Sully wrote of this occasion in Emperor of Dreams, the bibliography by Donald Sidney-Fryer:
. . . we proposed a longer walk—to Crater Ridge—where we had gone many times
in the past, but now we were going with a companion who came under a spell of
strange thought, transforming the scene into a foreboding and grotesque land-
scape, which Clark later used in his now famous story,
“The City of the Sing-
ing Flame.” . . . Later in the afternoon while Clark was still feeling a strange influence, . . . I suddenly suggested that he use his powers of writing for fiction, which would be more remunerative than poetry. His financial situation at the time was critical, and some practical advice seemed in order. This prodding led to
Clark’s writing of weird fiction and, thus, the walk to Crater Ridge started the flow of work which has made Clark the well-known writer that he is. (190)
As Mrs. Sully points out, Smith’s financial situation was indeed a major factor that led to his writing fiction for the pulp magazines. Smith’s parents were then in their mid-seventies and totally dependent on their only son. With the onset of the Depression, Smith desperately needed extra money to support them. Smith himself supports Mrs. Sully’s assertion in a letter to Lovecraft in January 1931:
As to my appalling prolificality, there are doubtless several reasons and explanations. About eighteen months ago, I was taken to task for idleness by a woman-
friend, and pledged myself to industry. . . . Other reasons are, that it is necessary for me to make a little money; also, that I need an imaginative escape from the human aquarium—and, moreover, a “safety-valve” to keep from blowing up and
disrupting the whole countryside. And, beyond all this, I am finding a pleasure in fiction-writing, and deriving a mental “kick” from it which I seldom got from poetry. ( SL 145)
Obviously many factors contributed to Smith’s advent as a fictioneer other than Lovecraft’s influence.
Of course, Smith deeply admired Lovecraft’s stories, just as Lovecraft likewise admired Smith’s poetry, prose-poems, and paintings. I would not argue the point that Lovecraft was instrumental in getting Smith’s tales published in Weird Tales, where he enjoyed a good deal of popularity with the readers and hence, with the editor. Murray also credits Lovecraft with introducing Smith to Weird Tales without offering any evidence. Since Murray advanced his theory, a letter has come to light that contradicts this: Lovecraft wrote F. Lee Baldwin on 27 March 1934 that it was actually Smith who was the first to direct his attention to the magazine ( Lord of a Visible World 255). Therefore, to suggest that Smith would never have written his
336 THE FREEDOM OF FANTASTIC THINGS
legendary stories at all had he not fallen under the “mesmeric literary influence” of Lovecraft is simply ludicrous and has more to do with Murray’s “Providential”
opinion than with reality.
Rather than being “heavily influenced” by the emerging Cthulhu Mythos,
Smith’s Hyperborean tales owe nothing in concept or in content to Lovecraft, aside from once or twice mentioning the Necronomicon and a few gods created by Lovecraft.
To the contrary, these tales merely continue the themes Smith had already developed in his poetry, as indicated by this excerpt from The Hashish-Eater: “For the snows /
Of hyperborean winter, and their winds, / Sleep in his jewel-builded capital, / Nor any charm of flame-wrought wizardry, / Nor conjured suns, may rout them.” This
quotation is an obvious precursor to the Hyperborean sequence and to “The Com-
ing of the White Worm” in particular, written before Smith ever corresponded with Lovecraft. As Lin Carter points out in his introduction to the Ballantine edition of Hyperborea, and as Murray also mentions, Smith elaborates on the intriguing ideas of the ancient Greeks and the contemporary Madame Blavatsky, as he mentions to
Lovecraft in a letter dated 1 March 1933, in which he states: “One can disregard the theosophy, and make good use of the stuff about elder continents, etc. I got my own ideas about Hyperborea, Poseidonis, etc. from such sources, then turned my imagination loose” ( SL 203).
Smith told George Wetzel that, “As to the Cthulhu Mythos, I believe I added
as much to it as I borrowed. Tsathoggua and The Book of Eibon were my own
inventions, and were promptly utilized by Lovecraft. In turn, I borrowed the Necronomicon” ( PD 75). If Smith was so influenced by Lovecraft, why did he not emulate Lovecraft’s style and concept of the emerging Mythos instead of simply
mentioning a few of Lovecraft’s creations such as Abdul Alhazred and his Necronomicon here and there throughout his Hyperborean sequence?
