shade of its hazel thickets.
There a treasure is preserved which I will not celebrate;
It is glorious and deeply concealed.
If Teils should return, if happiness were restored to the Cymri,
Dewi and Dyfrig should serve his Mass; then a great marvel would be made visible.
O blessed and miraculous work! then should my bliss be as the joy of angels.
I had rather behold this offering than kiss the twin lips of dark Gwenllian.
Dear my land of Gwent: O quam dilecta tabernacula.
Thy rivers are like precious golden streams of Paradise, thy hills are as the Mount Syon.
Better a grave on Twyn Barlwm than a throne in the palace of the Saxons at Caer-Ludd.
THE PRAISE OF MYFANWY
O gift of the everlasting:
O wonderful and hidden mystery.
Many secrets have been vouchsafed to me,
I have been long acquainted with the wisdom of the trees;
Ash and oak and elm have communicated to me from my boyhood,
The birch and the hazel and all the trees of the greenwood have not been dumb.
There is a caldron rimmed with pearls of whose gifts I am not ignorant;
I will speak little of it; its treasures are known to the Bards.
Many went on the search of Caer-Pedryfan,
Seven alone returned with Arthur, but my spirit was present.
Seven