1764 – ‘THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO’ BY HORACE WALPOLE

Year Published : 1764

Author : Horace Walpole

Nationality : English

Publisher : Oxford World’s Classics

Genre : Gothic, Romance, 18th Century

Pages  : 115

Blurb : First published  in 1764, The Castle of Otranto purported to be a translation of an Italian story of the time of the crusades.  In it Walpole attempted, as he declared in the Preface to the second edition, ‘to be the two kinds of romance; the ancient and the modern’.  He gives us a series of catastrophes, ghostly interventions, revelations of identity, and exciting contests.  Crammed with invention, entertainment, terror, and pathos, the novel was an immediate success and Walpole’s own favourite among his numerous works.  His friend, the poet Thomas Gray, wrote that he and his family, having read Otranto, were now ‘afraid to go to bed o’ nights’.

312 BOOK REVIEW : 312 BOOK REVIEW : Although tradition places ‘The Castle of Otranto’ as a spooky, ghostly, gothic novel, in fact the first ever gothic novel, it is difficult what to make of these claims.

The book was originally written as a hoax intended to fool its readership into believing it was an old medieval tale and my suspicion is that rather than being a hybrid of, in Walpole’s words, ‘two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern’ there is, I believe, a certain amount of flimflam in that claim.  After all Walpole only claimed so in the 2nd edition when his hoax had been exposed. 

The book most strongly resembles Greek and Shakespearian tragedy, particularly ‘Hamlet’, which as we all know, was set in a haunted medieval castle. However, while Greek and Shakespearian tragedy were and still are serious works of the first grade, there is something almost comic about ‘The Castle of Otranto’.  Perhaps, and I stress this is my own reading, it was more a campy joke played on medieval revisionist of the day or those who hadn’t quite grasped the on going age of enlightenment.  After all, most of Europe was still run by anachronistic kings and princelings in 1764.

Personally I would question how seriously can one take a piece of literature when almost the first event of the plot is a giant helmet, a hundred times normal size, appearing from nowhere to crush to death a groom as he prepares for his wedding ceremony?  Rather than setting the template for gothic chills, the book often reads more like a precursor of the surreal and absurd humour of The Goons, Beachcomber or Monty Python.

The book is littered with other examples of ridiculousness.  Much of the plot is based upon a rather simple formula.  Character A goes to Place B to see Character C at the same time as Character C goes to Place D to see Character A after which both characters miss each other and then draw the least obvious conclusion possible as to what Character A/C was doing when they should have been at Place B/D.  Clearly Occam’s Razor has no place in the realm of Otranto.  And despite the medieval setting, the dark hallways, the hysterical domestics who see ghosts and giants in every darkened room and the ruined underground catacombs with secret passages, the story often reads more like a light hearted English farce as characters perpetually rush to and fro, from the castle to the church and from the church to the convent, perpetually missing one another.

Another very apparent element of the ridiculous is the chivalric behaviour of all the main characters.  Whether the concept of chivalry was as ridiculous in Walpole’s 18th century as it is to our time is open to debate by my suspicion is that it was and that Walpole has deliberately enhance the ludicrousness of the novel by cranking it up to preposterous levels. 

Take Hippolita’s devotion to her rotten husband Manfred for instance.  The sanctity with which she treats her marriage vow and status of wife is hard to credit when he cold shoulders her for not providing more than one heir, attempts to rape her daughter-in-law and then plots a scheme to hold on to power, which he can only achieve by her consent, by divorcing her and then marrying a younger woman.  Yet through all this Hippolita’s marital subservience barely wavers.

Elsewhere, Theodore, a young knight, blood heir to Otranto, and hero of the piece is so outstandingly chivalrous he barely does anything except eloquently acquiesce before his hosts, who, might I  remind you, have stolen his rightful inheritance.  All the women fall in love with his courtly manners but as a man of action he’s next to useless and barely has any influence on the plot bar standing around being outstanding polite and gracious.

Even in the final scene when one of the characters is stabbed in a case of mistaken identity, she behaves with the utmost chivalry for almost half a chapter as her life leaks away, demanding forgiveness for her murderer and comforting her distressed relations as she passes away.   While courtly love and chivalry did exist the extremity of the virtuousness, seems to me, to be a tool used for satirical effect.

In summary,those expecting a gothic horror will no doubt be disappointed.  Those expecting a medieval romance will be equally let down.  However, read as a short, silly, rather convoluted, farcical, tongue in cheek satire of modern ideas about the medieval setting, the church and political power it may glean more for the potential reader.