Why then must Smith be considered an acolyte of Lovecraft? Or merely as
one of the “Lovecraft circle”? When Lovecraft first wrote to Smith on 12 August 1922, he wrote as a humble admirer addressing an inspired, successful writer who had already published two books of poetry, and his third, Ebony and Crystal (which contained twenty-nine prose-poems as well as the monumental The Hashish-Eater) was only a few months away from publication. Lovecraft wrote in his first letter, “I should deem it a great honour to hear from you if you have the leisure & inclination to address an obscurity . . . That I have not work of even approximately equal genius to exhibit in reciprocation, is the fault of my mediocre ability & not of my inclination” ( Selected Letters 1.194). And again, after reading Ebony and Crystal, he wrote on 25 March 1923: “My card sent from Salem last month attempted in a
feeble way to express the delirious delight & unboundedly enthusiastic admiration which Ebony and Crystal aroused in me. . . . It is genius, if genius ever existed! . . .
The magnificence of ‘The Hashish-Eater’ is beyond description . . . I delight in your use of the cosmos instead of merely the world as a background” ( Selected Letters 1.213–14). Apparently it was Smith’s poetry that influenced Lovecraft in this
Regarding the Providence Point of View
337
direction toward cosmicism, quite possibly inspiring Lovecraft’s extraterrestrial Old Ones. When examined in this light, it could well be argued that Smith influenced Lovecraft more than the other way around. But is it not more likely that the two kindred spirits equally encouraged and inspired the other?
Murray himself points out, and I wholeheartedly agree, “But Clark Ashton Smith
was not Howard Phillips Lovecraft” ( BH 8). In fact, the two writers utilize completely different methods to their writing. Lovecraft, the realist, carefully plotted a documentary approach to his Cthulhu Mythos stories, constructing a firm foundation of scientific fact to support his fiction, cleverly incorporating invented research and journalistic records along with existing books and actual events. Smith, the imaginative artist, utilized an artistic approach, describing in great detail the sights and sounds and emotions he wished to convey. Smith developed a luxurious, evocative prose style in which he meticulously painted a complete mental picture and atmosphere in which to immerse the reader in order to achieve the illusion of reality.
A careful study of Smith’s poems, prose-poems, and tales will reveal many re-
current themes: humanity’s insignificance in the greater cosmic arena, loss, love, journeys through space and time, omnipotence, ennui, mortality, to name just a
few. These recurrent themes detail a gradual evolution from poetry to prose-poems to tales, a process that began before Lovecraft wrote his first letter to Smith and culminated with his amazing burst of stories written and published 1928 to 1936.
After this period, Smith once again concentrated on poetry, painting, and his newest medium of self-expression, sculpting.
Another major flaw in The Book of Hyperborea is the overstressing of scholarly value at the expense of aesthetics and the cohesiveness of the collection as a whole.
Once again, I must agree with Murray when he states that his listing of the tales by completion dates can
be a “bewildering” experience for the reader. Also, the inclusion of “The House of Haon-Dor” (a fragment of a rough draft only peripherally
related to Hyperborea) in the middle of the sequence markedly detracts from the general reading experience.
For my money, I would much rather take my chances in the used book mar-
ket, searching out Lin Carter’s Hyperborea, which boasts a smooth narrative sequence, several additional prose poems, and a primitive map of Hyperborea.
Works Cited
Lovecraft, H. P. Lord of a Visible World. Ed. S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000.
———. Selected Letters. Ed. August Derleth, Donald Wandrei, and James Turner. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1965–76. 5 vols.
Sully, Genevieve K. Letter. In Emperor of Dreams: A Clark Ashton Smith Bio-Bibliography by Donald Sidney-Fryer and Divers Hands. West Kingston, RI: Donald M. Grant, 1978.
