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catastrophe of World War I.
The implications of the triumph attendant on Eliot’s own success, and later
that of Ezra Pound, along with other modernist figures, can only be imagined for those poetic masters whose work had been painstakingly cast in the traditional
prosody, regardless of the grandeur of the vision and thought behind their verses.
Right in the forefront of these traditionalist masters Sterling and Smith occupied a prominent place, for those cognoscenti who knew their work in depth. The two poets in their final exchange of letters during 1926 show themselves quite conscious of the major shift in poetic taste and sensibility that was occurring, and also sensitive to the implications for their own respective outputs. Whether by deliberate or accidental suicide Sterling as the poet laureate of the Far West, the foremost public defender of the classico-romantic tradition, died in late 1926. True, his death
represented a great loss to that tradition, not to mention personally to Clark Ashton Smith, but Sterling had accomplished almost everything that he could have on behalf of traditionalist poetry in English, that is, as it had evolved up through the first quarter of the twentieth century.
Just what could Smith do now, stranded as he was, almost “in the teeth of our
new Didactic School, the protagonists of the human and the vital,” the newly triumphant masters of the modern mode in poetry? Left behind in the countryside of roll-ing hills near Auburn, a thousand feet above sea level, Smith as the poet laureate of the otherworldly continued to live with his parents from the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s; but now, thanks to the earnest encouragement of Smith’s friend Genevieve K.
Sully, who, during the summer of 1927 when they were visiting Crater (now Hyperboreal) Ridge, urged him to write fiction for the emerging pulp magazines, the young poet would ignore his former mentor’s advice to give up “this macabre prose” and would produce between the late 1920s and late 1930s some 140 completed stories.
Klarkash-Ton and “Greek”
31
There is a certain irony here because, just as “A Wine of Wizardry” anticipates The Hashish-Eater, and the latter poem anticipates much of Smith’s fantastic fiction of that decade (1928–38), so does “A Wine of Wizardry” clearly prefigure in a generic way the extremely picturesque or pictorial character of many of Smith’s typical, far-ranging, and most polished fantasies, his extended poems in prose.
At least one episode in “A Wine of Wizardry,” the one involving Satan and Li-
lith, lines 155–64, directly anticipates one of the details or episodes near the end of one of Smith’s very last stories of any type whatsoever as published in the fantasy and science fiction magazines of the early 1950s.
But Fancy still is fugitive, and turns
To caverns where a demon altar burns,
And Satan, yawning on his brazen seat,
Fondles a screaming thing his fiends have flayed,
Ere Lilith come his indolence to greet,
Who leads from Hell his whitest queens, arrayed
In chains so heated at their master’s fire
That one new-damned had thought their bright attire
Indeed were coral, till the dazzling dance
So terribly that brilliance shall enhance. (Sterling 150–51)
In its issue for November of 1953 the magazine Fantasy Fiction published a late and rather mordant story “Schizoid Creator.” Near the end of the narrative one of his lieutenants, Bifrons, comes to report to Satan.
He found that Master of that picturesque region occupied in caressing a
half-flayed girl. The flaying had been done to render the caresses more intimate and more exquisitely agonizing.
Satan listened gravely [. . .] His tapering artistic fingers, with long-pointed nails of polished jet, ceased their occupation; and a furrow appeared like a black triangle between his luminous brows.
[. . .]
When Bifrons departed, Satan summoned his chief lieutenants before him in
the halls of Pandemonium.
“I am going away for awhile,” he told them. “There are certain obligations of
a pressing nature that call me—and I must not neglect them too long. In my ab-
sence, I consign the management of Hell to your competent hands.”
[. . .]
When they had gone, he descended from his globed throne and passed through
many corridors and by upward-winding stairs to the small postern gate of Hell.
The door swung open without touch of any visible hand. A long white robe
seemed to weave itself from the air about Satan’s form. His infernal attributes withered and dropped away. And the long white beard of the Elohim sprouted and
flowed down over his bosom as he stepped across the sill into Heaven. ( TSS 219–20)
32 THE FREEDOM OF FANTASTIC THINGS
But it is less in the specific passages and details of “A Wine of Wizardry,”
and more in the manner of envisioning any fantastic scene or tableau, and of shaping it into words, that we can trace the genuine continuity from the varie-gated contents of Sterling’s second greatest poem to many scenes and settings in Smith’s mature fiction of 1928–38. (The greatest influence on Smith’s early or
juvenile fiction seems to have been The Arabian Nights, coupled with the standard fairy tales.) However, it is beyond the scope of this essay to pursue this continuity from Sterling (and not just from “A Wine of Wizardry,” but from his
four earliest collections of poetry) to Smith in detail, apart from our one token example. The compressed or compact mode of presentation so typical of poetry,
including “A Wine of Wizardry,” obviously carries over to the clear but compact prose typical of Smith’s best short stories, those which justify the designation of extended poems in prose.
