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Acolyte, v. 3, issue 4, whole no. 12, Fall 1945
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see--no, you do not, but I see--such curious faces: and the people to which they belong flit about so oddly, often at your elbow when you least expect it, and looking close into your face, as if they were searching for someone--who may be thankful, I think, if they do not find him. 'Where do they come from?' Why, some, I think, out of the water, and some out of the ground. They look like that." At other times, as in the killing of the Squire by the enormous spiders in "The Ash Tree", the irony is grim and terrible: There is very little light about the bedstead, but there is a strange movement there; it seems as if Sir Richard were moving his head rapidly to and fro with only the slightest possible sound. And now you would guess, so deceptive is the half-darkness, that he had several heads, round and brownish, which move back and forward even as low as his chest. It is a horrible illusion. Is it nothing more? There! something drops off the bed with a soft plump, like a kitten, and is out of the window in a flash; another--four--and after that there is quiet again. "Thou shalt seek me in the morning, and I shall not be." In this sardonic passage we can observe how a corrosive irony--James' personal refinement of the art of suggestion--operates to emphasize the horror of the objective events. It avoids the antithetic 19th century pitfalls of crude, melodramatic sensationalism and mincing, attenuated sentimentality, and satisfies the sophisticated modern taste for strong meat spiced with piquant seasoning. We want our literary nightmares forceful and appalling but presented with some diverting, stimulating artistry so as to delight the intellect and gratify the sensibility to fine writing. No more perfect stylistic means to this end could be found than the subtle, chilling suggestiveness of irony. There are more times, though, when James prefers to deal with physical horrors in a more direct and serious way, as in the landlord's account of the poachers who aroused Count Magnus' wraith: "And I tell you this about Anders Bjornsen, that he was once a beautiful man, but now his face was not there, because the flesh of it was sucked away off the bones. You understand that? My grandfather did not forget that." The exaggerated simplicity of this speech stems not from irony but from the landlord's efforts to repress the horror he feels, and the effect is conveyed with undeniable power. There, of course, James is concerned simply with physical gruesomeness. But in a reader here and there of "A Disappearance and Appearance" possibly something will stir which lay buried in the remoter, the seldom-trodden verges of his consciousness-- the sense of the presence of Evil. There is a Punch and Judy show in this story, and its Punch is--well, not the devil, but a fairly intimate associate of his. "There came suddenly an enormous--I can use no other word--an enormous single toll of a bell, I don't know how far off--somewhere behind." Dostoevsky heard that bell. It resounds in dreams that have quite a distinct air of reality--a reality "somewhere behind"; and though Dr. James' tales may make no pretence but to amuse, this one carries off that pretence with a singularly malevolent and indelible grimace. (17) On certain infrequent occasions, however, James reveals a literary ability quite opposite in tone to the depiction of enormities, but fully as effective. This is his knack for the depiction of English -- 21 --
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see--no, you do not, but I see--such curious faces: and the people to which they belong flit about so oddly, often at your elbow when you least expect it, and looking close into your face, as if they were searching for someone--who may be thankful, I think, if they do not find him. 'Where do they come from?' Why, some, I think, out of the water, and some out of the ground. They look like that." At other times, as in the killing of the Squire by the enormous spiders in "The Ash Tree", the irony is grim and terrible: There is very little light about the bedstead, but there is a strange movement there; it seems as if Sir Richard were moving his head rapidly to and fro with only the slightest possible sound. And now you would guess, so deceptive is the half-darkness, that he had several heads, round and brownish, which move back and forward even as low as his chest. It is a horrible illusion. Is it nothing more? There! something drops off the bed with a soft plump, like a kitten, and is out of the window in a flash; another--four--and after that there is quiet again. "Thou shalt seek me in the morning, and I shall not be." In this sardonic passage we can observe how a corrosive irony--James' personal refinement of the art of suggestion--operates to emphasize the horror of the objective events. It avoids the antithetic 19th century pitfalls of crude, melodramatic sensationalism and mincing, attenuated sentimentality, and satisfies the sophisticated modern taste for strong meat spiced with piquant seasoning. We want our literary nightmares forceful and appalling but presented with some diverting, stimulating artistry so as to delight the intellect and gratify the sensibility to fine writing. No more perfect stylistic means to this end could be found than the subtle, chilling suggestiveness of irony. There are more times, though, when James prefers to deal with physical horrors in a more direct and serious way, as in the landlord's account of the poachers who aroused Count Magnus' wraith: "And I tell you this about Anders Bjornsen, that he was once a beautiful man, but now his face was not there, because the flesh of it was sucked away off the bones. You understand that? My grandfather did not forget that." The exaggerated simplicity of this speech stems not from irony but from the landlord's efforts to repress the horror he feels, and the effect is conveyed with undeniable power. There, of course, James is concerned simply with physical gruesomeness. But in a reader here and there of "A Disappearance and Appearance" possibly something will stir which lay buried in the remoter, the seldom-trodden verges of his consciousness-- the sense of the presence of Evil. There is a Punch and Judy show in this story, and its Punch is--well, not the devil, but a fairly intimate associate of his. "There came suddenly an enormous--I can use no other word--an enormous single toll of a bell, I don't know how far off--somewhere behind." Dostoevsky heard that bell. It resounds in dreams that have quite a distinct air of reality--a reality "somewhere behind"; and though Dr. James' tales may make no pretence but to amuse, this one carries off that pretence with a singularly malevolent and indelible grimace. (17) On certain infrequent occasions, however, James reveals a literary ability quite opposite in tone to the depiction of enormities, but fully as effective. This is his knack for the depiction of English -- 21 --
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