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Rating: William Hope Hodgson is one of the giants of last century's "weird" fiction. Lovecraft discovered him late but highlighted the great value of his work in the essay The Weird Works Of William Hope Hodgson in 1934 and, subsequently, in the well-known Supernatural Horror in Literature. It's no surprise he was interested: Lovecraft, in his ethical and aesthetic conception of life and literature, placed crucial importance on the feeling of so-called "cosmic horror," a characteristic he tried to infuse into his tales as a kind of mission and which he found rarely in the works of other fantastical writers. Particularly Hodgson's novels where this particular attitude is more apparent are the masterpiece The House on the Borderland, in which the protagonist's final journey – the Recluse – leads him to visit extra-cosmic dimensions and The Night Land. The latter is a nightmare novel not without faults, too long and burdened by a language full of archaisms and, at times, excessive sentimentality. Nonetheless, visions worthy of Dante Alighieri and Hieronymus Bosch of a dying and hallucinatory world where the protagonist finds himself barricaded in a pyramid, the Redoubt, surrounded by unspeakable horrors, are something rarely found in literature. The result, in my opinion, surpasses even much later science fiction which lacks Hodgson's dramatic dimension. The novel has just been finally reprinted by Fanucci after years of being out of print. Of The Night Land, released in 1912, the English writer also published a condensed version titled The Dream of X for the American market due to rights issues.
The publishing house Il Palindromo has just published The Dream of X in the meritorious series I Tre SediliI Deserti in a beautiful volume enriched by unpublished stories, some of the author's poems – a unique feature in Italy – and a respectable critical apparatus with contributions from Gianfranco De Turris, Pietro Guarriello, and Maria Ceraso. Whatever the reason Hodgson decided to create this new version, the result is brilliant: we are facing a new novel that retains all the qualities of the original without the aforementioned flaws. Despite the author having a controversial relationship with religion, one almost senses in these pages the numinous and irrational sense of the sacred, as understood by philosopher Rudolf Otto. The presented stories have a variable value. My favorites are The Valley of Lost Children and The Room of Fear, where we find a previously unseen Hodgson. These are 2 delicate stories full of poetry that speak to us about the disturbances and innocence of childhood. The Goddess of Death and The House Among the Laurels are instead 2 tales from the "occult detective" genre, a genre that has never personally thrilled me. The Promise of Jacobeous Deacon, already appeared in the Hypnos magazine, is a macabre story whereas Carnacki, The Ghost-Finder is a synthesis, in the vein of The Dream of X, of the first 4 stories of the series.
The final part is dedicated to Hodgson's poetry, practically ignored by criticism except for a recent edition by the mythical Tartarus Press. In fact, his poetry is not at all contemptible even if it derives its themes from romanticism. It is nonetheless not comparable in value to his major works, but the choice to propose a selection of his poems is commendable. The volume, which I highly recommend to all "weird" enthusiasts, is also enriched by 20 plates by Stephen E. Fabian. The translation is by Giuseppe Aguanno. The volume can be purchased on Il Palindromo's website at the following link or on Amazon: http://www.ilpalindromo.it/edizioni/.
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