CHAPTER II
Later Influences
The Gothic period marked a change in the vehicle of supernaturalism. Inancient times the ghostly had been expressed in the epic or the drama,in medievalism in the romances, metrical and prose, as in Elizabethanliterature the drama was the specific form. But Gothicism brought itover frankly into the novel, which was a new thing. That is noteworthy,since supernaturalism seems more closely related to poetry than toprose; and as the early dramas were for the most part poetic, it didnot require such a stretch of the imagination to give credence tothe unearthly. The ballad, the epic, the drama, had made the ghostlyseem credible. But prose fiction is so much more materialistic thatat first thought supernaturalism seems antagonistic to it. That thisis not really the case is evidenced from the fact that fiction sincethe terror times has retained the elements of awe then introduced, hasdeveloped, and has greatly added to them.
With the dying out of the _genre_ definitely known as the Gothicnovel and the turning of Romanticism into various new channels, wemight expect to see the disappearance of the ghostly element, sinceit had been overworked in terrorism. It is true that the prevailingtype of fiction for the succeeding period was realism, but with alarge admixture of the supernormal or supernatural. The supernaturalmachinery had become so well established in prose fiction that evenrealists were moved by it, some using the motifs with banteringapology--even Dickens and Thackeray, some with rationalisticexplanation, but practically all using it. Man must and will have thesupernatural in his fiction. The very elements that one might supposewould counteract it,--modern thought, invention, science,--serve asfeeders to its force. In the inexplicable alchemy of literature almosteverything turns to the unearthly in some form or other.
We have seen the various sources from which the Gothic novel drewits plots, its motifs for ghostly effect. The supernatural fictionfollowing it still had the same sources on which to draw, and inaddition had various other influences and veins of literary inspirationnot open to Gothicism. Modern science, with the new miracles of itslaboratories, proved suggestive of countless plots; the new study offolk-lore and the scholarly investigations in that field unearthed anunguessed wealth of supernatural material; Psychical Research societieswith their patient and sympathetic records of the forces of the unseen;modern Spiritualism with its attempts to link this world to the next;the wizardry of dreams studied scientifically,--all suggested newthemes, novel complications, hitherto unknown elements continuing thesupernatural in fiction.
With the extension of general reading, and the greater range oftranslations from other languages, the writers of England and Americawere affected by new influences with respect to their use of thesupernatural. Their work became less insular, wider in its range ofsubject-matter and of technical methods, and in our fiction we find theeffect of certain definite outside forces.
The overlapping influences of the Romantic movement in England andAmerica, France and Germany, form an interesting but intricate study.It is difficult to point out marked points of contact, though thegeneral effect may be evident, for literary influences are usually veryelusive. It is easy to cry, "Lo, here! lo, there!" with reference tothe effect of certain writers on their contemporaries or successors,but it is not always easy to put the finger on anything very tangible.And even so, that would not explain literature. If one could point withabsolute certainty to the source for every one of Shakespeare's plots,would that explain his art? Poe wrote an elaborate essay to analyzehis processes of composition for _The Raven_, but the poem remains asenigmatic as ever.
As German Romanticism had been considerably affected by the Gothicnovel in England, it in turn showed an influence on later English andAmerican ghostly fiction. Scott was much interested in the Germanliterature treating of evil magic, apparitions, castles in ruins, andso forth, and one critic says of him that his dealings with subjectsof this kind are midway between Meinhold and Tieck. He was fascinatedwith the German ballads of the supernatural, especially Burger'sghostly _Lenore_, which he translated among others. De Quincey likewisewas a student of German literature, though he was not so accurate inhis scholarship as Scott. His horror tale, _The Avengers_, as well as_Klosterheim_, has a German setting and tone.
There has been some discussion over the question of Hawthorne'srelation to German Romanticism. Poe made the charge that Hawthorne drewhis ideas and style from Ludwig Tieck, saying in a criticism:
The fact is, he is not original in any sense. Those who speak of him as original mean nothing more than that he differs in his manner or tone, and in his choice of subjects, from any author of their acquaintance--their acquaintance not extending to the German Tieck, whose manner in _some_ of his works is absolutely identical with that _habitual_ to Hawthorne.... The critic (unacquainted with Tieck) who reads a single tale by Hawthorne may be justified in thinking him original.
Various critics have discussed this matter with no very definiteconclusions. It should be remembered that Poe was a famousplagiary-hunter, hence his comments may be discounted. Yet Poe knewGerman, it is thought, and in his writings often referred to Germanliterature, while Hawthorne, according to his journal, read it withdifficulty and spoke of his struggles with a volume of Tieck.
Hawthorne and Tieck do show certain similarities, as in the use ofthe dream element, the employment of the allegory as a medium forteaching moral truths, and the choice of the legend as a literaryform. Both use somewhat the same dreamy supernaturalism, yet in styleas in subject-matter Hawthorne is much the superior and improvedwhatever he may have borrowed from Tieck. Hawthorne's vague mystery,cloudy symbolism, and deep spiritualism are individual in their effectand give to his supernaturalism an unearthly charm scarcely foundelsewhere. Hawthorne's theme in _The Marble Faun_, of the attaining toa soul by human suffering, is akin to the idea in Fouque's _Undine_.There the supernaturalism is franker, while that of Hawthorne's novelis more evasive and delicate, yet the same suggestion is present ineach case. Lowell in his _Fable for Critics_ speaks of Hawthorne as "aJohn Bunyan Fouque, a Puritan Tieck."
