What is the Blog of the Black Seal?

An interesting Blog post here which mentions Machen link through here: Blog of the Black Seal

Machen evening a great success

The Arthur Machen seminar was a great success with around sixty people attending which for a Thursday evening in Caerleon is a great turn out. And this despite a large rainstorm. There were anumber of familar faces like Jon Preece and another distinguished Machenite in attendance was Aidan Reynolds, the joint author of the 1963 biography.

Lionel Fanthorp was an excellent and genial chair and had some great anecdotes about Machen and his connection to his own Fortean researches. After some brief technical problems, I managed to get my audio visual Machen extravaganza working on the screen and we had a series of images as I attempted to run through Machen's life in twenty minutes not an easy
task.

Catherine Fisher, Time Lebbon and Simon Clark all gave great insights into Machen and his influnces on their own writing and the way they perceived the landscape and world. They are all very experienced authors in a differing ways and it was fascinating to hear how Machen had
inspired them. We had a series of interesting questions to answer from the floor the last one being a very tough one what type of things would Machen be writing today if he was alive? The night could have gone on far longer. I was approached afterwards by many people saying they would seek out more of Machen's work.

We retired later to the Hanbury Arms where we drank much ale. The sculpture itself bodes well the sculptor has got a giant piece of Welsh oak to work from.

Machen predicts Tobacco ban and more

Machen loved both tobacco and drink and the banning of the combination of both in their natural home of the Tavern would have led to much fury. He is no doubt fuming in his grave.

Yet this feeling leads onto greater mystery. Machen's works have had many curious effects, accidentaly creating the Angels of Mons for instance. But by what strange power did he predict the coming of the ban of smoking in pubs. He seems to have known some dark conspiracy was at work. In an essay in 1921 which defended beer included Dog and Duck he writes:

I think that good drink merely represents the first line of the cause which the bad people are attacking. It is my opinion that these bad people are only in the first stage or movement of a much more general attack. Tobacco will be the next line, the next engagement will centre round the meditative pipe, the gay cigarette, the magnificent Corona. Already that battle is preparing in America; soon, in powerful circles, a pipe will be inconsistent with piety.

Yet Machen goes on to make even more startling predictions:

Nor will matters stop there. The Vegetarians have long been aware that what is the matter with the world is Meat. They have their feelings, like the anti-Burgundy and anti-Bass people and the anti-Tobacco people. They are quite convinced, with Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist, that Meat is the root of all evil.

'It's not Madness, ma'am,' replied Mr. Bumble ... 'it's Meat.'

These persons then, sharing the opinion and the intelligence of Mr. Bumble, will engage on an anti-meat campaign. If they win, they will divide into two parties. One set will allow us to cook our vegetables; the other side will insist that if you are to boil your green peas, you may as well dine off rumpsteak at once. And, of course, sham science will come to their aid. There are plenty of doctors already who are quite prepared to demonstrate by unanswerable arguments that if you cook anything you destroy all its value.

Before long there will be letters in The Times over signatures furnished with the most appalling array of degrees and qualifications showing that the way out of all our difficulties is to put out the kitchen fire. But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the campaign will stop here, with our palates and stomachs and general comfort and well-being. All the arts will next be the object of attack; tobacco, beer, beef and boiled beans having fallen, painting, sculpture, music, literature will be suspected, examined, denounced, prohibited.

This is no fantasy; for this has happened before. It happened in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and is generally known as Puritanism. The movement was then allied with certain theological views. It began by smashing and destroying all the beautiful things that were then to be found in churches. It blotted out of the world a mass of beauty in a manner which is really awful to contemplate. Macaulay, not by any means the acutest of critics in a general way, got to the heart of the matter in his account of the Puritan objection to bear-baiting. They disliked bear-baiting, he said, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. So with their objection to sports and games of all sorts. They began by saying—and, no doubt, believing—that games were wicked when played on Sunday. They ended by banning games and sports of all kinds on any day. They shut up the theatres: they gave pleasure, and the Puritan hates pleasure because it is a good thing.

How could Machen know that the tobacco ban would be immediately targeted at theatres with actors smoking on stage. Could it be that the ban is not aimed at good health, but stopping theatres altogether? Likewise old films depicting smoking might be soon be banned. Let us hope Machen here is a false prophet.

