In the Adventure of the Mazarin Stone, Sherlock Holmes declares "I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is mere appendix." This is, evidently, the great detective's resolution of his own mind-body problem. Yet the body of Sherlock Holmes proves significant in a great many stories. As we are moving through the historical "reality" of Victorian literature and not in some realm of steampunk fantasy, he must of course be "embodied" -- but he uses that body in fascinating ways.
In The Adventure of the Dying Detective, Holmes deceives even Watson, faking his own illness in order to lay a trap for a criminal. In the process we hear his delightful attempt to feign delirium. Without any reason for doing so, he announces, "Indeed, I cannot think why the whole bed of the ocean is not one solid mass of oysters, so prolific the creatures seem!" In The Reigate Puzzle, we learn Holmes is susceptible to ailments, as "Even his iron constitution... had broken down under the strain of an investigation which had extended over two months during which period he... had more than once... kept to his task for five days at a stretch." Yet there, too, Holmes tricks people into thinking he is ill, in order to divert attention during a vital conversation.
I suppose that most people keep mind and body in an existential alliance, rarely allowing too much separation tween their consciousness and the physical vessel that fuels and mediates it. Holmes, though, seems to use his body as a tool of his will, casually pushing it to its uttermost limits and frequently ignoring its demands. Thus (somewhere or other!) he tells Watson that he cannot spare time for digestion because he is devoted to contemplating a problem. Yet Holmes, when he wishes to be, is as acutely aware of his own body as of all those he observes with such calculating fervor -- thus his success not only in creating ordinary disguises, but in creating and manipulating false ailments.
Holmes is famous for his logic -- for his mind. It would be interesting to speculate on whether that mind felt "at home" within his body, or whether, perhaps like T.E. Lawrence, he struggled in frustration against the weakness, strangeness, and imperfections of his actual substance -- tugging with impatience at his only anchor in the material world. Yet, in the middle of an engaging mystery, perhaps it hardly mattered.
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Saturday, July 26, 2014
The Human Shoggoth
H.P. Lovecraft -- At the Mountains of Madness (Part 4: Conclusion)
The shoggoth is one of the most memorable features of the story: "the nightmare plastic column of foetid black iridescence... a shapeless congeries of proto-plasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and unforming as pustules of greenish light..." Since the Old Ones used shoggoths as a slave labor force, it is reasonable to presume that they constitute Lovecraft's anxieties about the working class. I think there is more to the shoggoth, however. They are, in some ways, an embodiment of collectivity -- thus, ultimately, of society, cities, and civilization. After all, they are represented in the story as "a vast onrushing subway train," evoking an image of modernity, and a location ripe for overpopulated claustrophobia.
Shoggoths are raw, savage genetics -- demonstrating the undignified origin point of humanity, in both an evolutionary and a reproductive sense. The narrator speaks of "the frightful amorphous entities that might have pushed their foetidly squirming way even to the topmost hollow pinnacles..." This is the oozing stuff of life, manifested as a living monstrosity. The horror of the shoggoth is the horror of life -- the shifting, bubbling, heaving, messy reality of human substance that can find no meaning or purpose or justification.
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By the end of the story, the menacing reality of the shoggoth is replaced by babbling and inarticulate references to "the black pit" and "the nameless cylinder" and "the primal white jelly."
I'm not sure that this story is necessarily Lovecraft's best work. Yet I wonder whether he ever managed to produce something so acutely revealing of his own most fundamental anxieties.
Image from Unser Wissen von der Erde, available on the British Library's Flickr page.
The shoggoth is one of the most memorable features of the story: "the nightmare plastic column of foetid black iridescence... a shapeless congeries of proto-plasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and unforming as pustules of greenish light..." Since the Old Ones used shoggoths as a slave labor force, it is reasonable to presume that they constitute Lovecraft's anxieties about the working class. I think there is more to the shoggoth, however. They are, in some ways, an embodiment of collectivity -- thus, ultimately, of society, cities, and civilization. After all, they are represented in the story as "a vast onrushing subway train," evoking an image of modernity, and a location ripe for overpopulated claustrophobia.
Shoggoths are raw, savage genetics -- demonstrating the undignified origin point of humanity, in both an evolutionary and a reproductive sense. The narrator speaks of "the frightful amorphous entities that might have pushed their foetidly squirming way even to the topmost hollow pinnacles..." This is the oozing stuff of life, manifested as a living monstrosity. The horror of the shoggoth is the horror of life -- the shifting, bubbling, heaving, messy reality of human substance that can find no meaning or purpose or justification.
