The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies

by Clark Ashton Smith, S.T. Joshi (Editor)

A much-awaited collection of prose and poetry from one of the great cosmic masters of the supernatural

Not just any fantasy, horror, and science fiction author could impress H. P. Lovecraft into calling him "perhaps unexcelled by any other writer, dead or living” or compel Fritz Lieber to employ the worthy term sui generis. Clark Ashton Smith—autodidact, prolific poet, amateur philosopher, bizarre sculptor, and unmatched storyteller—simply wrote like no one else, before or since. This new collection of his very best tales and poems is selected and introduced by supernatural literature scholar S. T. Joshi and allows readers to encounter Smith’s visionary brand of fantastical, phantasmagorical worlds, each one filled with invention, terror, and a superlative sense of metaphysical wonder.

Genres: Horror, Fantasy, Short Stories, Fiction, Poetry, Weird Fiction, Classics

370 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1935

About the author

Clark Ashton Smith was a poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. It is for these stories, and his literary friendship with H. P. Lovecraft from 1922 until Lovecraft's death in 1937, that he is mainly remembered today. With Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, also a friend and correspondent, Smith remains one of the most famous contributors to the pulp magazine Weird Tales.

His writings are posted at his official website.

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Confession: I once underestimated Clark Ashton Smith. I dismissed him as a second-rate poet, and a first-rate prose stylist who marred his work with an eccentric indulgence in obscure, latinate diction, even more bizarre than his friend Lovecraft's. I also find his fascination with evil—particularly in his poetry—rather second-rate too, redolent with faux nostalgia for the fin de siecle in decline.

The funny thing is, I still believe all this to be true, but, recently, reading this J.T. Joshi anthology, I find this is only a small part of the story. First of all, although most of the poetry is second rate, some of it isn't, particularly the blank verse dramatic monologues (“Nero,” “Satan Unrepentant,” “The Hashish Eater") which rely on close reasoning or gorgeous enumerations, and the occasional isolated mood piece (“Memnon at Midnight,” “The Old Water Wheel”) which does not allow its central idea to become buried in baroque detail and mellifluous phrases.

Second, the stories—at least the ones included here—all succeed as stories, and whatever they lose from Smith's showy, occasionally bizarre diction they regain by the sonority and measured movement of his prose. Like Algernon Blackwood, the objective of this prose is to hypnotize, creating the proper state of mind so that the disquieting visions may begin. Even the worst of his stories—which can seem like overly long mood pieces—create memorable sensations, and the best (“The Vaults of Yo-Vombis,” “The Dark Eidolon,” “The Weaver in the Vault, “Xeethra,” “The Mother of Toads”) are terrifying.

In addition, Joshi introduced me to an aspect of Smith of which I had not been aware: the prose poems. They are more disciplined and closely crafted than either the poems or the stories, and may well be Smith's best work.


I conclude with one of those prose poems, to give you a taste of the delights which await:


THE MIRROR IN THE HALL OF EBONY

From the nethermost profound of slumber, from a gulf beyond the sun and stars that illume the Lethean shoals and the vague lands of somnolent visions, I floated on a black unrippling tide to the dark threshold of a dream. And in this dream I stood at the end of a long hall that was ceiled and floored and walled with black ebony, and was lit with a light that fell not from the sun or moon nor from any lamp. The hall was without doors or windows, and at the further extreme an oval mirror was framed in the wall. And standing there, I remembered nothing of all that had been; and the other dreams of sleep, and the dream of birth and of everything thereafter, were alike forgotten. And forgotten too was the name I had found among men, and the other names whereby the daughters of dream had known me; and memory was no older than my coming to that hall. But I wondered not, nor was I troubled thereby, and naught was strange to me: for the tide that had borne me to this threshold was the tide of Lethe.

Anon, though I knew not why, my feet were drawn adown the hall, and I approached the oval mirror. And in the mirror I beheld the haggard face that was mine, and the red mark on the cheek where one I loved had struck me in her anger, and the mark on the throat where her lips had kissed me in amorous devotion. And, seeing this, I remembered all that had been; and the other dreams of sleep, and the dream of birth and of everything thereafter, alike returned to me. And thus I recalled the name I had assumed beneath the terrene sun, and the names I had borne beneath the suns of sleep and of reverie. And I marvelled much, and was enormously troubled, and all things were most strange to me, and all things were as of yore.

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) is surely one of America’s most intriguing and unique authors, a poet and writer of tales of horror, fantasy and science fiction. Born in a small town in Northern California and living nearly all his life in the log cabin build by his parents, Smith didn’t attend school beyond the eighth grade due to psychological problems; rather, all of his learning occurred at home – he read voraciously and committed much to memory, including an encyclopedia and a dictionary cover to cover; he taught himself French and Spanish; he devoured book after book, such classics as Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels and the works of Edgar Allan Poe. As an adult, along with H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, Smith was a prime contributor to the pulp fiction magazine Weird Tales, and, like Lovecraft, whom he befriended and carried on a live-long correspondence, Smith used his own nightmares as raw material for his fiction.

This fine Penguin edition is a treasure, including many short stories, prose poems and poems along with an informative Introduction by literary scholar, S. T. Joshi. As a way of sharing a taste of what a reader will discover in these pages, I have focused on one short story from the collection, Ubbo-Sathla, noting a number of themes from the tale, themes that recur in much of the author’s work. Also included is my write-up (copied from one of my other reviews) on yet another tale from this Penguin collection: Mother of Toads.

UBBO-SATHLA
“For Ubbo-Sathla is the source and the end. Before the coming of Zhothaqquah or Yok-Zothoth or Kthulhut from the stars, Ubbo-Sathla dwelt in the steaming fens of the newmade Earth.”

So begins this beguiling tale of metaphysical investigation told in arcane language by Clark Ashton Smith, an author for whom fiction was as a way to explore the big philosophical questions: Where do we come from? What is the foundation of life? Why are we here? Where are we going?

Again, these questions are asked in the most inscrutable language, for as the author himself explains: "My own conscious ideal has been to delude the reader into accepting an impossibility, or series of impossibilities, by means of a sort of verbal black magic, in the achievement of which I make use of prose-rhythm, metaphor, simile, tone-color, counter-point, and other stylistic resources, like a sort of incantation.”

Similar to young men entering antique shops filled with curios from around the globe (Honoré de Balzac’s The Magic Skin and Théophile Gautier's The Mummy’s Foot come immediately to mind), the tale's protagonist, Paul Tregardis, enters an antique shop and his eye is drawn to something in particular: “the milky crystal in a litter of oddments from many lands and eras.”

And, oh, how that magically enchanted, arcane object quickly becomes the nucleus of occult unfoldings. "Tregardis thinks of his own explorations in hidden lore: he recalled The Book of Eibon, that strangest and rarest of occult forgotten volumes, which is said to have come down through a series of manifold translations from a prehistoric original written in the lost language of Hyperborea."