Machenology: Tributes to the Master of Mysteries

Machenology: Tributes to the Master of Mysteries is a 44 page A5 booklet limited to 300 copies edited by Gwilym Games. All profits from the booklet will raise funds towards the 2007 Caerleon sculpture to Machen and to commemorating Arthur Machen. [You can see images of The Sculpture here.] It contains special new tributes to Machen written by Gwyneth Jones, Simon Clark, Tim Lebbon, China Miéville, Mark Samuels, Catherine Fisher, David Hewson, and Machen’s daughter Janet, plus a collection of the thoughts of other notable figures on Machen including: Tanith Lee, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, Iain Sinclair, AE Housman, Henry Miller, HP Lovecraft, R.E. Howard, AE Waite, Clark Ashton Smith, MR James, Jorge Luis Borges, Sylvia Townsend Warner, plus many more.

It also includes a controversial essay in which Rhys Hughes explains why Arthur Machen is a far better writer for the Welsh to idolise than Dylan Thomas: “We are a low people. Dylan Thomas is treated as a god here and Machen is ignored." While well known Machen scholar Roger Dobson in his essay outlines the greatest unsolved mysteries of Machen scholarship.

It features two rare essays by Machen unpublished for many years, “A Book I Should Like To Write”, in which he discusses “one of the wonderful books that ought to be written – and never will be written… of those problems which are - almost - insoluble; and yet are not beyond all conjecture” and a thrilling true account of a weird Oriental Adventure in which Machen plumbs the depth of the mystery of The Hidden Claw, an escapade Machen illustrated himself.

It also includes a rare picture of the original “stone head of grotesque appearance” from The Great God Pan which will be an influence on the Machen sculpture. [Dr. Phillips tells me that he has seen the head in question, and assures me that he has never received such a vivid presentment of intense evil.] Dare you see it?

Copies available now. Cost is £5.00, postage free within the UK. Postage abroad is £1.00 inside Europe, £1.50 US/overseas. Make cheques payable to G. Games, or use paypal via gwilix@yahoo.co.uk. G. Games, 9 Heneage Drive, Westcross, Swansea, SA3 5BR. Copies will also be on sale at the seminar and around Caerleon.

Remember too Machen is highly collectable similar booklets from the eighties are now worth up to five times or more their original price.

Machen in Babylon

Excellent post on Machen on Anthony Brockway's Babylon Wales, a fine blog on the stranger byways of Welsh popular culture.

"Welsh literary critics have largely ignored him or unfairly Uncle Tom-ed him (see Stephen Knight's jaw-dropping sidestep of Machen's work in A Hundred Years of Fiction). Rather than being a literary Uncle Tom you could quite easily - if you chose to do such a thing - make a case for Machen being a highly subversive Welsh writer. In many of his stories the English/rational/scientific is undermined by the Welsh/irrational/primitive. And it is the latter grouping that Machen most certainly identified with.

The problem with Machen for Welsh critics is that he doesn't fit easily into dominant social realist/nationalist/post-colonial readings of Welsh writing in English. He is a one-off, an outsider. Add to this a snooty attitude from academia towards genre fiction in general (horror stories aren't real writing are they?) and you begin to understand why Machen's work has slipped into the margins in Wales."

Anthony inspired Rhys Hughes' essay on Machen and Dylan in the Machenology booklet by a comment on the sculpture.

Arthur Machen – Master of Holy Terrors

An evening chaired by Lionel Fanthorpe celebrating Machen's life and work.

Thursday 5 July 2007

The Boardroom, Central Building, University of Wales Caerleon, Newport [Map Here]

IWA Gwent Branch and Academi. Part of Celf Caerleon Arts Festival.

6.30 pm (cost £5.00 to include a glass of wine)

“I shall always esteem it as the greatest piece of fortune that has fallen to me, that I was born in that noble, fallen Caerleon-on-Usk, in the heart of Gwent.” Arthur Machen

Arthur Machen (1863-1947) joined together tales of unspeakable fears and wonders with Roman Isca, Victorian London, the Holy Grail, and the Gwent countryside. He has been read worldwide and has been admired by many including Oscar Wilde, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Iain Sinclair, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sir John Betjeman, Alan Moore, and Jorge Luis Borges. Now in the 60th anniversary of his death a sculpture is being erected to honour him and a distinguished panel featuring award winning writers: Simon Clark, Catherine Fisher, and Tim Lebbon join to explore Machen’s world of terror and wonder. Find out why they and Stephen King, Clive Barker and HP Lovecraft consider Machen to be amongst the greatest writers of tales of supernatural horror and fantasy.