An Annotated Chronology of the Fiction of
Clark Ashton Smith
Steve Behrends
Chronologies are dull affairs. Of course they can come in handy at times, but how often have you curled up with one before a crackling fire? It would be much more interesting, say, to have a list of the stories that the author himself considered his finest. Smith never gave us such a list; and while he did select his best work for inclusion in Out of Space and Time, he commented at the time that the “Choice seems pretty difficult, since, after a few outstanding items such as ‘The Double Shadow’ and ‘A Night in Malnéant,’ I seem to find dozens or scores of fairly equal merit” ( SL 333).
Although he may not have put them down in one place, Smith did have opin-
ions about his stories and frequently expressed them to his pen-pals. In an effort to bridge the gap between arid scholarship and light entertainment, some of these
comments have been gathered together, along with other informational tidbits, and appear below the pertinent title in the following Smith chronology.
A date in brackets indicates a date of completion, unless noted, and a number in parentheses before a title gives that story’s place in the Completed Stories log. This ordering has been followed as much as possible, despite minor disagreements with dates from other sources. Only when a tale’s completion was considerably delayed with respect to its inclusion in the log has the ordering been changed. Unfinished works are marked with an asterisk.
“The Abominations of Yondo” [1925] “I think it was mainly Lovecraft’s in-
terest and encouragement that led me to [‘Yondo’], which appeared in The
Overland Monthly” and “evok[ed], I was told, many protests from the readers.”
(1) “Sadastor”
[1925]
(2)
“The Ninth Skeleton” [after 4/28 and before 8/28]
(3)
“The Last Incantation” [9/23/29]
“The End of the Story” [10/1/29] “It’s a good tale—especially from the
sales-angle.”
(4)
“The Phantoms of the Fire” [10/6/29] “I prefer nearly all my other tales.”
(5)
“A Night in Malnéant” [10/15/29] “One of my best atmospherics.”
(6)
“The Resurrection of the Rattlesnake” [10/10/29] “Pretty punk, except for
the touch of genuine horror at the end.” “There isn’t much to it.”
(7)
“Thirteen Phantasms” [10/11/29]
An Annotated Chronology
339
(8)
“The Venus of Azombeii” [11/11/29] “A weird mixture of poetry and
melodrama.”
(9)
“The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” [11/16/29] “One of my best.”
(10) “The Monster of the Prophecy” [12/3/29] “One of my favorite yarns.”
“Absolutely novel in inter-planetary fiction.” “The result of a definite inspi-
ration.” “The plot . . . was good from any angle; and I am willing to bet that
the satiric implications will be missed by a lot of readers.” “I’m sure it’s the first interplanetary story on record, where the hero doesn’t return to earth at the end!”
(11) “The Metamorphosis of Earth” [late 1929] “Based on a far from bad idea.”
“Probably the best element is the satire.” “. . . am now engaged in killing off an odious bunch of scientists . . .”
(12) “The Epiphany of Death” [1/25/30] “Inspired by [Lovecraft’s] ‘[The
Statement of] Randolph Carter’ and . . . written in about three hours.”
(13) “A Murder in the Fourth Dimension” [1/30/30]
(14) “The Parrot in the Pawn-Shop” [2/5/30]
(15) “A Copy of Burns” [2/27/30]
(16) “The Devotee of Evil” [3/9/30]
(17) “The
Satyr”
[3/31/30]
(18) “The Planet of the Dead” [4/6/30]
(19) “The Uncharted Isle” [4/21/30]
*
“Vizaphmal in Ophiuchus” [plotted 4/30]
(20) “Marooned in Andromeda” [3/14/30, begun 1/24/30] “An excellent peg
for a lot of fantasy, horror, grotesquery and satire.”
(21) “The Root of Ampoi” [5/28/30] “A dud.”
(22) “The Necromantic Tale” [6/23/30]
(23) “The Immeasurable Horror” [7/13/30]
(24) “A Voyage to Sfanomoë” [7/17/30] “A sort of favorite with me.” Smith
listed it among his best pseudo-scientific yarns.
(25) “The Door to Saturn” [7/26/30] “This tale is one of my favorites, partly on account of its literary style.” “I take out the ms. and read it over, when I am too bored to read anything in my book-cases!”
