6. Arthur Machen (1894), The Great God Pan

[strange_complex]

I read this because it was published while Stoker was writing Dracula, and both use pagan gods to stand for the abject, evil and Satanic - though Machen's novella focuses almost wholly on that idea, whereas in Stoker's Dracula it's only part of a tapestry of related concepts. The Great God Pan is part of efflorescence of fin-de-siècle stories and artworks about Pan, mainly inspired by an anecdote about his death in Plutarch, De Defectu Oraculorum 17 and thoughtfully examined in this 1992 book chapter, which I wanted to get to grips with as part of Dracula's context and a possible influence.

Having read it, though, I don't think the influence is particularly strong or direct. Both certainly reflect similar anxieties about what lurks beneath the façade of contemporary civilisation, within us, in the past and / or in the untamed places of nature - but those themes are more or less what all horror stories are about. And both present their stories as a collection of accounts from different viewpoints which only gradually come together - but again, many late 19th century novels did that. What makes them quite different is that Dracula is manifest and present within his eponymous novel, whereas Pan does not manifest directly to any of the point-of-view characters in Machen's. Indeed, he isn't wholly an embodied being at all. Rather, Pan, Satan and Nodens are all treated as attempts to express by metaphor an evil too horrific and inhuman for human minds otherwise to understand; as much something psychological, or the pure concept of evil itself, as anything embodied. As one character puts it, "Such forces cannot be named, cannot be spoken, cannot be imagined except under a veil and a symbol, a symbol to the most of us appearing a quaint, poetic fancy, to some a foolish tale."

That was all slightly disappointing to me, as I was hoping for something both a bit more embodied and a bit more ambiguous - a Pan simultaneously alluring and terrifying, who might sound sweet music through wooded glades and yet also leap savagely with snorting nose and bloodied fingernails upon the unwary transgressor. Machen's Pan doesn't really span that divide, existing rather on the wholly-terrifying side of the equation. I shall have to browse through the book chapter I've linked above for something more along the lines I was looking for - unless anyone reading can recommend a different fin-de-siècle story or novel which comes closer to ticking those boxes? Do I want G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday or Saki's 'The Music on the Hill' (which sounds good anyway), or what?

Anyway, although it wasn't quite the novel I was expecting or perhaps really wanted, I still got good value out of reading this one. The way it draws on Classical motifs, and especially the landscape and gods of Roman Britain, to construct its image of evil reminded me of the realisation I had made while watching the BBC TV version of Nigel Kneale's Quatermass and the Pit that it is in part a response to the discovery of the London Mithraeum (LJ / DW). I guess this novel, and other material like it, also forms part of the literary backdrop which made Kneale's story possible.

It does some interesting things with story structure. The chapters from different points of view I've already mentioned, but the final chapter is literally called 'The Fragments', and includes texts with deliberate lacunae in them to bring the story to a dim, half-understood conclusion which the reader is left to patch together. This is essential to the way Machen has dealt with Pan throughout, the whole point being that no human mind can witness him / it without going insane. And it plays around nicely with the relationship between city and country. Pan is unleashed in the remote Welsh / Romano-British countryside, but his worst effects are felt in the heart of London. So Machen uses rural metaphors to describe the encroachment of the rural (primitive) into the city (civilised). One dimly-lit London street looks "as dark and gloomy as a forest in winter", while in another "the wind blew as blithely as upon the meadows and the scented gorse".

The critical reception section of the Wikipedia page is right to draw attention to its outright misogyny, though (third para). The force which Pan represents is brought into the world in the person of a woman, Helen Vaughan, whose main modus operandi is to lure men to her and then drive them to kill themselves. Even worse, she is born in the first place by the actions of a doctor who performs a brain operation on her mother, Mary, and who justifies his actions to a demurring friend on the grounds that "I rescued Mary from the gutter, and from almost certain starvation, when she was a child; I think her life is mine, to use as I see fit." Mary, by the way, is only seventeen, and in addition to seeming to think he has the right to perform experimental brain surgery on her, the doctor has also evidently brought her up to call him 'dear' and solicit kisses from him in what read to me as a very power-abusing relationship. The operation destroys Mary's mind, while her body survives only long enough to give birth to the child, Helen, (always the true purpose of women in misogynistic novels) and while the doctor does come to regret his actions by the end of the story, it's not at all clear that he would have done if it hadn't been for the consequences which followed. Both Helen and Mary also exist only from the two-dimensional perspective of the male characters - Helen never speaks, but just goes round being evil and ruining men; Mary speaks a few lines before the doctor's operation, but only to submit meekly to his will. Still, Wikipedia also tells me that there is a feminist response to the novel called Helen's Story by Rosanne Rabinowitz which tells the whole story from Helen's point of view - and that could be truly awesome.