By the end of the story, the menacing reality of the shoggoth is replaced by babbling and inarticulate references to "the black pit" and "the nameless cylinder" and "the primal white jelly."
I'm not sure that this story is necessarily Lovecraft's best work. Yet I wonder whether he ever managed to produce something so acutely revealing of his own most fundamental anxieties.
Image from Unser Wissen von der Erde, available on the British Library's Flickr page.
Friday, July 25, 2014
Blasphemous Penguins and Lovecraft's History
H.P. Lovecraft -- The Mountains of Madness (Part 3)
"What we heard was not the fabulous note of any buried blasphemy of elder earth from whose supernal toughness an age-denied polar sun had evoked a monstrous response." Classic Lovecraft -- yet only building up to "the raucous squawking of a penguin" Admittedly, a six foot albino penguin, but a penguin nevertheless. It's at moments like these when the story flirts (ferociously?) with the absurd, if not the outright comic.
Yet the middle segments of the story also include a complex history -- something surpassing, perhaps, even Tolkien's indulgence in (if not his capacity for) including ancient frameworks for the events of his stories. The history is more unbelievable than any giant penguin, for the narrator and his compatriot decipher endless details from artwork of (we are frequently reminded) an extremely alien sensibility and consciousness. The history is certainly an interesting one -- Old Ones fighting Mi-Go and Cthulhu spawn in epic wars? Amazing!
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The curious thing is that history is subtle and maybe even sophisticated. This is no list of kings and emperors, no chronicle of the high and mighty of the sort to which so many students have been subjected, no Greek or Biblical lineage of patriarchy. Partly due to the scale of time in question, and partly due to the nature of the alien civilization involved, it is a kind of environmental history. It is a history in which slavery and rebellion play a central role, unable to be suppressed beneath veneers of religion or rationality. It is almost a postmodern history, in which the centrality of the subject is disrupted, avoided, even impossible. After all, some of the major players are the genetically-engineered monstrosities called shoggoths, whose limited intelligence generally only mimics the Old Ones, but which somehow waged a war for their own liberation! Consider the passage: "To keep on with the work of the upper world it had become necessary to adapt some of the amorphous and curiously cold-resistant shoggoths to land life; a thing the Old Ones had formerly been reluctant to do. The great river was now lifeless, and the upper sea had lost most of its denizens except the seals and whales. All the birds had flown away, save only the great, grotesque penguins."
Penguins again! Anyway... this all goes back to the question of absurd and improbable deduction. The narrator eventually admits, "All this, of course, assuming that the non-terrestrial linkages and the anomalies ascribed to the invading foes [Mi-Go, etc.] are not pure mythology. Conceivably, the Old Ones might have invented a cosmic framework to account for their occasional defeats..." It's an important reminder of how much speculation is involved in this history. And what sort of scientist would take such leaps? What motivates these explorers? The reader has precious little to work with regarding such psychological questions, other than the periodic assurances that these are men of science, affiliated with Lovecraft's famous, fictional Miskatonic University.
Yet there is one interesting passage in that regard: "Our motivation after that is something I will leave to psychologists.... Yet in the end we did let sheer burning curiosity -- or anxiety -- or auto-hypnotism -- or vague thoughts of responsibility toward [the missing] Gedney -- or what not -- drive us on." Surely these are wildly different things? Aren't they? Perhaps not. Is human anxiety the cause of curiosity? Or is the reverse more true? Auto-hypnotism?! Just madness, surely, as the title of the story demonstrates. Yet if the Old Ones did create all other forms of life on earth, as the narrator suggests, then perhaps these men are not independent agents after all, but driven by ancestral, genetic pseudo-memories as much as the narrator in another famous tale, The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Are the scientists inevitably drawn to the antarctic, to the Old Ones, to the danger and the madness? Is the object of their curiosity also the source of it?
Image from Child Harolde's Pilgrimage, available on the British Library's Flickr page.
"What we heard was not the fabulous note of any buried blasphemy of elder earth from whose supernal toughness an age-denied polar sun had evoked a monstrous response." Classic Lovecraft -- yet only building up to "the raucous squawking of a penguin" Admittedly, a six foot albino penguin, but a penguin nevertheless. It's at moments like these when the story flirts (ferociously?) with the absurd, if not the outright comic.
Yet the middle segments of the story also include a complex history -- something surpassing, perhaps, even Tolkien's indulgence in (if not his capacity for) including ancient frameworks for the events of his stories. The history is more unbelievable than any giant penguin, for the narrator and his compatriot decipher endless details from artwork of (we are frequently reminded) an extremely alien sensibility and consciousness. The history is certainly an interesting one -- Old Ones fighting Mi-Go and Cthulhu spawn in epic wars? Amazing!
