Vathek

Completely preposterous and not in a good way. I can see why this orgy of Oriental tropes would have been exciting to an 18th century European reader high on the Arabian Nights and hungry for more genies, giaours, dives, and dwarfs. It's a nauseating banquet of sherbets and cordials, served by massed ranks of eunuchs, mystics, and sacrificial first-borns, a horrible literary carbuncle melting down into a bilious slurry where plot decoheres and characters implode under the weight of their own absurdity.

Here's Vathek's mom preparing a magic potion:

By secret stairs, known only to herself and her son, she first repaired to the mysterious recesses in which were deposited the mummies that had been brought from the catacombs of the ancient show more Pharaohs. Of these she ordered several to be taken. From thence she resorted to a gallery, where, under the guard of fifty female negroes, mute, and blind of the right eye, were preserved the oil of the most venomous serpents, rhinoceros’ horns, and woods of a subtle and penetrating odour, procured from the interior of the Indies, together with a thousand other horrible rarieties. This collection had been formed for a purpose like the present, by Carathis herself, from a presentiment that she might one day enjoy some intercourse with the infernal powers, to whom she had ever been passionately attached, and to whose taste she was no stranger. show less

Curiously impulsive. Vathek and his unending hunger for more propel forward through one massive atrocity after the other - hardly pausing for even a moment's reflection. Vathek often feels less like a character and more like a force. A story of a man told as one of a God... Until the final hell.

William Beckford wrote "The History of Caliph Vathek" in French in 1784, but it was first published in an English translation by Samuel Henley in 1786. Widely regarded as one of the seminal works of Gothic literature, this strange, unclassifiable novel recounts its eponymous protagonist's quest for esoteric knowledge and carnal pleasure, a quest which ultimately leads to his damnation.

"Vathek" combines exotic descriptions of the Orient with passages of grotesque comedy and a dollop of supernatural derring-do. Indeed, one of the challenges for modern sensibilities (and possibly its original readers as well) is to determine which passages should be taken at face value and which ones are to be read as self-parody. Even allowing for the show more genre's excesses, episodes such as that of a wizard being turned into a ball and kicked around Vathek's kingdom are clearly intended as black comedy. But what about Vathek's damnation, described in language of poetic intensity? Is the moralistic ending to be taken at face value or is Beckford being ironic? The author's letters suggest the former to be the case - which is rather surprising considering the atmosphere of decadence which permeates the novel.

If read purely for narrative pleasure, Vathek might disappoint. The plot is episodic, there are too many changes of gear, and the novel's ultimate message - if it does have one - is elusive and unclear. Yet, for anybody interested in early Romanticism, Orientalism, supernatural fiction or, for that matter, unusual literary fare, this is a must-read.

The Oxford World Classics text follows the 1816 English language version, prepared by Beckford himself. It includes an informative introduction by Roger Lonsdale which, interestingly, makes the case for *not* considering Vathek a Gothic novel. Also included are the erudite endnotes which Beckford included in the 1816 edition of Vathek (although first-time readers might prefer just reading through it and then consulting the notes on subsequent readings).

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2020/03/William-Beckford-Vathek.html show less

What the hell did I just read.

This novel feels like it was written by a cocaine addict having a manic episode after skimming a badly-translated pirated copy of the Arabian Nights. Needless to say nothing in here has anything to do with Arabia or the middle east in the slightest, either.

I feel like HP Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Edgar Allan Poe, Lin Carter, and everyone else who sung gushing praise of this thing, were all collectively trolling me from the grave.

Surely few stranger works of fiction exist in the annals of Romantic literature than William Beckford’s dreamy, opulent, and hypnotically weird Vathek, where an undeniable and outrageous breed of almost slapstick comedy mingles like wine in water with scenes of utter blasphemy and perversion as the eponymous Caliph Vathek, tempted by the sprawling subterranean riches of Iblis (the Islamic demon par excellence), wanders a one-way path to absolute damnation in one of the more meandering and scandalous journeys of self-destruction ever penned. Supreme destination: a climax of hearts exploding into smokeless fire.

