Most stories that appeared in Weird Tales received accompanying artwork, usually on the title page. Clark Ashton Smith's "The End of the Story" is no different, featuring this illustration, which depicts the confrontation between Hilaire, abbot of Périgon, and the lamia, Nycea. I can't quite make out the signature of the artist at the bottom right, so I'm unable to identify him with certainty. I think the initials are "HR," which, if so, suggests the artist is Hugh Rankin, who illustrated several of H.P. Lovecraft's during the same time period.
It looks a dandelion gone to seed.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the artist had never seen a holy water sprinkler?
That's my guess, too.
DeleteSlightly off topic, but I had a thought concerning the big three last night. Lovecraft was from New England, Howard from Texas, and Smith from California. And all three of them represent an archetype of those locations.
ReplyDeleteNew England can be cold, alienating, not welcoming to strangers or "others", while Texas is the land of the big, adventures or characters, a place to strike it rich. California, on the other hand, was the land of dreams, of cults (see Hammett's Dain Curse, Bohemian Grove, and so on) a place very natural yet so foreign that movies and magic came from it.
Looking at them from this angle, one can see how they came into their feelings and writings as the very land they came from and that helped define their spirits arose from them.
You're definitely onto something.
Deletefor the aspergillum, as a non-catholic, I have never even heard of one, but, while I may not be well read, I am well stocked.
ReplyDelete1933 book of knowledge- no entry
1910 Standard Book of Facts-no entry
1955 revised Oxford Universal Dictionary-no entry, but several related ones. no pictures
I would suggest it is quite likely the artist had no idea what one was. is it a spoon? that was vaguely mentioned in one of the dictionaries...
aha! you owe Mister Smith an apology. My 1910 Funk and Wagnalls, horrible beated up, has both Aspergillum and Aspergillus. -UM is a singleton of the fungus, -US is the Holy Water Sprinkler.
Deletefor those who care (all one of you), the mushroom is indeed named after the sprinkler, as it looks like one.
Interesting! I knew of the mushroom, which is has the –us ending rather than the –um ending for the holy water sprinkler, but perhaps that's just a contemporary usage?
DeleteCould be. Familiarity with Latin conjugation is fading, sadly
DeleteI think I am more proud of this exchange than anything I did at work this last week.... LOL
DeleteMy copy of Webster’s New International Dictionary, Unabridged 2nd Edition (1959), has both aspergillum and aspergillus, along with Asperges (the ceremony and anthem) and the verbs asperge and asperse (both of which mean “to sprinkle”, the latter also “to slander” or “to malign”). Aspergillum only referred to the holy water sprinkler (and a type of mollusk) but aspergillus to the sprinkler and the mold.
DeleteThat is indeed Hugh Rankin, who gave the world the first illustration of Wilbur Whatley's twin(ish) brother in April, 1929. Still one of the better ones, I think:
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Weird_Tales/Volume_13/Issue_4/The_Dunwich_Horror#/media/File:Weird_Tales_v13n04_-_The_Dunwich_Horror.png
Definitely Rankin. That HR sig is what he used on most of the pencil sketch illustrations he did. This is by far his worst published composition - to the point that I wonder if it was never intended for print or at least was an extreme rush job.
ReplyDeleteHe had a (very vaguely) similar composition in August 1929 WT for "The Shadow Kingdom" by REH: a protagonist (Kull) faces off with the Serpent Men, with a couple of nude (semi-nude? demi-nude? diaphanously never-nude? The pulps always kept ya guessing!) women lounged in judgment (or hope of rescue?...the pulps always kept --)
The point is the Kull story nails it artfully while The End of the Story illustration looks like the cover of a Tijuana bible called "Darkseid Goes to Mardi Gras."
I wonder if this had much more to do with the fact that this little morsel was only CAS' second publication in WeirdTales. Although it introduces Avergoine, it is clear that Smith is still openly resisting prose. I wonder if the roughness of the tale contributed to Rankin's confusion about who the main protagonist of the story is. Although the Abbot certainly performs a rescue and at least a partially successful rescue, that is supportive to the main plot and its conflicted, wistful complexity.