There are still more striking similarities to be pointed out betweenthe work of Poe and that of E. T. A. Hoffmann. As Hawthorne was, to aslight extent, at least, affected by German legends and wonder tales,Poe was influenced by Hoffmann's horror stories. Poe has been calleda Germanic dreamer, and various German and English critics mentionthe debt that he owes to Hoffmann. Mr. Palmer Cobb[38] brings out someinteresting facts in connection with the two romanticists. He says:
The verification of Poe's indebtedness to German is to be sought in the similarity of the treatment of the same motives in the work of both authors. The most convincing evidence is furnished by the way in which Poe has combined the themes of mesmerism, metempsychosis, dual existence, the dream element, and so forth, in exact agreement with the grouping employed by Hoffmann. Notable examples of this are the employment of the idea of double existence in conjunction with the struggle of good and evil forces in the soul of the individual, and the combination of mesmerism and metempsychosis as leading motives in one and the same story.
[38] _The Influence of E. T. A. Hoffmann on Edgar Allan Poe._
Mr. Cobb points out in detail the similarities between Poe's storiesof dual personality and the German use of the theme as found inFouque, Novalis, and Hoffmann, particularly the last. Hoffmann'sexaggerated use of this idea is to be explained on the ground thathe was obsessed by the thought that his double was haunting him,and he, like Maupassant under similar conditions of mind, wrote ofsupernaturalism associated with madness. Hoffmann uses the theme ofdouble personality.[39] In Poe's _William Wilson_ the other self is theembodiment of good, a sort of incarnate conscience, as in Stevenson'sMarkheim, while Hoffmann's _Elixiere_ represents the evil. Poe has herereversed the idea. In Hoffmann's _Magnetiseur_ we find the treatmentof hypnotism and metempsychosis and the dream-supernaturalism in thesame combination that Poe uses.[40] Hoffmann[41] and Poe[42] relate thestory of a supernatural portrait, where the w
ife-model dies as thesacrifice to the painting.
[39] In the _Doppelgaenger_, _Kater Murr_, and _Elixiere des Teufels_.
[40] In his _Tale of the Ragged Mountains_.
[41] In _Die Jesuit-kirche in G._
[42] In _The Oval Portrait_.
Both Hoffmann and Poe use the grotesquerie of supernaturalism, thefantastic element of horror that adds to the effect of the ghostly.Even the generic titles are almost identical.[43] But in spite ofthese similarities in theme and in grouping, there is no basis for acharge that Poe owes a stylistic debt to Hoffmann. In his manner heis original and individual. He uses his themes with much greater art,with more dramatic and powerful effect than his German contemporary.Though he employs fewer of the crude machineries of the supernatural,his ghostly tales are more unearthly than Hoffmann's. His horrors havea more awful effect because he is an incomparably greater artist. Heknows the economy of thrills as few have done. His is the genius ofcompression, of suggestion. His dream elements, for instance, thoughHoffmann uses the dream to as great extent as Poe--are more poignant,more unbearable.
[43] Compare Poe's definition of his type as phantasy pieces with Hoffmann's title Phantasie Stuecke.
The cult of horror in German literature, as evidenced in the work ofHoffmann, Kleist, Tieck, Arnim, Fouque, Chamisso, had an influenceon English and American literature of supernaturalism in general.The grotesque diablerie, the use of dream elements, magnetism,metempsychosis, ghosts, the elixir of life--which theme appears to havea literary elixir of life--are reflected to a certain degree in theEnglish ghostly tales of the generation following the Gothic romance.
A French influence is likewise manifest in the later English fiction.The Gothic novel had made itself felt in France as well as inGermany, a proof of which is the fact that Balzac was so impressed byMaturin's novel that he wrote a sequel to it.[44] The interrelationsof the English, French, and German supernatural literature arenowhere better illustrated than in the work of Balzac. He admitsHoffmann's inspiration of his _Elixir of Life_, that horrible storyof reanimation, where the head is restored to life and youth but thebody remains that of an old man, dead and decaying, from which thehead tears itself loose in the church and bites the abbot to thebrain, shrieking out, "Idiot, tell me now if there is a God!" Balzac'sinfluence over Bulwer-Lytton is seen in such stories as _The Hauntersand the Haunted_, _or the House and the Brain_, and _A Strange Story_,in each of which the theme of supernaturally continued life is used.Balzac's _Magic Skin_ is a symbolic story of supernaturalism thatsuggests Hawthorne's allegoric symbolism and may have influenced itin part. It is a new application of the old theme, used often inthe drama as in Gothic romance, of the pledge of a soul for earthlygratification. A magic skin gives the man his heart's desires, yeteach granted wish makes the talisman shrink perceptibly, with aninexorable decrease. This theme, symbolic of the truth of life, is sucha spiritual idea used allegorically as Hawthorne chose frequently anddoubtless influenced Oscar Wilde's _Picture of Dorian Gray_. Balzac's_Unknown Masterpiece_ is another example of his supernaturalism thathas had its suggestive effect on English ghostly fictions.
