[....]All writers worthy of the name present you with a world, or rather a vision of one, that lingers in the mind. The power of that vision is not dependent on whether you find it sympathetic, but on the imaginative skill of the artist and the depth of their intellect.
Reggie Oliver (2014) introduction to Written in Darkness By Mark Samuels
* * *
"Witch-Cult Abbey" is a story of hidden rites, secret inheritances, macabre lineages and sorcerous continuities.
It begins in a wonderfully observed blitzed 1940 London. It progresses forward in time back to the 1600s. The abbey itself, like a planet orbiting a Christopher Nolan black hole, accordions time. Among other things.
This being a Mark Samuels story, the hero experiences leeches, lost teeth, bad food, foul drinking water, and enforced book cataloging.
* * *
"Witch-Cult Abbey" by Mark Samuels: A paratextual comparison of the 2020 Zagava edition and the 2021 Hippocampus Press edition
In their book This Thing Called Literature: Reading, thinking, writing (2015, Routledge) authors Bennett and Royle define paratext in this way:
Paratext: term referring to any kind of text that is next to or beside (Gk. para) the main text. Examples of paratext would include the title of a work, a preface or foreword, the acknowledgements and any so-called end-matter such as an appendix ('The wordbook', for instance) or this glossary. The notion of paratext always raises questions of borders and framing: is the present glossary, for example, a part of or apart from the main text that precedes it?
In "Witch-Cult Abbey" Mark Samuels employs paratexts at the head of almost (depending on your edition) every chapter of the story. The quotation at the head of Chapter One is different depending on whether you read the Zagava or the Hippocampus edition. The Zagava edition has no literary quote at the start of Chapter Two. At the head of Chapter Six, different years of publication are given for the quoted source: Alphonsus Winters' The Damnable Cult of Witchcraft. At the head of Chapter Ten in the Zagava, the Milton quote is given as prose; in the Hippocampus edition, verse line breaks are used.
* * *
CHAPTER ONE
Zagava 2020:
"Apart from disease, madness on a huge scale was expected ... it must be emphasised once again that this picture was not the work of novelists who had read too much Poe and De Sade."
The Blitz (1957), Constantine Fitzgibbon
Hippocampus 2021:
I have sometimes amused myself by endeavouring to fancy what would be the fate of any individual gifted, or rather accursed, with an intellect very far superior to that of his race . . . This subject is a painful one indeed. That such individuals have so soared above the plane of their race, is scarcely to be questioned; but, in looking back through history for traces of their existence, we should pass over all biographies of "the good and the great" while we search carefully the slight records of wretches who died in prison, in Bedlam, or upon the gallows.
—Edgar A. Poe
* * *
CHAPTER TWO
Hippocampus 2021:
I have made my bed
In charnels and on coffins, where black death
Keeps record of the trophies won from thee,
Hoping to still these obstinate questionings
Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost
Thy messenger, to render up the tale
Of what we are.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alastor (1816)
* * *
CHAPTER THREE
Zagava 2020:
"Through me did he become idolatrous; and through me it was, by languishing desires, that he worshipped the worm and prayed to the wormy grave. Holy was the grave to him; lovely was its darkness; saintly its corruption."
Suspitia [sic] de Profundis (1845), Thomas De Quincey
Hippocampus 2021:
Through me did he become idolatrous; and through me it was, by languishing desires, that he worshipped the worm and prayed to the wormy grave. Holy was the grave to him; lovely was its darkness; saintly its corruption.
—Thomas De Quincey, Suspiria de Profundis (1845)
* * *
CHAPTER FOUR
Zagava 2020:
"I go on, therefore, to commend the work of Mr A—. Though not of a moral nature, one might say of his points of genius, like one of the twelve Caesars, Ut Puto, Deus fio."
Thomas De Quincey, writing in 1823 as "X.Y.Z." in The London Magazine.
Hippocampus 2021:
I go on, therefore, to commend the work of Mr A―. Though not of a moral nature, one might say of his points of genius, like one of the twelve Caesars, Ut puto, Deus fio.—Thomas De Quincey, writing as "X.Y.Z." in the London Magazine
* * *
CHAPTER FIVE
Zagava 2020:
"One night in high summer, when I lay tossing and sleepless for want of opium, —I amused myself with composing the imaginary Confessions of A Murderer, which, I think, might be made a true German bit of horror, the subject being exquisitely diabolical; and, if I do not flatter myself, some few dozens of useless old women I could frighten out of their wits and this wicked world. —Yet do not mention this, if you please, to anybody: for if I begin to write imaginary Confessions, I shall seem to many as no better than a pseudo-confessor in my own too real confessions."
Thomas De Quincey, 24th October 1822.
Hippocampus 2021:
One night in high summer, when I lay tossing and sleepless for want of opium,―I amused myself with composing the imaginary Confessions of A Murderer; which, I think, might be made a true German bit of horror, the subject being exquisitely diabolical; and, if I do not flatter myself, some few dozens of useless old women I could frighten out of their wits and this wicked world.―Yet do not mention this, if you please, to anybody: for if I begin to write imaginary Confessions, I shall seem to many as no better than a pseudo-confessor in my own too real confessions.—Thomas De Quincey, 24 October 1822
* * *
CHAPTER SIX
Zagava 2020:
"It must now be asked whether children can be born of the union of the witch and the incubus, and the general opinions of theologians and demonologists is that there have been and are such progeny. One undoubted case, known to me, was that of the young authoress of a single, suppressed book entitled The Reunion and Others. Certain of the tales therein display an unparalleled intimacy with the forbidden arts of necromancy and malefic possession: and only an early death curtailed an even more potentially terrifying sequel to her already abominable blasphemies."
