Arthur Machen

Arthur Machen ( March 3, 1863 in Caerleon, Wales, † March 30, 1947 ) was a Welsh author of SF stories.

Life and work

He was born as Arthur Llewellyn Jones, later he called himself Arthur Jones making. He grew up the son of a clergyman in Wales Caerleon -on- Usk ( Monmouth, Newport ). He attended a public school, the educational methods he detested and, inter alia, in the novel The Secret Glory ( 1922) literary processed.

Make studied medicine in London, broke after a few semesters and went through a time of privation, in which he, inter alia, to tried as a translator of Rabelais and Marguerite of Navarre. The difficult years in London and his youth in Wales he worked later in the novel The Garden of Avallaunius ( 1904). 1894 came the literary breakthrough with The Great God Pan, an eerie tale that, on the subject of the coexistence of the real world and a fantastic parallel world, fed from Celtic / Roman myths.

Make joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn ( Aleister Crowley, William Butler Yeats ) and traveled for several years with a troupe of traveling actors across the country. In addition to his literary activities authored AM biting literary and theater critic for various newspapers. A malicious premature obituary of Lord Alfred Douglas, lover of Oscar Wilde, ruined him economically.

In addition to novels Make mostly wrote short stories, which usually have the supernatural theme. Some of these stories revolve around the writer Dyson, who is embroiled in sinister and criminal ingenuity requiring adventure. His story The Terror: A Fantasy (1917 ) may be supplied with the idea for Daphne du Maurier's story The Birds (1952 ), which was filmed in 1963 by Alfred Hitchcock. Reception of historic significance is his story The Bowmen (1915 ) on the intervention of medieval archers on the British side at the Battle of Mons (23 August 1914). The legend of the Angels of Mons was soon afterwards seen by many contemporaries as "real" supersensible events.

Characteristic of making - particularly in the novels - is an elegiac language with extensive and enthusiastic descriptions of nature. Topic is often the Celtic / Roman past of Wales and the survival of ancient myths. His heroes are often misunderstood, lonely people. As Borges suggested in his preface to the " Shining Pyramid" to make himself felt as an outsider who has explicitly insisted on his " Celtic culture " in order to feel as doomed as it were analogous to his ancestors, to failure can.

The American writer H. P. Lovecraft was an admirer of making and was influenced by this literature.

Works (selection)

As author

  • The autobiography of Arthur Machen. Garnstone Press, London 1974, ISBN 0-85511-431-2 ( with an introduction by Morchard Bishop).
  • Donald M. Hassler Strong, Sue Strong Hassler (ed.): Arthur Machen & Montgomery Evans. Letters of a Literary Friendship 1923-1947. University Press, London 1994, ISBN 0-87338-489- X.
  • The glowing pyramid. Books Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-7632-5816-1 (edited by Jorge Luis Borges in the library of Babel)
  • Ambassador of evil. ( The Three Impostors. ) Piper Verlag, Munich / Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-492-11402-4
  • Fear and terror. ( The Terror. A Fantasy) Piper Verlag, Munich / Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-492-11401-6
  • The White purchase. ( The Shining Pyramid ao. ) Piper Verlag, Munich / Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-492-11403-2
  • The Great Pan. ( The Great God Pan. ) Piper Verlag, Munich / Zurich 1994, ISBN 3-492-11404-0
  • The mountain of dreams. ( The Garden of Avallaunius. ), Piper Verlag, Munich / Zurich 1994, ISBN 3-492-11405-9
  • The hidden victory. ( The Secret Glory. ) Piper Verlag, Munich / Zurich 1994, ISBN 3-492-11406-7
  • The Caerleon edition of the works of Arthur Machen. Caermaen Books, Oxford 1923 ff
  • Works. In six volumes. Piper, Munich 1993 /94 ( translated by Joachim Kalka )

As a translator

  • Margaret of Angoulême: Heptaméron. London 1886.
W. B. Yeats Elegy H. P. Lovecraft Algernon Blackwood Integrated Authority File
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