Initial Response to ETA Hoffmann's The Sandman

When Delibes' ballet Coppelia featured in ABC Classic FM's Classic 100 The Music of France it reminded me that I had written a response to Hoffmann's story, on which the ballet was based, so I thought I'd share it with you now. Warning - spoilers. You can find the story here.

Hoffmann sets up the situation and the theme of the story straightaway through three letters. The first tells us of the terrible events in Nathanael’s childhood and the possible reappearance of the villain of those events in his life. The second is the rational explanation of Clara dismissing the whole Nathanael’s fears to his own mind and in the third he accepts them.

The rest of the story revolves around, to a large degree, the irrational fears he has and the rational explanations that may dispel them – if they are irrational. We read how his conviction in the mystical is so fired up, and Clara’s adamant rationality is so fixed, that he almost comes to blows with her brother. This ends with another Clara-inspired revelation that he’s just being silly.

He continues the debate in his own head when confronted with the seeming double of the old villain from his childhood. Rationality seems to win out until Nathanael looks through a ‘perspective’ at the figure of Olimpia whom he becomes obsessed with – and who appears to steal his eyes.

This irrational period during which he forgets his former life and woos Olimpia, who says nothing in return but stares at him always, is unlike his morbid fears and bears none of the similarities to the ‘dark presence’. He is bewitched.
Olimpia, to all eyes but his, is ‘too perfect’ and unnaturally stiff in her movements. Having lost his ‘perspective’ to her Nathanael only sees her as true perfection. When going to propose to her she is revealed as an automaton; the eyes of which were stolen from Nathanael by Coppola. Coppola – speaking with the voice of Coppelius, the childhood villain – steals Olimpia but throws Nathanael’s eyes back into him. After temporary madness Nathanael is once again ‘rational’ until he sees Clara through the ‘perspective’ and believes her to be an automaton too and goes mad. Coppelius watches on, possibly stealing the eyes back.

PERSPECTIVE
To me this story is about perspective. Nathanael’s perspective, for the most, is affected by the events of his childhood. He is told the story of the sandman, who steals children’s eyes – so their sight, their view on the world. When he spies his father with Coppelius they seems to be in some sort of alchemical experiment, possibly creating homunculi – all that’s needed are eyes.

Clara’s perspective is steadfast in its rationality. She suffers only a minor wavering in the description of the events but quickly returns to her disbelief in the mystical as an outside force. Her eyes are described in glowing terms – like a lake even. Her perspective then is sharp and unchanging.

Thirdly, we have Olimpia, whose eyes seem to ‘lack vision’ but are not blind. She is simply without a perspective; she sees but does not comprehend. Those eyes however draw Nathanael in through the glass ‘perspective’ of Coppola, and cause him to lose all perspective and see only her.

Only after this happens will her creator allow the public to see her. After Coppola/Coppelius steals her body, Nathanael gets his eyes returned. The rush of perspective drives him seemingly mad – but he has just realised he’s been tricked into an obsession with a ‘doll’ so his madness is not singularly surprising.

Clara’s clear, clean perspective restores his sanity, so he says. Seeing her through Coppola’s glass perspective however, he again loses his sanity and Coppelius seems to claim his ‘foine eyes’ once more. So Nathanael’s perspective is again stolen, he goes mad and dies. Coppelius disappears. Did he exist outside the mind of Nathanael? That remains unclear. He may have, Nathanael did have the glass perspective, or Clara may have been right and Coppola was a normal man Nathanael’s perspective turned into a childhood nightmare made flesh. Hoffman doesn’t say. It’s a matter of our own perspective.

If there were any moral behind this tale it would be to keep your clarity and not allow outside forces to alter your perception of the world. Clara remains true to her world view and ends up happily. Nathanael’s view changes with the wind and he dies violently.

September Reading

Thought I might do a quick review of what I've been reading this month - if for no other reason than keeping it clear in my own head. I already mentioned the Elric novels so that was a big portion of it.

The other big one was Robert Chamber's The King in Yellow. I got this from the University of Adelaide ebook site as it was mentioned in terms of Weird fiction and having influenced HP Lovecraft. It was weird all right but not always in the sense of the supernatural genre.

It's a collection of short stories, the first four of which make reference to a fictional play, the eponymous King in Yellow. This play is so artistically wrought that anyone who reads it, or at least the second act, is mentally disturbed by it or downright insane. This concept Lovecraft liked and he referenced the play or the places mentioned in it a few times. He also liked some of Chamber's style at times.

