Sherds Podcast

Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope MIrrlees was originally published in 1926. Lud-in-the-Mist is the capital of the fictional free state of Dorimare, a country which shares a border with Fairyland, just across The Debatable Hills. Centuries ago, under the rule of Duke Aubrey, Fairy things had been part of life and culture in Dorimare. After a violent revolution, a new merchant class took over the country. Duke Aubrey was expelled and all mention of Fairies and Fairy lore became taboo. The smuggling of hallucination-inducing fairy fruit into Dorimare continues, however, behind closed doors. When Nathaniel Chanticleer, the Mayor of Lud-in-the-Mist finds that his son has ingested some of this heinous fruit, the old ways, the traditions and romance of the Fairies can no longer be ignored.

Over the course of the episode, we discuss the methods Mirrlees’ novel has in common with Modernist practice, the various allegorical interpretations that offer themselves throughout the text, and the emergent class politics suggested by her discussion of the fairy folk.

Bibliography:

Attebury, Brian, ‘“Make it Old”: The Other Mythic Method’ in The Mirror of the Past, ed. Bogdan Trocha, Aleksander Rzyman, Tomasz Ratajczak (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014)

Mirrlees, Hope, Collected Poems, ed. Sandeep Parmar, (Fyfield Books, 2011)

The Birds by Tarjei Vesaas was originally published in Nynorsk in 1957, and is available from Peter Owen books and now as a Penguin Modern Classics  edition.  The translation is by Michael Barnes and Torbjorn Stoverud.  The central character of The Birds is Mattis, a mentally disabled man, living with his sister in a small rural community in Norway.   We observe Mattis as he attempts to navigate the obstacles of everyday life - the obligations of work, family relationships and even romantic love.  Mattis’ transcendental, or even visionary inner life, keenly evoked by Vesaas’ spare and lucid prose, is far richer than it appears to those around him.  At the core of the novel, is Mattis’ struggle with the border between experience and expression in a world where birds seem to understand more than people.  

Over the course of the programme, we discuss the role of the woodcock as a symbol, Vesaas’ sensitive and generous treatment of mental disability, and the possibility of viewing Mattis as an artist figure.

On this episode of Sherds Podcast, I’m joined by writer, Quentin S. Crisp, to discuss his new novel, Graves (2019), published by Snuggly Books, who give the following description of the book:

In Graves, Damien, a male nurse and self-styled ‘thanatophile’, is in love with death in its purer and more ideal form. However, as he casts around for some authentic way to defy the void of modernity, his thanatophilia is swiftly and insidiously corrupted. Scavenging what ‘materials’ he can, he works in isolation like a reverse Doctor Frankenstein, wishing to understand the secrets of death, not life, in order to break the narrative power of science over the modern mind.Set against the backdrop of anomie-drenched 21st-century London, Graves, Quentin S. Crisp’s second major novel, is a work of Gothic horror that confronts the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness in a world where it is easier to believe in artificial intelligence than human intelligence.

Over the course of the programme we discuss the influence of Japanese Literature on Crisp’s work, the importance of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Graves, and the moral complexities of antinatalism.

Footnotes:

Some of the authors mentioned by Crisp throughout the programme are:

Nagai Kafu - you can read about Quentin S. Crisp’s relationship with this writer here: https://mathewfriley.com/2010/08/quentin-s-crisp-the-book-i-would-like-to-be-buried-with/

Justin Isis - http://justinisis.blogspot.com/ - whose two collections of stories, I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like (2011), and Welcome to the Arms Race (2015) are both published by Chômu Press: http://chomupress.com/

Jeremy Reed - http://www.jeremyreed.co.uk/

Zdravka Evtimova - http://www.contemporarybulgarianwriters.com/1-writers/evtimova-zdravka/

Brendan Connell - whose novel, Clark (2016), is singled out for special mention: http://www.snugglybooks.co.uk/clark/

About the Author:

Quentin S. Crisp was born in 1972, in North Devon, UK. He studied Japanese at the University of Durham and graduated in 2000. He has had fiction published by Tartarus Press, PS Publishing, Eibonvale Press and others. He currently resides in Bexleyheath, and is editor for Chômu Press.