[44] _Melmoth Reconcilie._
Guy de Maupassant has doubtless influenced English tales of horrormore than any foreign writer since Hoffmann. As a stylist heexercised a definite and strong influence over the short-story form,condensing it, making it more economical, more like a fatal bulletthat goes straight to the mark, and putting into a few hundred wordsa story of supernatural horror relentless in its effect. O. Henry'sdelicately perfect ghost story, _The Furnished Room_, is reminiscentof Maupassant's technique as seen in _The Ghost_. And surely F. MarionCrawford's _Screaming Skull_ and Ambrose Bierce's _Middle Toe of theRight Foot_ are from the same body as Maupassant's _Hand_. What aterrible corpus it must be! There is the same gruesome mystery, thesame implacable horror in each story of a mutilated ghost.
Maupassant's stories of madness, akin to Poe's analyses of mentaldecay, of the slow corruption of the brain, are among his most dreadfultriumphs of style, and have influenced various English stories ofinsanity. In Maupassant's own tottering reason we find the tragicexplanation of his constant return to this type of story. Such tales as_Mad_, where a husband goes insane from doubt of his wife; _Madness_,where a man has a weird power over human beings, animals, and eveninanimate objects, making them do his will, so that he is terrifiedof his own self, of what his horrible hands may do mechanically;_Cocotte_, where the drowned dog, following its master a hundred milesdown the river, drives him insane; _The Tress_, a curdling story of therelation between insanity and the supernatural, so that one is unableto say which is cause and which effect, illustrate Maupassant's unusualassociation between madness and uncanny fiction. Who but Maupassantcould make a story of ghastly hideousness out of a parrot that swears?As Maupassant was influenced by Poe, in both subject matter andtechnique, so he has affected the English writers since his time inboth plot material and treatment of the supernatural. And as his _LaHorla_ strongly reflects FitzJames O'Brien's _What Was It? A Mystery_that anticipated it by a number of years, so it left its inevitableimpress on Bierce's _The Damned Thing_ and succeeding stories ofsupernatural invisibility. A recent story by Katherine FullertonGerould, _Louquier's Third Act_, seems clearly to indicate the DeMaupassant influence, reflecting the method and motifs of _La Horla_and _The Coward_. Maupassant's tales have a peculiar horror possessedby few, partly because of his undoubted genius and partly the result ofhis increasing madness.
Other French writers have also influenced the uncanny story in English.Theophile Gautier has undoubtedly inspired various tales, such as _TheMummy's Foot_, by Jessie Adelaide Weston, which is the match, thoughnot in beauty or form, to his little masterpiece of that title. A.Conan Doyle's _Lot No. 249_, a horrible story of a reanimated mummy,bears an unquestionable resemblance to Gautier's _The Romance ofthe Mummy_ as well as _The Mummy's Foot_, though Poe's _A Word witha Mummy_, a fantastic story emphasizing the science of miraculousembalming of living persons so that they would wake to life afterthousands of years, preceded it. Something of the same theme is alsoused by F. Marion Crawford,[45] where the bodies in the old studioawake to menacing life. This motif illustrates the prevalence of theOriental material in recent English fiction. Gautier's _La MorteAmoureuse_ has exercised suggestive power over later tales, such asCrawford's vampire story,[46] though it is significant to recall thatPoe's _Berenice_ preceded Gautier's story by a year, and the lattermust have known Poe's work.
[45] In _Khaled_.
[46] _For the Blood Is the Life._
The fiction of Erckmann-Chatrian appears to have suggested variousEnglish stories. _The Owl's Ear_ obviously inspired another,[47]both being records of supernatural acoustics the latter dealing withspiritual sounds. _The Invisible Eye_, a fearsome story of hypnotism,has an evident parental claim on Algernon Blackwood's story,[48] thoughthe latter is psychically more gruesome. _The Waters of Death_, anaccount of a loathsome, enchanted crab, suggests H. G. Wells's story ofthe plant vampire.[49]
[47] _The Spider's Eye_, by Lucretia P. Hale.
[48] _With Intent to Steal._
[49] _The Flowering of the Strange Orchid._
Likewise Anatole France's _Putois_, the narrative of the man whocame to have an actual existence because someone spoke of him as animaginary person, is associated with the drolleries of supernaturalism,such as are used by Thomas Bailey Aldrich in the story of an imaginedperson, _Miss Mehitabel's Son_, and by Frank R. Stockton.[50] AnatoleFrance has several delicately wrought idylls of the supernatural, as_The Mass of Shadows_, where the ghosts of those who have sinned forlove may meet once a year to be reunited with their loved ones, andin the church, with clasped hands, celebrate the spectral mass, orsuch tender miracles as _The Juggler of Notre Dame_, where the jugglerthrows his balls before the altar as an act of worship and is rewardedby a sight of the Virgin, or _Scholasticus_, a symbolic story muchlike one written yea
rs earlier by Thomas Bailey Aldrich,[51] where aplant miraculously springs from the heart of a dead woman. _Amycus andCelestine_, the story of the faun and the hermit, of whom he tellsus that "the hermit is a faun borne down by the years" is suggestiveof the wonderful little stories of Lord Dunsany. Lord Dunsany, whilestartlingly original in most respects, seems a bit influenced byAnatole France. His _When the Gods Slept_ seems reminiscent of _TheIsle of the Penguins_. In France's satire the gods change penguins intomen whose souls will be lost, because the priest has baptized them bymistake, while in Dunsany's story the baboons pray to the Yogis, whopromise to make them men in return for their devotion.
