The Secret and the Secrets

Supernatural Horror: Authors and Themes

"THE SECRET AND THE SECRETS"
A look at Arthur Machen's Hieroglyphics

Hieroglyphics is set in a single room, in a single house, in one of Arthur Machen's favourite North London districts, Barnsbury. Although on the surface a work of nonfiction, Hieroglyphics, like much of Machen's genuine fictional output, has a microcosmic setting serving as a counterpoint to thoughts and opinions that can embrace considerably wider settings. From the commonplace and ordinary can come precious gems, and the extraordinary becomes a way of life.

Hieroglyphics is presented as one side of a series of conversations with an unnamed friend, presumably Machen himself. Although a work of nonfictional literary theory, Hieroglyphics is thus immediately given a quasi-fictional rationale, and does in fact share many of the characteristics of the author's better-known fiction.

Roger Dobson has pointed out similarities with "The White People" (1). Both works involve reclusive and obscure literary figures who live in old and mouldering houses in North London. Both Hieroglyphics and "The White People" are enabled to take place in this setting of apartness, and withdrawal from the world, and both are concerned with 'ecstasy' -- which can be defined as 'standing apart'.

And into this work of literary theory there also intrudes a hint of the supernatural:

I recall the presence of that hollow, echoing room, the atmosphere with its subtle suggestion of incense sweetening the dank odours of the cellar, and the tone of the voice speaking to me, and I believe that once or twice we both saw visions, and some glimpses at least of certain eternal, ineffable Shapes.

And in a letter written to the Boswell-like listener by the Hermit, giving him permission to publish the record of their conversations, he says: "'Remember: keep the secret, and the secrets."' (2)

Machen's other great connected fictional themes, those of ‘sorcery’ and 'sanctity', also have their place in Hieroglyphics. Each is 'an ecstasy, a withdrawal from the common life' (3). For Machen this meant true reality. And while his fiction tends to deal with the 'sorcerous' side of reality, the dangerous and destructive side, in Hieroglyphics he chooses to encounter the 'sanctified' -- the life-enhancing and constructive -- in a theory of literature which uses ecstasy as its starting-point and distinguishing feature.

In my article "A World of Great Majesty" I argued that, in his fiction, Machen effectively tried to compensate for what he saw as the weaknesses in contemporary organized religion (4).

So in Hieroglyphics he tried to provide a basis for the re-evaluation and enduring worth of true literature and those who write it. In line with the book's title, Machen wished to say that the craft of the writer should be a hierophantic one -- an expounder of sacred mysteries. Authors of true literature are hierophants, and not mere entertainers, and their work is art, and not just entertainment.

And while not condemning entertainment and its purveyors (and so consumers), Machen sets out in Hieroglyphics to make it clear that true literature, through the hierophantic author, is often, through symbols, seeing and conveying reality as it is. And authors are therefore to be regarded as 'priests' of ecstasy: being able, through ecstasy, to produce its feeling in the reader:

...if we, being wondrous, journey through a wonderful world, if all our joys are from above, from the other world where the Shadowy Companion walks, then no mere making of the likeness of the external shape will be our art, no veracious document will be our truth; but to us, initiated, the Symbol will be offered, and we shall take the Sign and adore, beneath the outward and perhaps unlovely accidents, the very Presence and eternal indwelling of God. (5)

*****

The setting of Hieroglyphics in a labyrinthine and large old house is reflected in the structure of the book itself. Machen decides on a theme and asks a question -- and then spends the length of a whole book going round in a cyclical argument.

The whole reason for the book is the question, What distinguishes true literature from mere writing, even if interesting writing? The answer, given early on, is ecstasy:

Yes, for me the answer comes with the one word, Ecstasy. If ecstasy be present, then I say there is fine literature; if it be absent, then, in spite of all the cleverness, all the talents, all the workmanship and observation and dexterity you may show me, then, I think, we have a product (possibly a very interesting one) which is not fine literature. (6)

And then comes the labyrinthine, the wandering of Machen's thought and arguments, much livened by the one-sided conversational, if not lecturing, format of the book.

