Ebony and Crystal
Clark Ashton Smith
Read by LibriVox Volunteers
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
A LibriVox Listener
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!
DrRobbo
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.