And the baboons arose from worshipping, smoother about the face and a little shorter in the arms, and went away and hid themselves in clothing and herded with men. And men could not discern what they were for their bodies were bodies of men though their souls were still the souls of beasts and the worship went to the Yogis, spirits of ill.
[50] In _The Transferred Ghost_ and _The Spectral Mortgage_.
[51] _Pere Antoine's Date Palm._
Maeterlinck, influenced by his fellow-Belgian, Charles Van Lerberghe,whose _Flaireurs_ appeared before Maeterlinck's plays of the uncannyand to whom he acknowledges his indebtedness, has strongly affectedghostly literature since his rise to recognition. In his plays wefind an atmospheric supernaturalism. The settings are of earth, yetwith an unearthly strangeness, with no impression of realism, of thefamiliar, the known. In Maeterlinck's plays we never breathe the air ofactuality, never feel the footing of solid earth, as we always do inShakespeare, even in the presence of ghosts or witches. Shakespeare'svisitants are ghostly enough, certainly, but the scenes in which theyappear are real, are normal, while in the Belgian's work there isa fluidic supernaturalism that transforms everything to unreality.We feel the grip of fate, as in the ancient Greek tragedies, theinescapable calamity that approaches with swift, silent pace. YetMaeterlinck's is essentially static drama. There is very little action,among the human beings, at least, for Fate is the active agent. In_The Blind_, _The Intruder_, and _Interior_ the elements are much thesame, the effects wrought out with the same unearthly manner. But in_Joyzelle_, which shows a certain similarity to _Midsummer Night'sDream_ and _The Tempest_, we have a different type of supernaturalism,the use of enchantment, of fairy magic that comes to a close happily.In the dream-drama[52] there is a mixture of realism and poeticsymbolism, the use of the dream as a vehicle for the supernormal,and many aspects of the weird combined in a fairy play of exquisitesymbolism.
[52] _The Blue Bird._
The influence of Maeterlinck is apparent in the work of Englishwriters, particularly of the Celtic school. W. B. Yeats's fairy play,_The Land of Heart's Desire_, with its pathetic beauty, _CountessCathleen_, his tragedy of the countess who sells her soul to the devilthat her people may be freed from his power, as well as his stories,show the traces of Maeterlinck's methods. William Sharp, in hissketches and his brief plays in the volume called _Vistas_, reflectsthe Belgian's technique slightly, though with his own individualpower. Sharp's other literary self, Fiona McLeod, likewise showshis influence, as does Synge in his _Riders to the Sea_, and GordonBottomley in his _Crier by Night_, that eerie tragedy of an unseenpower. Maeterlinck's supernaturalism seems to suggest the poetry ofColeridge, with its elusive, intangible ghostliness. The effect ofnaivete observable in Coleridge's work is in Maeterlinck producedby a child-like simplicity of style, a monosyllabic dialogue, and amonotonous, unreasoning repetition that is at once real and unreal.The dramatist has brought over from the poet the same suggestive useof portents and symbols for prefiguring death or disaster that lurksjust outside. The ghostliness is subtle, rather than evident, the dramastatic rather than dynamic.
Ibsen, also, has strongly influenced the supernatural in both ourdrama and our fiction. His own work has a certain kinship with that ofHawthorne, showing a like symbolism and mysticism, a like transfusionof the unreal with the natural, so that one scarcely knows just howfar he means our acceptance of the unearthly to extend. He leaves itin some cases an open question, while in others he frankly introducesthe supernatural. The child's vision of the dead heroes riding toValhalla, with his own mother who has killed herself, leading them,[53]the ghost that tries to make an unholy pact with the king,[54] theapparition and the supernatural voice crying out "He is the God ofLove!"[55] illustrate Ibsen's earlier methods. The curious, almostinexplicable _Peer Gynt_, with its mixture of folk-lore and symbolism,its ironic laughter and satiric seriousness, seems to have had asuggestive influence on other works, such as _Countess Eve_,[56] wherethe personification of temptation in the form of committed sin reflectsIbsen's idea of Peer Gynt's imaginary children. The uncanny power ofunspoken thought, the haunting force of ideas rather than the crudevisible phantasms of the dead, as in the telepathy, or hypnotism,or what you will, in _The Master Builder_, the evasive, intangiblehaunting of the living by the dead as in _Rosmersholm_, the strangepowers at work as in _The Lady from the Sea_, have had effect on thenumerous psychic dramas and stories in English. The symbolic mysticismin _Emperor and Galilean_, showing the spirits of Cain and of Judas,with their sad ignorance of life's riddles, the vision of Christ inperson, with His unceasing power over men's souls, foreshadowed theplays and stories bringing in the personality of Christ, as _TheServant in the House_, and _The Passing of the Third Floor Back_.
[53] In _The Vikings of Helgeland_.
[54] In _The Pretenders_.
[55] In _Brand_.
[56] By J. H. Shorthouse.
