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Rating: Clark Ashton Smith is remembered today for his horror stories, but his literary career actually began in the realm of poetry. His translations of Baudelaire are still considered among the most effective. Between 1918 and 1922, he published two famous collections of poetry: The Star Treader and other poems and Ebony and Crystal, the latter dedicated to his poet friend Samuel Loveman. According to the renowned critic S.T. Joshi, his stories are overrated and something to be enjoyed over time.
In 1922, his acquaintance with H.P. Lovecraft was crucial. The correspondence between the two writers proved fundamental. C.A. Smith was indeed encouraged to write stories for "popular" magazines. Between 1928 and 1935, his legendary stories appeared on "Weird Tales". The fervent imagination of the Californian writer knew no bounds: thus were born the unforgettable series of stories set in the imaginary continents of "Hyperborea" and "Zothique."
In particular, the cycle of "Zothique" (which, as we can see, inspired the name of the Dagon Press magazine), set in a distant future where the sun has darkened and the ancient arts of necromancy have been reborn, is considered his masterpiece. The stories of 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 in the splendid story "The Empire of the Necromancers."
It took the pen of a Clark Ashton Smith expert in Italy like Pietro Guarriello (I remember some of his pioneering articles in Urania, in addition to editing the legendary Ombre dal cosmo for Yorick) to thoroughly explore his figure in an in-depth retrospective in the new issue of the magazine Zothique (a name clearly inspired by the eponymous cycle of Ashton Smith) titled Clark Ashton Smith, il recluso di Auburn che sognava le stelle. I found his piece very interesting; I had always wondered why the Californian writer had stopped writing after H.P. Lovecraft's death. There are many reasons actually (including the death of his parents), as Guarriello points out. However, during this dark period from 1937 to 1950, I learn that he even met and socialized with Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan who was also an admirer of his, so much so that he took inspiration from one of his stories to devise a ritual. We also find numerous photos of the writer, as well as many illustrations (including the splendid reproduction by Andrea Bonazzi) from magazines of the time in which his stories appeared. We can also admire some of his landscape portraits. Also shown to us is the cover of Le metamorfosi della terra, currently his rarest book in Italy (along with other volumes from the Fanucci series "I Miti di Cthulhu", priced at 150 Euros). The 3 stories unpublished in Italy presented here are all after his golden period, which ended in 1937, but are very valid and interesting. An unmissable issue for weird enthusiasts.
Available on Amazon at the following link: https://www.amazon.it/ZOTHIQUE-16-Speciale-Clark-Ashton/dp/B0CH28YMXF.
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