After leaving the shop, crystal in hand, little does Tregardis know he now holds an enchanted object that will bring the book of his very own memories to life.

As per vintage Clark Ashton Smith, that aforementioned remote, secret book, The Book of Eibon, was purported to have been the handiwork of a great wizard in touch with the heart of the heart of all power within the universe. "This wizard, who was mighty among sorcerers, had found a cloudy stone, orb-like and somewhat flattened at the ends, in which he could behold many visions of the terrene past, even to the Earth's beginning, when Ubbo-Sathla, the unbegotten source, lay vast and swollen and yeasty amid the vaporing slime. . . But of that which he beheld, Zon Mezzamalech left little record; and people say that he vanished presently, in a way that is not known; and after him the cloudy crystal was lost."

With a wizard and sorcery added to the equation, our narrator is in for unexpected twists to his adventures.

The more our young narrator peers into his newly purchased crystal, the more all of the normal boundaries of time and space expand and take on strange forms. “As if he looked upon an actual world, cities, forests, mountains, seas and meadows flowed beneath him, lightening and darkening as with the passage of days and nights in some weirdly accelerated stream of time.”

Is he in twentieth century London or some other past and future time? Or, as unfathomable as it might seem, two or even all three together? It is hard for poor Paul Tregardis to tell. In this and in many other Clark Ashton Smith tales, it is left to us as readers to fathom our own conclusions, as nebulous as they might be.

Paul feels something very strange, as if he is under the influence of hashish. The walls begin to wobble as if they are made of smoke; all the men and women in the streets begin to appear as so many ghosts and shades; the whole scene takes on the cast of a vast phantasm.

Is Paul dreaming or hallucinating? Could be. But many the time in a Clark Ashton Smith tale, a dream or vision quickly slides into an unending nightmare. Recall the author mined his own nightmares during protracted illnesses to fuel his fantasies and tales of horror.

In such a nightmare, what other evil or unforeseen event can happen? Answer: for Clark Ashton Smith, a character’s very identity can shift and change not only once but multiple times. “He seemed to live unnumbered lives, to die myriad deaths, forgetting each time the death and life that had gone before. He fought as a warrior in half-legendary battles; he was a child playing in the ruins of some olden city of Mhu Thulan; he was the king who had reigned when the city was in its prime, the prophet who had foretold its building and its doom. He became a barbarian of some troglodytic tribe, fleeing from the slow, turreted ice of a former glacial age into lands illumed by the ruddy flare of perpetual volcanoes. Then, after incomputable years, he was no longer man, but a man-like beast, roving in forests of giant fern and calamite, or building an uncouth nest in the boughs of mighty cycads."

Clark Ashton Smith, such an imagination, such psychedelic, phantasmagorical visions - not only can a man or woman, plant or beast change, the entire universe can compress itself into a grey, formless mass of slime with the name Ubbo-Sathla.

MOTHER OF TOADS
This tale begins with Pierre, young apprentice of the village apothecary, making one of his journeys to the secluded hut of Mère Antoinette, a big ugly witch, for the purpose of returning with a mysterious brew for his master’s secret concoction. After giving Pierre what he came for, the witch beckons the lad to stay. We read his response: “Pierre tossed his head with the disdain of a young Adonis. The witch was more than twice his age, and her charms were too uncouth and unsavory to tempt him for an instant. She was repellently fat and lumpish, and her skin possessed an unwholesome pallor.”

Let’s pause here and ask why do witches appear in so many Western fairy-tales? Robert Bly speaks of the tyranny of patriarchal monotheistic culture, where what is good and pure and divine is male and what comes from nature is negative, chaotic and destructive. And since women are so closely aligned with nature and fertility, their female nature is denied a place in the spiritual realm or godhead, however their energy and power does not go away; rather, it goes underground and later emerges as the witch.

Since village rumors abound regarding the witch’s wickedness and her many toad-servants doing her evil bidding, we can also ask why the master sends young Pierre alone and unprotected to the witch’s hut in the first place. We read: “The old apothecary, whose humor was rough and ribald, had sometimes rallied Pierre concerning Mère Antoinette's preference for him. Remembering certain admonitory gibes, more witty than decent, the boy flushed angrily as he turned to go.” Does the older man have the best interests of the young man at heart? Robert Bly alludes to how the older generation of men in being too naïve themselves have betrayed younger men, causing those younger men to be, in turn, too naïve and gullible.

So, after Pierre refuses her offer to stay, the witch proposes he drink a cup of her fine red wine. Pierre smells the odors of hot, delicious spices and tells the witch he will drink if the wine contains none of her concoctions. Of course, the witch assures him its sound, good wine that will warm his stomach. Did I mentioned naïve and gullible? Pierre drinks the wine. Big mistake. All of Pierre’s sense are radically transformed and distorted – the big, fat witch starts looking pretty good, after all. Do I hear echoes of how drinking can alter and dull our perceptions? Anyway, the deed is done – the witch gets to have a handsome, young lover for the night.

Pierre wakes up sober, sees what has happened and runs away. But the evil witch possesses strange powers. Thousands of her toad-servants block his path and force him to return to the hut. The witch again proposes Pierre stay with her and drink of the wine. At this point, here is the exchange:
"I will not drink your wine," he said firmly. "You are a foul witch, and I loathe you. Let me go."
"Why do you loathe me?" croaked Mère Antoinette. "I can give you all that other women give ... and more."
"You are not a woman," said Pierre. "You are a big toad. I saw you in your true shape this morning. I'd rather drown in the marsh-waters than stay with you again."

Sorry, Pierre, it doesn’t sound like you are using your wits – when confronting powerful evil, you don’t win any points by being honest. Even as children Hansel and Gretel knew what is needed in dealing with a wicked witch is not honesty but cleverness. How does this tale end? You will have to pick up this outstanding collection and read for yourself.

Here are a number of cover illustrations of tales from this Clark Ashton Smith collection:

[Forrest · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let me let you in on a little cosmic secret: Clark Ashton Smith's writing is better than Lovecraft's. Way better. Alright, HPL got in on the game early, and it's obvious that CAS looked up to him in some ways. But let's not kid ourselves. In terms of pure writing ability, CAS >>>> HPL. That's not to say he's perfect. As you'll see in my notes below, Smith stumbles from time to time. But when considering the quality of his work as a whole, I find him a notch above the old man from Providence.

Let's start with the short stories.

The volume (and Smith's world) is introduced through "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros," a low-adventure story that blends tropes associated with cosmic horror and sword and sorcery rather seamlessly. One can already see, in this story, the influence Smith had on later writers. Fred Saberhagen's Empire of the East comes to mind immediately.

"The Last Incantation" would be heartbreaking, if the heart in question wasn't already broken beyond all repair and recognition.

Smith out-Lovecrafts Lovecraft with "The Devotee of Evil". THIS is true cosmic horror, without the mis-steps of HPL. The mysterious remains so, unspeakable things remain un-uttered, and no name is given to the dark vibrations collected and transmitted by the devotee. The obfuscation, ironically, gives the horror here a crystalline clarity. This is among the best cosmic horror stories I've read.