Modern Italian literature, as represented by Fogazzaro and D'Annunzio,introduces the ghostly in fiction and in the drama, and has had itseffect on our literature. Fogazzaro's novels are essentially realisticin pattern, yet he uses the supernatural in them, as in miraculousvisions,[57] and metempsychosis and madness associated with thesupernatural.[58] D'Annunzio's handling of the unearthly is morerepulsive, more psychically gruesome, as the malignant power of theancient curse in _La Citta Morta_, where the undying evil in an oldtomb causes such revolting horror in the action of the play. This hasa counterpart in a story,[59] by Josephine Daskam Bacon, where apacket of letters from two evil lovers lie buried in a hearth and bytheir subtle influence corrupt the soul of every woman who occupies theroom. D'Annunzio uses the witch motive powerfully,[60] madness thatborders on the supernatural,[61] and the idea of evil magic exorcisedby melting an image of wax to cause an enemy's death[62] which suggestsRossetti's poem using that incident, the unforgettable _Sister Helen_.
[57] In _The Sinner_ and _The Saint_.
[58] In _The Woman_.
[59] _The Unburied._
[60] In _The Daughter of Jorio_.
[61] In _Sogno d'un Mattino di Primavera_.
[62] In _Sogno d'un Tramonto d'Autunno_.
Likewise a new force in the work of the Russian school has affected ourfiction of the ghostly in recent years. Russian literature is a newfield of thought for English people, since it is only of late yearsthat translations have been easily accessible, and, because of theextreme difficulty of the language, very few outsiders read Russian.As German Romanticism began to have its definite power over Englishsupernatural fiction in the early part of the nineteenth century by theextension of interest in and study of German literature, and the morefrequent translation of German works, so in this generation Russianliterature has been introduced to English people and is having itsinfluence.
A primitive, still savage race like the Russians naturally shows aspecial fondness for the supernatural. Despite the fact that literatureis written for the higher classes, a large peasant body, illiterateand superstitious, will influence the national fiction. In the Russianworks best known to us there is a large element of the uncanny, of atype in some respects different from that of any other country. Likethe Russian national character, it is harsh, brutal, violent, yetsentimental. One singular thing to be noted about it is the peculiarcomb
ination of supernaturalism with absolute realism. The revoltingyet dreadfully effective realism of the Russian literature is nevermore impressive than in its union with ghostly horror, which makes theimpossible appear indubitable. In Gogol's _The Cloak_, for instance,the fidelity to homely details of life, the descriptions of pinchingpoverty, of tragic hopes that waited so long for fulfillment, arepainful in themselves and give verisimilitude to the element of theunearthly that follows. You feel that a poor Russian clerk who hadstinted himself from necessity all his life _would_ come back from thedead to claim his stolen property and demand redress. The supernaturalgains a new power, a more tremendous thrill when set off against theevery-dayness of sordid life. We find something of the same effect inthe stories of Algernon Blackwood and Ambrose Bierce and F. MarionCrawford.
Tolstoi's symbolic story of _Ivan the Fool_ is an impressive utteranceof his views of life, expressed by the allegory of man's folly andwisdom and the schemes of devils.
Turgeniev's pronounced strain of the unearthly has had its influenceon English fiction. He uses the dream elements to a marked degree, asin _The Song of Love Triumphant_, a story of Oriental magic employedthrough dreams and music, and _The Dream_, an account of a son'srevelatory visions of his unknown father. The dream element hasbeen used considerably in our late fiction, some of which seems toreflect Turgeniev. Another motive that he uses effectively is thatof suggested vampirism,[63] and of psychical vampirism,[64] where ayoung man is "set upon" by the spirit of a dead woman he has scarcelyknown, till he dies under the torment. This seems to have affectedsuch stories as that of psychical vampirism in _The Vampire_, byReginald Hodder. We find in much of Turgeniev's prose the symbolic,mystical supernaturalism besides his use of dreams, visions, and adistinct Oriental element. In _Knock! Knock! Knock!_ the treatmentof whose spiritualism reminds one somewhat of Browning's,[65] inits initial skepticism and later hesitation, the final effect ofwhich is to impress one with a sense of supernaturalism workingextraordinarily through natural means, so that it is more powerful thanthe mere conventional ghostly could be, we see what may have been theinspiration for certain spiritualistic novels and stories in English.The same tone is felt in Hamlin Garland's treatment of the subject,for instance. The mystical romanticism of Turgeniev is less brutallyRussian than that of most of his compeers.
[63] As in _Phantoms_.
[64] As in _Clara Militch_.
[65] In _Sludge, the Medium_.
Like Maupassant and Hoffman and Poe, the Russian writers use toa considerable extent the association between insanity and thesupernatural to heighten the effect of both. They may have beeninfluenced in this by Poe's studies of madness, as by Maupassant's,and they appear to have an influence over certain present-day writers.It would be difficult to say which is the stronger influence in thetreatment of abnormal persons, Maupassant or the Russian writers.One wonders what type of mania obsesses certain of the Russianfictionists of to-day, for surely they cannot be normal persons.Examples of such fiction are: Alexander Pushkin's story of mockingmadness resulting from a passion for cards, whose ghostly motif has asardonic diabolism,[66] Tchekhoff's story of abnormal horror,[67] aracking account of insanity,[68] and _The Black Monk_, a weird story ofinsanity brought on by the vision of a supernatural being, a replicatedmirage of a black monk a thousand years old. But it is in the work ofLeonidas Andreyev that we get the ultimate anguish of madness. _TheRed Laugh_, an analysis of the madness of war, of the insanity ofnations as of individuals, seems to envelop the world in a sheet offlame. Its horrors go beyond words and the brain reels in reading.There are in English a number of stories of insanity associated withthe supernatural which may have been influenced by the Russian method,though Ambrose Bierce's studies in the abnormality of soldier lifepreceded Andreyev by years. F. Marion Crawford's _The Dead Smile_ andvarious stories of Arthur Machen have a Russian horror, and otherinstances might be mentioned.
