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Rating: Arthur Machen is one of the greats of classical "Weird" literature, and we can place him at the same level as H.P. Lovecraft – who was inspired by him –, Algernon Blackwood, William Hope Hodgson, M.P. Shiel , and a few others. In possession of an aristocratic, refined, and very poetic style, far from that of his follower Lovecraft, the Welsh writer created true classics of the fantastic such as “The Great God Pan”, the cycle “The Three Impostors”, defined by Elemire Zolla as “a circular masterpiece”, the novel “The Hill of Dreams”, rich with a dreamlike and timeless atmosphere which, in his intentions, was meant to be his masterpiece” and defined by Mario Praz as “the most decadent book in English literature”, and many other writings not all translated into Italian. In reality, in our country, unlike other names, there has always been a certain interest in Machen, although, in the end, the same stories and novels have been reprinted more or less. Fortunately, in this regard, something now seems to be moving: Providence Press is preparing to publish the previously unpublished novel The Green Round, while Hypnos Editions have recently made available the long story previously unpublished in Italy, A Fragment of Life, which originally appeared in 1902 in Horlicks Magazine in 4 chapters, pairing it with one of his masterpieces, the story The White People.
As can be understood from the introduction written by Machen himself for the American edition of The House Of Souls in 1922, where these stories appeared, these are two works that, although seemingly different, are complementary. They were written in 1899 in a style that Machen aimed to align, in some way, with a “more contemporary” taste. With A Fragment of Life, he wanted to embody what was consistently his entire philosophy and aesthetic's poetics aimed at the search for the true essence of reality beyond appearances. It is a personal journey that will also lead him to embrace the society of the Golden Dawn, at the time very influential and frequented by numerous famous figures like Algernon Blackwood, Aleister Crowley, Yeats, Bram Stoker, and many others. But it should be said how Machen disdained occultism in the literary field which he considered as mere trinket as emerges from reading one of his articles on the subject recently translated by Pietro Guarriello in the first issue of the magazine Zothique. His sensitivity led him to write about secret things, to discover “unheard melodies”, and to access spells that open the doors to the full view of the invisible world. In this sense, A Fragment of Life is one of his works that closest approaches his "vision" of reality and is based on the concept of “the contrast between the rough London suburb and its trivial and limited life and the daily journeys to the City: its complete banality and lack of meaning: between this and the old gray house with columns under the forest near the river”; it is as if Machen had always tried to rewrite the same story throughout his life. The protagonist of the story, Edward Darnell, seeks to escape from the drabness of life as a clerk in the City by turning his gaze towards unknown worlds filled with an ancient mysticism.
The White People was instead missing for too long and could only be found in old editions so this reprint is certainly very welcome as it is perhaps his best work as Lovecraft believed. In the appendix, there are also the fourth chapter of A Fragment of Life and the short story A Double Return. Available on the Hypnos Editions website: http://www.edizionihypnos.com/.
Arthur Machen “A Fragment of Life/The White People” – 233 pages – Euro 21.90 - Hypnos Editions – 2018
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