Perhaps "The Uncharted Isle" loses some of its original power because the tropes used in it are now, well, tropes. It is a luxurious story, but easily predictable, with little new to offer those who have been steeped in weird fiction. Still, it's a good read. Perhaps if I had read this earlier in life it would have stood out to me more. As it is, it's not bad, not great.

"The Face By the River" rises above '50s horror comic hackneyed tropes only by mere inches. The last paragraph was the best part of the story. I only wish the rest was that good.

"The City of the Singing Flame" is one of the better stories of cosmic horror I have ever read. Tonally, it reminds me most of A Voyage to Arcturus. There is a beautiful ecstacy to this brand of horror, something terrifying not because of its darkness, but because of its chromatic, refulgent light. I am reminded of the carousel in Logan's Run. Here's a little snippet:

Wall on beetling wall, and spire on giant spire, it soared to confront the heavens, maintaining everywhere the severe and solemn lines of a wholly rectilinear architecture. It seemed to whelm and crush down the beholder with its stern and crag-like imminence.

I wonder if Dan O'Bannon was inspired by "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" when he wrote the screenplay for Alien. At least one important element seems to have been snatched right from these pages. It's an effective tale of horror mixed with science fiction. Heck, I might steal this idea next time I run the Mothership RPG. This is some good stuff!

"Ubbo-Sathla" is another story of curiosity turning to obsession to doom, but with the twist of something akin to transmigration of souls (metempsychosis). This was a good, old-fashioned weird story and I quite liked it. A step above Lovecraft in terms of writerly control and evocation of atmosphere, with the same level of weirdness.

"The Double Shadow" is what one traditionally thinks of when one thinks of CAS: sorcerous deviltries from time immemorial, necromantic rites, ages long since past (so long ago, in fact, that a long-dead ghost must be compelled to travel even further back into its pre-birth past), and dark abominations that even the greatest of sorcerers dare not invoke. Cosmic horror and ancient sorcery make for a heady admixture.

"The Maze of the Enchanter" speaks in the same voice as Jack Vance. Maybe that's coincidence, but the resemblance is uncanny. The same sort of strangeness, replete with transformations and hideous consequence, as well as winsome villains, resonates strongly with The Dying Earth. These are all good things, laudable, and slip into the dreamer's mind quite easily. Did I say "dreamer's"? Perhaps I mean "reader's". Or no.

The title story "The Dark Eidolon" is everything the weird fiction connoisseur could hope for. Mad wizards, decadent empires, gargantuan architecture, extravagant sin, devil-patrons, gigantic skeletons, crowned mummies of long-dead kings, and an age-old morality tale (though seemingly devoid of morals, except on the part of a devil!) make for heady reading that one drinks and drowns in, rather than simply reads.

The banal predictability of "The Weaver in the Vault" is more than offset by the luxuriant language and clever turns of phrase used to describe the setting and the action of three ill-fated warriors sent by their king to retrieve the mummy of his dynastic ancestor from the ruins of a fabled city of the dead. The Shakespearean affectations of the men's speech adds to the feeling of antiquity. Weirdness ensues (could it be any other way?).

"Xeethra" is a story of dream, of yearning, and of dashed hopes and the inevitability of decay and ruin. If I were to pick a tale to represent "nihilistic weird fiction," this might be it. It's a devastating story, made even more so by Smith's ability to lure the reader into a sense of comfort and even luxuriance, before stripping away the idyllic innocence he had already bestowed.

I would consider "The Treader of the Dust" a minor story in Smith's canon. There's nothing terribly original here, though it is weird and creepy. The mummy-cum-grey-alien-space-baby was a nice touch, but it was probably the only extraordinary thing here. The rest are pretty well-hackneyed weird fiction tropes. It'll do , if you need a fix, but no one is going to get addicted to Smith through this one, I'm afraid.

The moral of "Mother of Toads" - don't allow women who look (and smell and sound) like gigantic toads ensorcel you then sleep with you. Got it. Check. Not my favorite story, though it would make a great 1950's horror comic!

"Phoenix" is a classic piece of science fiction. A beautiful story with a predictable outcome, but told in such a soothing, almost solemn way. It's a joy to read.

Besides the short stories outlined (or critiqued?) above, there is a healthy dose of Prose Poems and Poetry.

All of the Prose Poems in this volume are excellent. I find myself increasingly fond of those two genre oddballs: novellas and prose poems. Smiths prose poems rank up there with Arthur Machen's Ornaments in Jade for sheer beauty, eloquence, evocation, and conciseness. The ideas behind the words are expansive beyond the page.

The poetry is good, some of it excellent, some of it repetitious almost to the point of self-referentiality.

"The Hashish-Eater; Or, The Apocalypse of Evil" is the type of epic poem you see tattooed across someone's back or airbrushed on the side of a conversion van or presented in an incredibly expensive edition book with gold leaf impressions and silk ribbons. To quote teenage me "it rules". I would spend good money for a beautifully-produced book containing this poem alone. Apparently CAS didn't like it much, feeling it too derivative of other poets (particularly Flaubert) and inadequate in presenting the true horror of understanding the vastness of the cosmos. But . . . well, he was wrong. If you're going to read any one piece of writing by Clark Ashton Smith, make it this poem!

All-in-all, this is a worthy collection. Though it lacks the tight cogency of, say, Zothique, it shows Smith's breadth of writerly skill and subject matter and is a fantastic introduction to this criminally-under-rated writer. There's a reason that this book has become one of the Penguin Classics. Here's to hoping that Penguin continues to produce more in this vein!

[P.E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Saucerful of Weirdness

Soundscape 1
Soundscape 2
Soundscape 3
Soundscape 4


Favourite texts:

PROSE:

* The Devotee of Evil — markedly Poe-like! Also reminds me of The Music of Eric Zahn...

* The Uncharted Isle — this short story makes me imagine a Gulliver's Travels: Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. gone mad, where nobody understands what is happening :) It also reminds me of the mind-racking mysteries of La Montagne morte de la vie

** The City of the Singing Flame — riveting.

* The Holiness of Azédarac — graced with quite an unpredictable end!

** The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis — plainly one of the most carefully elaborated of the collection, with certain features reminiscent of At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft

* Ubbo-Sathla — a perplexing and addictive tale of crazed time-travel, not unlike L'Herbe rouge in the spirit.

* The Double Shadow — especially memorable for its outlandish locale

* Genius Loci — not a little reminiscent of The Colour Out of Space, or 'The Horla' among others, while boasting a style and spirit of its own.

* The Dark Eidolon — a dream-like legend of cosmic proportions.

