THE DEEP ONES: "The Grove of Ashtaroth" by John Buchan

"The Grove of Ashtaroth" by John Buchan

Discussion begins October 1.

First published in the June 1910 issue of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.



ONLINE VERSIONS

http://gutenberg.readingroo.ms/7/1/715/715-h/715-h.htm#chap06
http://www.online-literature.com/john-buchan/moon-endureth/12/

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?449681

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories
The Screaming Skull and Other Classic Horror Stories
The Moon Endureth

MISCELLANY

http://www.johnbuchansociety.co.uk/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Buchan
http://skullsinthestars.com/2010/02/23/supernatural-buchan-by-john-buchan/
http://tinyurl.com/p3jrmqw

A very interesting fellow. And he wrote The 39 Steps! I'll be reading this one online. Can anyone translate the Verlaine quote at the beginning of the story?

>2 gwendetenebre:

"C'est enfin que dans leurs prunelles
Rit et pleure-fastidieux—
L'amour des choses eternelles
Des vieux morts et des anciens dieux!"

Finally, it is in their eyes,
that laughs and weeps, fastidiously,
That love of things eternal,
of the aged dead and ancient gods.

This is a stanza from a poem called "Grotesques", and the "their" in the first line refers back to grotesque figures mocked and avoided by the wise, the fool, and the children.

>3 Petroglyph:

Much appreciated - thanks!

I'll be reading this out of The Moon Endureth, which I got as a free e-book from Amazon:

http://amzn.com/B0082ZEGVE

>5 artturnerjr: Same for me.

I also read out of an e-book of The Moon Endureth. Deep Ones reads have been the only reason I've ever yet read e-books, and I think this is the third.

As with tales like "The Willows" and "Genius Loci", the vividly described landscape plays an essential role here. South Africa provides an interesting change of scenery from what we're used to. Good to note that we'll also be visiting the Congo and the Outback in upcoming Deep Ones reads.

I kept picturing an "Apocalypse" era Marlon Brando playing the part of Lawson.

I also noted the likeness to Blackwood's tales (both the wilderness in "The Willows" and the modern intrusion of ancient mysteries in "The Wings of Horus").

Wow, the racism was really so thoroughly integrated with the narrative here. It was such a clear glimpse at the "sophisticated" intellectual attitudes toward race in early 20th-century anglophone culture. Lawson's "Semitic blood" (contrasted with the "Northern race" of the narrator) gives Lawson both personal genius and financial talent, as well as vulnerability to "Phoenician and Sabaean" spiritual vestiges and "the ritual of Sidon and Tyre." To then invoke King Josiah, one of the great genocidal theocrats of the ancient world, was an extra treat.

(The only evidence for Josiah's reign is internal to the Hebrew scriptures of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, but even there, he comes off as a cruel "reformer": executing priests outside of his new Jahwist regime, and actively desecrating the priests' graves and altars of Bethel.)

What I liked best about the story was the idea communicated that "Ashtaroth," or whatever the grove's genius loci might have been, was really a wonderful being, it its own intentions neutral at worst. Still, its malign effect on Lawson motivated the narrator's Josianic demolition efforts. "Bros before hos"?

This was a pleasant surprise. Like Kenton, I was reminded both of "Genius Loci" and Heart Of Darkness/Apocalypse Now. You could have a field day with a Freudian analysis of this one, couldn't you? ("I felt as if I were penetrating the temenos of some strange and lovely divinity, the goddess of this pleasant vale..." "a little conical tower... {which} stood about thirty feet high, of solid masonry, without door or window or cranny, as shapely as when it first came from the hands of the old builders. Again I had the sense of breaking in on a sanctuary. What right had I, a common vulgar modern, to be looking at this fair thing, among these delicate trees, which some white goddess had once taken for her shrine?" Goodness!)

Interesting that the narrator, from a patriarchal Christian society, comes into conflict and feels it necessary to destroy the feminine/pagan grove. Reminds me of the discussion of the conflict between masculine and feminine spiritual powers in Alan Moore's graphic novel From Hell.

What I liked best about the story was the idea communicated that "Ashtaroth," or whatever the grove's genius loci might have been, was really a wonderful being, it its own intentions neutral at worst.

Despite the evidence of Lawson's self-mutilation and off-kilter psychological state, Buchan instead chooses to induce the reader's sympathy for "Ashtaroth, the goddess of the Zidonians". One is left aghast at such acts of desecration as the felling of the trees and the dynamiting of the tower. Rather than rooting for our protagonists as they attempt to send the goddess howling into oblivion, we're left instead with a feeling of loss.

>10 artturnerjr:

When you mention it, it's rather too easy to take the story as a parable on the inherent wrongness of female power over men. "Ashtaroth" isn't malevolent, but her power over Lawson is nevertheless a Bad Thing.

Also read if from an ebook of The Moon Endureth, the Gutenberg one, to be exact. Bought an e-reader back in '11 - it's repaid itself in Gutenberg editions of public domain works alone.

We looked at this story in the Gothic Literature group last year.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/159204

>13 housefulofpaper: Thanks for the link, you made some good points there.

>10 artturnerjr: Interesting that the narrator, from a patriarchal Christian society, comes into conflict and feels it necessary to destroy the feminine/pagan grove.

That "conflict" is to me the most provocative feature of the story. To the extent that one could call this a "horror" tale, the most horrific event is the destruction/desecration of the grove and temple. (I guess Lawson's midnight ceremony is a runner-up.) And the narrator seems to know that.

A little oddness: Lawson and Jobson: "son of law" (the Law of the Hebrew scripture contrasted with the Grace of Christianity, perhaps) and "son of Job" (a faithful sufferer who can endure catastrophe)?

Note too, in section I: "Here I build my tabernacle, old man." Lawson characterizes his planned house as the wilderness temple-tent of the Hebrews.

Noticed this in a Weird Fiction Review write-up on Algernon Blackwood:

The Great War saw him volunteering in the Red Cross and there were rumours of espionage under the auspices of John Buchan (whose own weird tales deserve to be far more widely read).

http://weirdfictionreview.com/2013/01/wfrs-101-weird-writers-19-algernon-blackwo...

Regarding the narrator's comment that "the Saxon mother from the Midlands had done little to dilute the strong wine of the East", while 1910 is somewhat late for such ideas, before the rediscovery of Mendelian genetics, it was commonly thought that one parent's heredity could be stronger than the other's (be more prepotent in technical language of the day), so that the son of a "Semite" and a "Saxon" could in principle be almost wholly Semitic.

Another observation regarding the way this story deals with race: was anyone else struck by the oddness of a story taking place in Africa that doesn't have a single character that is a person of color in it (or at least none that are identified as such)?

>17 artturnerjr:

alaudacorax, in the linked Gothic Literature thread, wrote: "I was struck by the implication that the land travelled through and subsequently built on was uninhabited, virgin territory, just lying there waiting to be exploited." This notion (as observed there) is not unconnected with the idea of attributing a ruin in the extreme south of Africa to an ancient Mediterranean race.

>17 artturnerjr:

Good observation. "The Kaffir" are mentioned a couple of times, but they are kept offscreen, as it were. Wikipedia notes that "The word kaffir was used in the former South Africa to refer to a black person. Now an offensive ethnic slur, it was formerly a neutral term for South African blacks."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaffir_(racial_term)