“So much for Machen’s literary history. No one could possibly tell it better than he has in Things Near and Far and Far Off Things—his two autobiographical collections. Nor is any literary history as simply told. It is not one of your tremendous collections of anecdotes concerning ‘literary figures of the day.’ It is the story of a lonely man who wanted, more than anything else, to write. And then—you must read Machen. All of him. I know of no other writer whose entire output can be so heartily recommended.
“You will realize, as you read, that when people use such names as Poe, Stevenson, Blackwood, and Henry James, they are but vaguely gesturing in the general direction of Machen’s own weird landscape. It is a land as strange as the misty mid-region of Weir where lies the dank tarn of Auber, the measureless caverns where runs the sacred river Alph. But it is like none of these. The young man of Gwent has created his own landscape, a strange country spread out under a sky that glows as if great furnace doors had been opened, bordered by tall grey mountains, traversed by streams that coil their esses through silent woods. It is my fancy to think I have a picture of that country, painted by another genius. You see that Van Gogh hanging there?” The Host indicated a large framed print of writhing cypresses under a swirling sky. “On quiet November nights I sit here and look into it, half expecting to see young Meyrick or Lucian Taylor come down the hillside.
“It is curious to go over some of these former estimates of Arthur Machen. One first reads them through in a fine enthusiasm at finding someone else who has read Machen and found him good. But even those who praise him the most, fail to express, or even to hint at the ‘quiddity’ of Machen. They seem to find him so far beyond their powers to praise that they often resort to picayunish criticism. Thus we find Vincent Starrett mildly complaining about an absence of cloud descriptions in Machen. Or about a lack of humor. True, you’ll find no Maxfield Parrish sky castles, no James Gould Fletcher touches, no rotogravure alto-cirrus formations. But if ever a man could imply clouds without using the very word, Machen can. And although Machen has not yet introduced a pair of jolly grave-diggers to coax us back into our seats or cajole us into combing back our bristling hair, you will find he has humor.
“There does exist, however, a problem in classifying Machen—it seems to exist only a necessary evil. Essentially, I suppose, Machen is what might be called a Gothic novelist. He has been linked so often with the recognized practitioners of the Gothic style and tradition. You’ll find no ivy-covered ruins, no deserted abbeys, no ravens, no baying mastiffs, not even a sinister monk—and we must rule out those jolly tosspots, the monks of Abergavenny. I daresay Machen would prefer to be known as a Silurist. His ruins are those of an older time, older even than the ruins of the golden city of the Roman legions.
“Vincent Starrett calls Machen the Novelist of Ecstasy and Sin—making him sound rather like a Messalinaen Lady Novelist. Mr. Van Vechten too, at least in his decadent novel Peter Whiffle, seizes upon Mr. Machen from much the same viewpoint, and makes Machen an asset in the character of his precious Peter. And all too frequently, in discussing Machen, the spirit of Baudelaire raises its ugly head. Novelist of Sin, forsooth! ‘Evil, be thou my good!’ What rot! And there are those, apparently, who would classify some of Machen’s tales as ‘erotica.’ Baudelaire, bosh! As well point out the resemblance between a lane in Gwent and a lupanar in Paris! No—Machen is neither a Gothic novelist nor a writer of delectable indelicacies. Machen’s tag must be sought for in hieroglyphics of his own devising.
“The ‘quiddity’ of Machen, the one quality that pervades all his work, is that of ‘ecstasy.’ It is not the ecstasy of the lyric lady-novelist. Mr. Starrett seems to think it is a technical device, since he finds it is ‘due in no small degree to his beautiful English style.’ Mr. Machen’s own idea of this quality is that it is ‘a removal from the common life.’ And that brings me to Hieroglyphics, a book that should be a text-book in all our Universities. But perhaps not—no, surely not. Because in this book of Machen’s you will find set forth, once and for all, the difference between reading matter and fine literature. And such a book cannot fail to make enemies, nor to create false ideas even among its friends. Mr. Starrett says: ‘It is Arthur Machen’s theory of literature and life, brilliantly exposited by that cyclical mode of discoursing that was affected by Coleridge. In it he suggests the admirable doctrine of James Branch Cabell that fine literature must be, in effect, an allegory and not the careful history of particular persons.’ Mr. Cabell, who is, according to Mr. Starrett, Machen’s literary son, set forth his literary credo in Beyond Life some seventeen years after the publication of Hieroglyphics. In it, Mr. Cabell expresses admirably, and with his famed urbanity, many of the truths he learned at his father’s knee. One is as pleased with Cabell’s literary progenitor as with his prose.
“Just one more quotation. It is my favorite quotation to end quotations about literary credos or the mechanics of creation. Mr. Machen, in The Three Impostors says: ‘... I will give you the task of a literary man in a phrase. He has got to do simply this—to invent a wonderful story, and to tell it in a wonderful manner.’
“In his novels, The Three Impostors, The Hill of Dreams, The Secret Glory, The Terror, The Great Return, and in many of his shorter stories: The Great God Pan, The White People, in all his creative work, Machen has shown himself the master of his own precept. In Hieroglyphics Machen noted the difference between reading matter that related facts about a character or a group of characters, and fine literature that symbolizes certain eternal and essential elements in human nature by means of incidents. You will find, then, that these wonderful stories are not merely startlingly original conceptions of heroes and heroines taking part in unusual events. That many of these plots and inventions are uncanny and fantastic does not place them in the ‘thriller’ class—having nothing more to say than the latest detective story. It would be absurd to think of The Great God Pan, for example, as merely a story about the discovery that Pan is not dead, or that Priapic cults may still flourish. No, it’s not so simple as that. There are other elements present, and chiefest of these is that quality of ecstasy. There are symbols and representations of a higher order, no cheap mysticism, no spiritualistic clap-trap. And finally there is in these stories an element of something that prompts belief.
“The Great God Pan is a story much more improbable, more fantastic than Frankenstein or The Strange Case of M. Valdemar. And it is not a mere pseudo-scientific story—it is believable. You do not believe that? Yet Machen wrote a story more fantastic still. A story with no possible explanation, scientific or otherwise, in short, nothing less than miraculous vision could have explained it. And that story was, and still is, widely accepted as true. The tale of the Bowmen at Mons, a simply written story, no flourishes, no elaborate atmosphere; yet with that quality of ecstasy, that quiddity of Machenism, has won belief. Quite recently, in a shop, I came across a volume that was an anthology of Myths, mysteries, visions and the like, and in it appeared the story of the Bowmen. It was not Machen’s story, however, and there was no mention whatever of Arthur Machen. It had been set down as an authentic legend, documented and sworn to by this one and that one who claimed to have been there. I daresay it will, in time, join such distinguished company as the Walls of Jericho and Joshua’s obedient sun.
“Yes, you must read Machen. All of him. It has been implied that there is a sameness about Machen’s work. But do not imagine that you will read the same story, told and retold. You will come to realize that there is in Machen a definite pattern. He has said that most men, as well as writers, are men of one idea. And most writers create tales that are variations on one theme, that a common pattern, like the pattern of an Eastern carpet, runs through them all. And Machen’s pattern? You will see, when you read him, that literature ‘began with charms, incantations, spells, songs of mystery, chants of religious ecstasy, the Bacchic chorus, the Rune, the Mass.’ And Machen has taken as his symbol and pattern the devices and signs of ecstasy, of the removal from the common life. The dance—the maze—the spiral—the wheel—the vine, and wine, these are the outward signs of ecstasy, the patterns of Machen.