[66] _The Queen of Spades._
[67] _Sleepyhead._
[68] _Ward No. 6._
The Russian fiction with its impersonality of pessimism, its racialgloom, its terrible sordid realism forming a basis for awesomesupernaturalism, is of a type foreign to our thought, yet, as is notinfrequently the case, the radically different has a strange appeal,and the effect of it on our stories of horror is undoubted. English andAmerican readers are greatly interested in Russian literature just nowand find a peculiar relish in its terrors, though the harsher elementsare somewhat softened in transference to our language.
Other fields of thought have been opened to us within this generationby the widening of our knowledge of the literature of other Europeancountries. Books are much more freely translated now than formerlyand no person need be ignorant of the fiction of other lands. Fromthe Spanish, the Portuguese, the Chinese, Japanese, and other tongueswe are receiving stories of supernaturalism that give us new ideas,new points of view. The greater ease of travel, the opportunity tostudy once-distant lands and literatures have been reflected in ourfiction. Some one should write a monograph on the literary influence ofCook's tours! Our later work has a strong touch of the Oriental,--notan entirely new thing, since we find it in Beckford's _Vathek_ andthe pre-Gothic tales of John Hawkesworth,--but more noticeable now.Examples are Stevenson's _New Arabian Nights_, _Bottle Imp_, andothers, F. Marion Crawford's _Khaled_ and _Mr. Isaacs_, Blackwood'sstories of Elementals, George Meredith's fantasy, _The Shaving ofShagpat_, though many others might be named. The Oriental fictionpermits the use of magic, sorcery, and various elements that seem outof place in ordinary fiction. The popularity of Kipling's tales ofIndian native life and character illustrates our fondness for thisaspect of supernaturalism.
Apart from the foreign influences that affect it we notice a certainchange in the materials and methods of ghostly fiction in English. Newelements had entered into Gothic tales as an advance over the earlierforms, yet conventions had grown up so that even such evasive andelusive personalities as ghosts were hidebound by precedent. Whilethe decline of the _genre_ definitely known as the Gothic novel inno sense put an end to the supernatural in English fiction, it didmark a difference in manner. The Gothic ghosts were more elementaryin their nature, more superficial, than those of later times. Lifewas, in the days of Walpole and Mrs. Radcliffe, more local becauseof the limitations of travel and communication, it being consideredastounding in Gothic times that a ghost could travel a thousand mileswith ease while mortals moved snail-like. Scientific investigation wascrude compared with the present and had not greatly touched fiction.Scientific folk-lore investigations were as unknown as societies ofpsychical research, hence neither had aided in the writing of ghostlyfiction.
The mass of ghostly stuff which has appeared in English since theGothic period, and which will be classified and discussed underdifferent motifs in succeeding chapters, shows many of the samecharacteristics of the earlier, yet exhibits also a decided developmentover primitive, classical and Gothic forms. The modern supernaturalismis more complex, more psychological than the terroristic, perhapsbecause nowadays man is more intellectual, his thought-processes moresubtle. Humanity still wants ghosts, as ever, but they must be morecleverly presented to be convincing. The ghostly thrill is as ardentlydesired by the reading public, as eagerly striven for by the writersas ever, though it is more difficult of achievement now than formerly.Yet when it is attained it is more poignant and lasting in its effectsbecause more subtle in its art. The apparition that eludes analysishaunts the memory more than do the comparatively simple forms of thepast. Compare, for instance, the spirits evoked by Henry James andKatherine Fullerton Gerould with the crude clap-trap of cloisteredspooks and armored knights of Gothic times. How cheap and melodramaticthe earlier attempts seem!
The present-day ghost is at once less terrible and more terrible thanthose of the past. There is not so much a sense of physical fear now,as of psychic horror. The pallid specters that glide through antiquecastles are ineffectual compared with the maleficent psych
ic invasionsof modernity. On the other hand, the recent ghostly story frequentlyshows a strong sense of humor unknown in Gothicism, and only suggestedin earlier forms, as in the elder Pliny's statement that ghosts wouldnot visit a person afflicted with freckles, which shows at least agerminal joviality in classical spooks.
One feature that distinguishes the uncanny tales of to-day from theGothic is their greater range of material. The early terror story hadits source in popular superstition, classical literature, medievallegends, or the Elizabethan drama, while in the century that haselapsed since the decay of the Gothic novel as such, new fields ofthought have been opened up, and new sources for ghostly plots havebeen discovered which the writers of modern stories are quick toutilize. Present-day science with its wonderful development hasprovided countless plots for supernatural stories. Comparative studyof folk-lore, with the activities of the numerous associations, hasbrought to light fascinating material. Modern Spiritualism, with itsseances, its mediumistic experiments, has inspired many novels andstories. The Psychical Research Society, with branches in various partsof the world and its earnest advocates and serious investigations, hascollected suggestive stuff for many ghostly stories. The differentsources for plot material and mechanics for awesome effect, addedto these from which the terror novel drew its inspiration, haveincalculably enriched the supernatural fiction and widened the limitsfar beyond the restrictions of the conventionalized Gothic.