The curious thing is that history is subtle and maybe even sophisticated. This is no list of kings and emperors, no chronicle of the high and mighty of the sort to which so many students have been subjected, no Greek or Biblical lineage of patriarchy. Partly due to the scale of time in question, and partly due to the nature of the alien civilization involved, it is a kind of environmental history. It is a history in which slavery and rebellion play a central role, unable to be suppressed beneath veneers of religion or rationality. It is almost a postmodern history, in which the centrality of the subject is disrupted, avoided, even impossible. After all, some of the major players are the genetically-engineered monstrosities called shoggoths, whose limited intelligence generally only mimics the Old Ones, but which somehow waged a war for their own liberation! Consider the passage: "To keep on with the work of the upper world it had become necessary to adapt some of the amorphous and curiously cold-resistant shoggoths to land life; a thing the Old Ones had formerly been reluctant to do. The great river was now lifeless, and the upper sea had lost most of its denizens except the seals and whales. All the birds had flown away, save only the great, grotesque penguins."
Penguins again! Anyway... this all goes back to the question of absurd and improbable deduction. The narrator eventually admits, "All this, of course, assuming that the non-terrestrial linkages and the anomalies ascribed to the invading foes [Mi-Go, etc.] are not pure mythology. Conceivably, the Old Ones might have invented a cosmic framework to account for their occasional defeats..." It's an important reminder of how much speculation is involved in this history. And what sort of scientist would take such leaps? What motivates these explorers? The reader has precious little to work with regarding such psychological questions, other than the periodic assurances that these are men of science, affiliated with Lovecraft's famous, fictional Miskatonic University.
Yet there is one interesting passage in that regard: "Our motivation after that is something I will leave to psychologists.... Yet in the end we did let sheer burning curiosity -- or anxiety -- or auto-hypnotism -- or vague thoughts of responsibility toward [the missing] Gedney -- or what not -- drive us on." Surely these are wildly different things? Aren't they? Perhaps not. Is human anxiety the cause of curiosity? Or is the reverse more true? Auto-hypnotism?! Just madness, surely, as the title of the story demonstrates. Yet if the Old Ones did create all other forms of life on earth, as the narrator suggests, then perhaps these men are not independent agents after all, but driven by ancestral, genetic pseudo-memories as much as the narrator in another famous tale, The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Are the scientists inevitably drawn to the antarctic, to the Old Ones, to the danger and the madness? Is the object of their curiosity also the source of it?
Image from Child Harolde's Pilgrimage, available on the British Library's Flickr page.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
The Alien Earth
H.P. Lovecraft -- The Mountains of Madness (Part 2)
I can't help but think that Mountains might be a better story if it were a shorter one. I mean, it might be more dramatic and accessible, though its exaggerated grandiosity and ponderous movements suit the material. Nonetheless, there are certainly gems of prose scattered throughout. Time and geology are, at this point, the real antagonists in the tale: "we... thanked heaven that we were clear of the haunted, accursed realm where life and death, space and time, have made black and blasphemous alliances in the unknown epochs since matter first writhed and swam on the planet's scarce-cooled crust." Lovecraft goes out of his way to dislodge the world from its familiar role in human consciousness, creating an "utterly alien earth."
The narrator struggles to understand a time "before any human race we know had shambled out of apedom" and is forced to confront a "palaeogean megalopolis" constructed by the Great Old Ones. As the exploration of the city commences, we hear the startling claim that these Old Ones were living at a time before "the true life of earth had advanced beyond plastic groups of cells" -- and that the aliens were "the makers and enslavers of that life." From that point in the story we begin to learn the history of earth's first empire -- an ancient power that came from the stars.
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Image from The Student's Lyell, available on the British Library's Flickr page.
I can't help but think that Mountains might be a better story if it were a shorter one. I mean, it might be more dramatic and accessible, though its exaggerated grandiosity and ponderous movements suit the material. Nonetheless, there are certainly gems of prose scattered throughout. Time and geology are, at this point, the real antagonists in the tale: "we... thanked heaven that we were clear of the haunted, accursed realm where life and death, space and time, have made black and blasphemous alliances in the unknown epochs since matter first writhed and swam on the planet's scarce-cooled crust." Lovecraft goes out of his way to dislodge the world from its familiar role in human consciousness, creating an "utterly alien earth."