It is precisely by the veritable flood or avalanche of Smith’s often dark and
mordant fantasies in prose, with their cosmic indifference (rather than pessi-
mism or nihilism), that Sterling’s protégé redeems not only Sterling’s own type of make-believe (marked by his own profound cosmic pessimism), as the direct
but very late inheritance of the full-blown romantic tradition, but redeems no
less, even if indirectly, Sterling’s own substantial poetic output. Without the latter there might not have existed any Smith at all whether as poet or as prosateur of fantasy, or of the uninhibited human imagination. This creative influence from the older poet to the younger one, like father to son, or older brother to younger
one, will always remain as the greatest possible monument or homage to Sterling as a fructifying force of literature.
What of Sterling’s bold assertion or prophecy that he made on behalf of Smith
in late October 1922 while writing the foreword for Ebony and Crystal? “Who of us care to be present at the accouchement of the immortal? I think that we so attend who are first to take this book in our hands. A bold assertion, truly, and one demonstrable only in years remote from these; and—dust wages no war with dust.” The first step to immortality for any author or poet is to have his output in whole or in part printed and then reprinted. Produced by Smith during 1944–49 as a manuscript, and published in November 1971 by Arkham House, the Selected Poems, totalling almost 425
pages, resurrects not only his first three major collections but makes available for the first time his later collections or cycles of poems, created in the later 1920s, the 1930s, and the 1940s, such as The Jasmine Girdle, Incantations, The Hill of Dionysus, and Experiments in Haiku. Selected Poems contains about 500 selections, and hence a major part of Smith’s mature poetic output. Published in 1923, Sterling’s own Selected Poems at over 230 pages contains his best work, but only one major portion of his overall output of poems. Sometime after 1970, a specialist publisher for libraries reprinted Sterling’s own volume on acid-free paper in a facsimile edition by photolithography, the cop
ies being sturdily bound in library-style hardcovers, made to withstand a great
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33
deal of handling. Thus the poems of both Smith and Sterling, at least in part, have managed to take the first important step on the way to immortality: their poetic output, or the best of it, has undergone reprinting. Vivat liber! Long live the book!
Postscript
Although probably interpreted by most readers as a mythic presentiment of
a major new poetic voice, Sterling’s sonnet “The Coming Singer” (first collected in Beyond the Breakers in 1914) was privately dedicated to Smith, but never in print. It remains the most ideal tribute ever paid to Klarkash-Ton.
The Veil before the mystery of things
Shall stir for him with iris and with light;
Chaos shall have no terror in his sight
Nor Earth a bond to chafe his urgent wings;
With sandals beaten from the crowns of kings
Shall he tread down the altars of their night,
And stand with Silence on her breathless height,
To hear what song the star of morning sings.
With perished beauty in his hands as clay,
Shall he restore futurity its dream.
Behold! his feet shall take a heavenly way
Of choric silver and of chanting fire,
Till in his hands unshapen planets gleam,
’Mid murmurs from the Lion and the Lyre. (Sterling 171)
Works Cited
Benediktsson, Thomas E. George Sterling. Boston: Twayne, 1980.
Sterling, George. The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror. Edited by S. T. Joshi.
New York: Hippocampus Press, 2003.
Contemporary Reviews of
Clark Ashton Smith
I. The Star-Treader and Other Poems
Porter Garnett. “A Young Poet and True.” San Francisco Call (1 December 1912): 6.1
The emergence of a true poet usually excites an interest which is more general than genuine. Clark Ashton Smith, whose book The Star-Treader and Other Poems has just been brought out by A. M. Robertson, is a true poet. He is a truer poet than we had any right to infer from the examples of his which have appeared in the news columns of the daily press in advance of their publication. Let one of Mr. Smith’s most charming productions speak for itself:
CLOUD ISLANDS2
What islands marvellous are these,
That gem the sunset’s tides of light—
Opals aglow in saffron seas?
How beautiful they lie, and bright,
Like some new-found Hesperides!
What varied, changing magic hues
Tint gorgeously each shore and hill!
What blazing, vivid golds and blues
Their seaward winding valleys fill!
What amethysts their peaks suffuse!
Close held by curving arms of land
That out within the ocean reach,
I mark a faery city stand,
Set high upon a sloping beach
That burns with fire of shimmering sand.
Of sunset-light is formed each wall;
Each dome a rainbow-bubble seems;
And every spire that towers tall
A ray of golden moonlight gleams;
Of opal-flame is every hall.