If you'd like to read The Great God Pan yourself, the whole thing is on Project Gutenberg, and I can confirm that their free Kindle-formatted version works very nicely.

Comments

[magister]

On the one hand, Music on the Hill isn't really what you're looking for either. On the other hand, it's about 6 pages, pretty good and easily findable via Google.

[strange_complex]

Yeah, I mean that one is by Saki so it's pretty much guaranteed to be good. I may in fact have read it before a few years ago. Maybe I need to write the novel I hoped this one would be?

[magister]

Ooh. That sounds fun. Correct me if I'm wrong, but basically, what you're after for Pan is a blend of this and how he appears in Wind in the Willows?

[strange_complex]

Yes, spanning both ends of the spectrum from savage horror to pastoral idyll. You might feel charmed at first, even succumb to the deep-seated urge to follow the lilting of his pipes and dance through woodland glades. But then, when it's too late to turn around, you realise that at the centre of the glade is an altar thick with layers of coagulated human blood. Or similar.

[magister]

Yes. And he's still smiling as he guts you. Rather more disturbing, I think, if he looks throughout like the beautiful teenage boy,albeit goat-legged, rather than some vast beast creature, stinking of fur and blood.

[strange_complex]

And he's still smiling as he guts you.

Exactly. Or it might be his troupe of faun and satyr followers, whom you were dancing with moments before, that do the actual gutting. But either way, it is an act of love. It is your honour to adorn the altar.

Rather more disturbing, I think, if he looks throughout like the beautiful teenage boy...

Also yes. Though I have time for stinking beast-creatures too. Maybe he looks like that occasionally, in glitchy little snippets, as you begin to lose consciousness?

[magister]

I think it's more disturbing if as your vision fades, he's still beautiful and,as you're torn to pieces by his followers, you're trying to climb off the altar because you still want to follow him, such is the love he inspires..

[strange_complex]

Yes, I think you're right.

In retrospect, it was perhaps naive of me to have imagined that Victorians / Edwardians might have written this story...

[magister]

I'm quite taken with the idea that you might write it. There's moments in Good Omens with the description of Adam that has hints of this.

And yes, the sacrifice is an act of love, on the part of the victim, not Pan. Pan should be completely indifferent, in the same way as a chef would be indifferent to a steak or a tin of beans. He does this because he always has and because it's his right, it's the order of things.

[strange_complex]

I mean, we pretty much have written it now between us. But I might have a go at fleshing it out, as it were, some time.

[magister]

Do let me know if that happens. I've not written anything in years, sadly.

[strange_complex]

Actually, I've just found and read this now (here), and it's much closer to what I was hoping for / expecting from The Great God Pan than the novel was itself. Although its Pan is largely malevolent, that's because we're seeing him from the perspective of Sylvia, who isn't really attuned to the countryside generally, voices disbelief in him specifically and also commits the sacrilege of casting aside his offering. The implication is that his golden laughter, beautiful brown face and piping music would be bestowed entirely benevolently on true devotees - e.g. Mortimer.

[magister]

Having reread it, yes, I think I agree. It would be interesting to know exactly what Mortimer is doing with his days. I wonder if he's one of the huntsmen with the pack.

[strange_complex]

I wonder if he's one of the huntsmen with the pack.

Yes, that would be a nice touch and rings true from what we have heard of him.

[magister]

Can't help but think Hammer could have done a nice - if very expanded - film of it. Probably with a bit of a feel of Plague of the Zombies to it.

[strange_complex]

Yes - or it would have made a great one-hour 'Play for Today' style television drama, like Robin Redbreast or Murrain or something like that.

[magister]

Or one of Lawrence Gordon Clarke's Ghost Stories for Christmas.