Along the way, a parade of droll, chimerical tableaux pepper the narrative with delightful diversions: pious dwarves bearing show more baskets of fruit and chirping incessantly, to the great annoyance of our Caliph, Qur’anic verses; saucy women tricking eunuchs into flinging about on swings in a perfumed harem; great feasts, examined in exacting detail, of everything from roasted wolves and boiled thistles to pistachio-stuffed lamb and drugged sherbets; an entire city kicking about a goblin who has curled into a ball and taken to rolling about through the streets of Samarra and eventually over a cliff; a woman burning bits and pieces of mummies, rhinoceros horns, and human beings atop a dizzyingly high tower to placate the forces of evil; divining fish; one-eyed deaf mutes getting lusty with ghouls who have risen drowsily from the grave to feast on fresh corpses. This is certainly not Aladdin.

Vathek is charming and potently hallucinatory stuff meant to be taken in one giant dose, like a short story. Take a couple of hours and give it your undivided attention; Vathek rewards with that glorious sensation of ‘I need to read this out loud to somebody.’ This is certainly not high literature, but it’s not just trash (not even just ‘good trash’) either. Vathek is a sort of world unto its own: equal parts Arabian Nights and Castle of Otranto, and also something unclassifiable and gorgeous and grotesque. The prose, while unashamedly purple, suits its narrative and has an irony about it that never fails to endear. There’s something almost Gogolian in its bizarre sense of humor, and the terror here is both Gothic and admirably understated. A jumble of contradictions, Vathek is as fickle as its author—and just as fascinating: William Beckford, ostracized from high society for his homosexual affair with young ‘Kitty’ Courtenay, was one of the wealthiest and most eccentric men of his generation, and Vathek is, in many ways, the ultimate expression of his own self-indulgent fantasies, here taken to their most far-flung extremes of escapism and ‘oriental’ magnificence. And like so many other curiosities in literature, from A Season in Hell to Melmoth the Wanderer, Vathek is all the more entrancing when this unique and sometimes uncomfortably personal relationship with its author is taken into account.

Vathek's influence on the Gothic movement as a whole is evident from the first paragraph, where we are introduced to our naughty Caliph’s ability to strike men dead with a single ‘terrible’ gaze; and this absurd, and yet ultimately captivating, sense of wonder pervades the entire novel like the cloying, and yet rapturous, odor of heady rosewater. A treat for reflective minds and those interested in literary theatrics both, I count myself an ardent admirer. show less

Vathek does a credible job of capturing the Arabian Nights tone and lush descriptive passages, based on my faint recollection. Anything mixing this and the Gothic is liable to turn incredible in places - and it does - testing a reader's patience if it's taken too seriously. But the story is still very determined to take itself seriously, notwithstanding. It barely touches upon comedy, and the drama can take some very dark turns as Vathek seeks out power above and beyond what he already enjoys as caliph. Given that he already has it all, and yet he's still tempted by infernal means of acquiring more, it's practically impossible to find any sympathy for him. His intermittent episodes of remorse are so impromptu and brief, and his chances show more to recant so many, he can't even be viewed as a victim of irresistible circumstance (or of his mother).

Beckford was writing at the height (circa 1790 to 1800) of the gothic period, while Anne Radcliffe was enjoying her throne as England's pre-eminent author before modern fiction began to take over. Even so, Vathek arguably does not fit completely into the gothic genre. It's more clearly bent towards adopting Asian storytelling traditions, which it is said to do remarkably well. This makes it an oddity among English literature and it continues to stand out today accordingly. Whether it's actually still enjoyable to read without knowing this context is another question given its preposterous plotting, unlikely events and too-plain moral. I had to drag myself through it, but I'd still take this over Radcliffe any day. show less

A faustian tale, written like something from the Arabian Nights. The style of writing can make some sentences confusing but overall its quite clear. Nicely weird in places, overall good but can drag a little.