Such was the fate of Hotar and Evidon, the last of the Atlanteans, and the first (if not also the last) of human visitors to Sfanomoë.
APPENDIX ONE:
STORY NOTES
Abbreviations Used :
AWD August W. Derleth (1909-1971), Wisconsin novelist, Weird Tales author, and founder of Arkham House.
AY The Abominations of Yondo (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1960).
BB The Black Book of Clark Ashton Smith (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1979).
BL Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.
CAS Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961).
DAW Donald A. Wandrei (1908-1937), poet, Weird Tales writer and co-founder of Arkham House.
EOD Emperor of Dreams: A Clark Ashton Smith Bio-Bibliography by Donald Sidney-Fryer et al. (West Kingston, RI: Donald M. Grant, 1978).
FW Farnsworth Wright (1888-1940), editor of Weird Tales from 1924 to 1939.
GL Genius Loci and Other Tales (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1948).
HPL Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937), informal leader of a circle of writers for Weird Tales and related magazines, and probably the leading exponent of weird fiction in the 20th Century.
JHL Clark Ashton Smith Papers and H. P. Lovecraft Collection, John Hay Library, Brown University.
LLLetters to H. P. Lovecraft. ed. Steve Behrends (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1987).
LW Lost Worlds (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1944).
MHS Donald Wandrei Papers, Minnesota Historical Society.
OD Other Dimensions (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1970).
OST Out of Space and Time (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1942).
PD Planets and Dimensions: Collected Essays. ed. Charles K. Wolfe (Baltimore: Mirage Press, 1973).
PP Poems in Prose (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1965).
RAA Rendezvous in Averoigne (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1988).
RHB Robert H. Barlow (1918-1951), correspondent and collector of manuscripts of CAS, HPL, and other WT writers.
RW Red World of Polaris. ed. Ronald S. Hilger and Scott Connors (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2003).
SHSW August Derleth Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin Library.
SL Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith. ed. David E. Schultz and Scott Connors (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 2003).
SS Strange Shadows: The Uncollected Fiction and Essays of Clark Ashton Smith. ed. Steve Behrends (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989).
ST Strange Tales, a pulp edited by Harry Bates in competition with WT.
SU The Shadow of the Unattained: The Letters of George Sterling and Clark Ashton Smith. ed. David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2005).
TSS Tales of Science and Sorcery (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1964).
WS Wonder Stories, a pulp published by Hugo Gernsback and edited first by David Lasser and then Charles D. Hornig.
WT Weird Tales, Smith’s primary market for fiction, edited by FW (1924-1940) and later Dorothy McIlwraith (1940-1954).
The Abominations of Yondo
The typescript of “The Abominations of Yondo” belonging to the L. Tom Perry Special Collections of the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University is dated February 5, 1925 (Roy A. Squires, the Glendale, California bookman who served as CAS’ literary executor for several years, offered for sale in his Catalog 6 a holograph manuscript given to R. H. Barlow that is dated February 3). It represents Smith’s first full-fledged effort in the realm of the weird tale, although the prose poems included in his 1922 collection Ebony and Crystal give testimony to the hold that the macabre exerted upon his imagination. Years later CAS would tell Samuel J. Sackett that he wrote both “Yondo” and “Sadastor” at the incitement of his correspondent H. P. Lovecraft1. At Smith’s request, HPL enthusiastically submitted it to Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright even though “it is obvious that he wants nothing purely fantastic, though I have hopes that the sheer stylistic merit of ‘Yondo’ may help to ‘land’ it.”2 Wright returned it, describing it as “a fascinating bit, but a prose poem rather than a weird narrative.”3
Smith’s poetic mentor, George Sterling, called the story “a magnificent exercise in imagination” but adding “I don’t advise you to devote much time to such things, however: the mind of man begins to smile at anything that is inherently absurd and outdated. Your faculties are far too fine to be wasted on such vacua.”4 After its rejection by WT, CAS asked Sterling to see if he could place it with the Overland Monthly, to which he contributed a regular column, “Rhymes and Reactions.” Sterling assented, although he called CAS “truly naive in imagining that you could have the ‘Yondo’ poem accepted by any magazine that pays! A few that don’t pay might take it.” He continued in this vein:
All highbrows think the “Yondo” material outworn and childish. The daemonic is done for, for the present, so far as our contemporaries go, and imagination must seek other fields. You have squeezed every drop from the weird (and what drops!) and should touch on it only infrequently, as I on the stars. The swine don’t want pearls: they want corn; and it is foolish to hope to change their tastes.
5
Smith’s response showed that he felt confident enough to disagree with his mentor when he felt the need:
I can’t agree with the high-brows that the “weird” is dead—either in poetry or anywhere else. They’re all suffering from mechanized imaginations. But, I, for one, refuse to submit to the arid, earth-bound spirit of the time; and I think there is sure to be a romantic revival sooner or later—a revolt against mechanization and over-socialization, etc. If there isn’t—then I hope to hell my next incarnation will be in some happier and freer planet. Neither the ethics or the aesthetics of the ant-hill have any attraction for me.
6
The story did appear in the April 1926 issue of the Overland Monthly, and was selected as the title story for Smith’s fourth story collection from Arkham House. Sterling told CAS that it “awoke many protests from the mentally infirm, I’m told,”7 presumably by editor B. Virginia Lee. This delighted Smith, who felt that “‘Yondo’ must have had a kick in it, after all, if it aroused so many protests.”8 He would enjoy telling this story to his friends for many years.
1. CAS, letter to S. J. Sackett, June 30, 1949 (SL 360).
2. HPL, letter to CAS, October 9, 1925 (Arkham House transcripts).