The narrator struggles to understand a time "before any human race we know had shambled out of apedom" and is forced to confront a "palaeogean megalopolis" constructed by the Great Old Ones. As the exploration of the city commences, we hear the startling claim that these Old Ones were living at a time before "the true life of earth had advanced beyond plastic groups of cells" -- and that the aliens were "the makers and enslavers of that life." From that point in the story we begin to learn the history of earth's first empire -- an ancient power that came from the stars.
Image from The Student's Lyell, available on the British Library's Flickr page.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Science as Ritual
H.P. Lovecraft -- The Mountains of Madness
Others have commented on the technical descriptions that feature so prominently in Lovecraft's tale of an ill-fated antarctic expedition. I'm intrigued, though, by the importance of information and science -- and the strange roles they play in the story. In many ways, this is a story about the limits, malleability, and breakdown of human knowledge. It begins, after all, with the statement "I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice... It is altogether against my will that I tell my reasons for opposing this contemplated invasion of the antarctic..." Here is a man of science struggling against his colleagues, and describing himself as powerless ("forced into speech").
Early in the story, the veneer of scientific confidence and precision quickly crumbles, revealing poetry (Poe's Mount Yaanek), myth ("the dreaded Necronomicon"), and art (the paintings of Nicholas Roerich). Along with measurements of latitude and longitude, we hear "Distant mountains floated in the sky as enchanted cities, and often the whole white world would dissolve into a gold, silver, and scarlet land of Dunsanian dreams..." The boundaries upon which rationality depend begin to dissolve: "the tendency of snowy earth and sky to merge into one mystical opalescent void with no visible horizon to mark the junction of the two."
Once the landmark discoveries begin to be revealed we have biological, geological, and paleontological lists that begin to sound like the convoluted, fabricated mythology of Cthulhu and his apocalyptic entourage. Thus, "Early in the boring the sandstone had given place to a vein of Comanchian limestone full of minute fossil cephalopods, corals, echini, and spirifera, and with occasional suggestions of siliceous sponges and marine vertebrate bones -- the latter probably of teliosts, sharks, and ganoids." It is tempting to argue that, in the course of its gradually erosion by the "madness" of earth's secret history, the expedition performs science not as a rational endeavor, but as an arcane ritual -- an act of magic inspired by the monstrous forces that threaten to consume it.
Nor is this an erudite, careful ritual. It is an act of urgent, even reckless violence. The "remarkable drill devised by Prof. Frank H. Pabodie" is vital to the story, but more than that we get descriptions like "We extend search area underground by hacking away stalactites." Then, of course, there is the fateful dissection of the supposedly fossilized Elder Ones: "Nothing like delicacy or accuracy was possible with instruments hardly able to cut the anomalous tissue..." The explorers are eager to amass as much information as they can, as quickly as possible, but it only serves to spiral towards revelations that will ultimately destroy them.
Others have commented on the technical descriptions that feature so prominently in Lovecraft's tale of an ill-fated antarctic expedition. I'm intrigued, though, by the importance of information and science -- and the strange roles they play in the story. In many ways, this is a story about the limits, malleability, and breakdown of human knowledge. It begins, after all, with the statement "I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice... It is altogether against my will that I tell my reasons for opposing this contemplated invasion of the antarctic..." Here is a man of science struggling against his colleagues, and describing himself as powerless ("forced into speech").
Early in the story, the veneer of scientific confidence and precision quickly crumbles, revealing poetry (Poe's Mount Yaanek), myth ("the dreaded Necronomicon"), and art (the paintings of Nicholas Roerich). Along with measurements of latitude and longitude, we hear "Distant mountains floated in the sky as enchanted cities, and often the whole white world would dissolve into a gold, silver, and scarlet land of Dunsanian dreams..." The boundaries upon which rationality depend begin to dissolve: "the tendency of snowy earth and sky to merge into one mystical opalescent void with no visible horizon to mark the junction of the two."
Once the landmark discoveries begin to be revealed we have biological, geological, and paleontological lists that begin to sound like the convoluted, fabricated mythology of Cthulhu and his apocalyptic entourage. Thus, "Early in the boring the sandstone had given place to a vein of Comanchian limestone full of minute fossil cephalopods, corals, echini, and spirifera, and with occasional suggestions of siliceous sponges and marine vertebrate bones -- the latter probably of teliosts, sharks, and ganoids." It is tempting to argue that, in the course of its gradually erosion by the "madness" of earth's secret history, the expedition performs science not as a rational endeavor, but as an arcane ritual -- an act of magic inspired by the monstrous forces that threaten to consume it.
