peedeel
Crab On The Rampage
Posts: 61
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Post by peedeel on May 28, 2021 12:15:37 GMT
Aickman and The Trains - even more to say!
Aickman’s despair of his age (everything prior to the year of his birth in fact was golden, a golden past that mirrored the views of, amongst others, the Roman satirist, Juvenal) is resonant of Sartre’s. But where Sartre may declare: “Tu n’es rien d’autre que ta vie” (you are nothing else but your life), Aickman goes one step further, seeming to suggest the very fabric of “modern” life has become tainted: the situation is thus hopeless; “you are nothing else but your life, which is inherently flawed and beyond repair”. Hence you are damned.
I sense faint resonance (whether intended or not) between Aickman’s “The Trains” and Jean Paul Sartre’s 1944 play “No Exit” (one might also suggest resonance of a kind with Algernon Blackwood’s “The Lost Valley”). The gothic elements in Sartre’s play are reflected in Aickman’s gothic pastiche. The two female characters in “No Exit”, Estelle, an infanticide, and Inez, a lesbian, are pale reflections of Aickman’s “heroines” in “The Trains” (or rather, vice versa). Sartre’s play contains four characters enclosing an abyss , Aickman’s story makes repeated use of groups of four, whether in groups of stones or people, but again enclosing vacuity. To Sartre hell is other people. To Aickman it is life itself.
However, Aickman’s use of four would also reflect his knowledge that the ancients believed there were four elements, four essential energy forces, fire, water, air and earth. The Sylph, for example, were spirits of the air in communion with the divine. These elements were seen as vital components of the human body – the maintenance of physical and psychological health depended on keeping a balance between them. A similar balance is required in the exterior world (Jungian psychology, of course, has continued this tradition by envisaging the psyche in terms of four aspects, thought, emotion, intuition and the senses).
Interestingly, while the ancients looked on rain as life-giving, a deluge could be caused by the wrath of the Gods purging the earth of corruption (in such circumstances the innocent would perish alongside the guilty). The valley, as symbol, was seen as protective, feminine, associated with fertility; however in Christian tradition it became linked with darkness and the unknown.
In his introduction to “The Fontana Book of Ghost Stories” in which “The Trains” appeared, Aickman wrote about his story: “sometimes you can’t tell whether or not it is a ghost story”.
He wrote “Strange Stories” rather than ghost stories.
But where’s the ghost, then? (you may ask)
Well, ummm, they’re all dead – so they’re all ghosts, right? (I might reply, hesitantly)
But surely “The Trains”, whatever else it may be, is an exploration of sexual identity? (you demand, tired of further prevarication)
Mmmm, well, yes – (I’m going to change the subject, of course) –
Aickman professed a love of railways and rail travel, thought it one of the more “civilized” forms of transportation. The power of those big steam locomotives was impressive. And being steam they were a product of a time prior to the terrible upheavals of 1914 – 18. But the abrupt appearance of new trains, of closed in trains, what does that signify?
In “The River runs Uphill” Aickman wrote:
“I believe that the key to the modern world lies in Samuel Butler’s suggestion that the machine is an evolutionary development, and that it is in the process of reducing man from homo sapiens to homo mechanicus; virtually to greenfly status. That machines have their own purposes and intelligences though entirely different from the purposes and intelligences of men, that they are rapidly taking over from men, seems to me plain.”
Could these new trains stand as a symbol of “modern” technology? Could they be the “closed” hospital trains returning from the front with the worst of the wounded? The windows of the carriages blacked out to hide the appalling mutilations of the poor wretches within. Could these “modern” trains be an “evolutionary development” reducing humankind to the status of greenfly? Could ghosts walk the corridor, coach to coach?
A tenuous argument, at best – but where’s that darn ghost, then? (you ask, patience finally, understandably, exhausted)
Ultimately, of course, there can be no answer to that question. If Aickman had thought an answer was required, he would have provided one – but that’s not what he was about, was it?
(I could at this point throw in a couple of paragraphs about the pseudo-couple: the early hiatus; these separate yet utterly dependant individuals; two sides of a single coin, but lacking psychic unity yet simultaneously fulfilling a socially symbolic role – but I won’t on this occasion)
Aickman claimed mankind “took a wrong turning” when it suggested “by application of reason and the scientific method, everything will be known…Spirit is indefinable, as everything that matters is indefinable”. So if his work ‘matters’ it must follow by definition that it is indefinable. Aickman believed in a world beyond, a “world elsewhere”, a place, perhaps, not too dissimilar to the location of Plato’s “forms”?
So no definitive explanation – and no ghost (or as many as you chose? It’s up to you!).
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peedeel
Crab On The Rampage
Posts: 61
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Post by peedeel on May 28, 2021 12:23:02 GMT
Aickman’s “The Trains” – idyll comments on sources =
The quiet valley may have as it’s source:
“The annals of a quiet valley”
A COUNTRY PARSON
Edited by JOHN WATSON, F.L.S. published 1894
Roper openly announces that they are in the “house of the dead”. Dante’s “deep place”, “basso loco” , where “‘l sol tace“, the sun is silent. In fact Dante’s “Commedia” allows us a glimpse of the first circle of hell in his “Inferno“, this circle containing similar characteristics to the Elysian Fields where the guiltless damned are punished – there fault being lack of faith and an inability to hope for better or greater good other than that which surrounds them (in a word: lack of imagination or vision).
Aickman could well be pointing a finger at us all and saying: “You’re in a purgatory of your own making!
