Later Influences
The Gothic period marked a change in the vehicle of supernaturalism. In
ancient times the ghostly had been expressed in the epic or the drama,
in medievalism in the romances, metrical and prose, as in Elizabethan
literature the drama was the specific form. But Gothicism brought it
over frankly into the novel, which was a new thing. That is noteworthy,
since supernaturalism seems more closely related to poetry than to
prose; and as the early dramas were for the most part poetic, it did
not require such a stretch of the imagination to give credence to
the unearthly. The ballad, the epic, the drama, had made the ghostly
seem credible. But prose fiction is so much more materialistic that
at first thought supernaturalism seems antagonistic to it. That this
is not really the case is evidenced from the fact that fiction since
the terror times has retained the elements of awe then introduced, has
developed, and has greatly added to them.
With the dying out of the _genre_ definitely known as the Gothic
novel and the turning of Romanticism into various new channels, we
might expect to see the disappearance of the ghostly element, since
it had been overworked in terrorism. It is true that the prevailing
type of fiction for the succeeding period was realism, but with a
large admixture of the supernormal or supernatural. The supernatural
machinery had become so well established in prose fiction that even
realists were moved by it, some using the motifs with bantering
apology--even Dickens and Thackeray, some with rationalistic
explanation, but practically all using it. Man must and will have the
supernatural in his fiction. The very elements that one might suppose
would counteract it,--modern thought, invention, science,--serve as
feeders to its force. In the inexplicable alchemy of literature almost
everything turns to the unearthly in some form or other.
We have seen the various sources from which the Gothic novel drew
its plots, its motifs for ghostly effect. The supernatural fiction
following it still had the same sources on which to draw, and in
addition had various other influences and veins of literary inspiration
not open to Gothicism. Modern science, with the new miracles of its
laboratories, proved suggestive of countless plots; the new study of
folk-lore and the scholarly investigations in that field unearthed an
unguessed wealth of supernatural material; Psychical Research societies
with their patient and sympathetic records of the forces of the unseen;
modern Spiritualism with its attempts to link this world to the next;
the wizardry of dreams studied scientifically,--all suggested new
themes, novel complications, hitherto unknown elements continuing the
supernatural in fiction.
With the extension of general reading, and the greater range of
translations from other languages, the writers of England and America
were affected by new influences with respect to their use of the
supernatural. Their work became less insular, wider in its range of
subject-matter and of technical methods, and in our fiction we find the
effect of certain definite outside forces.
The overlapping influences of the Romantic movement in England and
America, France and Germany, form an interesting but intricate study.
It is difficult to point out marked points of contact, though the
general effect may be evident, for literary influences are usually very
elusive. It is easy to cry, "Lo, here! lo, there!" with reference to
the effect of certain writers on their contemporaries or successors,
but it is not always easy to put the finger on anything very tangible.
And even so, that would not explain literature. If one could point with
absolute certainty to the source for every one of Shakespeare's plots,
would that explain his art? Poe wrote an elaborate essay to analyze
his processes of composition for _The Raven_, but the poem remains as
enigmatic as ever.
As German Romanticism had been considerably affected by the Gothic
novel in England, it in turn showed an influence on later English and
American ghostly fiction. Scott was much interested in the German
literature treating of evil magic, apparitions, castles in ruins, and
so forth, and one critic says of him that his dealings with subjects
of this kind are midway between Meinhold and Tieck. He was fascinated
with the German ballads of the supernatural, especially Burger's
ghostly _Lenore_, which he translated among others. De Quincey likewise
was a student of German literature, though he was not so accurate in
his scholarship as Scott. His horror tale, _The Avengers_, as well as
_Klosterheim_, has a German setting and tone.
There has been some discussion over the question of Hawthorne's
relation to German Romanticism. Poe made the charge that Hawthorne drew
his ideas and style from Ludwig Tieck, saying in a criticism:
The fact is, he is not original in any sense. Those who speak of
him as original mean nothing more than that he differs in his
manner or tone, and in his choice of subjects, from any author of
their acquaintance--their acquaintance not extending to the German
Tieck, whose manner in _some_ of his works is absolutely identical
with that _habitual_ to Hawthorne.... The critic (unacquainted with
Tieck) who reads a single tale by Hawthorne may be justified in
thinking him original.
Various critics have discussed this matter with no very definite
conclusions. It should be remembered that Poe was a famous
plagiary-hunter, hence his comments may be discounted. Yet Poe knew
German, it is thought, and in his writings often referred to German
literature, while Hawthorne, according to his journal, read it with
difficulty and spoke of his struggles with a volume of Tieck.
Hawthorne and Tieck do show certain similarities, as in the use of
the dream element, the employment of the allegory as a medium for
teaching moral truths, and the choice of the legend as a literary
form. Both use somewhat the same dreamy supernaturalism, yet in style
as in subject-matter Hawthorne is much the superior and improved
whatever he may have borrowed from Tieck. Hawthorne's vague mystery,
cloudy symbolism, and deep spiritualism are individual in their effect
and give to his supernaturalism an unearthly charm scarcely found
elsewhere. Hawthorne's theme in _The Marble Faun_, of the attaining to
a soul by human suffering, is akin to the idea in Fouqué's _Undine_.
There the supernaturalism is franker, while that of Hawthorne's novel
is more evasive and delicate, yet the same suggestion is present in
each case. Lowell in his _Fable for Critics_ speaks of Hawthorne as "a
John Bunyan Fouqué, a Puritan Tieck."
