'Afterwards' by Clark Ashton Smith

There is a silence in the world
Since we have said farewell;
And beauty with an alien speech
An alien tale would tell.

There is a silence in the world,
Which is not peace nor quiet:
Ever I seek to flee therefrom,
And walk the ways of riot.

But when I hear the music moan
In rooms of thronging laughter,
A tongueless demon drives me forth,
And silence follows after.

Writing tips from Clark Ashton Smith

"The main objective of the short story is to stir the reader's emotions. How you stir them or what emotion you stir is not so important as the fact that to hold the reader's interest you must stir his emotions. You must be able to create various emotional effects thru your characters, action, description, setting, etc.

Constant practice is the key to success. You cannot learn music without practicing it, neither can you learn to write without writing. I suggest that, for your own benefit, you write a few hundred words depicting an emotional experience. Write up one of your own experiences or invent one. But remember that you are writing it with the purpose of stirring an emotion in the person who reads it. The sketch is not to be a story but merely an incident-no opening explanations are necessary.

When you are reading a story watch for the passages in which the author is relating an emotional experience and inducing the emotional feeling in you. By studying how that particular author is doing it you will be better able to do it in your own work."

Full text here.

More bits & bobs:

Atmosphere in Weird Fiction
Fragment of an Essay
On Fantasy

Further nonfiction by C.A.S. may be found here.

'The Dark Eidolon' by Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Full text here.

Reading 'The Dark Eidolon' again recently reminded me why it's one of my favourite Ashton Smith stories ('The Last Incantation' being another). There are no heroes, no happy ending, no redemption, no hope. The characters are inexorably dragged onward and downward by their own obsessions, weaknesses and mistakes, culminating in a great big fucked up mess. Nobody wins. It is a relentlessly bleak tale of stupid, petty, and very human vengeance.

There are some wonderful images, ideas, and phrases here: "a dark liquid full of star-cold lights" and the sudden appearance of Namirrha's "house" (not a palace, a sinister citadel, or anything so clichéd) to name but two examples. There's a fundamental dreamlike weirdness at work here that I can't quite place but find utterly compelling.

M. John Harrison is quoted (in my edition of 'The Emperor of Dreams') as saying that C.A.S. "helped point the way to the hard-edged British fantasy of the 1960s and '70s". Having read the likes of Harrison's 'Viriconium' stories and also the works of Michael Moorcock (who I would also count as a huge influence) I can definately see the truth in this statement, but I think Ashton Smith's stories are also very worthy of the attentions of current day readers and writers. He deserves to be read and rated a lot more highly than he is.

People keep telling me that the New Weird is "dead", whatever the hell that means - well, I think that if that's the case then now is a more appropriate time than ever to embrace all that the "old" Weird has to offer.