Nor is this an erudite, careful ritual. It is an act of urgent, even reckless violence. The "remarkable drill devised by Prof. Frank H. Pabodie" is vital to the story, but more than that we get descriptions like "We extend search area underground by hacking away stalactites." Then, of course, there is the fateful dissection of the supposedly fossilized Elder Ones: "Nothing like delicacy or accuracy was possible with instruments hardly able to cut the anomalous tissue..." The explorers are eager to amass as much information as they can, as quickly as possible, but it only serves to spiral towards revelations that will ultimately destroy them.
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
"So Ardent a Bicyclist"
The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist
Violet Smith is a fascinating character -- probably one of the more appealing women that I can recall in the Sherlock stories. She makes a bold entrance at Baker Street "young and beautiful... tall, graceful, and queenly..." Holmes deduces that she is a musician rather than a typist, stating "There is a spirituality about the face... which the typewriter does not generate." It's a rather subjective comment for the fact-focused detective, and all the more noteworthy. It certainly raises a whole series of questions about the links between body, mind, and daily activity. Was this "spirituality" inherent to her character, or a result of her lifestyle and opportunities? Or both?
Miss Smith shows her courage when she challenges her enigmatic cyclist-stalker, turning her own cycle around and chasing after him. Watson observed the "spirited" response and notes "Presently she came back up the road again, her head haughtily in the air, not deigning to take any further notice of her silent attendant." It's a wonderful scene, and so all the more frustrating that Miss Smith becomes a passive object in the climax of the story. There's plenty of drama, and more than the usual emphasis on things ending happily-ever-after, but it seems like a missed opportunity. Perhaps one shouldn't be surprised by that, considering the frequency of condescending (and outright offensive) attitudes towards her.
There are some other great moments, including Sherlock's account of his brief fist-fight with the villain and his remark that the man "had a fine flow of language, and his adjectives were very vigorous." Still, I would have liked for Violet Smith to speak for herself at the end of the tale -- she deserved more time in the lime-light, and merely shimmers with unfulfilled possibility in the corset-bound world of the Victorian imagination.
Violet Smith is a fascinating character -- probably one of the more appealing women that I can recall in the Sherlock stories. She makes a bold entrance at Baker Street "young and beautiful... tall, graceful, and queenly..." Holmes deduces that she is a musician rather than a typist, stating "There is a spirituality about the face... which the typewriter does not generate." It's a rather subjective comment for the fact-focused detective, and all the more noteworthy. It certainly raises a whole series of questions about the links between body, mind, and daily activity. Was this "spirituality" inherent to her character, or a result of her lifestyle and opportunities? Or both?
Miss Smith shows her courage when she challenges her enigmatic cyclist-stalker, turning her own cycle around and chasing after him. Watson observed the "spirited" response and notes "Presently she came back up the road again, her head haughtily in the air, not deigning to take any further notice of her silent attendant." It's a wonderful scene, and so all the more frustrating that Miss Smith becomes a passive object in the climax of the story. There's plenty of drama, and more than the usual emphasis on things ending happily-ever-after, but it seems like a missed opportunity. Perhaps one shouldn't be surprised by that, considering the frequency of condescending (and outright offensive) attitudes towards her.
There are some other great moments, including Sherlock's account of his brief fist-fight with the villain and his remark that the man "had a fine flow of language, and his adjectives were very vigorous." Still, I would have liked for Violet Smith to speak for herself at the end of the tale -- she deserved more time in the lime-light, and merely shimmers with unfulfilled possibility in the corset-bound world of the Victorian imagination.
Monday, July 21, 2014
Searching through Shadows
What wisdom in the monster's bones?
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What answers in the shadowed depths?
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What truth to be found, in distant stars?
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What progress to be made, against the dark?
From Gately's World's Progress, edited by Charles Beale, 1886.
Images available on the British Library's Flickr page.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
The Detective and the Doctor
The Adventure of Black Peter
I think one of the most interesting features here involves the little "cabin" that the murdered sea captain has set up on his estate, to mimic his former surroundings on board ship. It makes an absurd image and could have been a sign of charming eccentricity in a different kind of story, though, in this case, the captain's violent personality makes the scene brutal and grim.
There is one stand-out passage in terms of writing quality. As Holmes and Watson stake-out the cabin, Watson muses "What savage creature was it which might steal upon us out of the darkness? Was it a fierce tiger of crime, which could only be taken fighting hard with flashing fang and claw, or would it prove to be some skulking jackal, dangerous only to the weak and unguarded?" It may not be subtle imagery, but it evokes the tension of scene.