There are still more striking similarities to be pointed out between
the work of Poe and that of E. T. A. Hoffmann. As Hawthorne was, to a
slight extent, at least, affected by German legends and wonder tales,
Poe was influenced by Hoffmann's horror stories. Poe has been called
a Germanic dreamer, and various German and English critics mention
the debt that he owes to Hoffmann. Mr. Palmer Cobb[38] brings out some
interesting facts in connection with the two romanticists. He says:
The verification of Poe's indebtedness to German is to be sought in
the similarity of the treatment of the same motives in the work of
both authors. The most convincing evidence is furnished by the way
in which Poe has combined the themes of mesmerism, metempsychosis,
dual existence, the dream element, and so forth, in exact agreement
with the grouping employed by Hoffmann. Notable examples of this
are the employment of the idea of double existence in conjunction
with the struggle of good and evil forces in the soul of the
individual, and the combination of mesmerism and metempsychosis as
leading motives in one and the same story.
[38] _The Influence of E. T. A. Hoffmann on Edgar Allan Poe._
Mr. Cobb points out in detail the similarities between Poe's stories
of dual personality and the German use of the theme as found in
Fouqué, Novalis, and Hoffmann, particularly the last. Hoffmann's
exaggerated use of this idea is to be explained on the ground that
he was obsessed by the thought that his double was haunting him,
and he, like Maupassant under similar conditions of mind, wrote of
supernaturalism associated with madness. Hoffmann uses the theme of
double personality.[39] In Poe's _William Wilson_ the other self is the
embodiment of good, a sort of incarnate conscience, as in Stevenson's
Markheim, while Hoffmann's _Elixiere_ represents the evil. Poe has here
reversed the idea. In Hoffmann's _Magnetiseur_ we find the treatment
of hypnotism and metempsychosis and the dream-supernaturalism in the
same combination that Poe uses.[40] Hoffmann[41] and Poe[42] relate the
story of a supernatural portrait, where the wife-model dies as the
sacrifice to the painting.
[39] In the _Doppelgänger_, _Kater Murr_, and _Elixiere des
Teufels_.
[40] In his _Tale of the Ragged Mountains_.
[41] In _Die Jesuit-kirche in G._
[42] In _The Oval Portrait_.
Both Hoffmann and Poe use the grotesquerie of supernaturalism, the
fantastic element of horror that adds to the effect of the ghostly.
Even the generic titles are almost identical.[43] But in spite of
these similarities in theme and in grouping, there is no basis for a
charge that Poe owes a stylistic debt to Hoffmann. In his manner he
is original and individual. He uses his themes with much greater art,
with more dramatic and powerful effect than his German contemporary.
Though he employs fewer of the crude machineries of the supernatural,
his ghostly tales are more unearthly than Hoffmann's. His horrors have
a more awful effect because he is an incomparably greater artist. He
knows the economy of thrills as few have done. His is the genius of
compression, of suggestion. His dream elements, for instance, though
Hoffmann uses the dream to as great extent as Poe--are more poignant,
more unbearable.
[43] Compare Poe's definition of his type as phantasy pieces
with Hoffmann's title Phantasie Stücke.
The cult of horror in German literature, as evidenced in the work of
Hoffmann, Kleist, Tieck, Arnim, Fouqué, Chamisso, had an influence
on English and American literature of supernaturalism in general.
The grotesque diablerie, the use of dream elements, magnetism,
metempsychosis, ghosts, the elixir of life--which theme appears to have
a literary elixir of life--are reflected to a certain degree in the
English ghostly tales of the generation following the Gothic romance.
A French influence is likewise manifest in the later English fiction.
The Gothic novel had made itself felt in France as well as in
Germany, a proof of which is the fact that Balzac was so impressed by
Maturin's novel that he wrote a sequel to it.[44] The interrelations
of the English, French, and German supernatural literature are
nowhere better illustrated than in the work of Balzac. He admits
Hoffmann's inspiration of his _Elixir of Life_, that horrible story
of reanimation, where the head is restored to life and youth but the
body remains that of an old man, dead and decaying, from which the
head tears itself loose in the church and bites the abbot to the
brain, shrieking out, "Idiot, tell me now if there is a God!" Balzac's
influence over Bulwer-Lytton is seen in such stories as _The Haunters
and the Haunted_, _or the House and the Brain_, and _A Strange Story_,
in each of which the theme of supernaturally continued life is used.
Balzac's _Magic Skin_ is a symbolic story of supernaturalism that
suggests Hawthorne's allegoric symbolism and may have influenced it
in part. It is a new application of the old theme, used often in
the drama as in Gothic romance, of the pledge of a soul for earthly
gratification. A magic skin gives the man his heart's desires, yet
each granted wish makes the talisman shrink perceptibly, with an
inexorable decrease. This theme, symbolic of the truth of life, is such
a spiritual idea used allegorically as Hawthorne chose frequently and
doubtless influenced Oscar Wilde's _Picture of Dorian Gray_. Balzac's
_Unknown Masterpiece_ is another example of his supernaturalism that
has had its suggestive effect on English ghostly fictions.