Contemporary Reviews of Clark Ashton Smith
35
Alas! how quickly dims their glow!
What veils their dreamy splendours mar!
Like broken dreams the islands go,
As down from strands of cloud and star,
The sinking tides of daylight flow.
Here is a poem of a rare and symmetrical beauty which does not falter unless
one were to quarrel with the line,
That out within the ocean reach.
If, however, its beauty seems too frail, let us turn to the splendid sonnet “Retrospect and Forecast,” in which we meet the philosophic note. It is upon a poem such as this that Mr. Smith’s reputation may most securely rest:
RETROSPECT AND FORECAST
Turn round, O Life, and know with eyes aghast
The breast that fed thee—Death, disguiseless, stern;
Even now, within thy mouth, from tomb and urn,
The dust is sweet. All nurture that thou hast
Was once as thou, and fed with lips made fast
On Death, whose sateless mouth it fed in turn.
Kingdoms debased, and thrones that starward yearn,
All are but ghouls that batten on the past.
Monstrous and dread, must it fore’er abide,
This unescapable alternity?
Must loveliness find root within decay,
And night devour its flaming hues alway?
Sickening, will Life not turn eventually,
Or ravenous Death at last be satisfied.
But these poems are not typical of Mr. Smith’s muse. They are merely his best.
They are the poems that he himself is likely to prefer in a few years. Here is another short poem of exquisite perfection. Two similar lyrics, “The Dream Bridge”
and “A Live Oak Leaf” almost equal it:
PINE NEEDLES
O little lances, dipped in grey,
And set in order straight and clean,
How delicately clear and keen
Your points against the sapphire day!
* * * * *
36 THE FREEDOM OF FANTASTIC THINGS
Attesting Nature’s perfect art
Ye fringe the limpid firmament,
O little lances, keenly sent
To pierce with beauty to the heart!
The following quatrain is a peculiarly happy expression of a form seldom han-
dled so well.
THE PRICE
Behind each thing a shadow lies;
Beauty hath e’er its cost;
Within the moonlight-flooded skies
How many stars are lost!
A careful examination of the contents of this little volume is productive of
certain definite impressions. The first impression is drawn from the poems—
“Nero,” “The Star Treader,” etc.—which have been placed at the beginning pre-
sumably because they are considered the poet’s best. They are his most ambitious productions and in many ways they are remarkable. There is no denying their rich-ness and power, but in the last analysis they fail to evoke the finer emotions which it is the function of poetry to excite. If one were to read these first poems only, the verdict could hardly be favorable. Indeed, it is probable that some critics, basing their judgments on these poems in seeing in them imperfections, will say things that are hasty and unkind.
It is unfortunate that in this first collection of Mr. Smith’s poems the dates of production should not have been given. It would then be possible (and interesting) to mark the steps of what is patently a growing talent. It is perhaps unnecessary to add that all true talent must be in a fluid state of growth! The moment it becomes set it ceases to have constructive value. The more nearly it keeps apace with the forward movement of the art of which it is the expression, the greater its significance and the more enduring it will be.
Regarding these more ambitious poems of Mr. Smith’s, the reader will find the
poet’s declaration of principles (from which in the poems already quoted he happily departs) in his “Ode on Imagination,” which begins thus:
Imagination’s eyes
Outreach and distance far
The vision of the greatest star
That measures instantaneously—
Enisled therein as in a sea—
Its cincture of the system-laden skies.
Abysses closed about with night
A tribute yield
Contemporary Reviews of Clark Ashton Smith
37
To her retardless sight;
And Matter’s gates disclose the candent ores<
br />
Rock-held in furnaces of planet-cores.
As has already been shown, all of Mr. Smith’s poetry is not erected upon the
conception of imagination expressed in these lines and emphasized in the remainder of the poem. Much of it is. In many of his poems he projects his mind beyond the immediate and the human. His thoughts fly on the wings of Imagination to where
She stands endued
With supramundane crown, and vestitures
Of emperies that include
All under-worlds and over-worlds of dream—
In some of these poems he takes an external view of the material universe,
looking in from space like a “curious god.” In others he looks out upon space like an astronomer at the eyepiece of his telescope which lures his vision beyond the stars, yet does not permit him to see the forested hills about him nor the cottage nearby, where a child is being born. Now the poet whose imagination takes him in such wide courses addresses himself to our emotions in two ways only—either by
an impelling and powerful diction which armors his thought, or by the creation
through imagery of a high visual beauty. To those who do not react to powerful
diction or who, considering it only a small part of art to be used sparingly, crave another evocation, he will have little to say. By the same token, he will have little to say to those who do not conceive beauty in terms of supramundane things. The