Vathek.

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Vathek.

1alaudacorax
okt 28, 2011, 6:05 am

Why I created this thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/115964#2939435 (just substitute Vathek for The Castle of Otranto). Do I need to mention spoilers?

2LolaWalser
okt 28, 2011, 8:42 am

If I manage the time, I'd like to finally read my French Vathek, Beckford's original (I read it in English).

3housefulofpaper
okt 28, 2011, 6:19 pm

I've got the English version, translated by Herbert B Grimsditch. This is the Folio Society edition with lithographs by Edward Bawden.

I bought it from Jarndyce booksellers (I think I've told this story before in the Folio Devotees group), which is opposite the British Museum. It was £30.00, probably the cheapest book in the shop and quite possibly the only one I could afford.

The general impression that's stayed with me is that there is a definite air of burlesque or parody in some passages and scenes, but overall it feels genuinely heartfelt.

Of course, I can't say how close Grimsditch keeps to the original, as I cannot read or speak or understand French (or any language but English, and that with a shaky grasp of (on?) grammar).

4veilofisis
okt 29, 2011, 8:12 am

3

'The general impression that's stayed with me is that there is a definite air of burlesque or parody in some passages and scenes, but overall it feels genuinely heartfelt.'

Totally agree. Incidentally, I'm a big fan of the Grimsditch translation. Without meaning to shamelessly self promote (ha), I did a review of Vathek for my blog. If you want to check it out: http://therealmoftheunreal.blogspot.com/2011/04/review-vathek.html

I love the lithographs in the Folio edition. They were love at first sight.

5housefulofpaper
Redigerat: okt 12, 2021, 11:30 am

> 3

And another thing in the Folio edition's favour is that it - and Bawden's lithographs - are printed by the Curwen Press.

I enjoyed the reviews on your blog - I'll have to raise my game when I comment on "Pigeons from Hell"!

6alaudacorax
Redigerat: mar 14, 2012, 4:02 pm

A wonderfully sensual read, this - for me, the whole book seems to take its cue from the opening description of Vathek's palaces of the senses and Beckford's constant 'feeding' of the reader's senses (especially the sense of smell) give it a solid and entrancing internal reality.

I quite agree that there's a definite tongue-in-cheek element to it, too; but what took me a little by surprise was detecting a quite stern morality underlying it. I'd quite suspected that Vathek would get away with it in the end and the ending, when it came, came as quite a sting in the tail.

Bit upset about Nouronihar - think she got a raw deal.

ETA - I get a strong feeling that Lovecraft would have been quite familiar with this. There are many passages that I suspect might have provided the starting points for some of his favourite themes.

7veilofisis
Redigerat: mar 14, 2012, 8:26 pm

6

Regarding Lovecraft, he speaks a bit about Vathek in Supernatural Horror in Literature. He's largely favorable towards it, though he concludes his brief analysis by stating: 'Beckford. . .lacks the essential mysticism which marks the acutest form of the weird; so that his tales have a certain knowing Latin hardness and clearness preclusive of sheer panic fright. '

I think that's fair. I, myself, am a HUGE fan of Vathek; I try not to speak about it with people who have yet to read it or have little interest, because my praise will take on a life of its own if I'm given the license! :P

8alaudacorax
Redigerat: mar 14, 2012, 11:35 pm

#7 - Interesting comment from Lovecraft. It's quite right, of course, but then I doubt that Beckford was going for 'sheer panic fright' or for 'weird' in the sense that Lovecraft meant it. There are the dark and Gothic elements, of course, but I'd place it closer to The Decameron or 1,001 Nights (the adult version) than Edgar Allen Poe. Having said that, I think it's probably quite unique.

'I, myself, am a HUGE fan of Vathek' - I've been reading it in the Oxford World's Classics paperback, but I've been quite taken with it and now I think I'm going to have to* get a nice hardback edition at some point. Possibly the Folio Society one, but I've spotted what appears to be a rather beautiful edition (again the Grimsditch translation) by the Limited Editions Club with illustrations and decorative borders by Valenti Angelo.

Edit *I should probably substitute 'I'm tempted to' for 'now I think I'm going to have to' - this lusting after fine editions is threatening to get out of hand!

Second (whispered) edit And it's got full Morocco binding. Oh dear ...

