Horror in literature attains a new malignity in the work of Matthew
Gregory Lewis, (1773-1818) whose novel "The Monk" (1795) achieved
marvelous popularity and earned him the nickname of "Monk" Lewis. This
young author, educated in Germany and saturated with a body of wild
Teuton lore unknown to Mrs. Radcliffe, turned to terror in forms more
violent than his gentle predecessor had ever dared to think of, and
produced as a result a masterpiece of active nightmare whose general
Gothic cast is spiced with added stores of ghoulishness. The story
is one of a Spanish monk, Ambrosio, who from a state of over-proud
virtue is tempted to the very nadir of evil by a fiend in the guise
of the maiden Matilda; and who is finally, when awaiting death at
the Inquisition's hands, induced to purchase escape at the price of
his soul from the devil, because he deems both body and soul already
lost. Forthwith the mocking Fiend snatches him to a lonely place,
tells him he has sold his soul in vain since both pardon and a chance
for salvation were approaching at the moment of his hideous bargain,
and completes the sardonic betrayal by rebuking him for his unnatural
crimes, and casting his body down a precipice whilst his soul is
borne off forever to perdition. The novel contains some appalling
descriptions such as the incantation in the vaults beneath the convent
cemetery, the burning of the convent, and the final end of the wretched
abbot. In the sub-plot where the Marquis de las Cisternas meets the
spectre of his erring ancestress, The Bleeding Nun, there are many
enormously potent strokes, notably the visit of the animated corpse to
the Marquis's bedside, and the cabalistic ritual whereby the Wandering
Jew helps him to fathom and banish his dead tormentor. Nevertheless,
"The Monk" drags sadly when read as a whole. It is too long and too
diffuse, much of its potency is marred by flippancy and by an awkwardly
excessive reaction against those canons of decorum which Lewis at first
despised as prudish. One great thing may be said of the author; that
he never ruined his ghostly visions with a natural explanation. He
succeeded in breaking up the Radcliffian tradition and expanding the
field of the Gothic novel. Lewis wrote much more than "The Monk." His
drama, "The Castle Spectre," was produced in 1798, and he later found
time to pen other fiction in ballad form--"Tales of Terror," (1799)
"Tales of Wonder," (1801) and a succession of translations from Germany.
Gothic romances, both English and German, now appeared in multitudinous
and mediocre profusion. Most of them were merely ridiculous in the
light of mature taste, and Miss Austen's famous satire "Northanger
Abbey" was by no means an unmerited rebuke to a school which had
sunk far toward absurdity. This particular school was petering out,
but before its final subordination there arose its last and greatest
figure in the person of Charles Robert Maturin, (1782-1824) an obscure
and eccentric Irish clergyman. Out of an ample body of miscellaneous
writing which includes one confused Radcliffian imitation called "The
Fatal Revenge; or, The Family of Montorio," (1807) Maturin at length
evolved the vivid horror-masterpiece of "Melmoth, the Wanderer," (1820)
in which the Gothic tale climbed to altitudes of sheer spiritual fright
which it had never known before.
"Melmoth" is the tale of an Irish gentleman who, in the seventeenth
century, obtained a preternaturally extended life from the Devil at
the price of his soul. If he can persuade another to take the bargain
off his hands, and assume his existing state, he can be saved; but
this he can never manage to effect, no matter how assiduously he
haunts those whom despair has made reckless and frantic. The framework
of the story is very clumsy; involving tedious length, digressive
episodes, narratives within narratives, and laboured dovetailing
and coincidences; but at various points in the endless rambling,
there is felt a pulse of power undiscoverable in any previous work
of this kind--a kinship to the essential truth of human nature, an
understanding of the profoundest sources of actual cosmic fear, and a
white heat of sympathetic passion on the writer's part, which makes
the book a true document of aesthetic self-expression rather than a
mere clever compound of artifice. No unbiased reader can doubt that
with "Melmoth" an enormous stride in the evolution of the horror-tale
is represented. Fear is taken out of the realm of the conventional and
exalted into a hideous cloud over mankind's very destiny. Maturin's
shudders, the work of one capable of shuddering himself, are of the
sort that convince. Mrs. Radcliffe and Lewis are fair game for the
parodist, but it would be difficult to find a false note in the
feverishly intensified action and high atmospheric tension of the
Irishman whose less sophisticated emotions and strain of Celtic
mysticism gave him the finest possible natural equipment for his task.
Without a doubt, Maturin is a man of authentic genius, and he was so
recognized by Balzac, who grouped "Melmoth" with Moliere's "Don Juan,"
Goethe's "Faust," and Byron's "Manfred" as the supreme allegorical
figures of modern European literature, and wrote a whimsical piece
called "Melmoth Reconciled," in which the Wanderer succeeds in passing
his infernal bargain on to a Parisian bank defaulter, who in turn
hands it along a chain of victims, until a gambler dies with it in
his possession, and by his damnation ends the curse. Scott, Rossetti,
Thackeray and Baudelaire are other titans who gave Maturin their
unqualified admiration, and there is much significance in the fact that
Oscar Wilde, after his disgrace and exile, chose for his last days in
Paris the assumed name of "Sebastian Melmoth."
(continued next month)
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