fundamental difficulty with all poetry written in contemplation of infinitude is that the exalted nature of the object contemplated exalts language in the effort to express it; the truest poetry, however, is cast in language so passionate or so beautiful that it infuses passion or beauty into the thing of which it treats and which becomes thereby transfigured. The poet should be able to say, “I speak and my
words make beautiful and vital whatsoever they touch.” He should not say, “That is sublime, let me find adequate words to describe it.”
But as we have endeavored to show in the poems quoted above, Mr. Smith
does not always soar in spaces whither one may follow him without becoming
dizzy. “The Cloud Islands” has to do with the sky, it is true, but it is of the earth.
The poet deals with a simple subject and beautifies and makes it memorable by
means of his art.
It will be seen that Mr. Smith’s poetry falls into two major categories. In one his imagination transcends the limits of life and matter; in the other he clothes the things of earth with lyric beauty. There is, however, a third category in which fall such poems as “The Butterfly.” In this he applies the method of the first category to the material of the second. The poem is as aloof as “The Star Treader.”
38 THE FREEDOM OF FANTASTIC THINGS
Of the poems in the spatial and stellar vein “The Song of the Comet” is in
many ways the best. It shows a freer rhythm and the pentasyllables and words of disturbing unusualness are comparatively infrequent.
It would be idle to allude to the influences detectable in Mr. Smith’s work.
They are sufficiently obvious. The really important thing is that, in spite of the derivative character of some of the poems—so inevitable in the work of a young
poet as to call for no comment—there is abundant evidence that the poet has the independence of modernity in his blood. He shows it in the free rhythms of some of his poems and it is easy to fancy his being picked up by the great wave which has been sweeping poetry away from tradition with greater swiftness than it has ever moved since the beginning of English literature. It is the wave upon which Whitman the pioneer rode so mightily. It is the wave that bore Browning and
Meredith and Henley. It is on the crest of this wave that Masefield rides today like one of his great and beautiful ships
Whose tests are tempests and the sea that drowns
Others too—singers of the new voice—Davidson, Housman, Dowson, Symons,
Bridges, Middleton, Bynner—have ridden on this wave that sweeps irresistibly onward.
Poets may escape the wave by scrambling up on the ancient peaks of song or
by soaring into the empyrean, but both places are deserted and lonely and filed with death and the coldness of death. Even hell is cold in poetry, as it is in slang.
Only life is hot. Nature is warm.
Regarding Mr. Smith’s adherence or nonadherence to the traditions of pros-
ody, it is only necessary to quote Edwin Bjorkman’s words, “Rules are made for
those who do not think.” There is much that might be said about the mechanics of Mr. Smith’s poetry, but let it suffice to call attention again to his rhythm. In many cases his sentence structure militates against rhythmical flow, and frequent polysyl-lables impair the music of his measures. Their absence from “The Song of the
Comet” results in a superior rhythmical unity. How welcome, too, the two lines
that emerge in agreeable monosyllabic rhythm from “Ode to the Abyss:”
O thou whose hands pluck out the light of stars,
Are worlds grown but as fruit for thee?
Save for the consonantal plexus in “worlds grown,” the rhythm here shows a
successful handling of a succession of monosyllables which is one of the ultimate tests of technique. A greater suavity of rhythm is achieved in the beautifully
wrought octave of a sonnet entitled “A Dream of Beauty.” Let our young and true poet speak once more and exquisitely:
I dreamed that each most lovely, perfect thing
That Nature hath, of sound, and form, and hue—
The winds, the grass, the light-concentering dew,
The gleam and swiftness of the sea-bird’s wing;
Contemporary Reviews of Clark Ashton Smith
39
Blueness of sea and sky, and gold of storm
Transmuted by the sunset, and the flame
Of autumn-colored leaves, before me came,
And, meeting, merged to one diviner form.
Incarnate Beauty ’twas, whose spirit thrills
Through glaucous ocean and the greener hills,
And in the cloud-bewildered peaks is pent,
Like some descended star she hovered o’er,
But as I gazed, in doubt and wonderment,
Mine eyes were dazzled, and I saw no more.
[Anonymous.] “Clark Ashton Smith: California Boy-Poet, Whose Muse Gives
Promise of Masterpieces of Melody.” Wasp (23 November 1912): 16.
That the hand of the press agent dealt most unkindly with Clark Ashton Smith, the juvenile bard of Auburn, when booming him as a new Byron, and reincarnated
Keats in the dailies some months ago, is evidenced by The Star-Treader and Other Poems, published by A. M. Robertson of this city. Speaking for himself in book form, Smith is infinitely more eloquent than those who introduced him in a manner,
which, however fitting for a new vaudeville performer or a new line of liver pill, was in the worst taste for a poet, or rather one who will be a poet when the years have added a message to his melodic felicity. The boy was not to blame. He shrank nervously from the ordeal of hearing his verses read by a press agent to busy city editors, who had to interrupt the readings every few minutes with talks over the telephone to hotel or police reporters. If later on, he seemed to endure and even like it, that was only another crime on the shoulders of his self-advertising discoverer. However, it is pleasant to be able to say that the writer of this volume has a poetic quality, proof against even the absurd encomiums and grotesque comparisons, with which he made his unfortunate bow.