(26) “The Red World of Polaris” [late 8/30] “Passably written, but suffer[ing]
from triteness of plot.” “It was written on several mountain-tops, beneath the
thousand-year-old junipers on granite crags; and the giant firs and hemlocks
by the margin of sapphire tarns.” “Mere words didn’t seem to stand up in the
presence of those peaks and cliffs. But now, amid the perspective of familiar
surroundings, ‘The Red World’ doesn’t seem so bad.”
(27) “Told in the Desert” [?]
(28) “The Willow Landscape” [9/8/30]
340 THE FREEDOM OF FANTASTIC THINGS
(29) “A Rendezvous in Averoigne” [9/13/30] “One of my own favorites—in
fact, I like it much better than the celebrated ‘End of the Story.’”
*
“The Eggs From Saturn” [begun late 9/30] “[will feature] a realistic local
setting for its interplanetary mysteries and horrors.”
*
“The Ocean-World of Alioth” [plotted and begun late 9/30]
(30) “The
Gorgon”
[10/2/30]
(31) “An Offering to the Moon” [10/30] “No great favorite of mine.” “Maybe I
tried too much for character-study and contrast, to the detriment of the
weird atmosphere and the ‘action.’”
(32) “The Kiss of Zoraida” [10/15/30] “An ungodly piece of pseudo-Oriental
junk. “ “Well enough done, with some touches of terrific irony.”
(33) “The Face by the River” [10/30]
(34) “Like Mohammed’s Tomb” [10/30]
*
“The Sorceress of Averoigne” [plotted late 10/30]
(35) “Checkmate”
[11/7/30]
(36) “The Ghoul” [11/12/30] “The legend is so hideous, that I would not be
surprised if there were some mention of it in the Necronomicon. ”
(37) “A Tale of Sir John Maundeville” [11/16/30] “A good short.” “[‘Sir John’
and ‘The Ghoul’] pleased me for their archaism.” “The kingdom of
; Antchar, which I have invented for this tale, is even more unwholesome, if
possible, than Averoigne.”
(38) “An Adventure in Futurity” [12/27/30] “An awful piece of junk.”
(39) “The Justice of the Elephant” [12/29/30]
(40) “The Return of the Sorcerer” [1/6/31] An “original plot; but it seems to
need some additional atmospheric development.”
(41) “The City of the Singing Flame” [1/15/31] “Some day I must look for
those two boulders . . . If you and other correspondents cease to hear from
me, you can surmise what has happened!”
*
“A Tale of Gnydron” [plotted 2/31] Note: Zothique conceived.
(42) “A Good Embalmer” [2/7/31] “Have spent three days over a six-page hor-
ror . . . It is not in my natural genre, and may not even have the dubious
merit of being salable.” “[It] should take the palm for macabre grotesquery.”
(43) “The Testament of Athammaus” [1/22/31, plotted 4/30] “I shall feel
rather peeved if Wright turns it down; since it is about as good as I can do in the line of unearthly horror.” “I real y think he (or it) is about my best monster to date.”
(44) “The Amazing Planet (A Captivity in Serpens)” [3/31, begun 11/30] “I’ll
give them their ‘action’ this time!!!”
(45) “The Letter from Mohaun Los” [4/9/31]
(46) “The Hunters from Beyond” [4/28/31] “I’m none too fond of the story.”
“Doesn’t please me very well—the integral mood seems a little second-rate,
An Annotated Chronology
341
probably because the modern treatment is rather uncongenial for me.”
(47) “The Holiness of Azédarac” [5/21/31] “The plot maketh rather a merrie
tale, methinks.”
(48) “The Maker of Gargoyles” [6/16/31]
(49) “Beyond the Singing Flame” [6/30/31] “Strikes me as the best thing I have done recently.”
(50) “Seedling of Mars (The Martian)” [7/20/31] “A pretty fair scientifictional opus.”
*
“The Master of Destruction” [plotted 8/31] “It ought to make a thriller.”
(51) “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis” [9/12/31] “A rather ambitious hunk of extra-
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