9starkimarki
mar 15, 2012, 12:50 am

>8 alaudacorax:.
I have the LEC. It is very small only a few inches each side. If you are worried about ithings getting out of hand you should be aware that it is just one of a series of three in matching styles. The others are 'The Rubaiyat' and 'The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El Yezdi'. They are tricky to find in fine condition, each is a three part construction book ( prone to fading ); chemise ( very fraglie ); slipcase. I ended up with a compromise or two on the condition, don't do that - get really nice ones you won't regret it, they are joyous little volumes.

10alaudacorax
mar 15, 2012, 11:41 am

#9 - I suspect, starkimarki, that you're one of those people who position sweetie-shelves right next to the check-out queue in supermarkets.

I love Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat, so that's two books I'm lusting after instead of one, and if I ever got the two, I'd - of course - have to get the third to complete the set (have to admit that I don't remember that I was ever aware of the 'Kasidah' - I am now!)

11alaudacorax
Redigerat: mar 15, 2012, 1:12 pm

I mentioned above that I read this in the Oxford World's Classics edition.

It can be bloody irritating. The editor assumes the reader's fluency in French. There are untranslated chunks of it throughout the introduction, and also in the editor's additions to the notes. I suppose I'll type them into an online translator at some point, but I don't have to be happy about it.

Also, 'The Episodes of Vathek' are not included. I fail to see the point of this omission in a modern edition. Their absence is quite noticeable in the novel as it stands. Of course, if you read Vathek as a key work in the evolution of the Gothic in the English-speaking world, the 'Episodes' are irrelevant as they weren't there through the nineteenth century. I don't care - I choose to be irritated. One can read them online, of course.

If I'm coming across as a bit grumpy, it's probably because I was delighted with Vathek, then read the introduction and felt I detected a slightly condescending tone towards Beckford. It spoilt my mood. I'm probably being irrational.

12veilofisis
Redigerat: mar 15, 2012, 5:03 pm

I agree regarding the untranslated French in the intro to the OWC edition: what gives? As for the 'Episodes,' pick up a copy of the Broadview edition (thought it's somewhat pricy) of VATHEK, which includes them in their entirety. It's the only copy that contains the unexpurgated first episode, which was quite homoerotic, and hence rewritten by Beckford into the more acceptable male/female story included in most editions of the Episodes. The Broadview also includes the edited version, as well as several critical materials well worth reading. I haven't read the text of VATHEK included in the Broadview, but I believe it's a new translation...not sure on that, though (I know that the Episodes, or at very least the 'scandalous' one, are new translations). Anyway, a recommendation, haha. (Not that you, er, need anymore of those...!) ;)

13LolaWalser
mar 16, 2012, 5:02 pm

I'm far from well read in Gothic lit, so I may be quite wrong, but on current experience I'd say there's something a bit different about Beckford, a certain propensity for satire, or, eh, humour... something rather contrasting to the usual so very earnest Gothicists. Did he write anything else in this vein?

14housefulofpaper
mar 16, 2012, 6:10 pm

This is what I can contribute about William Beckford (it's not much) ...

The Episodes of Vathek is (are?) also available in paperback from Dedalus (well, I'm assuming it's still in print). However, the translation is by Sir Frank Marzials and published in 1912, so the first episode is presumably expurgated.

The third episode was left uncompleted by Beckford. There is a complete version available. It uses the Marzials translation and it was done by Clark Ashton Smith. It's been collected in the recent multi-volume Collected Fantasies from Night Shade Books. It also appeared in a short story collection published by Neville Spearman Limited in 1972, and reprinted as a paperback in 1974 by Panther. The collection is entitled The Abominations of Yondo.

I also have (still to be read) the Penguin Classics Vathek and Other Stories (first published by Pickering & Chatto in 1993, presumably in a less painfully-small font size). The three main sections are Oriental Tales consisting of "The Long Story (known as The Vision)" pages 1-26 and Vathek ("Text established by Kenneth W. Graham as part of a doctoral thesis in the University of London, 1971") pages 27-121, including 24 pages of the original notes compiled by Samuel Henley in 1786.

The second section is Satires and the third is Travel Diaries.

15veilofisis
mar 16, 2012, 6:50 pm

13

'I'd say there's something a bit different about Beckford, a certain propensity for satire, or, eh, humour... something rather contrasting to the usual so very earnest Gothicists.'