• Hear why Machen wrote what has been called the most decadent book in the English language, The Hill of Dreams.
• Learn how Machen was the first novelist to place the Holy Grail in a modern setting – almost 100 years before Dan Brown.
• Discover the truth behind the Bowmen and the Angels of Mons; did they slay thousands of Germans in World War One?
• How is Machen’s The Great God Pan connected to Oscar winner Pan’s Labyrinth?

Find out more about Machen and the sculpture at The Friends of Arthur Machen and Celf Caerleon Arts Festival 2007 - www.caerleon-arts.org .

[The event will be followed in the best Machen tradition by a visit to local taverns.]

Participants:

Rev. Lionel Fanthorpe is an ordained Anglican priest, Fortean expert and entertainer. He has worked as a journalist, teacher, television presenter, author and lecturer. He has written 250 books. He is president of the the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena and the British UFO Research Association.

Simon Clark is an award winning horror novelist from Doncaster. In 2001 he won British Fantasy awards for The Night of the Triffids, a sequel to John Wyndham’s novel, and for best short story, "Goblin City Lights" and he has been shortlisted for many more including a World Fantasy Award. His twenty books include Blood Crazy, Darker, Vampyrrhic, The Fall, and the Doctor Who novella The Dalek Factor. He collaborated on the Machen inspired Exorcising Angels (2003) with Tim Lebbon. Website

Catherine Fisher is an award winning children’s writer and poet who lives in Newport. She has been translated into seventeen languages and her nineteen novels include the children’s fantasy series Book of the Crow, as well as Darkhenge, Snow-walker, and The Oracle Betrayed, which was a finalist for the Whitbread Children's Book Award, while The Candle won the Tir-Na-n'Og Award 2002. She has been nominated and won many others. Her novel Belin's Hill set in Caerleon was influenced by Machen.Website

Tim Lebbon is a Newport raised award winner writer of horror and dark fantasy and now lives locally. Author of more than twenty books which include Dead Man's Hand, Pieces of Hate, and Berserk, the fantasy Noreela series, and the Hellboy novel Unnatural Selection. He has won two British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Tombstone Award. His award winning novella White is soon to be a major movie written and directed by Stephen Susco (The Grudge). He collaborated on the Machen inspired Exorcising Angels (2003) with Simon Clark. Website

Gwilym Games is from Newport and is editor of Machenalia, one of the journals of the Friends of Arthur Machen, finalists for a World Fantasy Award in 2006. A recognised expert on Machen he has been responsible for the organisation of the Arthur Machen commemorative sculpture 2007 in collaboration with Celf Caerleon Arts Festival.


Supported by Academi and University of Wales, Newport, sculpture funded partialy by Principalty Medical Ltd.

Memorial Sculpture Plans

The idea of an Arthur Machen Memorial sculpture for Caerleon was first suggested in 2005 and has been a project worked on by the commitee of Celf Caerleon Arts Festival along with Gwilym Games of the Friends of Arthur Machen on and off over the last few years. The Arts festival holds a sculpture competition in which wooden sculptures are made for the town every year in July in the open air. This seemed an ideal opportunity to immortalize Machen in his birthplace. The sculptor commissioned for the piece, selected by the arts committee earlier this year after much debate in a long session is a Czech sculptor, Jiri Netik.

The Machen sculpture will take the form of a hand writing a book, on a plinth with a horrific mask of the Great God Pan and an inscription to Machen. The creation of the sculpture will coincide with the 60th anniversary of Machen’s death in Decemberand the hundredth anniversary of the publication of The Hill of Dreams.

To fund the sculpture a limited edition memorial booklet, Machenology will soon available. It will contain some rare items by Machen, plus a collection of tributes paid to him by writers past and present.

Plans for the Machen memorial sculpture are came together nicely in conversations with Jiri Netik, the Czech sculptor. I should mention here how much we owe to Principality Medical Ltd, the innovative hi-tech firm based in Bassaleg who provided much of the funding for the sculpture.

Leo Basil its director told me that Machen was a writer of great importance worldwide who deserved a memorial in his home town. “Principality Medical provides prosthetics which are used globally, not just for medical purposes to cover scar tissue, but in the special effects industry too. Our products have appeared in some of the most successful science fiction and fantasy films of recent years so it was a natural decision for us to fund the sculpture. We like to think our dedication to perfecting our products mimics Machen’s commitment to literature.”