** Xeethra — a rewriting of Rip Van Winkle? Baudelaire's 'La Chambre Double' expanded? A companion to HPL's The Shadow Out of Time? Much more: exquisite

* Phoenix — It is hardly surprising that CAS has been an major influence for Ray Bradbury. See Kaleidoscope and other Short Stories, The Martian Chronicles and other short stories from The Illustrated Man and Machineries of Joy... I wonder if it might have given inspiration for the movie Sunshine, too?


PROSE POEMS:

* The Abomination of Desolation


POETRY

* The Hashish-Eater; or, The Apocalypse of Evil
* The Hill of Dionysus
* Cycles


Further reading:

Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse
Les Diaboliques
Contes Cruels
La Mare au diable
Bruges-La-Morte
Le Horla et autres nouvelles fantastiques
Maldoror and the Complete Works
Rimas y leyendas
Pedro Páramo
The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories
The House on the Borderland
The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft
Conan 1 - Le Cimmérien
Niourk
Annihilation

[Algernon (Darth Anyan) · Rating 5 out of 5]

My imagination was excited, and I began to indulge in some rather overheated fantasies.

We don’t really have a Halloween tradition here in Romania, trick or treating being reserved for the Christmas season and the singing of carols. Yet, after so many years on Goodreads, I made it a habit to celebrate the month of October with a horror feast.
This year I started with ‘Vathek’ by William Beckford, a slightly dated Arabian Nights fantasy that finishes on a very dark note. One thing leads to another, and in tracking down how Vathek’s demonic journey ripples over time into the next generation of writers, I went from Lord Byron to Edgar Allan Poe and then to Clark Ashton Smith, where I really hit the jackpot in terms of scary thrills and purple prose.

“I ... refuse to submit to the arid, earth-bound spirit of the time; and I think there is sure to be a romantic revival sooner or later – a revolt against mechanization and over-socialization, etc. ... Neither the ethics or the aesthetic of the ant-hill have any attraction for me.”

A poet influenced by Baudelaire and the British Romantics, Smith turned to the pulp magazines out of necessity, literally to put bread on the table. But he refused to compromise on his aesthetic and on his use of language, despite editors who put pressure on him to tone down his use of archaic or obscure terms and to replace his intellectual terrors with more accessible adventure tales.

I, Satampa Zeiros of Uzuldaroum, shall write with my left hand, since I had no longer any other, the tale of everything that befell Tirouv Omphallios and myself in the shrine of the god Tsathounggua, which lies neglected by the worship of man in the jungle-taken suburbs of Commorion, that long-deserted capital of the Hyperborean rulers.

Still, the influence of his by now famous pen-pals, H P Lovecraft and Robert E Howard, is easy no notice in the stories collected here, not surprising given the cross-pollination of ideas and mythology between these three titans of the ‘Weird Tales’ era. Instead of sending cease and desist letters from lawyers specializing in intellectual property cases, these authors worked with each other’s characters and settings and we as readers should be grateful for this creative alembic.

What unimaginable horror of protoplastic life, what loathly spawn of the primordial slime had come forth to confront us, we did not pause to consider or conjecture. The monstrosity was too awful to permit of even a brief contemplation; also, its intentions were too plainly hostile, and it gave evidence of anthropophagic inclinations; for it slithered toward us with an unbelievable speed and celerity of motion, opening as it came a toothless mouth of amazing capacity.

Both Lovecraft and Howard can easily be identified by their themes and style, so what is the contribution of Smith in the horror genre? For me, who is just discovering him through these tales, the answer is in his use of special words to create a mood, a certain emotional load that, in his manifesto, is supposed to open the gates of imagination and to let something primordial, something malefic and impenetrable in.

“There are terrifying depths in human nature – gulfs of instinct and impulse more abhorrent than those of the jungle.”

I am sure that somewhere in space there is the center from which all evil emanates.

Forced to write in the pulps for money, Mr. Smith tried to adapt his subjects to the popular themes: rogues trying to steal treasure from ancient tombs, magicians trying to resurrect the nubile girl they loved ages ago, goat boys dreaming of lost kingdoms, etc.
The poet trumps the storyteller here though, which eventually led to debates with the editors about content. Clark Ashton Smith makes full use of his photographic memory [allegedly the self-educated Smith read the whole Britannica encyclopaedia twice] , and if the reader may be sometimes baffled by terms like ‘fulvous’ or ‘lethiferous’ or others of their ilk, he can rest assured their presence there is deliberate and a sort of programmatic protest against naturalism, realism and introspection/stream-of-conscience in literature. Smith wears his late Romantic cape with pride, going against the tides of fashion with similar poor monetary results as his friends Lovecraft and Howard.

Howbeit, let us have another drink! and return to the storytelling.
An ‘eidolon’ is apparently a sort of ghost, a spirit from the past that haunts the protagonist. Choosing this term as emblematic for the whole collection seems appropriate, since despite the various settings for the stories included [antiquity, medieval times, contemporary or the far future], all deal with a magical summoning gone wrong, a haunted place, or a spirit from the dark dimensions visiting.

“Yes, master,” replied the viper, in a low but singularly penetrating hiss, “you are Malygris, and all sorcerous or necromantic power is yours, all incantations and spells and pentacles are known to you.”

The visitations never end well: the thieves are chased by re-awakened monster-gods, the artists go crazy from their contact with the place infused by Evil, the summoning goes wrong and the magician is possessed by the very demon he tried to control, etc. Reading about the man behind the stories, I cannot help but notice that the one thing Lovecraft, Howard and Smith had in common was their loneliness and their depression. All three struggled with their inner demons and felt rejected by a society sick with consumerism and conformism. I believe this is reflected in the tone and in the subject matter of the stories they wrote. [ Existence had become the conserving of a fire menaced by inexorable night. ]

The soul of Malygris grew sick again with age and despair and the death of his evanescent hope. He could believe no longer in love or youth or beauty; and even the memory of these things was a dubitable mirage, a thing that might or might not have been. There was nothing left but shadow and greyness and dust, nothing but the empty dark and the cold, and a clutching weight of insufferable weariness, of immedicable anguish.

Most of the contemporary stories included here feature an artist, a writer or a painter, as the lead character, interested in the ancient texts or in the myths from the past. The farthest they travel from modern times, the more horrible the manifestations of spirit become. Smith’s personal touch is to reference either the primordial slime that first gave birth to Life on Earth, or the cosmic dimensions where the prime Evil dwells.

Stern and white as a tomb, older than the memory of the dead, and built by men or devils beyond the recording of myth, is the mansion in which we dwell.

Each story can and should be considered on its own merits, and in its own context, but for me the experience of reading all of them gathered here produced an overall coherent vision, similar to the Chtulhu myth or the Hyperborean Age. That’s why I don’t mention any story by its title, also because they are consistently good, with no filler or dud for me.

I have left for last my comments about the influence of Smith on future writers of speculative fiction, his paying forward the heritage of Beckford and Baudelaire and Cabell, enriched with Smith’s own panache for a flowery phrase and with his deeply embedded pessimism.