While reflecting on this story, I realized that one of the appealing things about Sherlock Holmes is his (almost) invincible energy. He doesn't care about convention. Watson is startled to find that his friend has been carrying a harpoon around the city: "You don't mean to say you've been walking about London with that thing?" And, towards the end of the tale, Holmes organizes a fake Arctic whaling expedition just to trap the criminal. No project is too daunting for the man.
Thinking about that energy made me realize the connections between Holmes and my beloved Doctor Who. Both have childlike enthusiasm, unparalleled genius, and boundless courage -- though Patrick Troughton's endearing version of the time traveler is certainly a bit panicky. Both men seem to require a companion on their adventures, though the Time Lord understandably goes through a longer list. There are many differences, of course -- including the Doctor's focus on compassion for others. Still, I think it's not a coincidence that these two characters have become such icons of British culture.
I think one of the most interesting features here involves the little "cabin" that the murdered sea captain has set up on his estate, to mimic his former surroundings on board ship. It makes an absurd image and could have been a sign of charming eccentricity in a different kind of story, though, in this case, the captain's violent personality makes the scene brutal and grim.
There is one stand-out passage in terms of writing quality. As Holmes and Watson stake-out the cabin, Watson muses "What savage creature was it which might steal upon us out of the darkness? Was it a fierce tiger of crime, which could only be taken fighting hard with flashing fang and claw, or would it prove to be some skulking jackal, dangerous only to the weak and unguarded?" It may not be subtle imagery, but it evokes the tension of scene.
While reflecting on this story, I realized that one of the appealing things about Sherlock Holmes is his (almost) invincible energy. He doesn't care about convention. Watson is startled to find that his friend has been carrying a harpoon around the city: "You don't mean to say you've been walking about London with that thing?" And, towards the end of the tale, Holmes organizes a fake Arctic whaling expedition just to trap the criminal. No project is too daunting for the man.
Thinking about that energy made me realize the connections between Holmes and my beloved Doctor Who. Both have childlike enthusiasm, unparalleled genius, and boundless courage -- though Patrick Troughton's endearing version of the time traveler is certainly a bit panicky. Both men seem to require a companion on their adventures, though the Time Lord understandably goes through a longer list. There are many differences, of course -- including the Doctor's focus on compassion for others. Still, I think it's not a coincidence that these two characters have become such icons of British culture.
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Cute and Creepy
So we should all know by now that the Victorians could be creepy -- whether consciously indulging in the thrill of Gothic horror or just being their ordinary bourgeois imperial selves. Yet I'm still intrigued by a series of illustrations from a book called Songs for Little People (1896), written by Norman Rowland Gale and illustrated by Helen Stratton.
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On some level, this might have a melancholic nymphs-in-the-water sensibility to it, but the hair seems to be strangling or binding the young woman in the middle. Serpentine female hair is an old story in art, but these women are intertwined and interconnected even as the heads are disembodied.
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Are these monkeys playful? Or are they attacking that elephant? Is the elephant eating the snake? Somehow the picture manages to be charming and disturbing at the same time. I'm not sure what Helen Stratton was trying to achieve with this series -- but I'm impressed.
Images available on the British Library's Flickr page
This one is rather sweet -- except for the air of menace in the birds. I suppose the hostility of the birds is open to debate, but there's a frenetic energy to that background that disrupts the quiet contemplations of the child reader. More disturbing is...
Are these monkeys playful? Or are they attacking that elephant? Is the elephant eating the snake? Somehow the picture manages to be charming and disturbing at the same time. I'm not sure what Helen Stratton was trying to achieve with this series -- but I'm impressed.
Images available on the British Library's Flickr page
All That Was Monstrous
The Adventure of the Devil's Foot
The Holmes stories frequently have an air of gothic horror, but this tale seems to stand out. The story really has a Lovecraftian atmosphere at times, despite Sherlock's repudiation of supernatural influences upon the course of events. The description of the Cornish landscape is striking: "In every direction upon these moors there were traces of some vanished race which had passed utterly away, and left as its sole record strange monuments of stone, irregular mounds which contained the burned ashes of the dead, and curious earthworks which hinted at prehistoric strife." Time, decay, and forgetfulness weave their way into the land, becoming surreal and menacing. Watson even describes it as "that land of dreams."