Revd. Alphonsus Winters, The Damnable Cult of Witchcraft. 1932.
Hippocampus 2021:
It must now be asked whether children can be born of the union of the witch and the incubus, and the general opinion of theologians and demonologists is that there have been and are such progeny. One undoubted case, known to me, was that of the young authoress of a single, suppressed book entitled The Reunion and Others. Certain of the tales therein display an unparalleled intimacy with the forbidden arts of necromancy and malefic possession: and only an early death curtailed an even more potentially terrifying sequel to her already abominable blasphemies.—Revd. Alphonsus Winters, The Damnable Cult of Witchcraft, 1938
* * *
CHAPTER SEVEN
Zagava 2020:
"Proprieties of place, and especially of time, are the bugbears that terrify mankind from the contemplation of the magnificent."
'The Assignation' 1844, Edgar A. Poe.
Hippocampus 2021:
Proprieties of place, and especially of time, are the bugbears that terrify mankind from the contemplation of the magnificent. —Edgar A. Poe, "The Assignation" (1844)
* * *
CHAPTER EIGHT
Zagava 2020:
"People think that the totality of their knowledge depends on the nature and capacity to be known of the objects of knowledge. But this is all wrong. Everything that is known is comprehended not according to its own nature, but according to the ability to know of those who do the knowing ... So it is that this divine foreknowledge does not change the nature and property of things; it simply sees things that are its present exactly as they will happen at some time as future events."
from Book V. De Consolatione Philosophise [sic], Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius.
Hippocampus 2021:
People think that the totality of their knowledge depends on the nature and capacity to be known of the objects of knowledge. But this is all wrong. Everything that is known is comprehended not according to its own nature, but according to the ability to know of those who do the knowing . . . So it is that this divine foreknowledge does not change the nature and property of things; it simply sees things that are its present exactly as they will happen at some time as future events.—Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae, Book V
* * *
CHAPTER NINE
Zagava 2020:
"But the dream-horror which I speak of is far more frightful. The dreamer finds housed within himself - occupying, as it were, some separate chamber in his brain - holding, perhaps, from that station a secret and detestable commerce with his own heart - some horrid alien nature. What if it were his own nature repeated, - still, if the duality were distinctly perceptible, even that- even this mere numerical double of his own consciousness - might be a curse too mighty to be sustained."
Thomas De Quincey.
Hippocampus 2021:
But the dream-horror which I speak of is far more frightful. The dreamer finds housed within himself—occupying, as it were, some separate chamber in his brain—holding, perhaps, from that station a secret and detestable commerce with his own heart—some horrid alien nature. What if it were his own nature repeated,—still, if the duality were distinctly perceptible, even that—even this mere numerical double of his own consciousness—might be a curse too mighty to be sustained.—Thomas De Quincey
* * *
CHAPTER TEN
Zagava 2020:
"Why then was this forbid? Why but to awe, Why but to keep ye low and ignorant, His worshipper; he knows that in the day Ye eat thereof, your eyes that seem so clear, Yet are but dim, shall perfectly be then Opened and cleared, and ye shall be as gods, Knowing both good and evil as they know." Book IX, Paradise Lost, John Milton
Hippocampus 2021:
Why then was this forbid?
Why but to awe,
Why but to keep ye low and ignorant,
His worshipper; he knows that in the day.
Ye eat thereof, your eyes that seem so clear,
Yet are but dim, shall perfectly be then.
Opened and cleared, and ye shall be as gods,
Knowing both good and evil as they know.
—John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book IX
* * *
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Zagava 2020:
" ... the house of life was riven asunder and the human trinity dissolved, and the worm which never dies, that which lies sleeping within us all, was made tangible and an external thing, and clothed with a garment of flesh. And then, in the hour of midnight, the primal fall was repeated and re-presented, and the awful thing veiled in the mythos of the Tree in the Garden was done anew. Such was the nuptiae Sabbati"
The Three Impostors, Arthur Machen
Hippocampus 2021:
. . . the house of life was riven asunder and the human trinity dissolved, and the worm which never dies, that which lies sleeping within us all, was made tangible and an external thing, and clothed with a garment of flesh. And then, in the hour of midnight, the primal fall was repeated and re-presented, and the awful thing veiled in the mythos of the Tree in the Garden was done anew. Such was the nuptiae Sabbati.—Arthur Machen, The Three Impostors
* * *
"Witch-Cult Abbey" is a slippery piece of work for its protagonist/narrator and its readers. The name of the protagonist/narrator, Saul Prior, is only one of the traps set by Mr. Samuels for his customers. The prose style itself, precise and gem-like, is initially lulling: clearly (we think to ourselves) this narrator is as reliable as John Watson or Richard Hannay or Richard Chandos; he will clearly face some close scrapes in this abbey, but he speaks and writes like an impeccable English hero. By the story's end, of course, nothing about the narrator or his adventures has prepared us for the forcing-frame of events he actually endures: snatching a book of short stories out of its reanimated author's womb is the mildest horror to be faced.
Jay
15 February 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment