The Dark Chamber
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
"Extremely high in artistic stature is the novel The Dark Chamber (1927) by the late Leonard Cline. This is the tale of a man who -- with the characteristic ambition of the Gothic or Byronic hero-villain -- seeks to defy nature and recapture every moment of his past life through the abnormal stimulation of memory. To this end he employs endless notes, records, mnemonic objects, and pictures -- and finally odours, music, and exotic drugs. At last his ambition goes beyond his personal life and readies toward the black abysses of hereditary memory -- even back to pre-human days amidst the steaming swamps of the carboniferous age, and to still more unimaginable deeps of primal time and entity. He calls for madder music and takes stranger drugs, and finally his great dog grows oddly afraid of him. A noxious animal stench encompasses him, and he grows vacant-faced and subhuman. In the end he takes to the woods, howling at night beneath windows. He is finally found in a thicket, mangled to death. Beside him is the mangled corpse of his dog. They have killed each other. The atmosphere of this novel is malevolently potent, much attention being paid to the central figure's sinister home and household." --"Supernatural Horror in Literature" (1927) by H. P. Lovecraft |
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
The Dark Chamber is a 1927 horror novel by American writer Leonard Cline.
The novel concerns Oscar Fitzalan and his interactions with Richard Pride who, trying to remember his past life, goes beyond his own memory and sinks into the gulfs of "primal memory."<ref name="bs"/>
Plot
The narrator, Oscar Fitzalan, a composer, is hired by Richard Pride to assist him at his estate and study at Mordance Hall. Here, he meets Hough, Pride's secretary; Miriam, Pride's wife; the Prides' daughter Janet; and their dog Tod, a German hound. They are later joined by Ramón Del Prado, one of Pride's employees. Also in the household are two black servants, old Mamie and her fourteen-year-old daughter Sally.
Pride brings Fitzalan to play music in order to awaken his memories. However, the household is devastated: Janet, Oscar's first love interest, elopes with Del Prado, and Pride's secretary, Hough, commits suicide. The dog becomes extremely aggressive and then his wife, Miriam, commits suicide as well.
In the end, Pride is reduced to a dirty and ruinous state from the memory therapy, and he finally leaves the house, letting the winds destroy his files regarding the recovered memories. He goes off into the night and there, when his daughter returns and elopes with the narrator, he is found dead, along with his dog in the woods - both having killed each other.