The fate of the victims is quite horrific -- involving not only death but madness -- yet the climax of the story comes when Holmes and Watson subject themselves to approximately the same circumstances, by way of testing Holmes' theory of poisonous vapors. Watson recounts, "A thick black cloud swirled before my eyes, and my mind told me that in this cloud, unseen as yet, but about to spring out upon my appalled senses, lurked all that was vaguely horrible, all that was monstrous and inconceivably wicked in the universe." The last part is perhaps the most crucial for the Lovecraft connection. Holmes deals in the world of the wicked -- yet it is a world that is largely comprehensible, driven by motives variously savage or calculating, but always human. Watson fears something else here -- not the criminal mind or the violent weapon, but the evil in the universe that cannot be explained.
The episode has a dramatic and rather charming conclusion, as Watson grabs Holmes (who has been similarly affected by the noxious vapors) and drags him to safety outside: "I dashed from my chair, threw my arms round Holmes, and together we lurched through the door, and an instant afterwards had thrown ourselves down upon the grass plot and were lying side by side, conscious only of the glorious sunshine which was bursting its way through the hellish cloud of terror which had girt us in." Holmes even apologies for putting his friend into danger with the experiment, and Watson rather sweetly replies "You know... that it is my greatest joy and privilege to help you." The whole scene is an intriguing symbol of a certain kind of urgent friendship. Sometimes you have to tackle someone into the sunlight.
The Holmes stories frequently have an air of gothic horror, but this tale seems to stand out. The story really has a Lovecraftian atmosphere at times, despite Sherlock's repudiation of supernatural influences upon the course of events. The description of the Cornish landscape is striking: "In every direction upon these moors there were traces of some vanished race which had passed utterly away, and left as its sole record strange monuments of stone, irregular mounds which contained the burned ashes of the dead, and curious earthworks which hinted at prehistoric strife." Time, decay, and forgetfulness weave their way into the land, becoming surreal and menacing. Watson even describes it as "that land of dreams."
The fate of the victims is quite horrific -- involving not only death but madness -- yet the climax of the story comes when Holmes and Watson subject themselves to approximately the same circumstances, by way of testing Holmes' theory of poisonous vapors. Watson recounts, "A thick black cloud swirled before my eyes, and my mind told me that in this cloud, unseen as yet, but about to spring out upon my appalled senses, lurked all that was vaguely horrible, all that was monstrous and inconceivably wicked in the universe." The last part is perhaps the most crucial for the Lovecraft connection. Holmes deals in the world of the wicked -- yet it is a world that is largely comprehensible, driven by motives variously savage or calculating, but always human. Watson fears something else here -- not the criminal mind or the violent weapon, but the evil in the universe that cannot be explained.
The episode has a dramatic and rather charming conclusion, as Watson grabs Holmes (who has been similarly affected by the noxious vapors) and drags him to safety outside: "I dashed from my chair, threw my arms round Holmes, and together we lurched through the door, and an instant afterwards had thrown ourselves down upon the grass plot and were lying side by side, conscious only of the glorious sunshine which was bursting its way through the hellish cloud of terror which had girt us in." Holmes even apologies for putting his friend into danger with the experiment, and Watson rather sweetly replies "You know... that it is my greatest joy and privilege to help you." The whole scene is an intriguing symbol of a certain kind of urgent friendship. Sometimes you have to tackle someone into the sunlight.
Friday, July 18, 2014
Just Say No -- to Boredom
The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter
The beginning of this story provides an interesting contrast between the melancholy Holmes, on the verge of succumbing to drug use to ease his boredom, and the healthy living of British athletes. Fearing that Holmes is on the point of depression, Watson says, "I was well aware that the fiend was not dead but sleeping... I have seen the drawn look upon Holmes's ascetic face, and the brooding of his deep-set and inscrutable eyes." Yet by the next page, Holmes is telling a visitor "You live in a different world to me, Mr. Overton -- a sweeter and healthier one. My ramifications stretch out to many sections of society, but never, I am happy to say, into amateur sport, which is the best and soundest thing in England."
One of the fascinating things about Holmes, though, is that he is mostly bothered by inactivity -- failure in the course of action has less of a sway over him. Thus, though he later returns "pale and dejected, stained with dust, and exhausted with hunger and fatigue" it isn't long before "he was ready to take that half comic and wholly philosophic view which was natural to him when his affairs were going awry."
Satisfied by a cold supper and a pipe, he contemplates the puzzle.
The beginning of this story provides an interesting contrast between the melancholy Holmes, on the verge of succumbing to drug use to ease his boredom, and the healthy living of British athletes. Fearing that Holmes is on the point of depression, Watson says, "I was well aware that the fiend was not dead but sleeping... I have seen the drawn look upon Holmes's ascetic face, and the brooding of his deep-set and inscrutable eyes." Yet by the next page, Holmes is telling a visitor "You live in a different world to me, Mr. Overton -- a sweeter and healthier one. My ramifications stretch out to many sections of society, but never, I am happy to say, into amateur sport, which is the best and soundest thing in England."