In this episode, I’m joined by Patricia Pulham, Professor of Victorian Literature at The University of Surrey, to discuss Vernon Lee’s collection of supernatural tales, Hauntings (1890).

The book collects four of Vernon Lee’s ghost stories, ‘Amour Dure’, ‘Dionea’, ‘Oke of Okehurst’, and ‘A Wicked Voice’, which together represent some of the finest examples of the genre, and reflect Lee’s deep engagement with Italian art, her sensitivity to place, and her imaginative relationship with the vestigial, fragmentary manifestations of history.

Over the course of the programme, we discuss Lee’s preference for a more restrained form of horror, her evocation of the settings in her texts, and take an in-depth look at music in her story, ‘A Wicked Voice’.

Bibliography:

Art and the Transitional Object in Vernon Lee's Supernatural Tales by Patricia Pulham (Ashgate Publishing, 2008)

Vernon Lee: Decadence, Ethics, Aesthetics ed. Patricia Pulham, Catherine Maxwell (Palgrave, 2006)

Vernon Lee: A Literary Biography by Vineta Colby, (University of Virgina Press, 2003).

D. O. Fagunwa’s Forest of a Thousand Daemons was first published in 1938; it marks the first full-length novel published in Yoruba and has become a classic work of African literature. The delightfully rich translation is by the Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka and is published by City Lights Books. The book concerns the life of the brave hunter, Akara-Ogun, whose encounters with spirits, bog-trolls and other supernatural creatures are related orally with great flair for an enraptured audience which grows bigger with each night’s telling, and an author who takes down the hunter’s words that they might provide a record of his days upon this earth.

The book stands at a crossroads between oral and written culture, between Christianity and traditional Yoruba beliefs, and takes place in a world in which the boundary between the natural and the supernatural is a distinctly porous one. To open its covers is to witness this complex metamorphosis taking place.

Over the course of the programme, we discuss the choices Wole Soyinka makes in his translation, religious syncretism, and the strong emphasis the book places on the body.

Bibliography:

‘Compound of Spells: The Predicament of D. O. Fagunwa’ by Olakunle George in Research in African Literatures, Vol. 28, No. 1, The Oral-Written Interface (Spring, 1997), pp. 78-97 (Indiana University Press)

An interview with Anthony Olajide Fayemi: https://www.thenewsnigeria.com.ng/2014/05/hidden-facts-about-fagunwa/

The Witches of Kyiv and Other Gothic Tales collects a range of stories by Ukrainian Romantic author, Orest Somov which were originally published between 1827 and 1833.  This collection comes from Sova Books and the translations are by Svitlana Yakovenko.  The book also features a helpful glossary and annotations, as well as excellent introduction by Svitlana Krys.  

Though written in Russian, these gothic tales draw heavily on Ukrainian folklore, and introduce a distinctly regional flavour to the palette of the Romantic literature of the 1820s and ‘30s.  Bold Cossack warriors, perilously seductive water sprites, and cunning witches haunt the pages of the collection, and bring into being the theories espoused by Somov in his seminal essay of 1823, ‘On Romantic Poetry’.   In this episode, I’m joined by Dr Keith Walmsley to discuss the work and influence of this forgotten innovator of Romantic prose in Russian. 

Over the course of the programme, we discuss Somov’s role as the originator of many motifs that will echo throughout Russian and Ukrainian literature, consider his relationship with Russia, and examine the import of the various folkloric figures which populate his tales.   

Bibliography:

‘Orest Somov: An Introduction’ by John Mersereau in The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 43, No. 101 (June, 1965), pp. 354-370 (the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London)

The Holy Fool in Russian Culture by Ewa Thompson (University Press of America, 1987)

Russian Romantic Criticism: An Anthology edited by Lauren G. Leighton (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1987)

Russia and Ukraine: Literature and the Discourse of Empire from Napoleonic to Postcolonial Times (McGill-Queen’s Press, 2001) 

Были и небылицы, Орест Михайлович Сомов (Сов. Россия, 1984)

Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall was originally published in German in 1963.  Our protagonist and narrator is a woman in her 40s. While visiting friends at a hunting lodge in rural Austria, she finds herself divorced from all human contact when an invisible wall descends, cutting her small region off from the rest of the world.  She is quickly forced into a struggle to survive, and must learn to become self-sufficient. Willingly or not, she must become the ruler of her own destiny.   Often interpreted as an allegory of female emancipation, this Robinsonade places questions of identity and society at its core by describing a world in which their very existence becomes questionable. 