In the scene-setting opening, Machen's Hermit, when he has recovered from the surprise of finding that his talks have been noted down, suggests as a title "Boswell in Barnsbury". And Machen's Boswell-like action in recording their conversations, in what he calls the 'cyclical mode of discoursing' (7) reinforces the sense of wandering, around a large old house, one with many rooms and passages, some neglected, others less so.

So Machen hints, in a self-deprecating aside, that the Hermit might be deceived in his search for 'real essential knowledge', and answer to his question (8).

In Hieroglyphics, perhaps the labyrinth -- which usually surrounds a centre, a heart, a destination -- actually surrounds a void, without allowing it to be fully explored. To Machen, the mystery of literature is only to be approached through cyclical argument, or to be found after a journey, a series of discussions (9). However, in Machen there is also a creative tension and possible contradiction. It can also seem that the experience of the search for the mystery, for ecstasy, is at least as important as -- and certainly no less interesting than -- the goal itself. The means are as important as the end, and are certainly more obtainable, than a fleeting and constantly out of reach answer.

Hieroglyphics is as much a book about looking for an answer, as it is about providing an unassailable answer in itself. Just as his The London Adventure is a book about not writing a book called The London Adventure, rather than the actual book itself, so Hieroglyphics is as much a 'hieroglyph' itself, rather than an explanation and revelation (10). Machen does get around to answering his question, but not in a way that is satisfactory to all. It is as if Machen said, "I don't really know what ecstasy is, but I recognize it when I see it." His examples are open to question. The process of examining ecstasy, of sifting writing to discover that which is true and fine literature, and that which does not measure up, is not open to question. It just happens.

*****

The labyrinthine setting of Hieroglyphics, and the manner in which Machen expounds his theory, has already been noted. It is also worthwhile to note that the literary works that Machen discusses as fine literature, that is, as possessing and giving ecstasy, also seem to be of a wandering, cyclical, if not labyrinthine, cast. Machen prefers the expansive in fiction. He lists, in particular, Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers, Cervantes' Don Quixote, and the works of Francois Rabelais.

These are among his favourite books, mentioned and praised in other connections (11). They are, doubtless, fine literature by Machen's standards, and his theory of literature. This is perhaps good luck, although of course Machen would also say that this is a coincidence. These books are generally regarded as classics, and the fact that they contain and produce ecstasy in the reader is enough to explain that.

Machen also decides that some other books, that were also highly regarded by many of Machen's contemporaries in the late nineteenth century, and have attained classic status now, are not fine literature. Machen insists that they may very well be fine books, but works by such authors as Jane Austen, William Makepeace Thackeray, and George Eliot do not have ecstasy present and are not, therefore, fine literature.

So, for example, Machen's Hermit says:

I claim, then, that here we have the touchstone which will infallibly separate the higher from the lower in literature, which will range the innumerable multitude of books in two great divisions... I will convince you of my belief in my own nostrum by a bold experiment: here is Pickwick and here is Vanity Fair; the one regarded as a popular "comic" book, the other as a serious masterpiece, showing vast insight into human character; and applying my test, I set Pickwick beside the odyssey, and Vanity Fair on top of the political pamphlet. (12)

It may be thought that Machen was being misogynistic in his choice of literature not to be awarded the prize of being fine literature. After all, he effectively writes off the works of Austen and Eliot.

However, I think that it is more correct to say that Machen simply did not care for the type of fiction that these authors wrote. Along with Thackeray, Machen discusses the reasons for not allowing their works to be considered fine literature (13).

But Machen did consider many of the works of one woman, Mary E Wilkins, to be fine literature. A New England author little-known today except for her ghost stories, for over thirty years from the late 1880's she was a fairly prolific author.