One of the fascinating things about Holmes, though, is that he is mostly bothered by inactivity -- failure in the course of action has less of a sway over him. Thus, though he later returns "pale and dejected, stained with dust, and exhausted with hunger and fatigue" it isn't long before "he was ready to take that half comic and wholly philosophic view which was natural to him when his affairs were going awry."
Satisfied by a cold supper and a pipe, he contemplates the puzzle.
Mycroft's Brain
The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
Sherlock's brother Mycroft features prominently in this tale, and the Baker Street regular provides a fascinating description of Mycroft's role in the British government. "The conclusions of every department are passed to him, and he is the central exchange, the clearing-house, which makes out the balance." Sherlock's description makes Mycroft seem like a computer -- or at least a database, as the Barnes & Noble edition points out. Yet for all Mycroft's rational qualities, he is a human being -- and capable, presumably, of his own agendas and interests. In that sense there is something vaguely sinister about a government controlled -- or at any rate managed -- by a single man, a person whom Sherlock regards as "the most indispensable man in the country." I'm inclined to consider Mycroft as a kind of quasi-Lovecraftian monstrosity -- an alien being that has tendrils of power woven through vast spheres of human activity and consciousness. Sherlock even refers to him as a kind of god: "Jupiter is descending to-day." It seems debatable whether Mycroft "has no ambitions of any kind," as Holmes' asserts. In any case, Mycroft is a living incarnation of bureaucracy and empire -- all consolidated into one fussy, aloof brain. Sounds pretty horrific to me.
Sherlock's brother Mycroft features prominently in this tale, and the Baker Street regular provides a fascinating description of Mycroft's role in the British government. "The conclusions of every department are passed to him, and he is the central exchange, the clearing-house, which makes out the balance." Sherlock's description makes Mycroft seem like a computer -- or at least a database, as the Barnes & Noble edition points out. Yet for all Mycroft's rational qualities, he is a human being -- and capable, presumably, of his own agendas and interests. In that sense there is something vaguely sinister about a government controlled -- or at any rate managed -- by a single man, a person whom Sherlock regards as "the most indispensable man in the country." I'm inclined to consider Mycroft as a kind of quasi-Lovecraftian monstrosity -- an alien being that has tendrils of power woven through vast spheres of human activity and consciousness. Sherlock even refers to him as a kind of god: "Jupiter is descending to-day." It seems debatable whether Mycroft "has no ambitions of any kind," as Holmes' asserts. In any case, Mycroft is a living incarnation of bureaucracy and empire -- all consolidated into one fussy, aloof brain. Sounds pretty horrific to me.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Agony Columns and Sweet, Soothing Hypnosis
The Adventure of the Red Circle
The highlight of this story is, perhaps, Holmes making his way through the "agony columns" of the Daily Gazette. He mutters that a lady who fainted on a Brixton bus "does not interest me," responds to someone who writes "Every day my heart longs" with "Bleat, Watson -- unmitigated bleat!" and decries "a chorus of groans."
There is real mystery and a bit of menace involving an enigmatic lodger. We also discover that Holmes "had an almost hypnotic power of soothing when he wished." This is particularly intriguing. Was it simply the detective's confidence that achieved this? Did he become some incarnation of Victorian rationality, blurring doubt and dulling despair? Or is this hypnotic power a hint of the supernatural inhabiting the otherwise so frequently mechanical spirit of Holmes -- something not meant to be explained. That's certainly one of my favorite things about the Sherlock stories -- the mystery of the man.
The highlight of this story is, perhaps, Holmes making his way through the "agony columns" of the Daily Gazette. He mutters that a lady who fainted on a Brixton bus "does not interest me," responds to someone who writes "Every day my heart longs" with "Bleat, Watson -- unmitigated bleat!" and decries "a chorus of groans."
There is real mystery and a bit of menace involving an enigmatic lodger. We also discover that Holmes "had an almost hypnotic power of soothing when he wished." This is particularly intriguing. Was it simply the detective's confidence that achieved this? Did he become some incarnation of Victorian rationality, blurring doubt and dulling despair? Or is this hypnotic power a hint of the supernatural inhabiting the otherwise so frequently mechanical spirit of Holmes -- something not meant to be explained. That's certainly one of my favorite things about the Sherlock stories -- the mystery of the man.
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