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Ebony and Crystal

Gelesen von LibriVox Volunteers

(5 Sterne; 2 Bewertungen)

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

Bewertungen

(5 Sterne)

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 Sterne)

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.