Science has furnished themes for many modern stories of thesupernatural. Modern science itself, under normal conditions, seemslike necromancer's magic, so its incursion into thrilling fictionis but natural. Every aspect of research and discovery has had itsexponent in fictive form, and the skill with which the material ishandled constitutes one point of difference between the present ghostlystories and the crude scientific supernaturalism of the early novels.The influence of Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, and other scientists of thelast century did much to quicken fiction as well as thought, and theeffects can be traced in the work of various authors.
The widespread interest in folk-lore in recent years has had anappreciable influence on the stories of the supernatural. While themethods of investigation followed by the serious students of folk-loreare scientific and the results are tabulated in an analytic rather thana literary style, yet the effect is helpful to fiction. Comparativestudies in folk-lore, by the bringing together of a mass of materialfrom diverse sources, establishes the fact of the universal acceptanceof supernaturalism in some form. Ethnic superstitions vary, yet thereis enough similarity between the ideas held by tribes and races sowidely separated as to discredit any basis of imitation or consciousinfluence between them, to be of great interest to scientists. Notribe, however low in the social scale, has been found that has nobelief in powers beyond the mortal.
Folk-lore associations are multiplying and the students of literatureand anthropology are joining forces in the effort to discover andclassify the variant superstitions and legends of the past and of theraces and tribes still in their childhood. Such activities are bringingto light a fascinating wealth of material from which the writers ofghostly tales may find countless plots. Such studies show how closeakin the world is after all. A large number of books relating storiesof brownies, bogles, fairies, banshees, wraiths, hobgoblins, witches,vampires, ghouls, and other superhuman personages have appeared. Iam not including in this list the fairy stories that are written forjuvenile consumption, but merely the folk-loristic or literary versionsfor adults.
The most marked instance of the influence of folk-lore in supplyingsubject matter for literature is shown in the recent Celtic revival.The supernatural elements in the folk-tales of Ireland, Scotland,and Wales have been widely used in fiction, poetry, and the drama.In this connection one is reminded of Collins's _Ode on the PopularSuperstitions of the Highlands Considered as the Subject for Poetry_.The Irish National School, with W. B. Yeats, John Synge, and LadyGregory as leaders, have made the folk-tales of Ireland live inliterature and the ghostly thrill of the old legends comes down to usundiminished. Lord Dunsany's work is particularly brilliant, going backto ancient times and re-creating the mythologic beings for us, makingus friendly with the gods, the centaurs, the giants, and divers otherlong-forgotten characters. Kipling has made the lore of the Indiantowns and jungles live for us, as Joel Chandler Harris has immortalizedthe legends of the southern negro. Thomas A. Janvier in his tales ofold Mexico calls back the ghosts of Spanish conquerors and Aztec menand women, repeopling the ancient streets with courtly specters. Thefondness for folk-loristic fiction is one of the marked aspects ofRomanticism at the present time.
The activities of the Society for Psychical Research have had decidedeffect in stimulating ghostly stories. When so many intelligent personsturn their attention to finding and classifying supernatural phenomenathe currents of thought thus set up will naturally influence fiction.Nowadays every interest known to man is reflected in literature. Theproceedings of the association have been so widely advertised and soopen to the public that persons who would not otherwise give thoughtto the supernatural have considered the matter. Such thinkers as W. T.Stead and Sir Oliver Lodge, to mention only two, would inevitablyinfluence others. In this connection it is interesting to note therecent claims by Stead's daughter that her father has communicatedwith the living, and Lodge's book, just published, _Raymond, or Lifeand Death_, that gives proof of what he considers incontrovertiblemessages from his son killed in battle. The collection of thousands ofaffirmative answers to the question as to whether one had ever felt aghostly presence not to be explained on natural grounds brought out amass of material that might serve for plot-making. Haunted houses havebeen catalogued and the census of specters taken.
The investigations in modern Spiritualism have done much to affectghostly literature. The terrors of the later apparitions are notphysical, but psychical, and probably the stories of the future willbe more and more allied to Spiritualism. Hamlin Garland, John Corbin,William Dean Howells, Algernon Blackwood, Arnold Bennett, and othershave written novels and stories of this material, though scarcely thefringe of the garment of possibilities has yet been touched. If onebut grant the hypothesis of Spiritualism, what vistas open up for thenovelist! What thrilling complications might come from the skillfulmanipulation of astrals alone,--as aids in establishing alibis, forinstance! Even the limitations that at present bind ghost storieswould be abolished and the effects of the dramatic employment ofspiritualistic faith would be highly sensational. If the will be allpowerful, then not only tables but mountains may be moved. The lawsof physics would be as nothing in the presence of such powers. Alovelorn youth bent on attaining the object of his desires could, bymerely willing it so, sink ocean liners, demolish skyscrapers, callup tempests, and rival German secret agents in his havoc. Intenselydramatic psychological material might be produced by the conflictresulting from the double or multiple personalities in one's ownnature, according to spiritualistic ideas. There might be complicatedcrossings in love, wherein one would be jealous of his alter ego, andconflicting ambitions of exciting character. The struggle necessary forthe model story might be intensely dramatic though altogether internal,between one's own selves. One finds himself so much more interesting inthe light of such research than one has ever dreamed. The distinctionsbetween materializations and astralizations, etherealizations and plainapparitions might furnish good plot structure. The personality of the"sensitives" alone would be fascinating material and the cosmic clashesof will possible under these conceived conditions suggest thrillingstories.
