Ebony and Crystal


Read by LibriVox Volunteers

(5 stars; 2 reviews)

As stated in L'Alouette: A Magazine of Verse, "Ebony and Crystal is an artist's intrepid repudiation of the world of trolleys and cash-registers, Freudian complexes and Binet-Simon tests, for realms of exalted and iridescent strangeness beyond space and time yet real as any reality because dreams have made them so. Mr. Smith has escaped the fetish of life and the world, and glimpsed the perverse, titanic beauty of death and the universe; taking infinity as his canvas and recording in awe the vagaries of suns and planets, gods, and daemons, and blind amorphous horrors that haunt gardens of polychrome fungi more remote than Algol and Achernar. It is a cosmos of vivid flame and glacial abysses that he celebrates, and the colorful luxuriance with which he peoples it could be born from nothing less than sheer genius.

The summation of Mr. Smith's exotic vision is perhaps attained in the long phantasmal procession of blank verse pentameters entitled, "The Hashish-Eater; or, the Apocalypse of Evil." In this frenzied plunge through nameless gulfs of interstellar terror the Californian presents a narcotic pageant of poisonous vermilious and paralysing shadows whose content is equalled only by its verbal medium; a medium involving one of the most opulent and fastidiously choice vocabularies ever commanded by a writer of English."

Clark Ashton Smith, referred to as one of the big three of Weird Tales, was a romantic-style poet, a Lovecraftian-style writer and a literary friend of H.P Lovecraft. As a poet, he was considered one of the last great West Coast Romantics. Ebony and Crystal, published in 1922, was Smith's last collection of pure poetry.
- Summary by Mary Kay and L'Alouette: A Magazine of Verse (3 hr 48 min)

