"Atmosphere.In.Weird.Fiction" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Clark Ashton)

Atmosphere in Weird Fiction

by Clark Ashton Smith


The term atmosphere, in application to fiction, is often used in a somewhat
vague or restricted sense. I believe that it can be most profitably defined as
the collective impression created by the entire mass of descriptive, directly
evocative details in any given story (what is sometimes known as "local color")
together with all that is adumbrated, suggested or connoted through or behind
these details. It can be divided roughly into two elements: the kinetic and the
potential; the former comprising all the effects of overt surface imagery, and
the latter all the implications, hints, undertones, shadows, nuances, and the
verbal associations, and various effects of rhythm, onomatopoeia and phonetic
pattern which form a more consistent and essential feature of good prose-writing
than is commonly realized. Many people would apply the word atmosphere only to
the elements defined here-above as potential; but I prefer the broader
definition; since, after all, the most intangible atmospheric effects depend
more or less upon the kinetic ones and are often difficult to dissociate wholly
from them through analysis. An attempt to achieve purely potential writing might
result, I suspect, in something not altogether dissimilar to the effusions of
Gertrude Stein! Or, at least, it would lead to an obscurity such as was
practiced by the French Symboliat poet, Mallarme, who is said to have revised
his poems with an eye to the elimination of kinetic statement whenever-
possible.

A few examples of the use of atmospheric elements, taken from the work
of recognized masters, should prove more illuminative than any amount of
generalization. Take, for instance, this paragraph from Ambrose Bierve's tale,
The Death of Halpin Frayser, one of the most overwhelmingly terrific horror,
tales ever written:

He thought that he was walking along a dusty road that showed white in
the gathering darkness of the summer night. Whence and whither it led,
and why he traveled it, he did not know, though all seemed simple and
natural, as is the way in dreams; for in the Land Beyond the Bed
surprises cease from troubling and the Judgement is at rest. Soon he
came to the parting of the ways; leading from the highway was a road
less traveled, having the appearance, indeed, of having been long
abandoned, because, he thought, it led to something evil; yet he turned
into it without hesitation, impelled by some mysterious necessity.


Note here the potential value of the italicized clauses. The element of
dream-mystery is heightened by the unknown reason for traveling the road, by the
"something evil" which has no form or name, and the unparticularized necessity
for taking the abandoned way. The ambiguity, the lack of precise definition,
stimulate the reader's imagination and evoke shadowy meanings beyond the actual
words.