[44] _Melmoth Réconcilié._
Guy de Maupassant has doubtless influenced English tales of horror
more than any foreign writer since Hoffmann. As a stylist he
exercised a definite and strong influence over the short-story form,
condensing it, making it more economical, more like a fatal bullet
that goes straight to the mark, and putting into a few hundred words
a story of supernatural horror relentless in its effect. O. Henry's
delicately perfect ghost story, _The Furnished Room_, is reminiscent
of Maupassant's technique as seen in _The Ghost_. And surely F. Marion
Crawford's _Screaming Skull_ and Ambrose Bierce's _Middle Toe of the
Right Foot_ are from the same body as Maupassant's _Hand_. What a
terrible corpus it must be! There is the same gruesome mystery, the
same implacable horror in each story of a mutilated ghost.
Maupassant's stories of madness, akin to Poe's analyses of mental
decay, of the slow corruption of the brain, are among his most dreadful
triumphs of style, and have influenced various English stories of
insanity. In Maupassant's own tottering reason we find the tragic
explanation of his constant return to this type of story. Such tales as
_Mad_, where a husband goes insane from doubt of his wife; _Madness_,
where a man has a weird power over human beings, animals, and even
inanimate objects, making them do his will, so that he is terrified
of his own self, of what his horrible hands may do mechanically;
_Cocotte_, where the drowned dog, following its master a hundred miles
down the river, drives him insane; _The Tress_, a curdling story of the
relation between insanity and the supernatural, so that one is unable
to say which is cause and which effect, illustrate Maupassant's unusual
association between madness and uncanny fiction. Who but Maupassant
could make a story of ghastly hideousness out of a parrot that swears?
As Maupassant was influenced by Poe, in both subject matter and
technique, so he has affected the English writers since his time in
both plot material and treatment of the supernatural. And as his _La
Horla_ strongly reflects FitzJames O'Brien's _What Was It? A Mystery_
that anticipated it by a number of years, so it left its inevitable
impress on Bierce's _The Damned Thing_ and succeeding stories of
supernatural invisibility. A recent story by Katherine Fullerton
Gerould, _Louquier's Third Act_, seems clearly to indicate the De
Maupassant influence, reflecting the method and motifs of _La Horla_
and _The Coward_. Maupassant's tales have a peculiar horror possessed
by few, partly because of his undoubted genius and partly the result of
his increasing madness.
Other French writers have also influenced the uncanny story in English.
Théophile Gautier has undoubtedly inspired various tales, such as _The
Mummy's Foot_, by Jessie Adelaide Weston, which is the match, though
not in beauty or form, to his little masterpiece of that title. A.
Conan Doyle's _Lot No. 249_, a horrible story of a reanimated mummy,
bears an unquestionable resemblance to Gautier's _The Romance of
the Mummy_ as well as _The Mummy's Foot_, though Poe's _A Word with
a Mummy_, a fantastic story emphasizing the science of miraculous
embalming of living persons so that they would wake to life after
thousands of years, preceded it. Something of the same theme is also
used by F. Marion Crawford,[45] where the bodies in the old studio
awake to menacing life. This motif illustrates the prevalence of the
Oriental material in recent English fiction. Gautier's _La Morte
Amoureuse_ has exercised suggestive power over later tales, such as
Crawford's vampire story,[46] though it is significant to recall that
Poe's _Berenice_ preceded Gautier's story by a year, and the latter
must have known Poe's work.
[45] In _Khaled_.
[46] _For the Blood Is the Life._
The fiction of Erckmann-Chatrian appears to have suggested various
English stories. _The Owl's Ear_ obviously inspired another,[47]
both being records of supernatural acoustics the latter dealing with
spiritual sounds. _The Invisible Eye_, a fearsome story of hypnotism,
has an evident parental claim on Algernon Blackwood's story,[48] though
the latter is psychically more gruesome. _The Waters of Death_, an
account of a loathsome, enchanted crab, suggests H. G. Wells's story of
the plant vampire.[49]
[47] _The Spider's Eye_, by Lucretia P. Hale.
[48] _With Intent to Steal._
[49] _The Flowering of the Strange Orchid._
Likewise Anatole France's _Putois_, the narrative of the man who
came to have an actual existence because someone spoke of him as an
imaginary person, is associated with the drolleries of supernaturalism,
such as are used by Thomas Bailey Aldrich in the story of an imagined
person, _Miss Mehitabel's Son_, and by Frank R. Stockton.[50] Anatole
France has several delicately wrought idylls of the supernatural, as
_The Mass of Shadows_, where the ghosts of those who have sinned for
love may meet once a year to be reunited with their loved ones, and
in the church, with clasped hands, celebrate the spectral mass, or
such tender miracles as _The Juggler of Notre Dame_, where the juggler
throws his balls before the altar as an act of worship and is rewarded
by a sight of the Virgin, or _Scholasticus_, a symbolic story much
like one written years earlier by Thomas Bailey Aldrich,[51] where a
plant miraculously springs from the heart of a dead woman. _Amycus and
Celestine_, the story of the faun and the hermit, of whom he tells
us that "the hermit is a faun borne down by the years" is suggestive
of the wonderful little stories of Lord Dunsany. Lord Dunsany, while
startlingly original in most respects, seems a bit influenced by
Anatole France. His _When the Gods Slept_ seems reminiscent of _The
Isle of the Penguins_. In France's satire the gods change penguins into
men whose souls will be lost, because the priest has baptized them by
mistake, while in Dunsany's story the baboons pray to the Yogis, who
promise to make them men in return for their devotion.