I completely agree. His own inclinations toward self-parody are much more obvious than the subtler efforts made later by the Victorians and are entirely unique for his time-period. And I suspect you're better read in the Gothic than you let on, Ms. Lola! :P :D

16alaudacorax
mar 16, 2012, 7:28 pm

Yes, the humorous or satirical elements of it were why I was expecting Vathek to get away with it all at the end.

17LolaWalser
Redigerat: mar 16, 2012, 7:58 pm

nd I suspect you're better read in the Gothic than you let on, Ms. Lola! :P :D

And if you should suspect I'm a dead ringer for Anna Karina in Une femme est une femme, who am I to say otherwise, Lady J, suspect awayyyy! ;)

Thanks, houseful, so it looks like the answer's basically "no". I have a book about Beckford on the road, The Grand Tour of William Beckford, at least it sounds like it...

#16

What, leave badness unpunished?! That sort of villainy had to await 20th century...

18housefulofpaper
Redigerat: nov 21, 2021, 6:17 pm

An essay by Ruth Scobie entitled "'A World of Bad Spirits: The Terrors of Eighteenth-Century Empire'" in The Cambridge History of the Gothic provides a new angle of Vathek - new to me at any rate.

Maybe because the Orientalist fantasies (that seem in retrospect to spearhead the rise of Sentiment, the Gothic, and Romanticism and the eclipse of Augustanism and the Age of Reason) came via France - the translation of the 1001 Nights by Antoine Galland - I hadn't thought about Beckford writing his novel just as the East India Company was becoming de facto ruler of Bengal via its mercenary army, and ongoing debates about the tyrannical behaviour of the Company's "Factors" (dubbed Nabobs from the Urdu "nawab) even as booty flowed from India to Britain.

Ruth Scobie writes that the novel, which became public with Samuel Henley's unauthorised translation of 1786, "reacts both to the new presence of Indian, Persian and Arab artefacts in Britain, and to the news of British despotism in India, constructing the Orient as both the agent and object of sublime power".

Her assessment of Vathek is that it's mythical setting in the Abbasid Empire "acts as an alibi for Beckford's engagement with topical debates about the East India Company. Beckford - as MP, avid collector of artworks looted from Indian courts and the son of a leading political opponent of Company monopolies - was familiar with, though, though somewhat ambivalent towards, the issues and language of these discussions".

She goes on to give an analysis of how the characters of Vathek and the Giaour at set up so as to allow Beckford to (I feel the urge to write "interrogate" here, but I think "satirise" or "take potshots at" are nearer the mark). "The Giaour may stand in simultaneously for Hindu subject and British Imperialist, and Vathek for British Imperialist and Muslim Monarch"...the novel's "ambiguous doublings and power struggles replicate the tangled nature of contemporary debates about British presence in India, without pledging the novel to any clear or stable political position".

The essay goes on to talk about the trial of one of the nabobs, Warren Hastings, during which "the comic nabob or fantasy Caliph became a fully developed Gothic villain"..."Indeed, the strong sense of this character as a stock element in romance and fiction may have contributed to the ultimate failure to convince the House of Lords of the reality of Hastings' crimes".

19housefulofpaper
okt 11, 2021, 11:29 am

"Nabob" survived in the lexicon long enough for Johnny Ray to be dubbed "The Nabob of Sob", but clearly the negative connotations had been forgotten.

20haydninvienna
okt 11, 2021, 11:35 am

>19 housefulofpaper: Even longer than that: the late unlamented Spiro T. Agnew referred to the "nattering nabobs of negativism" in 1970, so that would probably post-date Johnny Ray.

21housefulofpaper
okt 11, 2021, 12:22 pm

>20 haydninvienna:

Could be a Boris Johnson line.

22alaudacorax
okt 12, 2021, 6:55 am

I'm ashamed to say I've completely forgotten about Vathek: quite forgotten my reading of it; never got round to getting a fine edition of it (or of Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat - >8 alaudacorax:, >9 starkimarki:, >10 alaudacorax:). Odd really, because it seems to have been one of the 'key work's' I've read that I've been most taken with. Have to reread soon ...

23alaudacorax
okt 12, 2021, 6:59 am

>18 housefulofpaper:

The Cambridge History of the Gothic is becoming a sore point. I greenly drool over it every time you mention it. But the price!

24housefulofpaper
okt 12, 2021, 11:38 am

>22 alaudacorax:
Well, I still haven't read that Penguin Vathek and Other Stories. And it's going to have to wait at least until I've got new glasses. There's nothing wrong with my current pair, apart from no longer being strong enough. I'm ageing, as the saying goes, like a fine milk...

