THE DEEP ONES: "Schalken the Painter" by J. Sheridan LeFanu

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THE DEEP ONES: "Schalken the Painter" by J. Sheridan LeFanu

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2gwendetenebre
Jul 2, 2018, 9:23 am

The Dark Descent for me. And I'd better get cracking!

3elenchus
Jul 2, 2018, 1:45 pm

Online for me!

4gwendetenebre
Jul 4, 2018, 7:32 am

Hard not to picture every scene in the style of the great 17th century Dutch painters. I also really enjoyed the ominous feel that hangs over the tale from the very moment that the "short, sudden sniff " ushers in the sinister Minheer Vanderhausen. It's an ominous quality that Le Fanu certainly carries through on! I was as much surprised by Rose's sudden, highly distressed, post-nuptial reappearance - I was sure that this would be a rescue-the-maiden tale - as I was by her cruel fate. Was the ending a nightmare or hallucination or was it real?

This should have been up in the Miscellany section:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godfried_Schalcken

5AndreasJ
Jul 4, 2018, 2:50 pm

>4 gwendetenebre:

Ah, I had assumed the characters were all entirely fictional.

I was surprised by he reappearance too, but for the opposite reason: I was expecting she'd be gone forever the first time, and that later some unsettling hint to Vanderhausen's nature and/or motive would be found.

So, what sort of creature was Vanderhausen? His leaden visage and failure to breathe or blink surely marks him as some sort of revenant. He's evidently corporeal, but able to appear and vanish like a ghost. I was thinking "vampire" - certainly a species of revenant noted for its interest in nubile young women - but there's no hint of blood-drinking.

I learn this is a revised version of "Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter" from 1839. Does anyone know how the versions differ?

6AndreasJ
Jul 4, 2018, 3:06 pm

Regarding the final vision, I suspect it was real in the sense that Rose's spirit was sending Schalken a message, but unreal in the sense that any third party watching would merely have seen him sleep-walking or hallucinating.

7gwendetenebre
Edited: Jul 5, 2018, 9:51 am

>5 AndreasJ:

At first, I thought Vanderhausen seemed to be a pretty standard Mephistopheles looking to make a bargain, but his bluish hue and what I took to be white, nearly pupil-less eyes indicate something else altogether. Interesting that this tale shows up in a couple of "zombie" anthologies. I really found him to be a harbinger of Dracula. A supernatural, predatory European aristocrat, clad in a dark cloak - I wonder how much of an influence Le Fanu's story might have had on fellow Irishman Bram Stoker?

>6 AndreasJ:

I think that's it.

8elenchus
Edited: Jul 5, 2018, 2:43 pm

>4 gwendetenebre: I was as much surprised by Rose's sudden, highly distressed, post-nuptial reappearance - I was sure that this would be a rescue-the-maiden tale - as I was by her cruel fate.

>7 gwendetenebre: At first, I thought Vanderhausen seemed to be a pretty standard Mephistopheles looking to make a bargain ...

I anticipated a Faustian tale, as well, and later some revelation as to the torture and damnation visited upon Rose, and neither come to pass. The tale is all the more pleasing for confounding expectations, and for leaving me with an uneasy confusion alongside that ominous tone sustained throughout!

It isn't clear to me: is Schalken's vision of Vanderhausen at the end, a scene of a dead Vanderhausen? Or someone merely sleeping, or even "awake" and looking at him? He is sitting "bold upright", it is true, and described as "livid" (a livid metallic blue?), but also "demoniac" so ... not the same guise in which Vanderhausen appeared earlier? Admittedly, all these questions are a bit beside the point. I have no problem understanding why Schalken would have fainted.

Curious, too, that Schalken chooses to paint the penultimate scene rather than the bedside scene, though of course the former better features and memorialises his true love.

9elenchus
Edited: Jul 5, 2018, 2:42 pm

>4 gwendetenebre:

Those links to the historical Schalken and Dou, and other fijnschilder, and the apparent reputation for painting scenes by candlelight and trompe l'oeil suggest the germ of the idea was an ironic joke on the part of Le Fanu. As though these skills derive from the experience, almost an Aesopian "how the painter earned his chops" sort of story.

The BBC adaptation provides further interesting comment, with the screenplay apparently departing substantively from the story (or at least, the 1851 version linked online above):
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1154981/index.html

10gwendetenebre
Edited: Jul 5, 2018, 3:18 pm

>8 elenchus:

It isn't clear to me: is Schalken's vision of Vanderhausen at the end, a scene of a dead Vanderhausen?

Good question! And now that you mention it, why does Rose have an "arch smile" in the vision? Did she somehow get the better of Vanderhausen, perhaps even posthumously?

I'll watch that BBC adaptation later. Thanks for the link.

11housefulofpaper
Jul 8, 2018, 8:14 pm

I wasn't able to re-read this story last week, but I have read it (in its revised version) more than once; and I've seen the 1979 BBC adaptation directed by Leslie Megahey.

In Jim Rockhill's introduction to the Ash Tree Press volume of Le Fanu's ghost stories that contains both versions of Schalken, he says the later is "tighter in construction and its tension better sustained, but since it also sacrifices much detail and much that is charming in the original, a choice between the two versions has always been difficult."

A quick glance at the two versions suggests the main differences are in the opening and closing paragraphs: the original version is framed as a narrative told by Father Purcell (the recurring narrator/introducer of Le Fanu' early weird fiction). He's dropped from the revised version (although it still has a narrator, presumably the Captain Vanndael who tells the story to Father Purcell in the first version, or a descendant of his) and the opening is rewritten and the final couple of paragraphs, I think, dropped (I'd have to read more closely to find out if they've been moved to an earlier spot in the story).

The BBC drama does stick very close to the story in terms of the narrative.What it adds is scenes of everyday life within Dou's workshop (there's a didactic element to the film; it was, after all, commissioned for a BBC arts strand that generally consisted on straight factual documentaries), and the result of artistic decisions that had to be made about how to dramatise a work of prose for the screen.

>5 AndreasJ:
"Carmilla", of Le Fanu's most famous ghost story, is also corporeal but can vanish like a ghost. I don't know of the behaviour of Le Fanu's revenants owe more to folklore, Emmanuel Swedenborg, or Le Fanu's particular cast of mind and the workings of his imagination.

12AndreasJ
Jul 9, 2018, 2:44 am

>11 housefulofpaper:

Thanks.

Le Fanu was evidently fond of framing devices - "Carmilla" and the other stories in In a Glass Darkly (1872) are allegedly from the papers of one Dr Hesselius - so it's interesting he dropped it in the revision of this.

13RandyStafford
Jul 9, 2018, 5:30 pm

>11 housefulofpaper: I read Jamieson Ridenhourannotated version of Carmilla. It put the influences on Le Fanu down to the tradition of femme fatales going back to the lamia, the literary vampire starting with Polidori, and folklore traditions.

The latter included not only the vampire of folklore but also Irish folklore involving unearthly, beautiful, and deadly women. He also tapped into Irish folklore about stolen children and the aisling: poetry that involved blood sacrifices and beautiful women.