And the baboons arose from worshipping, smoother about the face
and a little shorter in the arms, and went away and hid themselves
in clothing and herded with men. And men could not discern what
they were for their bodies were bodies of men though their souls
were still the souls of beasts and the worship went to the Yogis,
spirits of ill.
[50] In _The Transferred Ghost_ and _The Spectral Mortgage_.
[51] _Père Antoine's Date Palm._
Maeterlinck, influenced by his fellow-Belgian, Charles Van Lerberghe,
whose _Flaireurs_ appeared before Maeterlinck's plays of the uncanny
and to whom he acknowledges his indebtedness, has strongly affected
ghostly literature since his rise to recognition. In his plays we
find an atmospheric supernaturalism. The settings are of earth, yet
with an unearthly strangeness, with no impression of realism, of the
familiar, the known. In Maeterlinck's plays we never breathe the air of
actuality, never feel the footing of solid earth, as we always do in
Shakespeare, even in the presence of ghosts or witches. Shakespeare's
visitants are ghostly enough, certainly, but the scenes in which they
appear are real, are normal, while in the Belgian's work there is
a fluidic supernaturalism that transforms everything to unreality.
We feel the grip of fate, as in the ancient Greek tragedies, the
inescapable calamity that approaches with swift, silent pace. Yet
Maeterlinck's is essentially static drama. There is very little action,
among the human beings, at least, for Fate is the active agent. In
_The Blind_, _The Intruder_, and _Interior_ the elements are much the
same, the effects wrought out with the same unearthly manner. But in
_Joyzelle_, which shows a certain similarity to _Midsummer Night's
Dream_ and _The Tempest_, we have a different type of supernaturalism,
the use of enchantment, of fairy magic that comes to a close happily.
In the dream-drama[52] there is a mixture of realism and poetic
symbolism, the use of the dream as a vehicle for the supernormal,
and many aspects of the weird combined in a fairy play of exquisite
symbolism.
[52] _The Blue Bird._
The influence of Maeterlinck is apparent in the work of English
writers, particularly of the Celtic school. W. B. Yeats's fairy play,
_The Land of Heart's Desire_, with its pathetic beauty, _Countess
Cathleen_, his tragedy of the countess who sells her soul to the devil
that her people may be freed from his power, as well as his stories,
show the traces of Maeterlinck's methods. William Sharp, in his
sketches and his brief plays in the volume called _Vistas_, reflects
the Belgian's technique slightly, though with his own individual
power. Sharp's other literary self, Fiona McLeod, likewise shows
his influence, as does Synge in his _Riders to the Sea_, and Gordon
Bottomley in his _Crier by Night_, that eerie tragedy of an unseen
power. Maeterlinck's supernaturalism seems to suggest the poetry of
Coleridge, with its elusive, intangible ghostliness. The effect of
naïveté observable in Coleridge's work is in Maeterlinck produced
by a child-like simplicity of style, a monosyllabic dialogue, and a
monotonous, unreasoning repetition that is at once real and unreal.
The dramatist has brought over from the poet the same suggestive use
of portents and symbols for prefiguring death or disaster that lurks
just outside. The ghostliness is subtle, rather than evident, the drama
static rather than dynamic.
Ibsen, also, has strongly influenced the supernatural in both our
drama and our fiction. His own work has a certain kinship with that of
Hawthorne, showing a like symbolism and mysticism, a like transfusion
of the unreal with the natural, so that one scarcely knows just how
far he means our acceptance of the unearthly to extend. He leaves it
in some cases an open question, while in others he frankly introduces
the supernatural. The child's vision of the dead heroes riding to
Valhalla, with his own mother who has killed herself, leading them,[53]
the ghost that tries to make an unholy pact with the king,[54] the
apparition and the supernatural voice crying out "He is the God of
Love!"[55] illustrate Ibsen's earlier methods. The curious, almost
inexplicable _Peer Gynt_, with its mixture of folk-lore and symbolism,
its ironic laughter and satiric seriousness, seems to have had a
suggestive influence on other works, such as _Countess Eve_,[56] where
the personification of temptation in the form of committed sin reflects
Ibsen's idea of Peer Gynt's imaginary children. The uncanny power of
unspoken thought, the haunting force of ideas rather than the crude
visible phantasms of the dead, as in the telepathy, or hypnotism,
or what you will, in _The Master Builder_, the evasive, intangible
haunting of the living by the dead as in _Rosmersholm_, the strange
powers at work as in _The Lady from the Sea_, have had effect on the
numerous psychic dramas and stories in English. The symbolic mysticism
in _Emperor and Galilean_, showing the spirits of Cain and of Judas,
with their sad ignorance of life's riddles, the vision of Christ in
person, with His unceasing power over men's souls, foreshadowed the
plays and stories bringing in the personality of Christ, as _The
Servant in the House_, and _The Passing of the Third Floor Back_.
[53] In _The Vikings of Helgeland_.
[54] In _The Pretenders_.
[55] In _Brand_.
[56] By J. H. Shorthouse.
