Someone told me that Algernon Blackwood made TV appearances in which he read his tales, back in the early days of television, and that he had a very wrinkled face, like Auden. Naturally, I wondered if anyone might have put these on Youtube. The closest thing (the only thing, in fact) I found was this, a clip using excerpts from Blackwood's story The Wendigo. Now, one thing that fascinates me very much is the resonance contained in certain words whose meaning you do not know. I don't know where I first came across the word 'Wendigo', but it has always seemed wonderfully evocative to me. I haven't even read Blackwood's story, but I want to, just because of the title. Now, I think I had an idea, early on, that the Wendigo was something a little bit like Sasquatch, but the very mystery of the word excited me, and I didn't want to define it too closely. In some ways it has been enough for me just to have the word and the mystery, and to know that Algernon Blackwood has written a story about it, and, oh yes, not to forget, to see this picture:
Now, whatever else I write about on this blog, this is the kind of thing I really feel at home with. Monsters. Not just any monsters, either, but monsters who stride through the snowy night with their antlers in the Milky Way and a paw full of stars. Eerie, mysterious monsters. Monsters of the blackest eldritch midnight. In fact, I don't know why I don't write more about this kind of thing – the kind of thing that whispers to us from the shadows. Well, of course, I do, but not much on this blog. Perhaps I like to keep such things to myself and those who have the gumption actually to buy my books. Even then, I don't indulge as much as I might like to, because I've told myself time and time again to go easy on the H.P. (Lovecraft) sauce. But it's been so long since I spent some time with those shapeless monsters in the cellar I grew up with, the monsters known to me at the time as Gooligars – they were not so terribly different, I believe, to Lovecraft's Nightgaunts, from The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath – it's been so long, I say, that I'm really getting quite nostalgic and homesick. I want to feel the breath of the eerie once more. But when? When will I feel it again? We shall wait, and we shall see.
Let's get back, for the moment, to the Wendigo. Another association I have with the word is a poem by Ogden Nash, which, like Blackwood's story, is simply called, 'The Wendigo'. You'll find it at the bottom of this link, here. I do urge you to read it. Nash is known as a humorist, and, being a fan of preposterous rhymes, I know that he can trot a few out when he wants (check out the title of this blog post, for a start). However, I also find this poem eerie with the same eeriness inherent in its whispering way in the word 'Wendigo' itself. It's that nursery rhyme effect, perhaps, bringing back memories of a child's fear of the dark. There's also that almost onomatopoeic quality in his use of words, too:
You loll,
It contemplates,
It lollops.
The rest is merely gulps and gollops.
Lovecraft knew how to use words in this way, and the names of his creations are masterpieces of this sort of almost-onomatopoeic suggestion: Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, Cthulhu. Ia! Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!
I looked up – for the first time – some of the details of the Wendigo myth on Wikipedia just now, and am sorry to say that the actual myth Blackwood's story, Nash's poem and the above illustration are based on was a little too corporeal for my taste, dealing as it does with cannibalism and a kind of walking-corpse spirit. I was disappointed. Still, perhaps if I dig deeper I will discover more details that furnish me with the frisson of the sinister I seek. In any case, I did notice something strange. It was this line:
At the same time, Wendigos were embodiments of gluttony, greed, and excess; never satisfied after killing and consuming one person, they were constantly searching for new victims.
I don't know why it is, but this is really tickling my deja vu-bone. I've encountered or been thinking about something with this theme recently, I'm sure, and I can't quite remember what it is. Perhaps I should sleep on it. Who knows what dreams I shall have, or what dreams shall have me.
PS:
Its eyes are ice and indigo!
That's such a great line!
Justin Isis writes:H.P. Lovecraft prose style is the only defense against life
Too true, too true.
Robin Davies writes:
Ah, Algernon Blackwood! He’s my favourite of the old-time fantasists and I’ve built up a huge collection of his work over the years. I agree with H. P Lovecraft that he was “the one absolute and unquestioned master of weird atmosphere”. Many modern readers may find his stuff a bit long-winded (and some of his novels are a bit bloated) but I love the way he builds up the most astonishing moods from a gradual, sensitive accumulation of detail. I think one of the reasons I like your work is that you have something of the same quality.Blackwood did indeed read several of his stories on the radio and television, and he was awarded a CBE and a Television Society medal. Sadly only one of his TV appearances survives in the BBC archives. A very brief clip of it was shown in the BBC4 documentary The Story Of The Ghost Story screened on 18th December 2005 (which I recorded). He was also filmed reading some of his stories for a company called Rayant Films and two of these were discovered in 1994 but I’ve been unable to find out who owns them or how to arrange a screening of them. I’ve got a few audiotapes of Blackwood reading his stories for the radio. Thanks for the Ogden Nash reference. I’d never heard of that poem before.Lots of Blackwood collections are available second-hand for very low prices so I’d recommend you check them out. His story of The Wendigo is rather more subtly expressed than the myth it draws from, and can be read here:http://www.gordon-fernandes.com/hp-lovecraft/other_authors/wendigo.htm
“His story of The Wendigo is rather more subtly expressed than the myth it draws from, and can be read here:”Excellent. That’s just what I needed. More later.Quentin.
That’s such a good story. I’m so glad there are still weird tales out there for me to discover. I kind of feel like no one knows how to do eerie anymore, though. It’s a real art. Some people can do it, of course, but it hardly seems to get a look-in these days in film, literature and so on.Thank you for comparing me to him. If I could write something that masterly in its control of atmosphere, I think I would be happy. Blackwood is one of those of whom I’ve only read one or two stories. In fact, there are many writers like this. Unfortunately, I’m not a very fast reader. I don’t seem to be a completist, either, probably more out of necessity than anything. Somewhere I have a musty old hardback, without the jacket, of John Silence stories. I remember the one about the town full of cat people. Which reminds me a little, now I think of it, of that story by Ambrose Bierce. I’ve forgotten the title now, but that had some kind of were-panther thing in it. Or was that Blackwood, too? I felt sure it was Bierce. Someone gave me a volume of Reggie Oliver for my birthday, so I’m looking forward to that when I get the time.
I realised what I suspected anyway, that that Youtube Wendigo clip isn’t really excerpts from The Wendigo, but a rather impressionistic adaptation of it. I thought it was fairly effective.
Robin Davies writes:
“Somewhere I have a musty old hardback, without the jacket, of John Silence stories. I remember the one about the town full of cat people.”Ancient Sorceries. “Which reminds me a little, now I think of it, of that story by Ambrose Bierce. I’ve forgotten the title now, but that had some kind of were-panther thing in it.”The Eyes Of The Panther, here:http://www.americanliterature.com/Bierce/SS/TheEyesofthePanther.htmlIn 1942 Val Lewton considered both Ancient Sorceries and The Eyes Of The Panther as the basis for his first movie production but finally settled on an original story about cat people called, uh, Cat People!
I enjyed the original Cat People film, and I’m quite fond of it in the way that I am, say, The Castle of Otranto, but I suppose I don’t really rate it. Much better, by, I believe, the same director, is I Walked with a Zombie. I remember Night of the Demon being pretty damned good, too.