The Miscellaneous Writings of Clark Ashton Smith Read Free Page B

unless the original typescript should turn up in the late Mr. Price’s papers, it remains mere conjecture.
    We suspect that “House of the Monoceros” originally was similar to Smith’s contemporary horror stories such as “The Nameless Offspring,” but where bits of Smith occasionally flash through in “Dawn of Discord,” little remains outside of the name Treganneth and the word “monoceros” itself. There may be little of Smith’s original concepts left in these two stories, but the Smith afficionado may find something of interest in them.
    “The Dead Will Cuckold You” was described by Smith as one of his “few unpublished masterpieces” ( SL 373). While the author’s omnipresent touch of irony was almost certainly not entirely absent from this evaluation, this play in blank verse (written during the winter of 1951 and revised in 1956) his penultimate story set in Zothique (the last continent of earth under a dying red sun) contains some of his most vivid, and most macabre, writing. Although it remained unpublished until after Smith’s death, he and his friends enjoyed acting out or reading aloud its sonorous, rhythmic lines. 13
    “The Hashish-Eater; or, The Apocalypse of Evil” is Clark Ashton Smith’s longest and most well-known poem; and was described by his friend H.P. Lovecraft as “the greatest imaginative orgy in English literature.” 4 Written in early 1922 and published later that same year in Ebony and Crystal, this epic poem owes at least some of its inspiration to George Sterling and “A Wine of Wizardry,”which the young Smith discovered in the pages of Cosmopolitan in 1907. Smith would later describe his intentions and rationale behind his cosmic masterpiece in a letter to S.J. Sackett: ( SL 259)

. . . The Hashish-Eater , a much misunderstood poem, which was intended as a study in cosmic consciousness, drawing heavily on myth and fable for much of its imagery. It is my own theory that, if the infinite worlds of the cosmos were opened to human vision, the visionary would be overwhelmed by horror in the end, like the hero of the poem.

    During the preparation of his Selected Poems, Smith would slightly revise the poem, removing many commas and asterisks and adding a few lines and word-changes. He would also replace such British spellings as colour, harbour , and rigour , with standard American. More significantly, Smith increased the number of episodes from ten to twelve, perhaps to impart more of a classic aesthetic structure. Although this revised version has superseded the original as Smith’s own preferred text, the editors felt it important to keep the Ebony and Crystal version in print as well for the sake of the CAS scholar who may wish to compare texts or, perhaps, who wish to experience Smith’s magnum opus exactly as it appeared in 1922.
    Unlike the other works that we have included in the Night Shade Books edition of Clark Ashton Smith, “The Hashish-Eater” is not prose, yet it contains so many germs and ideas that would find maturation in his short stories that its inclusion is warranted. This may also be said of the other pieces included in this collection: they do not represent his best work, but for the devout acolyte at the altar of Klarkash-Ton they provide glimpses of ideas that failed to come together for some reason, as well as signs and portents of wonders yet to come.

    Notes
    1. Clark Ashton Smith, “Story-Writing Hints” (Ms, Clark Ashton Smith Papers, John Hay Library, Brown University).
    2. Donald Sidney-Fryer, Emperor of Dreams: A Clark Ashton Smith Bibliography (West Kingston, RI: Donald M. Grant, 1978): 19.
    3. F. E. Dyer (President, The Shortstory Publishing Co.), letter to Clark Ashton Smith, April 13, 1910 (TLS, Clark Ashton Smith Papers, John Hay Library, Brown University).
    4. L. Sprague de Camp, “Sierra Shaman.” Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1976): 198.
    5. Selected Letters of