Dreams constitute another definite source for ghostly plots in modernliterature. While this was true to a certain extent in the Gothicnovel, it is still more so in later fiction. Lafcadio Hearn[69]advances the theory that all the best plots for ghost stories in anylanguage come from dreams. He advises the person who would writesupernatural thrillers to study the phases of his own dream life.It would appear that all one needs to do is to look into his ownnightmares and write. Hearn says: "All the
great effects producedby poets and story writers and even by religious teachers, in thetreatment of the supernatural fear or mystery, have been obtaineddirectly or indirectly from dreams." Though one may not literallyaccept the whole of that statement, one must feel that the relationbetween dreams and supernatural impressions is strikingly close. Thefeeling of supernatural presence comes almost always at night whenone is or has been asleep. The guilty man, awaking from sleep, thinksthat he sees the specters of those he has wronged--because his dreamshave embodied them for him. The lover beholds the spirit of his deadlove, because in dreams his soul has gone in search of her. Very youngchildren are unable to distinguish between dreams and reality, as isthe case of savages of a low order, believing in the actuality of whatthey experience in dreams. And who can say that our dream life isaltogether baseless and unreal?
[69] In his _Interpretations of Literature_.
The different nightmare sensations, acute and vivid as they are, can beanalyzed to find parallelisms between them and the ghostly plots. Forexample, take the sensation, common in nightmares, of feeling yourselffalling from immeasurable height. The same thrill of suspense iscommunicated by the climax in Lewis's and Mrs. Dacre's Gothic novels,where the devil takes guilty mortals to the mountain top and hurlsthem down, down. The horrible potentialities of shadows suggestedfrequently in dreams is illustrated by Mary Wilkins Freeman's storywhere the accusing spirit comes back as a haunting shadow on the wall,rather than as an ordinary ghost, tormenting the living brother till_his_ shadow also appears, a portent of his death.[70] The awful gripof causeless horror, of nameless fear which assails one so often innightmares is represented in _The Red Room_,[71] where black Fear, thePower of Darkness, haunts the room rather than any personal spirit. Itis disembodied horror itself. Wilkie Collins illustrates the presagingvision of approaching disaster in _The Dream Woman_. The nightmarehorror of supernaturalism is nowhere better shown than in Maupassant's_La Horla_ where the sleeper wakes with a sense of leaden weight uponhis breast, and knows that night after night some dreadful presenceis shut in with him, invisible yet crushing the life out of him anddriving him mad.
[70] _The Shadows on the Wall._
[71] By H. G. Wells.
The nightmare motifs are present to a remarkable degree inBulwer-Lytton's _The Haunted and the Haunters, or the House andthe Brain_. There we have the gigantism of the menacing Thing, thesupernatural power given to inanimate objects, the ghostly chill, thedarkness, and the intolerable oppression of a nameless evil thingbeside one. Vampirism might easily be an outcome of dreams, sincebased on a physical sensation of pricking at the throat, combined withdebility caused by weakness, which could be attributed to loss of bloodfrom the ravages of vampires. F. Marion Crawford's story, _For theBlood Is the Life_, is more closely related to dreams than most of thetype, though probably Bram Stoker's _Dracula_ is the most horrible.
The curious side of supernaturalism as related to dreams is illustratedby _The Dream Gown of the Japanese Ambassador_,[72] and the morebeautiful by Simeon Solomon's _Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep_. MaryWilkins Freeman has a remarkable short story, _The Hall Bedroom_,which is one of the best illustrations of the use of dream imageryand impressions. Here the effects are alluring and beautiful, withthe horror kept in the background, but perhaps the more effectivebecause of the artistic restraint. Odors, sights, sounds, feelings,are all raised to an intensity of sensuous, slumbrous enjoyment,all subliminated above the mortal. The description of the river inthe picture, on which the young man floats away to dreamy death,similar to the Japanese story referred to by Hearn, helps to give theimpression of infinity that comes only in dreams. Algernon Blackwood innumerous stories not only uses the elements of dreams and nightmaresbut explicitly calls attention to the fact. Dream supernaturalism isemployed in Barry Pain's stories, in Arthur Machen's volume,[73] and inmany others. Freud's theory of dreams as the invariable result of pastexperiences or unconscious desires has not been stressed in fiction,though doubtless it will have its inning presently. A. Conan Doyle's_The Secret of Goresthorpe Grange_ is an amusing story of the relationof definite wishes and dreams of the ghostly.
[72] By Brander Matthews.
[73] _The Hill of Dreams._
These are some of the sources from which the later writers of occultismhave drawn their plots. They represent a distinct advance over theGothic and earlier supernaturalism in materials, for the modern storyhas gained the new elements without loss of the old. The ghostlyfiction of to-day has access to the animistic or classical or medievalthemes, yet has the unlimited province of present thought to furnishadditional inspiration. There never was a time when thinking alonggeneral lines was more spontaneously reflected in fiction than now,and supernatural literature claims all regions for its own. Like everyother phase of man's thought, ghostly fiction shows the increasingcomplexity of form and matter, the wealth of added material andabounding richness of style, the fine subtleties that only modernitycan give.
The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction Page 3