On Zothique, the last continent of Earth, the sun no longer shone with the whiteness of its prime, but was dim and tarnished as if with a vapor of blood. New stars without number had declared themselves in the heavens, and the shadows of the infinite had fallen closer. And out of the shadows, the older gods had returned to man

Having read only a couple of weeks previously a book by Jack Vance, it is extremely easy to draw comparisons between Zothique and the Dying Earth [and also between Averoigne and Lyonesse and Poictesme]. Both the characters [magicians, thieves and demons] and the language used link Smith and Vance in my imagination. Other names are mentioned as being influenced by Smith, Bradbury among them, but my interest is piqued to continue reading the original stories of this poet of the darkness of the spirit, and to fill in the gaps that remain in my mapping out the history of the speculative fiction genre.
‘The Dark Eidolon’ also includes samples of Smith’s prose poems and poetry, which I didn’t have the time to include here before my self-appointed Halloween deadline, but I might do an update unless something shinier and newer catches my attention.

[Wilum Pugmire · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm reading it very slowly, and it is freaking FABULOUS. I love the Introduction, which is of great length because the Penguin editors felt that this would be a book that is the first-time experience with CAS for many readers. I love the Notes at the back of the book, with passages from letters by CAS and H. P. Lovecraft. I have been influenced as an author by this fiction, but I haven't really concentrated on it as I do with Lovecraft's excellent stories. I am doing very slow and careful readings with this book, reading some pages two or three times just to drink in the feel and flow of language. A common complaint about Clark Ashton Smith is his use of rare and difficult words, but so far I have encountered very few that are so incomprehensible that they stop my flow of reading and leave me baffled.

S. T. was over last night and we did a YouTube vlog about the book. It was incredible, because during the recording S. T. read aloud Smith's poem in memory of H. P. Lovecraft, and Joshi got so moved by the poem that he began to softly weep! I felt the tears brimming in my eyes as well. But then -- woe o woe -- just as we were finishing the video, we LOST OUR INTERNET CONNECTION! Bah!! I could not figure out how to retrieve what we had recorded and the video was utterly lost! Oy oy oy! I was so upset I slept badly, kept waking up and cursing fate. S. T. will be over again this week-end, Saturday or Sunday (March 29th or 30th), not certain which, and we will try again to record a promotional video for the book on YouTube. He will again read ye poem--and this time I shall be certain to wear my strongest waterproof mascara!

[Tristan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Bow down: I am the emperor of dreams;
I crown me with the million-colored sun
Of secret worlds incredible, and take
Their trailing skies for vestment when I soar,
Throned on the mounting zenith, and illume
The spaceward-flown horizons infinite."

- Clark Ashton Smith, The Hashish Eater; or the Apocalypse of Evil




Far too long neglected among American writers of the weird, Clark Ashton Smith has finally been granted a compilation of his best work by Penguin. The result is nothing short of revelatory.

As can be deducted from my 'started' and 'finished' dates I took considerable time devouring this volume. This was intentional. Admittedly, Smith's prose style does tend to veer to the flowery side. It's rather dense in terms of the -sometimes obscure and archaic- vocabulary and references. He makes you work for it. In Smith's case however, I find it fits the subject matter perfectly well (Actually, for me it works better than Lovecraft's prose style, whose literary indulgences didn't always quite mesh with every tale of his). It lends to Smith's tales - a strange mix of old fantasy and cosmic horror- even more of an otherworldly, trance-inducing aspect. In short, reading it straight through can get mighty laborious, so I recommend tackling it at a measured pace.

Primary attention has been given to the short stories, and with good reason. The City of the Singing Flame, The Vaults of Yo-Vombis, Genius Loci, The Dark Eidolon, The Weaver in the Vault, Xeethra, and the darkly comedic The Mother of Toads are simply sublime, pairing pure fantasy with pure terror to great effect. They're like nothing else in the field.

Thankfully, Smith's prose poems and poetry are also given a generous treatment (although poetry doesn't sell, Penguin momentarily ignored financial considerations and allowed Joshi to include it). Personally, I prefer the former over the latter. Of all literary forms he practised, the prose poem might be the one he actually mastered. His talents are best represented there, I feel.

S.T. Joshi's elucidating notes at the end are just the icing on the cake, making this particular edition indispensable to the library of the weird fiction aficionado.

[E. G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Introduction
Suggestions for Further Reading
A Note on the Texts

Short Stories

--The Tale of Satampra Zeiros
--The Last Incantation
--The Devotee of Evil
--The Uncharted Isle
--The Face by the River
--The City of the Singing Flame
--The Holiness of Azédarac
--The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis
--Ubbo-Sathla
--The Double Shadow
--The Maze of the Enchanter
--Genius Loci
--The Dark Eidolon
--The Weaver in the Vault
--Xeethra
--The Treader of the Dust
--Mother of Toads
--Phoenix

Prose Poems

--The Image of Bronze and the Image of Iron
--The Memnons of the Night
--The Demon, the Angel, and Beauty
--The Corpse and the Skeleton
--A Dream of Lethe
--From the Crypts of Memory
--Ennui
--The Litany of the Seven Kisses
--In Cocaigne
--The Flower-Devil
--The Shadows
--The Passing of Aphrodite
--To the Daemon
--The Abomination of Desolation
--The Mirror in the Hall of Ebony
--The Touch-Stone
--The Muse of Hyperborea

Poetry

--The Last Night
--Ode to the Abyss
--A Dream of Beauty
--The Star-Treader
--Retrospect and Forecast
--Nero
--To the Daemon Sublimity
--Averted Malefice
--The Eldritch Dark
--Shadow of Nightmare
--Satan Unrepentant
--The Ghoul
--Desire of Vastness
--The Medusa of Despair
--The Refuge of Beauty
--The Harlot of the World
--Memnon at Midnight
--Love Malevolent
--The Crucifixion of Eros
--The Tears of Lilith
--Requiescat in Pace
--The Motes
--The Hashish-Eater; or, The Apocalypse of Evil
--A Psalm to the Best Beloved
--The Witch with Eyes of Amber
--We Shall Meet
--On Re-reading Baudelaire
--To George Sterling: A Valediction
--Anterior Life
--Hymn to Beauty
--The Remorse of the Dead
--Exorcism
--Nyctalops
--Outlanders
--Song of the Necromancer
--To Howard Phillips Lovecraft
--Madrigal of Memory
--The Old Water-Wheel
--The Hill of Dionysus
--If Winter Remain
--Amithaine
--Cycles

Explanatory Notes

[Ronald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clark Ashton Smith was one of the great triumvirate of Weird Tales, the other two being his friends H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard.

It seems that of the three, Clark Ashton Smith is the least well known. I'm been hoping for a Clark Ashton Smith revival, and this recently published book by Penguin might ignite it.

The Introduction of this book is by S.T. Joshi, who made the editorial decision on the stories, poems, and "prose-poems" to reprint.