Machen, in an 'Appendix' spends time showing the Wilkins' work does deserve its place in the canon of fine literature by virtue of its possession of ecstasy:

So this is my plea for Miss Wilkins. I think that she has indicated this condition of "ecstasis"; she has painted a society, indeed, but a society in which each man stands apart, responsible only for himself and his God. You will note this, if you read her carefully, you will see how this doctrine of awful, individual loneliness prevails so far that it is carried into the necessary and ordinary transactions of social life.... (14)

In Hieroglyphics, Machen realises that, in setting forth his literary theory, he is open to the charge of being subjective. Machen knows the books that he likes, and therefore calls them true literature. He then fits them into his literary theory of ecstasy, as they contain that which defines and makes fine literature.

This is a circular argument. Therefore, for example, out of two of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century, Charles Dickens and George Eliot, only one of them ever wrote fine literature. And the difference may not have been apparent to most readers!

Machen heads off this accusation by saying that taste is what is subjective, and not art. Thus art is there, and has nothing to do with popularity and enjoyment, 'classic' status, and so on. How the book is done, and all that follows from that, is not the point, to Machen:

You see, I think that the question of liking a book or not liking it has nothing whatever to do with the consideration of fine art. Art is there, if I may say so, just as the Tenth Commandment is there; and if we don't like them, so much the worse for us.... But when we leave the utterances of the eternal, universal human ecstasy, which we have agreed to call art, and descend to these lower levels that we are talking of now, it seems to me that the question of liking or not liking counts for a great deal. We must still distinguish...
You see how, here again, we come to the generic difference between fine literature and interesting reading-matter. We read the Odyssey because we are supernatural, because we hear in it the echoes of the eternal song .... we read Miss Austen and Thackeray because we like to recognise the faces of our friends aptly reproduced, to see the external face of humanity so deftly mimicked, because we are natural. (15)

Thus Machen avoids the charge of subjectivity. It is the art in a piece of writing that determines whether or not it should be accepted as fine literature. And art, to Machen, is of the 'supernatural' -- and speaks to that same quality in humanity. While Machen's staunch adherence to non-Protestant Christianity enables him to claim this high ground of objectivity, it still does require acceptance of, or at least sympathy with, that world-view. As the Hermit says: '...you will realise that to make literature it is necessary to be, at all events sub consciously, Catholic.' (16) This objective base is quite necessary, in that Hieroglyphics would otherwise just be an interesting diversion and a labyrinthine shaggy-dog article (which is not, to this reader, intended to be any sort of denigration at all!)

Towards the end of Hieroglyphics Machen divides people into two camps: the rationalists and the mystics. He is, of course, on the side of the mystics, and continues to try and prove the objective nature of his literary theory by showing that if rationalism is correct, '...then all literature, all that both sides agree in thinking the finest literature, is simply lunacy, and all the world of the arts must go into the region of mania.' (17)

*****

At the beginning of this section of Hieroglyphics, Machen parodies rationalism by giving a series of questions lifted from a rationalist examination paper (18). And he does precisely that: provides an outrageous and hilarious parody which is great fun to read, but which also necessarily involves the wholesale acceptance of Machen's premisses in order to really support and explain his literary theory, and make it credible against all criticism.

Machen describes such a version of rationalism that his views can only be proved to be the correct ones. There must be things that are done and enjoyed without being able to give reasons for doing so, and this does have to be admitted by rationalists (19).

Machen's literary theory as promulgated in Hieroglyphics is effectively only correct if all his premisses are accepted. If they are not, then Hieroglyphics becomes only merely very interesting, and is seriously flawed as a work of literary theory in the absolute and dogmatic sense that Machen seems to wish it to be understood and accepted.

As is the case with the acceptance or rejection of a religion or political stance, it takes more than intellectual argument to convince. Viewpoints accepted on intellectual and logical arguments alone can often he held with a tenacity that is in proportion to the viewpoint's credibility. The heart must be involved, as well as the head.

The two are not in harmony in Hieroglyphics, and the Hermit's strong convictions and loquacity are clear symptoms of this (maybe the 'break of some sort' in his early life is relevant! (20)) Hieroglyphics provides a literary theory, not the literary theory, and, as has been seen, too much stands or falls on the necessity of accepting Machen's world-view, and understanding of the nature of humanity and its place in a universe created by God.