Our two M’s, our heroines, are certainly guilty of this sin – in fact they’re civil servants, bureaucrats, unimaginative and non-creative individuals, simple numbers, thus they are Aickman’s hated, faceless, nonentities who help feed the miseries of modern life. As such they are not worthy of his, or our sympathy.
According to Dante these souls contained within the first circle are neither within hell nor without it. They’re in limbo. So when Margaret asks what they’re to do, Mimi answers, “Catch the first departure for hell, I should say.” Suggesting there’s only one way out of Limbo – not toward the light of paradise, but instead toward the inner circles of hell.
“without hope we live in desire” (Dante)
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on May 28, 2021 12:24:00 GMT
Difficult to describe, and not really like anyone else. Walter de la Mare is similar, at times, in my view. More recently, Thomas Ligotti. There's something Kafkaesque about many of his stories - there's something going on, but it's not always clear what or why. There is a lot of Freudian stuff bubbling under the surface too. I'd definitely start with "Ringing The Changes" (from Dark Entries, 1964) and then take it from there if you want more. Scribd doesn't have any. Pity. But Internet Archive has three books: The Wine-Dark Sea, T he Model and Cold Hand in Mine. Which is best? Any one of them except THE MODEL is fine. |
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Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on May 28, 2021 12:35:35 GMT
Scribd doesn't have any. Pity. But Internet Archive has three books: The Wine-Dark Sea, T he Model and Cold Hand in Mine. Which is best? Any one of them except THE MODEL is fine. Thank you. You look familiar, have we met? |
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Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on May 28, 2021 12:36:19 GMT
Internet Archive has three books: The Wine-Dark Sea, T he Model and Cold Hand in Mine. Which is best? I'd probably go for Cold Hand in Mine. "The Swords" and "The Hospice" are fairly representative of Aickman, I think. I like "Pages From A Young Girl's Diary", though it is a much more straightforward sort of story than he typically produced. Thank you. |
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Post by cauldronbrewer on May 28, 2021 13:20:44 GMT
I'd probably go for Cold Hand in Mine. "The Swords" and "The Hospice" are fairly representative of Aickman, I think. I like "Pages From A Young Girl's Diary", though it is a much more straightforward sort of story than he typically produced. I second this recommendation. "The Hospice" was my introduction to Aickman, and it captures the darkly absurd side of his work. Some of the other stories would be a good test of whether you'll like his more cryptic work. |
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Post by weirdmonger on May 28, 2021 13:27:35 GMT
Some great stuff there and I shall read it all more closely lately.
But has anyone before directly related the word TRAINS with a premonition of gender TRANS?
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Post by Shrink Proof on May 28, 2021 13:42:56 GMT
Thank you! his stories sound interesting. How would you describe the style? The overall feeling when reading Aickman is "I'm really not quite sure what's going on here, but whatever it is it's seriously bloody creepy." |
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on May 28, 2021 13:45:50 GMT
Some great stuff there and I shall read it all more closely lately. But has anyone before directly related the word TRAINS with a premonition of gender TRANS? No, no one. |
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Post by andydecker on May 28, 2021 13:56:39 GMT
So I got the story "The Inner Room" and read it carefully.
On the whole it was quite impressive. After a too slow start - did it really need the whole car-story? - it became interesting. A few ticks (?) of the writer threw me a couple of times, but that may be my unfamiliarity with the language. The description of the doll house architecture was often not very convincing, even if it was told by the adult Lene. What also threw me was the rather callous description of the fate of Lene's mother in Germany. Lene the dancer sure comes across as a very cold person which somehow sounded untrue. Maybe it is the hindsight of the narrator which doesn't ring true. Lene the child in the 1920a is much to calculating to be convincing. On the other hand, Lene seems to be a typical Aickman protagonist. Never the life of the party.
But the last part was truly unsettling, and I loved that Aickman didn't give a damn about genre tropes. Most writers would have used the obvious plot. Lene's head on the trophy wall or such. But Aickman thought of a much better and more disturbing ending.
I have to confess that Aickman is hit and miss for me. From what I have read recently for the first time, half a dozen stories I think so far, my verdict is that too much is often needlessly uneven in tone and, a bigger fault, too long for its own good. Don't misunderstand me, I don't think this should be short stories with a twist ending. Heaven forbid. But they often tend to sag in the middle.
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Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on May 28, 2021 15:03:07 GMT
Wine-Dark Sea is from Homer isn't it. It's like something Dylan Thomas would say. Apparently the ancient Greeks didn't have a word for blue.
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Post by Shrink Proof on May 28, 2021 15:21:20 GMT
Wine-Dark Sea is from Homer isn't it. It's like something Dylan Thomas would say. Apparently the ancient Greeks didn't have a word for blue. I was taught that it was Κυανος (kuanos) from which we get cyan in English. |
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Post by helrunar on May 28, 2021 15:22:09 GMT
Weirdmonger, I've wondered about the secret significance of the phrase "Trans-Europa Express" in the original German release of the song by Kraftwerk.
H.
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Post by weirdmonger on May 28, 2021 15:32:51 GMT
Lol
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Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on May 28, 2021 15:48:29 GMT
Wine-Dark Sea is from Homer isn't it. It's like something Dylan Thomas would say. Apparently the ancient Greeks didn't have a word for blue. I was taught that it was Κυανος (kuanos) from which we get cyan in English. I don't think it was used the same way we use blue. It's a dark-blue. |
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