Clark Ashton Smith

[Mr Fraaz]

also what sort of influence he may have had.

I don't know if it's relevant outside of a Swedish language context, but the currently active fantasy writer Erik Granström mentions Clark Ashton Smith as a source of inspiration. C. A. S. is on my reading list.

 

[PhillipAEllis]

I am one of those that rate his poetry far more highly than we rate his fiction. I came to CAS through his fiction, but was agog at the skill and technique of his poetry, which I came to via the Eldritch Dark website. For a long while, with every new poem it posted I made a printout and collated them into a series of lever-arch folders; then I started collecting the poetry books when I got the money and means to pay for them.

 

[j d worthington]

Currently, as part of my Lovecraft-centered reading program, I am going through a lot of related material as well, in chronological sequence in most cases, but occasionally specifically timed for the point in Lovecraft's life I am dealing with when it comes to his own writing. Presently, that related reading is Ebony and Crystal, which I would say is one of Smith's greatest poetry collections; or, to be more exact, collections of "poetry in verse and prose", as the title page of the original edition says.

Now, I don't have a copy of the book itself -- not even the slightly altered version one can find in his Selected Poems (Arkham House, 1971) -- but I do have Donald Sidney-Fryer's Emperor of Dreams: A Clark Ashton Smith Bibliography, which includes a complete listing of the pieces in each volume, and two copies (one being a tpb gift set from Wilum Pugmire, bless him!) of the Hippocampus Press Complete Poetry and Translations, as well as some other odds and ends, such as Sidney-Fryer's edition of The Hashish-Eater, which includes both the original version of the poem (included in E&C) as well as the revised version (included in SP)*... all of which allows me to read at least the contents (including Sterling's prefatory note) and get the overall impression of the collection... which in turn has led me to the conclusion I mention above about the quality of this particular volume.

Anyway... as with Phillip, the more I read of Smith's poetry, the more I find (despite my intense liking for much of his fiction) that Smith's greatest strength was as a poet; for he certainly is one of the most powerful and accomplished I've encountered in a very, very long time; at his best he certainly on a par with Poe, and even at times Milton... no small praise.

So, for those who might want to find out what we're talking about, this:

Ebony and Crystal in the Bibliography of Clark Ashton Smith

which both gives the table of contents and links to each piece; making it possible for those who can't get their hands on a copy of the book to nevertheless recapture much of the experience. It is an experience I highly recommend to lovers of beauty, the weird, or simply a magnificent use of the English language....

*Incidentally, for those who might be interested, Smith himself noted that "The Hashish-Eater" is quite intentionally in the mode (albeit in verse rather than prose) of Flaubert's Temptation of Saint Anthony... and, I would add, likely the Lafcadio Hearn translation....

 

[BAYLOR]

His Best Story The City of the Singing Flame Powerful stuff.

 

[j d worthington]

His Best Story The City of the Singing Flame Powerful stuff.

Were you aware of Harlan Ellison's comments on that one? He credits it with being one of the (if not the) major influences on his becoming a writer of the fantastic....

 

[BAYLOR]

Were you aware of Harlan Ellison's comments on that one? He credits it with being one of the (if not the) major influences on his becoming a writer of the fantastic....

Because of Ellison I discovered this wonderful story .Ive read this one several times It's one of the greatest short stories, ive ever read. I recommend it constantly to people.

 

[Fried Egg]

Yes, it was the first CAS story to really blow me away. Such powerfully evocative description of an unimaginable, fantastic world.

 

[Zendexor]

Yes, it was the first CAS story to really blow me away. Such powerfully evocative description of an unimaginable, fantastic world.

See also the plant-dominated world in The Demon of the Flower. The first few paragraphs of that could be used as key examples of Smith's style at its most jewelled.

 

[Zendexor]

And Smith, too, was quite fond of Spenser, as I recall. Certainly, he was very well read in the older poetic traditions (though having little use for much of the moderns). He himself had been labeled as something of an American Keats with his early published verse, and I don't think it is stretching things very much, either. (His later verse didn't show a falling-off, but it suffered, as far as critical acclaim is concerned, from the almost wholesale rejection of earlier forms in favor of the Modernist movement.)

I agree with Dr. Farmer, with a few reservations.* One of the things I so like about Smith is the complex interweaving of various emotions in his work -- a strong poetic sensibility in much of his prose which makes the reading much more than the actual incidents of the tale -- and therefore very much a fresh experience each time I visit it.