Modern Italian literature, as represented by Fogazzaro and D'Annunzio,
introduces the ghostly in fiction and in the drama, and has had its
effect on our literature. Fogazzaro's novels are essentially realistic
in pattern, yet he uses the supernatural in them, as in miraculous
visions,[57] and metempsychosis and madness associated with the
supernatural.[58] D'Annunzio's handling of the unearthly is more
repulsive, more psychically gruesome, as the malignant power of the
ancient curse in _La Città Morta_, where the undying evil in an old
tomb causes such revolting horror in the action of the play. This has
a counterpart in a story,[59] by Josephine Daskam Bacon, where a
packet of letters from two evil lovers lie buried in a hearth and by
their subtle influence corrupt the soul of every woman who occupies the
room. D'Annunzio uses the witch motive powerfully,[60] madness that
borders on the supernatural,[61] and the idea of evil magic exorcised
by melting an image of wax to cause an enemy's death[62] which suggests
Rossetti's poem using that incident, the unforgettable _Sister Helen_.
[57] In _The Sinner_ and _The Saint_.
[58] In _The Woman_.
[59] _The Unburied._
[60] In _The Daughter of Jorio_.
[61] In _Sogno d'un Mattino di Primavera_.
[62] In _Sogno d'un Tramonto d'Autunno_.
Likewise a new force in the work of the Russian school has affected our
fiction of the ghostly in recent years. Russian literature is a new
field of thought for English people, since it is only of late years
that translations have been easily accessible, and, because of the
extreme difficulty of the language, very few outsiders read Russian.
As German Romanticism began to have its definite power over English
supernatural fiction in the early part of the nineteenth century by the
extension of interest in and study of German literature, and the more
frequent translation of German works, so in this generation Russian
literature has been introduced to English people and is having its
influence.
A primitive, still savage race like the Russians naturally shows a
special fondness for the supernatural. Despite the fact that literature
is written for the higher classes, a large peasant body, illiterate
and superstitious, will influence the national fiction. In the Russian
works best known to us there is a large element of the uncanny, of a
type in some respects different from that of any other country. Like
the Russian national character, it is harsh, brutal, violent, yet
sentimental. One singular thing to be noted about it is the peculiar
combination of supernaturalism with absolute realism. The revolting
yet dreadfully effective realism of the Russian literature is never
more impressive than in its union with ghostly horror, which makes the
impossible appear indubitable. In Gogol's _The Cloak_, for instance,
the fidelity to homely details of life, the descriptions of pinching
poverty, of tragic hopes that waited so long for fulfillment, are
painful in themselves and give verisimilitude to the element of the
unearthly that follows. You feel that a poor Russian clerk who had
stinted himself from necessity all his life _would_ come back from the
dead to claim his stolen property and demand redress. The supernatural
gains a new power, a more tremendous thrill when set off against the
every-dayness of sordid life. We find something of the same effect in
the stories of Algernon Blackwood and Ambrose Bierce and F. Marion
Crawford.
Tolstoi's symbolic story of _Ivan the Fool_ is an impressive utterance
of his views of life, expressed by the allegory of man's folly and
wisdom and the schemes of devils.
Turgeniev's pronounced strain of the unearthly has had its influence
on English fiction. He uses the dream elements to a marked degree, as
in _The Song of Love Triumphant_, a story of Oriental magic employed
through dreams and music, and _The Dream_, an account of a son's
revelatory visions of his unknown father. The dream element has
been used considerably in our late fiction, some of which seems to
reflect Turgeniev. Another motive that he uses effectively is that
of suggested vampirism,[63] and of psychical vampirism,[64] where a
young man is "set upon" by the spirit of a dead woman he has scarcely
known, till he dies under the torment. This seems to have affected
such stories as that of psychical vampirism in _The Vampire_, by
Reginald Hodder. We find in much of Turgeniev's prose the symbolic,
mystical supernaturalism besides his use of dreams, visions, and a
distinct Oriental element. In _Knock! Knock! Knock!_ the treatment
of whose spiritualism reminds one somewhat of Browning's,[65] in
its initial skepticism and later hesitation, the final effect of
which is to impress one with a sense of supernaturalism working
extraordinarily through natural means, so that it is more powerful than
the mere conventional ghostly could be, we see what may have been the
inspiration for certain spiritualistic novels and stories in English.
The same tone is felt in Hamlin Garland's treatment of the subject,
for instance. The mystical romanticism of Turgeniev is less brutally
Russian than that of most of his compeers.
[63] As in _Phantoms_.
[64] As in _Clara Militch_.
[65] In _Sludge, the Medium_.
Like Maupassant and Hoffman and Poe, the Russian writers use to
a considerable extent the association between insanity and the
supernatural to heighten the effect of both. They may have been
influenced in this by Poe's studies of madness, as by Maupassant's,
and they appear to have an influence over certain present-day writers.
It would be difficult to say which is the stronger influence in the
treatment of abnormal persons, Maupassant or the Russian writers.
One wonders what type of mania obsesses certain of the Russian
fictionists of to-day, for surely they cannot be normal persons.
Examples of such fiction are: Alexander Pushkin's story of mocking
madness resulting from a passion for cards, whose ghostly motif has a
sardonic diabolism,[66] Tchekhoff's story of abnormal horror,[67] a
racking account of insanity,[68] and _The Black Monk_, a weird story of
insanity brought on by the vision of a supernatural being, a replicated
mirage of a black monk a thousand years old. But it is in the work of
Leonidas Andreyev that we get the ultimate anguish of madness. _The
Red Laugh_, an analysis of the madness of war, of the insanity of
nations as of individuals, seems to envelop the world in a sheet of
flame. Its horrors go beyond words and the brain reels in reading.