1891 – ‘THE DAMNED (LA BAS)’ by JORIS KARL HUYSMAN

Year Published : 1891

Author : Joris Karl Huysmans

Nationality : French

Publisher : Penguin Classics

Genre : Gothic, Occult, French, 19th Century

Pages : 265

Blurb : “Durtal, a shy censorious man, is writing a biography of   Gilles de Rais, the monstrous fifteen-century child murderer thought to be the original for ‘Bluebeard’.  Bored and disgusted by the vulgarity of everyday life, Durtal seeks spiritual solace by immersing himself in another age.  But when he starts asking questions about Gilles’s involvement in Satanic rituals and is introduced to the exquisitely evil Madame Chantelouve, he is soon drawn into a twilight world of black magic and erotic devilry  in fin-de-siecle Paris.  Published in 1891, The Damned cemented Huysmans’s reputation as a writer at the forefront of the avant garde and as one of the most challenging and innovative figures in European literature

312 BOOK REVIEW:  Huysmans is best known in the English speaking world for his extraordinary novel ‘A rebours’ which broke virtually every novel writing convention of its day and which still vexes and delights according to taste.  In fact such are the idiosyncrasies of ‘A rebours’ that it is almost impossible to discuss Huysmans without making reference to them. 

The novel dispensed completely with story, plot and featured only one major character who mostly remained silent.  Its strength rested on incredibly in depth descriptive passages on what would otherwise be mundane objects or events.  Few authors have devoted 20 pages to describing the aroma of a perfume, the colour of a gem stone or a collection of house plants.  Even if they had, few authors could transfix the reader with swirling syntax, mind bending, almost hallucinogenic use of language and a masterly command of a vast and varied vocabulary as Huysmans does in ‘A rebours’.

However ‘The Damned’ follows the conventional model of a novel much more than ‘A rebours’.  It has spoken dialogue, a number of characters who interact with one another and a well-structured and paced plot that maintains a feeling of forward movement and momentum, something ‘A rebours’ deliberately dispensed with.  However, this being Huysmans things are not completely straight forward in terms of the books structure. 

The book is really two books in one with something of a metaphysical twist.  It is the story of an author researching satanic rituals for a book he is writing about the medieval serial killer Gilles de Rais but the book alternates between the story of the events surrounding his research and the text of the book that he himself is writing.  These dual stories lie parallel to each other and with one set in medieval France and the other in then contemporary Paris, the reader is encouraged to compare and contrast these two eras, one where faith in religion is almost unquestioned, the other wallowing in the spiritual dearth of materialist atheism.

The battle between spiritual faith and modernism is perhaps the overriding theme of the book, Huysmans himself was a conflicted Catholic who eventually and not without struggle rejected atheism, but it also raises questions concerning good and evil and the thinly delineated lines that separate them, as well as the murky regions of the human psyche were superstition, science both known and unknown and age old human irrationalities intermingle.

The sexual politics of the book are also notable and although it is difficult to determine if they are Huysmans own views, (they are mostly expressed through the relationship between Durtal, a thinly veiled autobiographical Huysmans, and Madame Chantelouve) or a knowing denouncement of the Church doctrine that considers sexually promiscuous women, especially those breaking wedding vows, and homosexuals as not just ungodly but possessed by devils and outright satanic.

Huysmans does not employ his descriptive powers as freely here as in ‘A rebours’ but there are wonderfully evocative gothic scenes as Durtal explores the ruined castle of Gilles de Rais by moon light or his mysterious and slightly surreal first encounter with the devout Carhaix in the bell tower of a church.  The scenes of sexual congress between Durtal and the amorous adultress Madame Chantelouve are erotic, indeed sinful, but are not over done or laden with cringy clinches as with much literary love making.  In fact the relationship is convincing and the Madame Chantelouve character is surprisingly well drawn when her main role is as a sexual foil to the monk like Durtal, who’s preference is to remain cloistered in his lodgings.

‘The Damned’ does not hit the heights of ‘A rebours’ at its best but neither does it hit its lows at its worst.  Although in spells it may bore some with its fascination for arcane medieval Catholicism the story unfolds nicely, firstly concerning Durtal’s relationship with Madame Chantelouve and latterly as the inevitable meeting with the fallen priest and satanic sorcerer Docre unfolds. Overall ‘The Damned’ is a good novel that probably requires to be read through two or three times to disentangle its rich and complex, oscillating belief system and rich symbolism.