The remarkable feature of the verse of Clark Ashton Smith is that while it re-
calls the mannerisms of various poets, it has yet a native daring and distinctiveness marking an original outlook on the problems of man and the mysteries of nature.
Above all, he is singularly free of the literary vice of the age, that of subordinating everything to the startling phrase, or striking simile. The putting of words together that have never been introduced to each other is a mechanical accomplishment in which so many are proficient. It is of value only in advertisements, political and other articles, calling more for the sensational than the literary. Occasionally, as in
“Nero,” Smith vexes with “the eyeballs of posterity” and other bizarre expressions, and there is a tendency to overwork such words as “gyre,” but in the main, his
blemishes are insignificant.
40 THE FREEDOM OF FANTASTIC THINGS
As the first exercises of a youth, as yet innocent of the master passion, still looking “with wonder’s wide and startled eye at common things of life and day,”
and minus the message of the poetical interpreter, they are laden with richest
promise. When the breadth of Eros shall have touched his lyre, and when the in-
spiration shall have given him some central theory for his wonderings, then will come the melodies that may warrant the most daring comparisons.
Meanwhile, and dropping into the key of those who foolishly wrote of him as
though he were the author of a best-seller and not of genuine poetry, it is safe to say that all who would come in on the ground floor of a great poet should buy this neatly printed volume of exquisite verse. If you have any doubt, read these lines from a boy of eighteen:
NIRVANA
Poised as a god whose l
one, detachèd post,
An eyrie, pends between the boundary-marks
Of finite years, and those unvaried darks
That veil Eternity, I saw the host
Of worlds and suns, swept from the furthermost
Of night—confusion as of dust with sparks—
Whirl tow’rd the opposing brink; as one who harks
Some warning trumpet, Time, a withered ghost,
Fled with them; disunited orbs that late
Were atoms of the universal frame,
They passed to some eternal fragment-heap.
And, lo, the gods, from space discorporate,
Who were its life and vital spirit, came,
Drawn outward by the vampire-lips of Sleep!
G. R. Y. “Clark Ashton Smith and His Book of Verse.”3
Along the path of friendship there has come a man with more than two generations behind him, and every year of his life has been filled with remarkable experiences and choice studies. He studied art before the American invasion of Parisian Bohemia and knew Whistler and De Maurier before either became famous; as a friend he listened to Wilde’s retorts when that archer of epigram waged a merry war with literary foe-men; he was the friend of Ruskin, Gladstone, and Fitzgerald. One thing puzzled him then, one thing puzzles him now: Where does genius come from?
Clark Ashton Smith is a poet. There are but few alive and in the catacombs of
Immortality there are not many. But this boy, this stripling of the mountains, this youngster who knows nothing of our universities and could not name a half dozen metres by their correct names, writes with power and vividness and writes poetry.
Contemporary Reviews of Clark Ashton Smith
41
It does not matter that he is too young to take part in selecting the village justice of the peace in that he has not arrived at those years of discretion necessary to mark a ballot correctly. Keats was dead at 26, and Chatterton never reached 20. It is not years that count. William Watson was born in 1858 and with heroic effort has labored in vain ever since to be a poet.
Like most proverbs, that one which says a prophet is not without honor save
in his own country is false. Poets and prophets are honored by their countrymen and the proverb originated from a prophet who had exceptionally unappreciative
countrymen, but since that time inferior and worthless poets and prophets have
been quoting the proverb when they should have been busy working and doing
something for which they might be appreciated. Clark Ashton Smith is not famous and will not be for many years. To begin with he has no press agent. A. M. Robertson, the book publisher of Union Square, San Francisco, has issued Smith’s only volume of verse, The Star-Treader, and Mr. Robertson sells his books on their own merit—not on his ability to advertise them. But Smith is appreciated and is honored by his countrymen as well as by the critics of New York, and any time a critic of New York honors any one without being paid for it, it is a sure sign that the critics of that city have been maligned.
There is much of Smith’s poetry that is better than the rest; there is some of it that almost anyone could have written, but what of that? Poets are the only people on earth that are judged by their worst work. Byron is disliked because he wrote love-sick trash, Browning is ignored because he wrote dramas that read like a jumbled abracadabra, Milton is tabooed because he is so heavy he makes people
think—and so on. The poorest critics can find fault with the greatest poets. But as we do not judge an athlete by his lowest record so we should judge a poet by the best that he has done.