*Most of these exceptions are in his "interplanetary" tales written for the sf markets -- though not all of those are of a lower order, either; some are quite good -- and a few of his tales of outright grue. In nearly all these instances, they were written very much for desperately-needed money to support his aged and very sickly parents. Even so, several of these also have some very interesting aspects.

Glad you mentioned the interplanetary tales. I've counted four great Solar System adventures: "Master of the Asteroid", "The Immortals of Mercury", "Vulthoom" (set on Mars) and "The Immeasurable Horror" (set on Venus). The mysterious, anciently inhabited Mars and the fecund Venus are archetypes of their kind. I wish he had done a Moon story. Smith was so good, I keep wishing he had done more. But maybe he didn't realize how good he was as a prose storyteller - if he primarily thought of himself as a poet.

 

[BAYLOR]

The Vaults of Yoh Vombus it's my second favorite story . It's likely one of the inspiration for the film Alien.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

My favorite stories by Smith are those set in Averoigne. Somehow they seem to me to be tighter and less self-indulgent than some of the others.

 

[BAYLOR]

My favorite stories by Smith are those set in Averoigne. Somehow they seem to me to be tighter and less self-indulgent than some of the others.

Those were great as well .

As a Teenager he wrote an adventure novel The Black Diamonds . it seems to be his only novel length work.

 

[Zendexor]

My favorite stories by Smith are those set in Averoigne. Somehow they seem to me to be tighter and less self-indulgent than some of the others.

And of these my favourite is "The Holiness of Azédarac". Has a humorous charm, combined with its haunting vividness; a combination which reminds me of his very different "The Monster of the Prophecy" (an interstellar adventure).

 

[BAYLOR]

And of these my favourite is "The Holiness of Azédarac". Has a humorous charm, combined with its haunting vividness; a combination which reminds me of his very different "The Monster of the Prophecy" (an interstellar adventure).

Both excellent.

 

[Zendexor]

That would make sense, considering CAS's penchant for melding various types of organisms together via some form of "surgery" -- be it sorcerous or otherwise -- usually to enhance the strangeness and decadence of the milieu he was depicting... and to increase its "picturesqueness". (Think of the Maze of Maal Dweb" for example.)

And "The Garden of Adompha".

 

[BAYLOR]

I read "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" (celebrated as the debut of Tsathoggua, or anyway of its idol); I would have read it before, in the early Seventies, but I didn't remember it upon revisiting it just now. It is an example of a type of story common in the weird fiction-imaginary world genre -- I mean, who of us has not only not read, but has not written, a story of attempted theft from an ancient temple -- ghastly consequences ensuing for the would-be burglar? There must be dozens or hundreds of these in print, and more in the files of unpublished fan fiction. In my case it was called "Teloktek's Eyes." Thief rows boat to abandoned (ho! ho!) temple; steals rare stone from bird-idol's eye-socket; out in boat, "stone" hatches; curtain falls, with implication that hatchee was ready for immediate carnage. I thought Smith's temple-guardian was clever, particularly when it oozes in separate streams through gaps in wall and then reunites. It is possible that a very distant memory of this scene influenced something in my so-far-not-quite-finished-let-alone-published Ash Lad. Perhaps there was a teensy bit of Ashton Smith to thank there.

Then I read "The Last Incantation," which departed from Wikipedia's generalization (which I think is probably true) about Smith's stories: "his weird fiction is generally macabre in subject matter, gloatingly preoccupied with images of death, decay and abnormality." The story is about disenchantment. As such it reminded me of a good, though obscure, essay by C. S. Lewis, called "Talking of Bicycles." The essay suggests a fourfold experience:

1.unenchanted
2.enchanted
3.disenchanted
4.re-enchanted

One of the examples, the one most pertinent for the Smith story, deals with romantic love.

1.In the unenchanted state, a boy (the example given is of a male) is not yet interested in girls.
2.The lad falls in love with a girl.
3.Married to her, he comes to see that the woman is not the radiant being that he perceived when they both were younger.

That's about where Smith's story stops (of course, Malygris never married Nylissa; his disenchantment comes after he brings her back from the dead and soon is disappointed in her) and where many stories and, I suppose, many people's experience, stop.

However, a further stage is possible:

4."'[T]here comes a time when you look back on that first mirage, and yet, seeing all the things that have come out of it, things the boy and girl could never have dreamed of, and feeling also that to remember it is, in a sense, to bring it back in reality, so that under all the other experiences it is still there like a shell lying at the bottom of a clear, deep pool -- and that nothing would have happened at all without it -- so that even when it was least true it was telling you important truths in the only form you could then understand -- '" etc.

