Arthur Machen: Weaver of Fantasy

by William F. Gekle

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And then of course there is the final test of the story-teller’s magic. Mr. Machen’s inventions have frequently been taken for truth. The tale of the Bowmen at Mons is the classic example. Machen has told how he received letters following the publication of some of his books—letters in which the writers sought explanations of the stories, letters which were undoubtedly prompted by a belief in some basic truth on which they suspected the story had been built.

Many years ago Vincent Starrett wrote, in his preface to the Chicago edition of The Shining Pyramid, that there were three Machens—Machen the Saint, Machen the Sorcerer and Machen the Critic. It is, of course, Machen the Sorcerer whose work is most popular, or shall we say, the best known. Machen himself once wrote: “Sorcery and Sanctity, these are the only true realities.” We might interpret these to mean religion and science—although it is doubtful if all of the admirers of Arthur Machen make this interpretation. At any rate it is the works of Machen the Sorcerer that have been most widely anthologized. These are the stories one finds classified under such headings as “supernatural stories, tales of terror, horror stories” and the like.

Let us admit that supernatural fiction, supernatural tales, have quite a respectable lineage. It must not be imagined, as some intellectuals do, that the tale of terror is something to which only the readers of pulp magazines are addicted. The supernatural tale has been the subject of several excellent studies. One has only to mention the work of such admirable scholars as Dorothy Scarborough, Edith Birkhead, Montague Summers and Eino Railo.

It has been said by some of these scholarly investigators that almost every English writer of any importance has, at one time or another, written at least one story or novel that fits somewhere into one of these categories. And then, of course, the scholarly investigators proceed to give reasons for the interest in such stories, and they point out that the interest as well as the belief in such matters is always in direct proportion to the ruggedness of the terrain. And they also list, as evidence of the extent of their research, the means whereby the best effects may be achieved in this particular field. Basically these have to do with landscape, architecture, antiquity and a whole collection of odds and ends, of props and stage settings that form the background for the venerable school of Gothic literature started many years ago by Horace Walpole in The Castle of Otranto.

One thing all of these tales have in common is, naturally enough, strangeness. A strangeness in landscape, a strangeness in character. Basically too, one supposes, these stories are written about, and because of, men’s fears. That is why they are called ghost stories, or horror stories, or tales of terror. This fear is not merely a fear of the dead returned, but of the past. For these stories concern themselves, even when not with actual ghosts, with past glories, past powers, past civilizations, and ancient ceremonies.

It is not that man seeks to frighten himself that he reads these stories and is fascinated by them. Psychologists, of one sort or another, have said that the popularity of ghost stories and mystery novels can be traced to a desire to enjoy vicariously the precarious situations in which characters in these tales find themselves; and that by substituting themselves for the characters involved the readers may obtain a certain stimulation which is lacking in their humdrum, calm and civilized lives. This, it seems to me, is not particularly true. It is rather because the past is the past—simply that and nothing more. For the past is the one thing man can never alter, although it has become fashionable for us to try even that. The present is here, the future is attainable and forseeable and it may even be influenced. The past is unattainable and will always remain so, therefore man remains fascinated by it. The more shrouded in the mists of time and of antiquity, the more fascinating. Man does not read of the past to frighten himself any more than he drinks in order to experience a hang-over. Nor does the average reader of supernatural stories identify himself with primitive men’s fears any more than he identifies himself with the abstract forces for good or evil when reading detective stories. Man is a curious creature and his curiosity leads him into strange places. His curiosity concerning his amazing curiosity leads him to even stranger conclusions.

This preoccupation with the Past is part of man’s eternal preoccupation with Time; is now, and always shall be, world without end; from the days of the early Greeks, who knew that Chronos was the father of great Jupiter himself—the parent of the father of the Gods. Many years ago J. W. Dunne wrote a strange and tantalizing book, An Experiment with Time, a book much remarked by critics and book reviewers in the practice of their trade, but seldom quoted beyond a mere mention of its title. This is an extraordinary book, perhaps out-dated now, in this age of the supersonic and the expanding universe and the expanding ego. Nevertheless, H. G. Wells and Kipling have been influenced by it; and many another creator of the marvelous and the wonderful. One may read many strange and wonderful books, one may even read strong and powerful and significant books—but one never forgets such books and plays written about the Time theme as The Time Machine and Berkeley Square, Priestley’s I Have Been Here Before, Ford Madox Ford’s Ladies Whose Bright Eyes and many others.