There are in English a number of stories of insanity associated with
the supernatural which may have been influenced by the Russian method,
though Ambrose Bierce's studies in the abnormality of soldier life
preceded Andreyev by years. F. Marion Crawford's _The Dead Smile_ and
various stories of Arthur Machen have a Russian horror, and other
instances might be mentioned.
[66] _The Queen of Spades._
[67] _Sleepyhead._
[68] _Ward No. 6._
The Russian fiction with its impersonality of pessimism, its racial
gloom, its terrible sordid realism forming a basis for awesome
supernaturalism, is of a type foreign to our thought, yet, as is not
infrequently the case, the radically different has a strange appeal,
and the effect of it on our stories of horror is undoubted. English and
American readers are greatly interested in Russian literature just now
and find a peculiar relish in its terrors, though the harsher elements
are somewhat softened in transference to our language.
Other fields of thought have been opened to us within this generation
by the widening of our knowledge of the literature of other European
countries. Books are much more freely translated now than formerly
and no person need be ignorant of the fiction of other lands. From
the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Chinese, Japanese, and other tongues
we are receiving stories of supernaturalism that give us new ideas,
new points of view. The greater ease of travel, the opportunity to
study once-distant lands and literatures have been reflected in our
fiction. Some one should write a monograph on the literary influence of
Cook's tours! Our later work has a strong touch of the Oriental,--not
an entirely new thing, since we find it in Beckford's _Vathek_ and
the pre-Gothic tales of John Hawkesworth,--but more noticeable now.
Examples are Stevenson's _New Arabian Nights_, _Bottle Imp_, and
others, F. Marion Crawford's _Khaled_ and _Mr. Isaacs_, Blackwood's
stories of Elementals, George Meredith's fantasy, _The Shaving of
Shagpat_, though many others might be named. The Oriental fiction
permits the use of magic, sorcery, and various elements that seem out
of place in ordinary fiction. The popularity of Kipling's tales of
Indian native life and character illustrates our fondness for this
aspect of supernaturalism.
Apart from the foreign influences that affect it we notice a certain
change in the materials and methods of ghostly fiction in English. New
elements had entered into Gothic tales as an advance over the earlier
forms, yet conventions had grown up so that even such evasive and
elusive personalities as ghosts were hidebound by precedent. While
the decline of the _genre_ definitely known as the Gothic novel in
no sense put an end to the supernatural in English fiction, it did
mark a difference in manner. The Gothic ghosts were more elementary
in their nature, more superficial, than those of later times. Life
was, in the days of Walpole and Mrs. Radcliffe, more local because
of the limitations of travel and communication, it being considered
astounding in Gothic times that a ghost could travel a thousand miles
with ease while mortals moved snail-like. Scientific investigation was
crude compared with the present and had not greatly touched fiction.
Scientific folk-lore investigations were as unknown as societies of
psychical research, hence neither had aided in the writing of ghostly
fiction.
The mass of ghostly stuff which has appeared in English since the
Gothic period, and which will be classified and discussed under
different motifs in succeeding chapters, shows many of the same
characteristics of the earlier, yet exhibits also a decided development
over primitive, classical and Gothic forms. The modern supernaturalism
is more complex, more psychological than the terroristic, perhaps
because nowadays man is more intellectual, his thought-processes more
subtle. Humanity still wants ghosts, as ever, but they must be more
cleverly presented to be convincing. The ghostly thrill is as ardently
desired by the reading public, as eagerly striven for by the writers
as ever, though it is more difficult of achievement now than formerly.
Yet when it is attained it is more poignant and lasting in its effects
because more subtle in its art. The apparition that eludes analysis
haunts the memory more than do the comparatively simple forms of the
past. Compare, for instance, the spirits evoked by Henry James and
Katherine Fullerton Gerould with the crude clap-trap of cloistered
spooks and armored knights of Gothic times. How cheap and melodramatic
the earlier attempts seem!
The present-day ghost is at once less terrible and more terrible than
those of the past. There is not so much a sense of physical fear now,
as of psychic horror. The pallid specters that glide through antique
castles are ineffectual compared with the maleficent psychic invasions
of modernity. On the other hand, the recent ghostly story frequently
shows a strong sense of humor unknown in Gothicism, and only suggested
in earlier forms, as in the elder Pliny's statement that ghosts would
not visit a person afflicted with freckles, which shows at least a
germinal joviality in classical spooks.
One feature that distinguishes the uncanny tales of to-day from the
Gothic is their greater range of material. The early terror story had
its source in popular superstition, classical literature, medieval
legends, or the Elizabethan drama, while in the century that has
elapsed since the decay of the Gothic novel as such, new fields of
thought have been opened up, and new sources for ghostly plots have
been discovered which the writers of modern stories are quick to
utilize. Present-day science with its wonderful development has
provided countless plots for supernatural stories. Comparative study
of folk-lore, with the activities of the numerous associations, has
brought to light fascinating material. Modern Spiritualism, with its
seances, its mediumistic experiments, has inspired many novels and
stories. The Psychical Research Society, with branches in various parts
of the world and its earnest advocates and serious investigations, has
collected suggestive stuff for many ghostly stories. The different
sources for plot material and mechanics for awesome effect, added
to these from which the terror novel drew its inspiration, have
incalculably enriched the supernatural fiction and widened the limits
far beyond the restrictions of the conventionalized Gothic.
