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Rating: For a long time, Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) was absent from bookstore shelves in our country. Finally, a substantial volume titled Atlantis and the Lost Worlds has been published, encompassing four complete cycles – “Atlantis”, “Averoigne”, “Zothique”, and “Xiccarph” – in the prestigious Oscar Draghi series, which features authors such as Terry Brooks, George R. Martin, Robert E. Howard, and H.P. Lovecraft. This initiative is credited to the courage of Giuseppe Lippi, one of Italy's foremost experts on fantasy literature and editor of the “Lovecraftian” stories based on S.T. Joshi’s definitive texts. Atlantis and the Lost Worlds fills a gap by making available to “weird” enthusiasts a writer who, over the years, had gained a “Holy Grail” status. Just take a tour on eBay and type his name to get an idea of the astronomical prices at which his old editions published by Fanucci and Meb in the '70s and '80s are sold. In particular, Le metamorfosi della terra and also Averoigne – released in the mythical “I Miti di Cthulhu” series by Fanucci, curated by Gianni Pilo – have reached considerable sums.
We are undoubtedly dealing with a unique writer: his perspective is cosmic and anti-anthropocentric, endowed with a genuine poetic vein, a macabre and decadent touch, and possessing a monumental and bizarre vocabulary. He can be considered one of the last exponents of an “outré” fantasy: his decadent, baroque, and “visionary” prose transports the reader's mind to another dimension in realms beyond time and space. He was one of the pillars of early 20th-century American fantasy alongside H.P. Lovecraft and R.E. Howard. Lyon Sprague De Camp called him one of the “Three Musketeers” of the famous pulp magazine Weird Tales, which was then directed by Farnsworth Wright.
His literary career, in fact, began in the realm of poetry, and his activity as a sculptor, with which he depicted the malevolent deities “evoked” in his writings, is not insignificant.
In 1922, his acquaintance with H.P. Lovecraft proved pivotal. The correspondence between the two writers was so crucial that Clark Ashton Smith, following in the footsteps of the “Providence recluse,” invented new deities (including Tsathoggua and Ubo-Sathla) and The Book of Eibon, a so-called “pseudobiblium” like the notorious Necronomicon.
Between 1928 and 1935, his legendary stories appeared in Weird Tales magazine. The fertile imagination of the Californian writer was limitless, giving birth to the unforgettable cycles of stories set in the imaginary continents of Atlantis, Hyperborea, and Zothique.
Atlantis is the first cycle of this volume and is based on the concept of “lost worlds”, specifically referring to the mythical and mythological continent of Atlantis mentioned by Plato. These are stories that transport us to forgotten eras and buried continents where the art of necromancy is still practiced, as in the fascinating “The Death of Malygris”. Noteworthy is “The Double Shadow”, a story of cosmic horror highly liked by Lovecraft. Another fascinating cycle of stories we have the opportunity to read in Atlantis and the Lost Worlds is “Averoigne”, set in the Middle Ages in the ancient French region of Averoigne dominated by dark legends and powerful magic. These are tales not devoid of a certain gothic, erotic, and grotesque charm that make it a cult cycle among fantasy enthusiasts. Readers are immersed, in stories like “The Colossus of Ylourgne”, “The Beast of Averoigne”, or “The End of the Story”, in an archaic medieval atmosphere rich in fantastic and mythical echoes where typical figures of horror literature such as vampires and demons abound, along with elements from the “Cthulhu Mythos”.
The “Zothique” cycle, set in a remote future (such as in the incredible novel by William Hope Hodgson "The Night Land" from which it perhaps drew inspiration), where the sun has darkened and the ancient arts of necromancy have been reborn, is considered his masterpiece and is here presented in an integral edition. The stories in this cycle perhaps constitute the essence of his lush writing, influenced by Baudelaire and Verlaine: a prose characterized by the use of sophisticated vocabulary that creates an atmosphere of aesthetic decadence, as seen in the splendid story “The Empire of the Necromancers”. The closing is entrusted to the short cycle of “Xiccarph”: in this last one, his tendency towards black and apocalyptic science fiction emerges.
The translations by Giuseppe Lippi are new and based on the six-volume edition published by Night Shade Books between 2007 and 2011. It is practically the first complete Italian edition as several cuts that were required at the time by the magazines have been integrated. The volume is also accompanied by a detailed bibliography, four maps drawn by Greta Grendel, and images depicting six sculptures by the author.
Clark Ashton Smith “Atlantis and the Lost Worlds” – Mondadori – Oscar Draghi – 600 pages – Euro 25 ISBN 9788804683643
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