Smith has written:
And were I a god,
Exempt from this mortality which clogs
Perception, and clear exercise of will,
What raptures it would be, if but to watch
Destruction crouching at the back of Time,
The tongueless dooms which dog the traveling suns;
The vampire Silence at the breast of worlds,
Fire without light that gnaws the base of things,
And Lethe’s mounting tide, that rots the stone
Of fundamental spheres.
—and that is poetry.
Most of his verse deals with the universe, chaos, destruction, death, immensity and other things that appeal mightily to the imagination of a melancholy youth. It is not a fault—but is a characteristic that it will undoubtedly be beneficial to out-
42 THE FREEDOM OF FANTASTIC THINGS
grow. A poet by the name of Young once had a series of nightmares that he put
into verse and called “Night Thoughts,” and a poet was spoiled because he took
too great a delight in feeling bad and telling other people about it.
But Smith can write other things than “Nero,” who as the poet portrays him, is
not satisfied with wanting to wring the single neck of all Rome, but would pluck out the eye of the universe and kick the stars and planets out of the heavens. Smith has a poem called “The Butterfly” that has so far not received much attention, but which is worthy of it. In the beginning the butterfly is called a “wonderful winged flower,”
and the man who first used that phrase, no matter if magazine editors would have refused manuscripts all of his life, would have written one line of perfect poetry.
From “The Butterfly” also comes:
From out the web of former lives,
The ancient catenated chain
Of joy and sorrow, loss and gain,
One certain truth my heart derives:—
Though Beauty passes, this I know,
From Change and death, this verity:
Her spirit lives eternally—
’Tis but her forms that come and go.
Smith has a terrific imagination, and not unfrequently he allows it to lead him off into the horrible. The following is taken from “Medusa:”
The land is claimed of Death: the daylight comes
Half strangled in the changing webs of cloud
That unseen spiders of bewildered winds
Weave and unweave across the lurid sun
In upper air.
That is word painting with a vengeance. If Dr. Young could have incorporated
those lines into his midnight chronicles, he would have felt delighted enough to brood an hour longer than usual by some newly made grave.
Smith is a boy of our mountains; he is shy and studious and 19 years of age.
Youth is the most melancholy period of life and it is natural that since he has the genius that he has that he should write as he does. But where, where does that genius come from? Perhaps it is
“A gift divine, a wondrous sign from God
Which proves to man that he is not a mere clod.”
—who can say?
Contemporary Reviews of Clark Ashton Smith
43
Sophie Treadwell. “Makers of Books and Some Recent Works.” San Francisco Evening Post (23 November 1912): magazine section, p. 2.4
Clark Ashton Smith’s little book of poems has proved a hard disappointment to
me. I had heard so much, read so much of this young genius of the Sierras; this new-discovered greater-than-Keats, that I ventured into the promising looking
book with awed expectancy. For me, there is little, nothing near to Keats. But there is something near to Sterling; the lesser part of Sterling.
Stars, suns, comets, abysses, moon, have been the strongest inspirer of the
boy; and it is where he plunges into these vastnesses and voids that he is lost. Here is a characteristic bit from “The Lament of the Stars:”
Beyond restrainless boundary-nights surpassing
All luminous horizons limited,
The substance and the light of her have fed
Ruin and silence of the night’s amassing:
Abandoned worlds forever morningless;
Suns without worlds in frory beamlessness
Girt for the longer gyre f
unereal.
Or this from “Ode to the Abyss:”
In aeon-implicating wars
Thou tearest planets from their place;
Worlds granite spined
To thine erodents yield
Their treasures centrally. confined
In crypts by continental pillars sealed.
Within a page and a half of this poem appear the words unhorizoned, undi-
mensioned, unborn, unswerved, unconstrainable, undiscoverable, unstriving; and
later, ungrasped, unsure, unfound, unexceeded.
The diction throughout is unusual. The lad shows a fondness for the more
weighty forms of expression—what might be called “near Latin.” He has a strong
penchant for obsolete words, and words which apparently are of home brew. Con-
sider that expression “frory beamlessness.” Is that not delightfully reminiscent of Lewis Carroll, and “unescapable alternity, mystic immancence, cadences of threne, pits of infinite duress, mazeful gyres, star-dominated gyres, unswervable eclipse gyre-release unsphered restorelessly, murkiness, levins, cerementless, immingle, contermi-nate, malefice, clomb, discorporate,” and many, many more. When these tread fast and furious one upon the other, the exhausted reader can but wonder why the publishers did not warn with a more definite title. Why not “The Unrevealed,” or “The Mystic Meaning,” or perhaps “The Shadow of Nightmare?”
One realizes that the boy has a genuine feeling for beauty, and, many times, its true expression. In “The Masque of the Forsaken Gods,” Pan says:
44 THE FREEDOM OF FANTASTIC THINGS
‘Man hath forgotten me:
Yet seems it that my memory
Saddens the wistful voices of the wood;
Within each erst-frequented spot
Echo forgets my music not,
Nor Earth my tread where trampling years have stood.
Microsoft Word - freedom_v13.doc Page 6