Chapters

Preface, by George Sterling 2:28 Read by Mike Pelton
Arabesque 0:53 Read by Keith Louis
Beyond the Great Wall 1:19 Read by Keith Louis
To Omar Khayyam 3:52 Read by Thomas A. Copeland
Strangeness 1:44 Read by Sandra Cullum
The Infinite Quest 0:57 Read by Sandra Cullum
Rosa Mystica 1:20 Read by Sandra Cullum
The Nereid 1:29 Read by Sandra Cullum
In Saturn 1:09 Read by Damla Ozdemir
Impression 1:06 Read by Sandra Cullum
Triple Aspect 1:55 Read by Anusha Iyer
Desolation 1:11 Read by Keith Louis
The Orchid 1:00 Read by Amy Gramour
A Fragment 1:30 Read by Anusha Iyer
Crepuscle 0:46 Read by Sandra Cullum
Inferno 1:31 Read by Sandra Cullum
Mirrors 1:22 Read by S.A. Judasin
Belated Love 1:19 Read by S.A. Judasin
The Absence of the Muse 1:06 Read by JudyDerby
Dissonance 1:17 Read by Shakira Searle
To Nora May French 6:08 Read by Anusha Iyer
In Lemuria 1:22 Read by Leonard Wilson (1930-2024)
Recompense 0:51 Read by Keith Louis
Exotique 1:29 Read by Leonard Wilson (1930-2024)
Transcendence 1:16 Read by Shakira Searle
Satiety 1:22 Read by Anusha Iyer
The Ministers of Law 1:19 Read by Leonard Wilson (1930-2024)
Coldness 1:42 Read by S.A. Judasin
The Desert Garden 1:02 Read by Amy Gramour
The Crucifixion of Eros 1:21 Read by Shakira Searle
The Exile 1:27 Read by Leonard Wilson (1930-2024)
Ave Atque Vale 1:29 Read by Leonard Wilson (1930-2024)
Solution 2:10 Read by Leonard Wilson (1930-2024)
The Tears of Lilith 1:02 Read by Sandra Cullum
A Precept 1:05 Read by MaryAnn
Remembered Light 2:14 Read by MaryAnn
Song 0:45 Read by MaryAnn
Haunting 1:11 Read by MaryAnn
The Hidden Paradise 1:22 Read by Leonard Wilson (1930-2024)
Cleopatra 2:12 Read by Leonard Wilson (1930-2024)
Ecstasy 1:24 Read by Sandra Cullum
Union 0:53 Read by Amy Gramour
Psalm 2:37 Read by Leonard Wilson (1930-2024)
In November 1:13 Read by MaryAnn
Symbols 1:07 Read by MaryAnn
The Hashish-Eater; or, the Apocalypse of Evil, Part I 11:46 Read by Amy Gramour
The Hashish-Eater; or, the Apocalypse of Evil, Part II 16:38 Read by Amy Gramour
The Sorrow of the Winds 1:05 Read by MaryAnn
Artemis 1:23 Read by Leonard Wilson (1930-2024)
Love is Not Yours, Love is Not Mine 0:50 Read by Sandra Cullum
The City in the Desert 1:17 Read by MaryAnn
The Melancholy Pool 1:12 Read by MaryAnn
The Mirrors of Beauty 1:08 Read by MaryAnn
Winter Moonlight 0:54 Read by MaryAnn
To the Beloved 1:08 Read by MaryAnn
Requiescat 1:11 Read by Leonard Wilson (1930-2024)
Mirage 1:27 Read by Leonard Wilson (1930-2024)
Inheritance 1:16 Read by Anusha Iyer
Autumnal 1:09 Read by Shakira Searle
Chant of Autumn 1:22 Read by Shakira Searle
Echo of Memnon 1:10 Read by Anusha Iyer
Twilight on the Snow 0:53 Read by Amy Gramour
Image 1:32 Read by MaryAnn
The Refuge of Beauty 1:26 Read by MaryAnn
Nightmare 1:08 Read by Anusha Iyer
The Mummy 1:08 Read by Anusha Iyer
Forgetfulness 0:56 Read by Amy Gramour
Flamingoes 0:44 Read by Amy Gramour
The Chimaera 1:24 Read by Sandra Cullum
Satan Unrepentant 6:27 Read by Thomas A. Copeland
The Abyss Triumphant 1:23 Read by Anusha Iyer
The Motes 0:37 Read by Amy Gramour
The Medusa of Despair 1:15 Read by Anusha Iyer
Laus Mortis 1:14 Read by Anusha Iyer
The Ghoul and the Seraph 7:05 Read by Harley James
At Sunrise 1:13 Read by nbvoices
The Land of Evil Stars 1:56 Read by Sandra Cullum
The Harlot of the World 1:10 Read by Anusha Iyer
The Hope of the Infinite 1:16 Read by Anusha Iyer
Love Malevolent 1:15 Read by Anusha Iyer
Palms 0:43 Read by Amy Gramour
Memnon at Midnight 1:20 Read by Anusha Iyer
Eidolon 1:13 Read by Anusha Iyer
The Kingdom of Shadows 2:24 Read by Anusha Iyer
Requiescat in Pace 1:55 Read by Anusha Iyer
Alexandrines 1:19 Read by Anusha Iyer
Ashes of Sunset 0:51 Read by Anusha Iyer
November Twilight 0:37 Read by Amy Gramour
Sepulture 1:17 Read by Anusha Iyer
Quest 1:52 Read by Anusha Iyer
Beauty Implacable 1:20 Read by Anusha Iyer
A Vision of Lucifer 1:12 Read by Anusha Iyer
Desire of Vastness 1:15 Read by Anusha Iyer
Anticipation 0:44 Read by Amy Gramour
A Psalm to the Best Beloved 1:28 Read by Anusha Iyer
The Witch in the Graveyard 4:23 Read by Harley James
The Traveler 3:50 Read by Anusha Iyer
The Flower-Devil 2:44 Read by Amy Gramour
Images 2:54 Read by Anusha Iyer
The Black Lake 2:31 Read by Anusha Iyer
Vignettes 4:41 Read by Thomas A. Copeland
A Dream of Lethe 2:27 Read by Anusha Iyer
The Caravan 2:09 Read by Anusha Iyer
The Princess Almeena 1:51 Read by MaryAnn
Ennui 4:22 Read by Thomas A. Copeland
The Statue of Silence 1:20 Read by Anusha Iyer
Remoteness 1:06 Read by Amy Gramour
The Memnons of the Night 2:32 Read by Anusha Iyer
The Garden and the Tomb 1:35 Read by Amy Gramour
In Cocaigne 2:01 Read by Anusha Iyer
The Litany of the Seven Kisses 1:59 Read by Jacquelyn Bengfort
From a Letter 2:03 Read by Jacquelyn Bengfort
From the Crypts of Memory 5:15 Read by Sandra Cullum
A Phantasy 1:38 Read by Anusha Iyer
The Demon, the Angel, and Beauty 4:55 Read by Anusha Iyer
The Shadows 4:48 Read by Thomas A. Copeland

Reviews


(5 stars)

The hashish eater owes a debt to the French Decadents who wrote about fantastic visions and flights of fancy they got from hashish and other drugs, as well as from DrQuincy. Coleridge, though he took only a small doctor prescribed dose of opium, was believed to have seen what he describes in hus fantastic poetry in opium dreams. The most immediate influence is A Wine of Wizardy. I am sure the bohemian Californian probably tried marijuana with some of his artist and poet friends, but a sober mind must have perfected the dense web of allusions and imagery in his poetry.

Some sublime moments!


(5 stars)

This is wonderful poetry- but it's depends so much upon a suitable reader. In this regard- the "Hashish Eater", is the best poem in this collection, and its reader here is wonderful. This rendition alone will change your life forever, as it opens a door to the sublime, to the ineffable pleroma.... Having said this, some of the renditions are very poor, without sense of meter or meaning.....In stercore, est sublimitas.