The rest of the stories in the book, which make up the other two-thirds or so, have nothing to do with The King in Yellow or Weird fiction whatsoever. They are predominantly romances about naive American art students in Paris. One of them, The Street of the Four Winds, was absolutely brilliant though. It wasn't about a student but was set in Paris. It's a simple tale of a man who is kind to a stray cat and tells him something of his history. The coincidence at the story's heart will break the reader's own, at least it did mine.

I confess the concept of a play so powerful it affects people's psyches to the point of madness did rather rub the bells of synchronicity. I've been thinking about Artaud's Alchemical Theatre and the role of theatre to create a reality beyond our own mundane existence. The 'liminal' space and the greater truths of myth and story than everyday banality. Anyway, somewhere in that idea is my Masters thesis, one day.

The other things I've read, in full, are W W Jacob's The Monkey's Paw and some Lovecraft shorts. The former is a classic of the Weird too, and I believe Lovecraft thought it such as well. It works on the premise of less is more, terror over horror, suggestion over detail. And it works well. Reminiscent of a Buffy episode too, I suspect it was involved somewhere.

The Lovecraft were Pickman's Model and The Shadow Out of Time. The latter is one of his slightly longer works, a whole 76 pages in eight chapters, and is about a man possessed by a mind of a Great One from several epochs before humans evolved and consequently possessed the body of the Great One for a few years. Like In the Mountains of Madness, his longest work I think, it's less gripping than some of his shorter pieces but the atmosphere of dread slowly works a pervasive spell over you and the history of the world and the Great Ones and Elder Gods etc is quite fascinating.

Pickman's story has a more immediate effect, following in the Poe mode of first person 'I know this is unbelievable but it's what happened okay'. The plot itself is quite see-through these days but the descriptions and atmosphere are classic Lovecraft who truly knew the language of nightmare.

Keep dreaming - but not about Great Ones I hope.

The Eternal Ramble - A Haphazard Rave about Elric

I said in a previous post that I might write about the Elric novels I've been reading and to stop myself from debating whether I will or not I am. Many of you will already know something about them even if you've never read them but for those who don't I'll give a quick idea.

Elric is the last emperor of Melnibone, an ancient and decadent empire. He can summon aid from demons and elementals and has a sword of mystical origins which forms a love-hate symbiosis with him. All of this is part of Michael Moorcock's multiverse where Elric becomes just one facet of the Eternal Warrior.

It's epic fantasy but in episodic form. Every novel (of the first five which is all I've read so far) is divided into three and each section is its own story which was published in a slightly different version (or not) in journals. At least that's how they're designed. So the chronology occasionally jumps slightly but the stories do follow one after the other even if some events happen at different points in other characters' lives, by which I mean Corum who pops up twice but is actually also the Eternal Warrior.

With that in mind I have to say I found Elric less compelling overall than Erekose and Hawkmoon who are two other facets or forms of the Eternal Warrior and whose sagas are told in a continuous flowing story. However the shorter format provides for more variety and interest, and if one story isn't so great there's always the next one.

The format also puts Elric into the tradition of Conan, Solomon Kane and other "pulp" figures (those being Robert E Howard's most famous creations). But this is early 20th century pulp in the mid 20th century, which is to say slightly nuts. You never know when Elric is going to leave his own plane of existence, or time stream. He meets demons, crazed agents of chaos, plenty of women who he has wild sex with, and brave heroes like Rakhir the Red Archer - so named because he's an archer who wears red from head to toe, bright crimson at that.

In all I can see why Elric has such a cult following, but while I enjoyed his stories - and will read Stormbringer, the sixth volume which was the last one till there was a seventh - I'm not as fanatical. It's classic, it's fascinating but it's not world-shattering. I remain a Hawkmoon fan first and foremost; long live the Eternal Warrior ... yes that's a redundant comment, although he does die too, frequently actually.

Keep dreaming!

A Promethean Symphony

So I've been thinking today about my playwrighting and where it's going/hasn't been going. Aside from numerous personal factors, I think one reason so little happened for as long as it didn't, was that I can never seem to produce anything that would be deemed a full-length play. This strictly speaking shouldn't really matter - Samuel Beckett only wrote one, his first. After that his works got shorter and shorter as he tried to produce a pure theatrical image. However, outside festivals of 10-minute plays and the occasional special event of one-act wonders there's little call for shorter works.

But I've also realised I'm not interested in writing a long play. I have stories to tell and theatrical images to attempt, and my style of telling these stories is generally very quick. My longest play actually suffers from its size I think - that and it has a light and a dark side that don't mesh.

What does excite me is an idea I've tossed around in my head a few times but until now never gotten fully into. Basing my works on other structures borrowed from other mediums. I got the idea listening to classical music - well Romantic probably but that's a pedantic argument - and the prevalence of short pieces in collections. Three Sketches; Two Poems for Orchestra, etc. Why not turn a shorter piece of mine into a 'movement' of a greater work?