Science has furnished themes for many modern stories of the
supernatural. Modern science itself, under normal conditions, seems
like necromancer's magic, so its incursion into thrilling fiction
is but natural. Every aspect of research and discovery has had its
exponent in fictive form, and the skill with which the material is
handled constitutes one point of difference between the present ghostly
stories and the crude scientific supernaturalism of the early novels.
The influence of Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, and other scientists of the
last century did much to quicken fiction as well as thought, and the
effects can be traced in the work of various authors.
The widespread interest in folk-lore in recent years has had an
appreciable influence on the stories of the supernatural. While the
methods of investigation followed by the serious students of folk-lore
are scientific and the results are tabulated in an analytic rather than
a literary style, yet the effect is helpful to fiction. Comparative
studies in folk-lore, by the bringing together of a mass of material
from diverse sources, establishes the fact of the universal acceptance
of supernaturalism in some form. Ethnic superstitions vary, yet there
is enough similarity between the ideas held by tribes and races so
widely separated as to discredit any basis of imitation or conscious
influence between them, to be of great interest to scientists. No
tribe, however low in the social scale, has been found that has no
belief in powers beyond the mortal.
Folk-lore associations are multiplying and the students of literature
and anthropology are joining forces in the effort to discover and
classify the variant superstitions and legends of the past and of the
races and tribes still in their childhood. Such activities are bringing
to light a fascinating wealth of material from which the writers of
ghostly tales may find countless plots. Such studies show how close
akin the world is after all. A large number of books relating stories
of brownies, bogles, fairies, banshees, wraiths, hobgoblins, witches,
vampires, ghouls, and other superhuman personages have appeared. I
am not including in this list the fairy stories that are written for
juvenile consumption, but merely the folk-loristic or literary versions
for adults.
The most marked instance of the influence of folk-lore in supplying
subject matter for literature is shown in the recent Celtic revival.
The supernatural elements in the folk-tales of Ireland, Scotland,
and Wales have been widely used in fiction, poetry, and the drama.
In this connection one is reminded of Collins's _Ode on the Popular
Superstitions of the Highlands Considered as the Subject for Poetry_.
The Irish National School, with W. B. Yeats, John Synge, and Lady
Gregory as leaders, have made the folk-tales of Ireland live in
literature and the ghostly thrill of the old legends comes down to us
undiminished. Lord Dunsany's work is particularly brilliant, going back
to ancient times and re-creating the mythologic beings for us, making
us friendly with the gods, the centaurs, the giants, and divers other
long-forgotten characters. Kipling has made the lore of the Indian
towns and jungles live for us, as Joel Chandler Harris has immortalized
the legends of the southern negro. Thomas A. Janvier in his tales of
old Mexico calls back the ghosts of Spanish conquerors and Aztec men
and women, repeopling the ancient streets with courtly specters. The
fondness for folk-loristic fiction is one of the marked aspects of
Romanticism at the present time.
The activities of the Society for Psychical Research have had decided
effect in stimulating ghostly stories. When so many intelligent persons
turn their attention to finding and classifying supernatural phenomena
the currents of thought thus set up will naturally influence fiction.
Nowadays every interest known to man is reflected in literature. The
proceedings of the association have been so widely advertised and so
open to the public that persons who would not otherwise give thought
to the supernatural have considered the matter. Such thinkers as W. T.
Stead and Sir Oliver Lodge, to mention only two, would inevitably
influence others. In this connection it is interesting to note the
recent claims by Stead's daughter that her father has communicated
with the living, and Lodge's book, just published, _Raymond, or Life
and Death_, that gives proof of what he considers incontrovertible
messages from his son killed in battle. The collection of thousands of
affirmative answers to the question as to whether one had ever felt a
ghostly presence not to be explained on natural grounds brought out a
mass of material that might serve for plot-making. Haunted houses have
been catalogued and the census of specters taken.
The investigations in modern Spiritualism have done much to affect
ghostly literature. The terrors of the later apparitions are not
physical, but psychical, and probably the stories of the future will
be more and more allied to Spiritualism. Hamlin Garland, John Corbin,
William Dean Howells, Algernon Blackwood, Arnold Bennett, and others
have written novels and stories of this material, though scarcely the
fringe of the garment of possibilities has yet been touched. If one
but grant the hypothesis of Spiritualism, what vistas open up for the
novelist! What thrilling complications might come from the skillful
manipulation of astrals alone,--as aids in establishing alibis, for
instance! Even the limitations that at present bind ghost stories
would be abolished and the effects of the dramatic employment of
spiritualistic faith would be highly sensational. If the will be all
powerful, then not only tables but mountains may be moved. The laws
of physics would be as nothing in the presence of such powers. A
lovelorn youth bent on attaining the object of his desires could, by
merely willing it so, sink ocean liners, demolish skyscrapers, call
up tempests, and rival German secret agents in his havoc. Intensely
dramatic psychological material might be produced by the conflict
resulting from the double or multiple personalities in one's own
nature, according to spiritualistic ideas. There might be complicated
crossings in love, wherein one would be jealous of his alter ego, and
conflicting ambitions of exciting character. The struggle necessary for
the model story might be intensely dramatic though altogether internal,
between one's own selves. One finds himself so much more interesting in
the light of such research than one has ever dreamed. The distinctions
between materializations and astralizations, etherealizations and plain
apparitions might furnish good plot structure. The personality of the
"sensitives" alone would be fascinating material and the cosmic clashes
of will possible under these conceived conditions suggest thrilling
stories.