The stories I've read before. The stories selected, it appears, is a sample of the different types of fiction that Clark Ashton Smith wrote--science fiction, adventure-fantasy, and supernatural horror. Most of the stories take place in the distant past, or even the far future, and take place in imaginary realms such as Hyperborea. This approach differed from that of his friend H.P. Lovecraft, and perhaps differs from most writers of the weird tale since.

One the one hand, I would have liked to see more stories included, but I can understand that the editor might have had space constraints.

What is new to me: the poetry, the "prose poems", and that Clark Ashton Smith painted. The cover of this book is one of Clark Ashton Smith's paintings. Joshi says that there was even an exhibit of Smith's paintings. I would have liked to see more of Smith's painting reproduced.

The 1-2 page "prose poems" are not plot driven stories, but more like vignettes, mood pieces, parables. These prose poems have striking imagery--I still can recall them days after I've read these prose poems.

A good amount of the poems are rhyming verse. Some poems are about an individual, such as his mentor, the poet George Sterling. Many poems have fantastical subject matter. The poem "The Hashish-Eater; Or, The Apocalypse of Evil" begins:

Bow down: I am the emperor of dreams;
I crown me with the million-colored sun
Of secret worlds incredible, and take
Their trailing skies for vestment when I soar,
Throned on the mounting zenith, and illume
The spaceward-flown horizon infinite.

I bow down before the emperor of dreams, Clark Ashton Smith.

[Mattia Ravasi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZeaF...
Featured in my Top 20 Books I Read in 2017

A true master of horror, fantasy, science fiction - all the good things of life. ST Joshi does an excellent job with this edition, which includes the genesis story of each tale included, all good stuff if you are interested in tracing the Smith-Lovecraft bromance, which I totally am.

[Stewart Tame · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some lovely classic horror and fantasy tales here. Smith was one of several contemporaries inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, and made a number of lasting contributions to the Cthulhu mythos. This anthology features an assortment of his fiction, as well as poetry and prose poems.

There's a poetic cadence and positively monstrous vocabulary to Smith’s prose. Some of his verbiage even warranted footnotes. There's a section at the back of the book with detailed information on when each story was written and published, as well as definitions for some of Smith’s more obscure terms.

The endings of some of these stories are so obvious that only a protagonist could miss them. But, as with so much of Lovecraft’s fiction, it's not the destination but the scenery along the way that's the real draw. We know that the three warriors in “The Weaver In the Vault”, for instance, are almost certainly not coming back from their mission. But it's finding out exactly what happens to them, the exact description of the titular Vault and the Weaver therein, that keep us reading.

These are fine stories indeed, most of them well-suited for reading aloud by candlelight.

One of them, “Phoenix”, particularly fascinated me as an extremely early example of science fiction. Almost all of the science in it, we now know, is inaccurate. Yes, the sun does not actually have a solid surface, and sunlight is not the result of some kind of massive form of atomic-powered volcanic activity. But it gives us a glimpse of how SF “works”. Basically, humanity wants to use atomic warheads to relight the sun. Sure, we now know that there are all kinds of things wrong with that idea. And actually, at least some of it may have been a bit sketchy even in the early 50's when the story was written. But there's a certain grandeur to the idea that's just endearing. It seems like something E.E. “Doc” Smith would have come up with. Yes, you can see the ending coming from over eight light minutes away, but it's still a fun tale.

As for the prose poems and poetry, well, I enjoyed a number of the former, but very few of the latter. I tend to be an uncouth barbarian where poetry is concerned, so believe me, the problem is almost certainly on my end and not on Smith’s. Some of the offerings were surprisingly … erotic. “The Litany of the Seven Kisses” is not something one casually declaims to random passers by. Nor is “A Psalm to the Best Beloved.” Use with caution.

Despite my tin ear for poetry, there is a wealth of good material in this book. Highly recommended!

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like CAS a lot, but this is perhaps too much of a good thing. Certainly by the time I reached the prose poems I was ready for a new author. I suspect this book will be most effective when dipped in and out of rather than read all at once.

[Quiver · Rating 3 out of 5]

I, Satampra Zeiros of Uzuldaroum, shall wirte with my left hand, since I have no longer any other, the tale of everything that befell Tirouv Ompallios and myself in the shrine of the god Tsathoggua, which lies neglected by the worship of man in the jungle-taken suburbs of Commoriom, that long-deserted capital of Hyperborean rulers.

This is the first sentence of the first tale in the collection, The Tale of Stampra Zeiros, and it exemplifies both the craft and the fantastic purple prose characteristic of Smith's style. The craft is in the hook for I have no other that begs the question why; the purple prose is hinted at by the long sentence and the compound words jungle-taken and long-deserted. Between those two elements the reader is hamstrung more or less in every subsequent paragraph of every subsequent story. Patience and inclination will play a role—it could be fun, though after a while it is also likely to become tiring, especially if consumed all at once.

The book is divided into three sections: Short Stories, Prose Poems, and Poetry. The short stories have quirky, mystical idea lurking under layers of cloying language and are worth plodding through just to get a sense of their rich worlds. The prose poems are hard going, though with the occasional pretty turn of phrase. The poetry is actually easier to read than the prose poems, and though it feels rather free of deep content, it is by no means unpleasant.

I'm glad I read this collection for its texture—linguistic and imaginative. I know of few other comparably rich works.

(In a more magical-realist vein, Bruno Schulz comes close to comparable texture in his The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories, but thankfully only close and on the pleasant side at that.)

[Kip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not really a "review," as such, just a general impression about a book of which its very existence has tickled me silly since first reading of its conception on the CAS forums many moons ago. CAS in Penguin Classics! Who'd have thunk it?! Anyway, I'll give no intro to CAS... in this era of Wikipedia et al I see no point. Instead, I'm just going to say what's included, what works, what doesn't, and what my impressions are of the collection as a whole.

Anyway, the book! It's surpassed my hopes. From the cover art to the introduction to the tales (best thing ST has penned on CAS imo), the prose-poems, and the poetry, all the way to the explanatory notes - the book is excellent. It's not perfect, of course, as I suspect that my tastes and agenda are somewhat different that ST Joshi's (the editor), but considering that I would have put ten or so tales ahead of some of the tales included in this collection - indeed, I think many will argue that The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies seems to be missing many of CAS' greatest tales - it is amazing how well these tales read again for a second (or so's) time. This collection has brought reanimated some tales that I had almost forgotten, having been initially outshone by other tales on first reading; here stories I merely considered "good" at the time are now alive and well within my imagination as they deserve to be. So, while my selected tales would have differed, I can only say that despite those disagreements this selection seems to work admirably. Okay, one or two of the stories selected slightly baffles me, especially things like 'The Face by the River,' which I can only assume was selected in an attempt to show off CAS' range and because it probably falls into the realm of a psychological ghost story (therefore satisfying the lit. crowd?), and 'Phoenix,' which I assume was only included for its overt cosmicism. As CAS readers will know, CAS' cosmicism is rarely found in any overt sense in his tales (in comparison to HP Lovecraft, at least), so I'm guessing this explains ST's inclusion of this satisfying, but, ultimately, mediocre piece. However, this is just a matter of taste, and some will no doubt make arguments for its inclusion.

