3
Smith responded that “I am greatly pleased to learn that the new Averoigne tale was so much to your taste. It is one of my own favorites—in fact, I like it much better than the celebrated ‘End of the Story’.”4 A few days earlier Smith contrasted the composition of stories such as this with the stories he was writing for WS, complaining that “I would vastly prefer to write tales of the supernatural and the purely fantastic like ‘Averoigne’,”5 which illustrates how he came to prefer to set his stories in secondary worlds that he invented out of whole cloth. The story was published in the April-May 1931 issue of WT, and was voted the most popular story in that issue by the readers in its letter column, “The Eyrie.”
When the John Day Company published the anthology Creeps By Night, which was ostensibly edited by Dashiell Hammett, they approached both Wright and Derleth for story recommendations, and both recommended “A Rendezvous in Averoigne;” unfortunately, it did not achieve the dignity of hard covers until it was collected in OST. It provided the title for Arkham House’s 1989 omnibus of “the best of Clark Ashton Smith.” The text for this story is derived from the carbon copy of the typescript at JHL, compared with the original WT appearance and a copy of OST that was corrected by Smith.
1. CAS, letter to HPL, June 29, 1930 (ms, JHL).
2. FW, letter to CAS, September 22, 1930 (ms, JHL).
3. Private collection.
4. CAS, letter to HPL, c. October 24, 1930 (SL 129).
5. CAS, letter to HPL, c. October 21, 1930 (LL 15).
The Gorgon
Originally titled “Medusa,” this story was completed on October 2, 1930. The theme was long a favorite of Smith’s, dating as far back as his first collections of poetry: The Star-Treader and Other Poems (San Francisco: A. M. Robertson, 1912) contained the poems “Medusa” and “The Medusa of the Skies,” and “The Medusa of Despair” was included both in Odes and Sonnets (San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1918) and Ebony and Crystaclass="underline" Poems in Verse and Prose (Auburn, CA: Auburn Journal Press, 1922). Lovecraft called the story “really splendid, & I read it over twice with increasing admiration. You strike an atmospheric note to which I am particularly susceptible—the mystery of unknown, ancient, & labyrinthine streets—& I have never seen that alluring theme more effectively handled. If Wright doesn’t snap that up, he’s absolutely out of his head!”1 Naturally, Wright rejected the story, calling it “unconvincing,” only to accept it a year later upon resubmission.2 Smith also submitted the story to Ghost Stories, which returned the manuscript “after holding it six weeks, with a personal letter expressing interest in my work and a desire to see more of it. I’m surprised to infer, from this, that they gave the story serious consideration—which was hardly to be expected in view of their standards, which seem to call for a combination of spookiness and raw human interest.”3 Harry Bates of ST also didn’t care for the story and returned it.4
After August Derleth pointed out to Smith that WT had published a story called “Medusa” several years earlier (“Medusa” by Royal W. Jimerson appeared in the April 1928 issue). Smith changed the title to “Medusa’s Head” and finally to “The Gorgon.” Wright used the story as filler in the April 1932 issue of WT.“The Gorgon,” along with “The Venus of Azombeii,” received third ranking in the O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1932, edited by Blanche Colton Williams (New York: Doubleday, 1932); Smith remarked that “Personally, I think it’s a long way from being my best. But there you are. Judges, editors, critics, all of them are more or less bughouse. And I suppose that any kind of a weird tale is lucky to receive official mention in an age tyrannized over by realism.”5 Text is based upon the typescript at JHL; BL has a carbon that CAS presented to Donald Wandrei, but this copy lacks several handwritten changes found on the JHL copy.
1. HPL, letter to CAS, October 17, 1930.
2. CAS, letter to AWD, October 23, 1931 (ms, SHSW).
3. CAS, letter to HPL, c. November 16, 1930 (SL 134).
4. Harry Bates, letter to CAS, May 20, 1931 (ms, JHL).
5. CAS, letter to AWD, November 24, 1932 (SL 197).
An Offering to the Moon
As CAS continued to write and sell stories to WT, WS, and other markets, he and HPL began a discussion of their respective theories regarding aesthetics, realism versus romanticism, and related topics. On October 17, 1930, Lovecraft revealed the following personal glimpse in support of his “conception of phantasy, as a genuine art-form, is an extension rather than a negation of reality”;
In fact I
know
that my most poignant emotional experiences are those which concern the lure of unplumbed space, the terror of the encroaching outer void, & the struggle of the ego to transcend the known & established order of time, [...] space, matter, force, geometry, & natural law in tantalising mnemonic fragments expressed in unknown or half-known architectural or landscape vistas, especially in connexion with a sunset. Some instantaneous fragment of a picture will well up suddenly through some chain of subconscious association—the immediate excitant being usually half-irrelevant on the surface—& fill me with a sense of wistful memory & bafflement; with the impression that the scene in question represents something I have seen & visited before under circumstances of superhuman liberation & adventurous expectancy, yet which I have almost completely forgotten, & which is so bewilderingly uncorrelated & unoriented as to be forever inaccessible in the future.
1
Smith replied that
I don’t think I have had anything quite like the pseudo-mnemonic flashes you describe. What I have had sometimes is the nocturnal dream-experience of stepping into some totally alien state of entity, with its own memories, hopes, desires, its own past and future-none of which I can ever remember for very long on awakening. This experience has suggested such tales as “The Planet of the Dead”, “The Necromantic Tale,” and “An Offering to the Moon”. I think I have spoken of the place-images which often rise before me without apparent relevance, and persist in attaching themselves to some train of emotion or even abstract thought. These, doubtless, are akin to the images of which you speak, though they are always clearly realistic.
2
Completed no later than October 21, 1930, “An Offering to the Moon” may have resulted from Smith’s recent reading: “The book by James Churchward, The Lost Continent of Mu, [...] is truly interesting, especially in the mass of data relating to South Sea ruins which is presented.”3 Although he recognized that it “perhaps isn’t quite my best,” Smith was eager to learn what HPL made of the tale.4 Lovecraft enjoyed the story, adding that
Mnemonic tales, vaguely suggesting reincarnation or other-dimensional existence, are peculiarly fascinating to me; & nothing stirs my fancy more than the inexplicable stone ruins of the Pacific. [...] Your sense of totally alien worlds must be vastly more fascinating than my own fragmentary & incomplete detachments, & you certainly make effective use of them in tales like ‘An Offering to the Moon.’ The place-images are likewise highly alluring, & I hope to see many fictional reflections of them.