Dreams constitute another definite source for ghostly plots in modern
literature. While this was true to a certain extent in the Gothic
novel, it is still more so in later fiction. Lafcadio Hearn[69]
advances the theory that all the best plots for ghost stories in any
language come from dreams. He advises the person who would write
supernatural thrillers to study the phases of his own dream life.
It would appear that all one needs to do is to look into his own
nightmares and write. Hearn says: "All the great effects produced
by poets and story writers and even by religious teachers, in the
treatment of the supernatural fear or mystery, have been obtained
directly or indirectly from dreams." Though one may not literally
accept the whole of that statement, one must feel that the relation
between dreams and supernatural impressions is strikingly close. The
feeling of supernatural presence comes almost always at night when
one is or has been asleep. The guilty man, awaking from sleep, thinks
that he sees the specters of those he has wronged--because his dreams
have embodied them for him. The lover beholds the spirit of his dead
love, because in dreams his soul has gone in search of her. Very young
children are unable to distinguish between dreams and reality, as is
the case of savages of a low order, believing in the actuality of what
they experience in dreams. And who can say that our dream life is
altogether baseless and unreal?
[69] In his _Interpretations of Literature_.
The different nightmare sensations, acute and vivid as they are, can be
analyzed to find parallelisms between them and the ghostly plots. For
example, take the sensation, common in nightmares, of feeling yourself
falling from immeasurable height. The same thrill of suspense is
communicated by the climax in Lewis's and Mrs. Dacre's Gothic novels,
where the devil takes guilty mortals to the mountain top and hurls
them down, down. The horrible potentialities of shadows suggested
frequently in dreams is illustrated by Mary Wilkins Freeman's story
where the accusing spirit comes back as a haunting shadow on the wall,
rather than as an ordinary ghost, tormenting the living brother till
_his_ shadow also appears, a portent of his death.[70] The awful grip
of causeless horror, of nameless fear which assails one so often in
nightmares is represented in _The Red Room_,[71] where black Fear, the
Power of Darkness, haunts the room rather than any personal spirit. It
is disembodied horror itself. Wilkie Collins illustrates the presaging
vision of approaching disaster in _The Dream Woman_. The nightmare
horror of supernaturalism is nowhere better shown than in Maupassant's
_La Horla_ where the sleeper wakes with a sense of leaden weight upon
his breast, and knows that night after night some dreadful presence
is shut in with him, invisible yet crushing the life out of him and
driving him mad.
[70] _The Shadows on the Wall._
[71] By H. G. Wells.
The nightmare motifs are present to a remarkable degree in
Bulwer-Lytton's _The Haunted and the Haunters, or the House and
the Brain_. There we have the gigantism of the menacing Thing, the
supernatural power given to inanimate objects, the ghostly chill, the
darkness, and the intolerable oppression of a nameless evil thing
beside one. Vampirism might easily be an outcome of dreams, since
based on a physical sensation of pricking at the throat, combined with
debility caused by weakness, which could be attributed to loss of blood
from the ravages of vampires. F. Marion Crawford's story, _For the
Blood Is the Life_, is more closely related to dreams than most of the
type, though probably Bram Stoker's _Dracula_ is the most horrible.
The curious side of supernaturalism as related to dreams is illustrated
by _The Dream Gown of the Japanese Ambassador_,[72] and the more
beautiful by Simeon Solomon's _Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep_. Mary
Wilkins Freeman has a remarkable short story, _The Hall Bedroom_,
which is one of the best illustrations of the use of dream imagery
and impressions. Here the effects are alluring and beautiful, with
the horror kept in the background, but perhaps the more effective
because of the artistic restraint. Odors, sights, sounds, feelings,
are all raised to an intensity of sensuous, slumbrous enjoyment,
all subliminated above the mortal. The description of the river in
the picture, on which the young man floats away to dreamy death,
similar to the Japanese story referred to by Hearn, helps to give the
impression of infinity that comes only in dreams. Algernon Blackwood in
numerous stories not only uses the elements of dreams and nightmares
but explicitly calls attention to the fact. Dream supernaturalism is
employed in Barry Pain's stories, in Arthur Machen's volume,[73] and in
many others. Freud's theory of dreams as the invariable result of past
experiences or unconscious desires has not been stressed in fiction,
though doubtless it will have its inning presently. A. Conan Doyle's
_The Secret of Goresthorpe Grange_ is an amusing story of the relation
of definite wishes and dreams of the ghostly.
[72] By Brander Matthews.
[73] _The Hill of Dreams._
These are some of the sources from which the later writers of occultism
have drawn their plots. They represent a distinct advance over the
Gothic and earlier supernaturalism in materials, for the modern story
has gained the new elements without loss of the old. The ghostly
fiction of to-day has access to the animistic or classical or medieval
themes, yet has the unlimited province of present thought to furnish
additional inspiration. There never was a time when thinking along
general lines was more spontaneously reflected in fiction than now,
and supernatural literature claims all regions for its own. Like every
other phase of man's thought, ghostly fiction shows the increasing
complexity of form and matter, the wealth of added material and
abounding richness of style, the fine subtleties that only modernity
can give.