Obviously allowances have to be made, as Joshi's choice was further constrained by space, due to squeezing in a taster of CAS' poetic output too, and I feel this is where this collection really stands out over other collections... Much of CAS' prose reads like prose-poetry, so the inclusion of his poetry and prose-poems really makes sense, and the combined effect shows CAS at his best. Actually, my only criticism is I'd have liked to have seen the poetry and prose-poems included before the prose, but I can understand why the inverse order was decided upon. Kudos to Penguin for insisting upon the inclusion of CAS' longer poetry too.

So, if you're a CAS fanatic then you've already got this, I assume. If you're a mere dabbler, then I guess it's the selection of stories and poetry that will make this selected works appeal or not. A lot of the tales, in their bastardized forms, can be found in other collections, so I suspect it will be the poetry that will appeal to those who have a CAS collection or two on their shelves. For the newbie, despite a slightly arguable selection of tales, I think this represents the best place to start, unless you have absolutely zero interest in CAS' poetry. If you simply just want a collection of CAS' best tales, then I might not recommend this, except I'm not sure there is an ideal (corrected texts) one volume starting place for CAS' stories in print at the moment. So, if in doubt, buy this or buy whichever volumes of the Collected Fantasies that are still in print while you can.

[Arisawe Hampton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the writings of Clark Ashton Smith. He was the quintessenstial poet. BOW DOWN, I AM THE EMPEROR OF DREAMS. I Crown me with the million-colored suns of secret worlds incredible and take their trailing skies
for vestment. His fiction is also clothed in words that are poetry. His only peer is Lord Dunsany.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Normally it would take me a couple of days to read a book this length, but for various reasons I've been reading this on and off for a couple of weeks. It needs time to absorb the fantastically rich and opulent purpureal prose.

Clark Ashton Smith writes wonderfully, his imagination is wild, untamed and he revels in the bizarre and fantastic - the miasma of his diction clusters and saturates the page. He was a champion of unknown and rarely used words, and this enhances the sheer strangeness and esoteric theme of many of the stories. The book abounds in strange and exotic flora and fauna, forgotten tombs, strange worlds, explorations into space, discoveries of time travelling, witches, mummies, black magic and the occult arts. In short, it's FABULOUS, and as a whole an incredibly rich collection of work.

The book is split into three sections: short stories, prose poems, poetry and I feel as been carefully selected to represent a real range of his writing and output. Immensely enjoyable, an absolute must for any Lovecraft fans or enthusiasts of weird fiction. Highly highly recommended!

*book received as a Christmas gift from my brother.

[Andrew]

Clark Ashton Smith had the fortune to be writing his stories in an earlier time. Some of them are masterworks of Gothic creepiness, just weird, eerie things that dance around your mind for a while. Others make Lovecraft sound like Hemingway, have evil alien lord characters named Zogdor or some damn thing, and have plots that nowadays would come to the public as a movie called "Mummies on Mars 3-D." Maybe that was revolutionary 100 years ago, but now it's laughable. And a lot of Smith's verse-poetry has aged even more horribly, and lands firmly in the "definitely shops at Hot Topic" camp.

[Philipp · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good friend of H.P. Lovecraft, and it shows - both "universes" overlap a bit (the Necromonicon and Yog-Sothoth make an appearance here, for example), but Smith also came up with his own books. There are two differences: Smith vocabulary [1] is humongous compared to Lovecraft. Where everything "moves blasphemously" for Lovecraft, Smith does this:

All the hideous things that had swarmed upon me beneath the cacophonous beating of those accursed gongs, drew near again for a moment; and I looked with fearful vertigo into hells of perversity and corruption. I saw an inverted soul, despairing of good, which longed for the baleful ecstasies of perdition. No longer did I think him merely mad: for I knew the thing which he sought and could attain; and I remembered, with a new significance, that line of Baudelaire's poem - "L'enfer dont mon coeur se plait."

(which, by the way, is a misquote as the footnotes explain).

Smith has a much better rhythm and feels much more natural to read, compared to Lovecraft who often feels clunky or forced. But, Smith just isn't as original in "worldbuilding" as Lovecraft - contrary to Lovecraft Smith's stories are often set in a relatively generic fantasy world in which some evil wizard does something evil (for added strangeness everybody's name starts with an X or a Z), stories that could have worked in One Thousand and One Nights, but feel weird and not very original coming from a relatively recent American author. I felt similar about the prose poems and the poems, but Smith's language makes it worth.

However, Smith's overflow of adjectives and adverbs doesn't always work out:

Xeethra plunged incontinently into the dark cave.

Recommended for: Fans of Lovecraft, or those who love overflowing language

[1] As a side: The German word "Wordschatz" is so much better than your "vocabulary". "Wordschatz" literally means "treasure of words", a much more apt description.

[Zac Hawkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clark Ashton-Smith has very quickly become my favourite of the early 20th century Weird scribes. His marriage of grim histrionics rubbing up against the flabby, pulsating flesh of horrors that eclipse Lovecrafts scope in their sheer audacious beauty is something truly to be cherished. Incredible collection from Penguin that doesn’t attempt to be a one-stop-shop of the mans A list material but instead offered a veritable platter of different and holistically tuned tales that encourages further exploration of the depths of Poseidonis, the pastures ablaze with taloned beasts in Averoigne, or the lost awakening horrors of Hyperborea.
Kicking myself for not jumping on the Ashton-Smith wagon sooner holy fuck.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

As so many do, I came to Clark Ashton Smith by way of Lovecraft, and I'm quite pleased to have found him. Tonally his stories cast a much wider net, which means reading the entirety of the collection over a short span of time is a bit easier than reading your way straight through an HPL anthology. Unfortunately (for me, at least), editor S.T. Joshi decided to give the last third of this collection over to prose poems (which I loathe) and poetry proper (which I adore, but not when I'm looking for horror stories). So despite an informative introduction, solid endnotes, and the inclusion of gems like "The Devotee of Evil" and "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" my enthusiasm for Smith had waned by the time I finished the volume.

Reading CAS did, however, bring up an interesting question for me as a reader. According to Joshi's introduction, Smith was forced by circumstance to be a bit more ruthlessly pragmatic in his approach to writing than Lovecraft (well, circumstances tried to force Lovecraft, but he just chose to ignore them). Faced with the necessity of supporting ailing parents, Smith apparently gave way much more frequently to the editorial demands of the pulps who paid him, as opposed to HPL, who liked to take his toys and go home. So the question arises: Am I enjoying CAS more consistently than HPL because he's gone commercial and sold out and I'm just culturally conditioned to enjoy that kind of thing? Or did the need to work within the strictures of editorial review make his work better than it otherwise might have been?