So comes my idea to write A Promethean Symphony. My first movement is Prometheus Rebooted, an Andante if you will as it does move along fairly slowly and isn't high on the action front. It will be followed by three more movements, I haven't figured out what, based on the general nebulous theme of Promethean/Frankenstonian lore.

I've also come up with the plan to finish part one of the first book of The Scarlet Ring by the end of this month, work on one or two movements of the symphony in October then get into NaNoWriMo before finishing both works over December/January. I should get back to Five-Fingers too ... hold that thought.

Keep dreaming!

Retreat by the River

Just spent a few wonderful days relaxing with my wife on the South Coast. We needed a getaway so we took one. We stayed at Bewong River Retreat which is a series of bungalows right in the bush. It's designed for couples - no kids allowed - and I'd certainly recommend it if you want to get away from the world. It really does feel like you're in the middle of the bush, largely because you are. There are birds aplenty, kangaroos all around and even some wallabies. It's also right on the river.

While there we went for a bit of sightseeing and saw Green Patch, which is just idyllic, and Sanctuary Point. There were many birds and another wallaby but the echidna was the biggest thrill. It was by the side of the road at the end of a National Parks road and was very intent on some tasty ants so didn't mind us at all.

I managed to get some writing done too, adapting an earlier version of a scene in The Scarlet Ring and writing the following scene which I had no idea how it would pan out until I did it. Pretty happy with all that. Finished reading two books too: Michael Moorcock's The Vanishing Tower and ER Eddison's Worm Ouroboros. The former is one of the Elric novels which I'm working my way through, may blog about them later. The Worm however was the ebook I was reading and it's an older fantasy novel written like a chivalric romance. It's quite bizarre in its way and the style of it won't be to everyone's taste but it's well worth reading if you're a fan of fantasy and/or romances (not the modern sort but Arthurian/Charlemagne etc).

Keep dreaming!

First Response to H P Lovecraft’s The Outsider

This is my initial thoughts on the story, nothing too in depth. Warning, big spoiler, if you want to read the story do that first. It's here.

The beginning of this story reminded me somewhat of Gormenghast but with a more literal take on the idea of Titus Alone. Its mouldy, decaying castle is viscerally described and the infinite loneliness of the narrator is palpable. The nature of this castle with its immense forest is kept a mystery, but there is a hint that not all is as described when we're told the narrator believed himself young because he remembered so little. A failed memory and a life in a place that seems to exist outside the real world.

Only when the escape is made – and leads not to a high tower above the forest, but ground level in an aged churchyard does the mystery of the castle, a veritable crypt, become clear. From there it’s clear what must happen, the narrator must learn it is a dead thing crawled up from its grave, but Lovecraft spins the discovery out to full effect in both horror and sympathy.

The use of nepenthe to erase the sorrow through forgetfulness and allow the ghoul to be just that in some sense breaks the sympathy we might feel for it, but at the same time gives rise to an explanation behind the raison d’être of ghouls and ghosts everywhere. The horror, the otherness and extreme loneliness of their existence drives them to flee the light and take delight in scaring the living who shun them.

Calling the story the Outsider and giving the reader an attachment to the ghoul before revealing its nature allows Lovecraft to make the connection – is this a ghoul or a man shunned for being different? Obviously in the story it is a genuine undead being, but the metaphor is carefully woven so the simple horror of the story is twisted to an analogy of human existence and the loneliness of the ‘other’.

Until next time, keep dreaming!

Goals and Plans

So I have a couple of plans in mind and I'm going to commit them to this blog to make sure I stick with them. There's one about my playwrighting and one about The Scarlet Ring.

The thing with the playwrighting is I did actually finish two one-act pieces this year and since then both have sat on my computer not bothering anyone or finding out if they're any good - let alone trying to come to life on the stage. So the plan is a play reading picnic in the park.

People will gather, some volunteering to read, others just coming to enjoy the event and join the discussion, then while a picnic lunch is eaten the two plays will be read out. Then as we digest the food everyone who wants to can give some feedback on the plays. That should at least give me the basis for a second draft. That's the plan. A date will be set soon and people will be invited via Facebook, so if you're interested watch that space. It'll be in Sydney in case you're not.

Plan two. I've decided to give NaNoWriMo a go this year. That's the National Novel Writing Month, where you sign up and challenge yourself to write 50,000 words of a novel in November. The idea is to start a new novel, I don't want to do that but I do want to face the challenge properly. Bit of an issue when I've already started but I have a plan.

Before this came up I had divided The Scarlet Ring into three parts (not the trilogy but three sections of book one). So the plan is to finish part one before November and do parts two and three as the challenge.