Over the course of the programme, we discuss the rich interpretive possibilities the book offers, delve into its treatment of nature, and ponder the recurrent reading of the novel as a feminist text.

The readings in this episode were performed by Ola Wittchen

Bibliography:

Wahrscheinlich bin ich verrückt: Marlen Haushofer - Die Biographie by Daniela Strigl (List, 2007)

marlenhaushofer.ch

Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe

‘Marlen Haushofer–eine Feministin aus Österreich’ by Dagmar C. G. Lorenz in Modern Austrian Literature, Vol. 12, No. 3/4, Special Issue on Austrian Women Writers (1979), pp. 171-191

‘Behind the Transparent Wall Marlen Haushofer's Novel "Die Wand"‘ by Hugo Caviola in Modern Austrian Literature, Vol. 24, No. 1 (1991), pp. 100-112

One contemporary reviewer referred to The Hill of Dreams as the “study, rather than the story, of a morbid temperament.” Often regarded as Machen’s masterpiece, this beautiful and idiosyncratic novel concerns the short life of a young writer, Lucian Taylor, and follows his journey from the Welsh countryside of his boyhood to the squalor of late 19th-century London. In an attempt to commune with a reality beyond our own, a plane of existence accessible only to the true artistic visionary, Lucian sacrifices himself and becomes a martyr to aesthetic ideals.

Over the course of the programme, we discuss the book’s place within the decadent movement, Machen’s moral position regarding his main character, and the traces of opium that stain the novel’s pages.

Bibliography:

‘Arthur Machen: Ecstasy and Epiphany’ by NIcholas Freeman in Literature and Theology, Vol. 24, No. 3 (September 2010), pp. 242-255

‘Abominable Transformations: Becoming-Fungus in Arthur Machen’s The Hill of Dreams’ by Anthony Camara in The EcoGothic in the Long Nineteenth Century (Manchester University Press)

Mark Valentine’s ‘Introduction’ in The Hill of Dreams by Arthur Machen (Tartarus Press)

The Friends of Arthur Machen website: http://www.arthurmachen.org.uk/

‘Lucian in the Labyrinth: London Locations in The Hill of Dreams’ in The Library of the Lost : In Search of Forgotten Authors by Roger Dobson (Caermaen Books and Tartarus Press, 2015)

Decadent and Occult Works by Arthur Machen, ed. by Denis Denisoff (Modern Humanities Research Association, 2018)

Ghada Samman’s ‘Beirut Nightmares’ was originally published in Arabic in 1976. Set at the height of the Lebanese Civil War, this autobiographical novel concerns two weeks in the life of a journalist and writer living at the heart of the warzone. With the conflict raging outside, and snipers on every corner, she is unable to leave her flat. The horror of the waking world soon finds its way into the dreamscape where disembodied limbs roam the flaming streets, and mannequins come to life.

Over the course of the programme, we discuss the strange mixture of realistic depictions of war and fantastical nightmares, boredom as a literary theme, and the clash between ideology and aesthetics within the novel.

Edogawa Rampo’s short story, ‘The Human Chair’,was originally published in Japanese in 1925. The story is taken from the collection, Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination, translated by James B. Harris, and published by Tuttle Publishing. ‘The Human Chair’ is a tale of the grotesque in which a master carpenter entombs himself inside a chair in order to gain the intimacy that society has denied him. The longer he spends inside the chair, pressed close to the bodies of strangers, the harder it becomes to return to his ordinary life. As well as being a superb example of the uncanny tale, ‘The Human Chair’ is a rich palimpsest that reveals layer upon layer of sexual, social and national anxieties.