Bbc4 did a rather good adaptation of three of Saki's stories in 2007 - Who Killed Mrs de Ropp.

[strange_complex]

I didn't know about that, but Detective Google tells me it is out there for the watching. One to squirrel away for later enjoyment.

[poliphilo]

I don't think you want the Chesterton. It's worth reading for its own sake but it's not about Pan.

But...E.F. Benson's the Man Who Went Too Far could be exactly what you need. It's available on line; I just checked.

By the way, do you know Benson's The Room In The Tower? It's an absolutely cracking vampire story.

And how about Algernon Blackwood. His best stories aren't exactly about Pan but they're full of that peculiarly fin de siècle ambiguity about Nature- its beauty and its horror. The Wendigo- set in the Canadian arctic- is my favourite.

[strange_complex]

Great, thank you for the E.F. Benson tip! I will follow that up. I have read 'The Room in the Tower', but not 'The Man Who Went Too Far'. Just from the title, though, I can feel the shape of the story I'm after beckoning to me.

Algernon Blackwood - I've read 'The Willows', which was recommended to me some time ago for exactly the sorts of reasons I'm talking about here, and I loved it. I downloaded a collection of his short stories to my Kindle a while back and haven't read it yet, but I like to snuggle up with stories of that kind in the run-up to Christmas, so might make this December the time when I pick it up.

[poliphilo]

Blackwood wrote a lot. His novels are quite extraordinarily long-winded but fascinating if you have the stamina- full of esoteric knowledge (because he was among other things a practising magician). The short stories are easier to take- and some of them are very, very scary.

[strange_complex]

Any particular short stories - other than 'The Willows' and 'The Wendigo', which we've mentioned - that you'd recommend?

[poliphilo]

Those two stand out- and they're widely acknowledged as his masterpieces. Otherwise, the one that sticks with me is A Haunted Island. Again it's set in Canada.

[strange_complex]

I certainly like the title - sounds a lot like The Willows.

[strange_complex]

OK, I just read 'The Man Who Went Too Far' here, and oh my! That was indeed exactly what I needed. An immensely accomplished and very self-assured story, absolutely probing at the very intersection between Pan the Idyllic and Pan the Terrible that I was yearning for, and I think carrying with it a profound awareness of genre and trope without becoming weighed down by them. Thank you! I definitely need to read more of E.F. Benson as well...

[lady_lugosi1313]

One of my favourite Fall songs is Leave The Capitol -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpMoRS_9bcM

and here are the lyrics - I wonder if the great god Pan Smith is referring to is the story as opposed to Pan.

The tables covered in beer
Showbiz whines, minute detail
Its a hand on the shoulder in Leicester Square
Its vaudeville pub back room dusty pictures of
White frocked girls and music teachers
The beds too clean
The waters poison for the system
Then you know in your brain
LEAVE THE CAPITOL!
EXIT THIS ROMAN SHELL!
Then you know you must leave the capitol
Straight home
Straight home
Straight home
One room, one room
Then you know in your brain
You know in your brain
LEAVE THE CAPITOL!
EXIT THIS ROMAN SHELL!
Then you know you must leave the capitol
Straight home
Straight home
Straight home
Then you know in your brain
You know in your brain
Leave The Capitol!
Then you know you must leave the capitol
It will not drag me down
I will leave this ten times town
I will leave this fucking dump
One room, one room
Hotel maids smile in unison
Then you know in your brain
You know in your brain
LEAVE THE CAPITOL
EXIT THIS ROMAN SHELL
Then you know you must leave the capitol
I laughed at the great God Pan
I didnae, I didnae
I laughed at the great god Pan
I didnae, I didnae, I didnae, I didnae
LEAVE THE CAPTIOL
EXIT THE ROMAN SHELL
Then you know you must leave the capitol
Pan resides in welsh green masquerades
On welsh cat caravans
But the monty
Hides in curtains
Grey blackish cream
All the paintings you recall
All the side stepped cars
All the brutish laughs
From the flat and the wild dog downstairs.

Make of that what you will.....

[strange_complex]

Yes, the line "Pan resides in welsh green masquerades" does sound a bit like it might point to Machen, as that's where his Pan is unleashed.