The Psychological Weird Tale
Our idea of the required form of the weird tale has come to be that of the modern artistic short-story; but all the elements of the type save form were present in England in the middle of the eighteenth century in the terror school started by Walpole's "Castle of Otranto." The author declared his work to be an attempt to blend the ancient romance and the modern novel. By modern novel he meant the stories of Richardson, Fielding, Smollet, and their less worthy contemporaries; by ancient romance he must have meant the Oriental wonder tale; for he has sliding panels, trap doors, subterranean passages, and a general extravagance in an attempt at magnificence. Indeed, in regard to the multiplicity of detail, this school is often called the Gothic. The difference between the narratives of the school of terror and the Oriental wonder tale is the difference of atmosphere. While the ancient tale is mysterious, it is seldom if ever morbid. Especially is the cheerfulness true of the stories of mediæval chivalry that later embodied the wonder tale. Enchantment there is, but it is airy; if there be any vaults, they are not damp. The school of terrorBut the "Castle of Otranto" by Walpole, the "Old English Baron" by Clara Reeve, the "Romance of the Forest," the "Mysteries of Udolpho," and the "Italian" by Mrs.[399] Radcliffe, and "The Monk" by Matthew Lewis,—the six chief romances of the school of terror,—are all damp, dark, ghostly, and morbid. Mrs. Radcliffe, however, added an element of eighteenth-century rationalism in her attempt at explanation; inasmuch as she always refers her constant suggestions of the supernatural to ordinary causes. Moreover, she interspersed her work with excellent landscape description in harmony or contrast with her theme. The contributions, then, of the romances of the school of terror are (1) frightful mechanism, (2) a general tone of Gothic fantasticalness, (3) weird place-impressions that can be explained by natural causes, and (4) terror of physical or supernatural punishment and death.
To point out how much Edgar Allan Poe on the mere material side is indebted to this set of writers, possibly through Charles Brockden Brown and the American school of terror, we need only to name over to ourselves two of his famous weird tales together with their grosser elements. "The Fall of the House of Usher" has general arabesqueness plus hollow groans, echoing footsteps, high pointed windows excluding light, a person imprisoned in a metal vault (the hero in the "Castle of Otranto" is imprisoned in a gigantic metal helmet), terror of death, consonant landscape description, natural causes for weird sounds. The "Pit and the Pendulum" has a dungeon of the Inquisition, horrible instrument of torture, brink over which to fall, bodily and mental fear of death (Lewis's monk is snatched by demons from the Inquisition and carried to a cliff of the Sierra Morena off which he is commanded to fling himself).
But Poe is as far away from the crude and bungling methods of the earlier writers as he is near their materials. How cracking doors and opening vaults, quaking houses, and walking dead, outer terrific elements and inner terrific sensation and morbid imaginative perception reaching madness, can be fused into one harmonized, unified, piercing, intense prose poem he has shown us in this same "Fall of the House of Usher." Nothing of the kind could be better. His own cruder attempt is set forth in the fore-study, "Berenice," which might be considered good if the other story were not immeasurably better. A side sketch of quite a different tone, yet almost as weird, is his beautiful color symphony of the "Masque of the Red Death." All are exquisite artistic creations.
Poe's "William Wilson," an imaginative psychological horror study of conscience, has been paralleled if not surpassed by Stevenson's "Markheim." "Markheim" is more concrete, especially at the beginning; there is more of story and less of symbolism about it; but the climax is the same, or rather the reverse; for in Poe's story William Wilson's worse self murders his better, while in Stevenson's story Markheim's better self, the murderer, who really hates his deed, triumphs over his worse self, the coward and liar.
In Poe's story the weirdness results from the fact that Wilson's conscience, which he kills, is a concrete double with the same name and appearance. Stevenson has united this device of a double with weird place-description and weird deed-narrative. He has kept the thing more psychological and less symbolic by making[401] the second presence explainable as an hallucination, more shadowy than Poe's.
"What is It? a Mystery" by Fitz James O'Brien shows how very, very material the horror story may be; and yet O'Brien's is not an uninteresting narrative; for it is full of vigor and truth-likeness in the beginning; the end only is bad art; where the frightened people take a plaster cast of the mysterious being they have captured and can not see. "The Hand" by Maupassant is another such touch horror tale, but of course better told. His "Apparition" is almost pure narrative and builds to a fine realistic climax, despite the ghostliness of the visitant. Matthew's "Venetian Glass" is also weird plot rather than weird place, while "The Wind in the Rose Bush" is emphatically character study, and the "Phantom Rickshaw" is a good old-fashioned, if Oriental, ghost story.
For your first attempt at this type of narrative, you might try the modern ghost story, and later, when more practised, the delicate psychological analysis of states of conscience. The modern ghost stories differ from folk-tales concerning weird beings in this respect particularly: the modern ghost is usually explainable, a fact you would expect because of our inheritance from the terror school. He is a logical ghost—a creature of one's own making, an hallucination at best or a white cow at worst. The author sets out to depict not so much the ghost, as the ghost's effect upon the hero. In a number of instances the modern narrative of this kind rises to the plane of the true short-story, complying[402] with all the canons of art. Read for example one of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's six "Stories of the Supernatural," of which the "Wind in the Rose Bush" is one.
The material is comparatively simple. Get eerie circumstances, a credulous or boastfully incredulous mind, a probable incident, an explainable apparition, and any modern setting that will hold the course of events together. See to it that the construction is unified and coherent. Build to a climax, and stop quickly afterwards. Make the apparition a logical outgrowth of the environment and the state of mind of the victim. The ghost of the folk-tale usually appears to the half-witted, the foolish, the credulous; but the ghost of the modern story, to prove his existence, perhaps, is far bolder; he speaks out to the skeptic, the person who calls a shadow a shadow. That the unearthly spirit must catch the strong man at his weak moment is obvious—otherwise there would be no story. But when the events are given, stop. Do not explain too much.
It is well to notice the different methods of getting the facts before the reader. Sometimes everything is set forth by the author, and the characters speak but little or not at all. Sometimes one character speaks in a continued monologue. Sometimes the events come out in conversation or dialogue, the dramatic method, and the author appears but little. When he appears not at all we have true drama instead of narrative. The larger number of stories, doubtless, are a mixture of author and character talk.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.