For all that, Hieroglyphics is a fascinating and lively setting-forth of a theory. Machen's view that it is ecstasy that distinguishes fine literature is a viable and defensible one, and worth arguing for. (As an aside, it would be interesting to see if the same arguments could be deployed, using twentieth century literary examples.)

But it is Machen's attempts to give his personal views an absolute and universal basis, which by its nature then has to denigrate other views, that causes problems.

In Hieroglyphics Machen makes a valuable and timeless definition of fine literature. But it begs the question as to whether or not such a definition is really needed in the first place, and whether it is worth all the effort that Machen and the 'Hermit' put into it.

But perhaps the joke is with Arthur Machen.

The reader is treated to a series of lectures, if not tirades, and may well come to feel that the Hermit is someone that it would be a good idea not to encounter too often, despite the vehemence and liveliness of his conversation. There is always the nagging possibility that the reader has been taken for a Machenesque ride, and that the Hermit is simply enjoying himself as the long-winded bore at the end of the bar does. (And certainly this reader always emerges from Hieroglyphics feeling that he has been the mental equivalent of ten rounds in the ring.)

It is the journey and experience that is the thing, and the labyrinthine quest around the heart of literature is what is eventually left. The reader withdraws from the world in the experience of reading Hieroglyphics. The reader thus experiences ecstasy. And whether or not Machen has proved his point becomes a rather secondary consideration.

NOTES

1) Roger Dobson, "The Hermit and the Mystic: the Two Who are One", in R.B. Russell, ed., Machenalia Vol. 1, 1990

2) Hieroglyphics, pp 8, 10

3) "The White People" p 65

4) See "A World of Great Majesty" originally published in Avallaunius 17, 1997

5) Hieroglyphics, p 139

6) Hieroglyphics, p 18

7) Attributed by Machen to S T Coleridge. See Hieroglyphics pp 10, 14, and 85f

8) Hieroglyphics, p 10

9) Hieroglyphics, p 86

10) This pithy observation is pointed out by S T Joshi in The Weird Tale, p 35

11) Rabelais is used in The Secret Glory. Cervantes and Dickens are the subject of the essay "True to Life", reprinted in The Secret of the Sangraal. A trawl through the 'Periodicals' section of the Goldstone and Sweetser Bibliography will reveal many pieces whose titles would seem to refer to these works and authors

12) Hieroglyphics, p 19

13) Hieroglyphics, p 87

14) Hieroglyphics, p 159 . Wilkins also published under her married name Mary E Wilkins Freeman. A selection of her stories, and a bibliography can be found in Barbara H Solomon, Short Fiction of Sarah Orne Jewett and Mary Wilkins Freeman. I have surveyed a selection of her ghost stories in "Lavender and Lilac", first published in Dark Horizons 38, 1999.

15) Hieroglyphics, pp 44, 48

16) Hieroglyphics, p 162f. See also Gerald Suster, "Arthur Machen -- Satanist?", in Faunus 2, 1998

17) Hieroglyphics, p 126

18) Hieroglyphics, p 124f. See also Joshi, p 14f

19) Hieroglyphics p 126f

20) Hieroglyphics, p 5. See also Dobson.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dobson, Roger "The Hermit and the Mystic: Two who are One" in R B Russell, ed., Machenalia Vol.1, Tartarus Press 1990

Joshi, S T "Arthur Machen: The Mystery of the Universe" in The Weird Tale, University of Texas Press 1990

Sweetser, Wesley D Arthur Machen Twayne Publishers 1964

Valentine, Mark Arthur Machen Seren 1995

Pagination: the edition of Hieroglyphics referred to is the New Adelphi Library reprint of 1926; that of "The White People" is in Volume 1 of the Panther paperback edition of Tales of Horror and the Supernatural (1975).

A selection of contemporary views of Hieroglyphics can be found in Precious Balms (1924).

A slightly different version of this article was first published in Faunus 5, 2000.

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