It's a point worth considering, though it's not one that can be settled without a greater exploration of Smith's work. Which - despite the unintentional horror of those prose poems - I'm more than willing to undertake.

[Benjamin · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was near impossible to read Clark Ashton Smith without drawing parallels to H.P. Lovecraft. The two are nearly the same. But, with that said, I prefer the short stories of Clark Ashton much more. He, in many cases, has a much darker imagination. I found myself mind blown with stories such as Xeethra, The Face by the River, City of the Singing Flame, or The Double Shadow. These stories, while not entirely unlike your typical weird fiction, had more of a psychological edge to them, and as a result the horror I felt was much more compelling. Other stories were less hallucination inducing, but no less frightening. Themes in this collection are a odd mix of sci-fi and fantasy, all with a taste of dark suspense and horror.
The Poetry was nothing too inspiring or altogether impressive, but I did particularly enjoy The Hashish Eater, The Tears of Lilith, and The Motes.
Favorite short story?
The Dark Eidolon, hands down.

[Captain Sir Roddy, R.N. (Ret.) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This guy can write some seriously scary stuff! Just one example is the short story "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" . . . Oh, crap . . .

Anyhoo, this is a collection of just a small portion of Clark Ashton Smith's short stories, some of his prose poems, and a nice collection of his poetry. As usual, Penguin does a great job putting these collections together for the reader. I highly recommend this collection.

I have actually purchased Clark Ashton Smith's short story collection in his "Zothique" universe (Zothique: The Final Cycle and his The Averoigne Chronicles. I have heard really good things about both story collections.

[Andrew Owen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Within these pages lie unspeakable beasts of anthroprophagic inclinations, ancient vine chocked edifices of Hyperborean civilization lost in the sea of time, and the twisted abominations of cosmic maleficence all conspiring to remind humanity of its minuscule place in the universe. Containing some of Smith's best short stories, poetry, and prose, each showcasing his extraordinary language craft. What a discovery!

[Antony F · Rating 4 out of 5]

The prose is somewhat archaic but the Sword & Sorcery/DnD vibes in some of the stories really did it for me. The poetry, for me, was a little hit and miss but the fiction was pretty good at minimum. Worth checking out if you like old school fantasy/weird/horror fiction.

[Dxarmbar06 · Rating 5 out of 5]

The literary caliber of this volume is off the charts! This guy taught me new words! Here is a master whose command of the English language is worthy of song. NOT FOR PLEBS!

[Rob Atkinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

[3.5 stars: an average of 4 for the stories, 3 for the poetry]

[Ronald Morton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Back when I was in high school I checked out a couple Clark Ashton Smith hardbacks - time has completely erased the memory of which - because I was just starting my overall Lovecraft kick, having finished the library’s couple Lovecraft collections for the second time and was seeking out more in that vein; somehow (this is like right when the internet was becoming generally available, but I don’t think the public library had it yet) I’d made the connection that this fit into the same general space. I remember really enjoying these stories to start, but by the end of the second book I was glad to put them behind me. The decades have dulled my overall impression of them at the time, but I vaguely feel that I found them needlessly wordy, a bit silly in their reliance on made up complicated names, and overall a bit same-y. The reason I even revisited Smith through the collection is that I recognize that those descriptors can also be applied to Lovecraft, so I figured I give this a shot (plus, I bought it used for cheap a few years ago, so my only loss was time).

The opening paragraph was not very promising:

I, Satampra Zeiros of Uzuldaroum, shall write with my left hand, since I have no longer any other, the tale of everything that befell Tirouv Ompallios and myself in the shrine of the god Tsathoggua, which lies neglected by the worship of man in the jungle-taken suburbs of Commoriom, that long-deserted capital of the Hyperborean rulers. I shall write it with the violet juice of the suvana-palm, which turns to a blood-red rubric with the passage of years, on a strong vellum that is made from the skin of the mastodon, as a warning to all good thieves and adventurers who may hear some lying legend of the lost treasures of Commoriom and be tempted thereby.

Though that story ended up with a bit of a Conan vibe, so I wasn’t entirely put off by it. The second story was needlessly wordy AND a bit silly in its reliance on made up complicated names. So not the best of starts.

But, there is a subset of this collection where the majority of the action is not taking place in made up fantastical lands, and those - even when they end up linked to made up fantastical lands because apparently Smith just can’t help himself - actually were pretty good. And while they are not the majority of this collection, or really even half, there are a fair number of them here, and they are suitably Lovecraftian and Weird as to make this at least worth the time I spent with it.

Oh, but not the prose poems. Or the poems. Just stop while you’re ahead and go read something else once you hit those.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, this was decent, though a lot of the stories suffered from bloating: I wished I could trim the prose and clean up the plots. Clark Ashton Smith is clearly a smart guy, but I didn't feel like every single word and piece of ancient history his knows needed to make their way into the stories. That said, I appreciate the stories themselves, I appreciate the contributions to cosmic horror / sword & sorcery / and even sci fi, and there's some quirky characters, spooky places, and wit that I really enjoy.

Top Stories for me:

"The Face by the River" - gave me chills. Felt like it could have been written recently, this haunting and a murderer

"The Holiness of Azederac" - I thought it was going to be a standard cosmic horror (with monks), but the time travel was fun and quirky

"Xeethra" - back and forth double life, a king and a goat heard, and a lot of thought about meaning in your life

"Phoenix" - the most strictly sci-fi of the bunch, a very futuristic story and a love story all in one.

The prose poems suffered from the bloat, like they were stories he wanted to just write description and nothing else. Some were still lovely, but none were real shining stars for me.

There's some lovely poetry in this collection though, from the 21-page fever dream of "The Hashish Eater, or the Apocalypse of Evil" (all the big words and ancient history finally work for me here!), to the dark love poems of "Love Malevolent" and "Exorcism" to his very strong memoiral poems including the sweeter "Requiescat in Pace" and "To Howard Philips Lovecraft" where he imagines the other writer meeting with some of his creations.

All together, a solid read with good stories that could have been shorter.

[Laika · Rating 4 out of 5]

These would have blown my mind if I'd read them in the 1930s. Reading them 90 years after they were released, I've seen many of the same ideas since, although never with better prose.

My favorite stories:

The End of the Story:
The classic eldritch horror setup of doomed curiosity but with a gothic ancient greece aesthetic.

Beast of Averoigne:
Basically a sci-fi riff in the classic werewolf story told from multiple POVs.

City of Singing Flame:
Another eldritch horror story, but this time it's artists being drawn to something beautiful that will kill them. What makes it more memorable is when drawn to the location the narrator's beautiful descriptions of truly alien beings from countless other worlds all also drawn to the same doom.

Xeethra:
Classic fantasy setup of a farmer who yearns for more that evolves into a dark fairytale with a Mobius strip structure.

[Carlos Arellano · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this collection is one of the best I have read that combine weird fiction, horror, super natural, the fantastic, and science fiction. The language used as well as the way the stories are displayed is unique and awakes a feeling of fear and strangeness.