Lewis also suggests that there's a difference between genuine disenchantment, which can be worth reading about, and unenchantment that falsely presents itself as disenchantment, which is a waste of time to read. "'Has the writer been through the Enchantment and come out on the bleak highlands, or is he simply a subman who is free from the love mirage as a dog is free....?'"

By the way, but this is irrelevant for Smith's story -- Lewis also suggests it's important to be able to distinguish between enchantment and re-enchantment. "'The war poetry of Homer or The Battle of Maldon, for example, is Re-enchantment. You see in every line that the poet knows, quite as well as any modern, the horrible thing he is writing about. He celebrates heroism but he has paid the proper price for doing son. he sees the horror and yet sees also the glory.'"

The First story I ever read by him was The Tale Satampra Zeiros and I was hooked .


I read The Last Incantation and in that story, I felt pity for Malygris . However, in the The Death of Malygris , I felt no pity for him, at all, because in truth, Malygris in becoming the powerful Wizard that he became ,lost all his humanity . That seems to be common theme with Clark Ashton Smith Wizard's . They become powerful and they become disconnected and aloof from humanity and in the process ,they become not pleasant people.

 

[BAYLOR]

A writer I will always reccoemd to people

Another golden age author here - the name is very familiar, but I'm not able to put any stories to the name. Although I have a list of books by him, I'm uncertain of the themes of his writing, and also what sort of influence he may have had.

Can anyone please satiate my curiosity?

I know this is few after the fact but , iClark Ashton Smith , is one of the on one of the greats in fantasy literature . If you like elegant ,unique and beautiful prose with great story telling , He has it and then some. There is no one like him at all. His best friends were HP Lovecrat, and Robert E Howard , were both giants in the filed of fanatic literature . But Clark Ashton Smith towered over them both.

Of further interest is Vathek by William Beckford . This novel had an quite n influence on Smith and his writing style and story telling .He also expanded on a chapter by Beckford that was not included in Vathek when it was published. This expanded on story is include in Smith's Collected works The Third Episode of Vathek : The Story of the Princess Zulkais and the Prince Kalilah. It can also be found in one the Adult fantasy anthologies, ive seen it but have forgotten which one.

 

[Sargeant_Fox]

I'm over 100 pages into Hippocampus' The Complete Interplanetary Tales of Clark Ashton Smith and loving it so far. This is introduction to this author.

There's a lot of innocence and carefreeness in his settings, to think that Mars and Venus were overbrimming with lush jungles and breathable atmospheres. No wonder hard sci-fi became a thing!

But it's a good thing he didn't care about pesky facts and just let his imagination overflow! Way to more Martian underground cults and temples crawling with dark gods.

Was he fixated on plant-based intelligent life forms! Some are benign, some are planetary conquerors, nice balance. "Seedling of Mars" was utterly unexpected.

Also, lots of reference to mind-altering substances.

When I read in the Intro that "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" may have been the inspiration for the "Alien" movie, I was like, "There must be a hundred other guys who claim that honor". But reading the story, damn, the critter does look a lot like the face-hugger! And CAS adds the extra horror that the thing actually dissolves the top part of the skull and is lodged right over the brain! What an image! And it turns the victims into zombies.

So far so good.

 

[BAYLOR]

I'm over 100 pages into Hippocampus' The Complete Interplanetary Tales of Clark Ashton Smith and loving it so far. This is introduction to this author.

There's a lot of innocence and carefreeness in his settings, to think that Mars and Venus were overbrimming with lush jungles and breathable atmospheres. No wonder hard sci-fi became a thing!

But it's a good thing he didn't care about pesky facts and just let his imagination overflow! Way to more Martian underground cults and temples crawling with dark gods.

Was he fixated on plant-based intelligent life forms! Some are benign, some are planetary conquerors, nice balance. "Seedling of Mars" was utterly unexpected.

Also, lots of reference to mind-altering substances.

When I read in the Intro that "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" may have been the inspiration for the "Alien" movie, I was like, "There must be a hundred other guys who claim that honor". But reading the story, damn, the critter does look a lot like the face-hugger! And CAS adds the extra horror that the thing actually dissolves the top part of the skull and is lodged right over the brain! What an image! And it turns the victims into zombies.

So far so good.

Seedling of Mars is excellent story , very nasty ending.

Ive read The Vaults of Yoh Vombus quite a number of times. its one my favorite stories by Smith . Richard Corben who did work for Heavy Metal Magazine , did a graphic novel adaptation it.


My favorite story by Smight Is The City's of the Singing Flame of which did s sequel Beyond the Singing Flame and he was planning a third story in the cycle .

Other stores you might find od interest

The Plutonian Drug

The Eternal World