>23 alaudacorax:
Looking on Amazon, it's cheaper for the Kindle - but still expensive compared to other ebooks. And currently only volumes 1 and 2 are available.

I did benefit from quite a steep discount on one of the volumes, so maybe it's worth keeping an eye on the prices on Amazon (also, does CUP ever do sales?)

25pgmcc
okt 12, 2021, 11:53 am

>24 housefulofpaper: & >23 alaudacorax:

Look on the positive: they qualify for free click and collect.
:-)

I think they are at the academic book price level. There are so many books like them that I would love to acquire but their academic price tag presents a barrier.

26housefulofpaper
okt 12, 2021, 12:59 pm

>25 pgmcc:
I'm with you on academic book pricing. I've only got some Palgrave Gothic titles because I was somehow alerted to an online sale where prices were briefly cut by 90% (!!). That's what I wondered if CUP would ever do something similar.

Academic titles used to be reasonably priced and sometimes even turned up in high street bookshops. These came from Blackwells in Reading* in the '90s:
The Battle of the Books (this is sort of Gothic-adjacent. It examines the literary and political issues prior to the emergence of the Gothic (and if you look hard you can see some of the roots of Gothic developing)).
Vampires, Burial and Death.

* It's gone now. Replaced by an estate agents, a hairdressers, and flats.

27benbrainard8
Redigerat: okt 26, 2021, 10:19 am

>1 alaudacorax: I'm going to purposely wait on this thread, will jump on it in a week or two, after reading The Castle of Otranto and The Mysterious Mother. I bought Vathek (Haunted Library of Horror Classics) at same time. This will be my first read. There sure are a lot of versions of this book/story.

28benbrainard8
Redigerat: okt 26, 2021, 10:21 am

Det här meddelandet har tagits bort av dess författare.

29JHemlock
Redigerat: okt 26, 2021, 12:30 pm

Det här meddelandet har tagits bort av dess författare.

30JHemlock
Redigerat: aug 23, 2023, 2:18 pm

>27 benbrainard8: Put them both down and read Melmoth the Wanderer. Then pick them back up.

31DavidX
Redigerat: okt 29, 2021, 2:50 pm

I strongly recommend the Broadview edition of Vathek as the most complete and uncensored "restored" edition of Vathek with the episodes of Vathek.

https://broadviewpress.com/product/vathek-with-the-episodes-of-vathek/#tab-descr...

And also historian Rictor Norton's essay "William Beckford: The Fool of Fonthill".

http://rictornorton.co.uk/beckfor1.htm

32housefulofpaper
okt 30, 2021, 7:52 pm

>31 DavidX:
you've convinced me. I've just ordered a copy of the Broadview edition.

The essay included plenty of new (to me) information. Things I haven't seen in general essays about the Gothic, or introduction to editions of Vathek that I already own.

I had a quick look online to see what remains of Fonthill Abbey - very little. About the equivalent of the Abbey Gateway on the sight of Reading Abbey, I would guess. I remember seeing a small contemporary model of Fonthill as an exhibit near the start of the British Library's "Terror and Imagination" exhibition. The scale of the place didn't register at first, until I tried to imagine my house to scale, and saw how completely dwarfed it was.

>22 alaudacorax:
I couldn't resist, and I looked on Abebooks for copies of the LEC Vathek. Shipping costs from the US to the UK are eye-watering of course. Two copies listed. One (without its slip-case) is over £100 including shipping. The other a little cheaper but the slip-case falling apart. Worse, suspicious white marks on the book's spine. Mould? I was able to resist placing an order today, at least.

Looking back on this thread, I thought I'd voiced my opinion that combing the novel with the episodes would make a very lopsided work. Not a sort of nested boxes/Russian dolls structure like The Saragossa Manuscript (have we discussed that work yet?) or even the tales leading to a resolution of the story like Melmoth the Wanderer, but rather a story told in linear fashion to within the last page, then three long interjections, then back to the main action for no more than a couple of paragraphs. I don't think it would work.

33DavidX
Redigerat: nov 4, 2021, 1:19 pm

I need to get another copy of the Broadview edition. Mine is pretty worn and has some coffee stains. My favorite part is "The History of the Two Princes and Friends, Alasi and Firouz" from "The Episodes of Vathek". It was heterosexualized in the altered censored version.

Melmoth the Wanderer and Tales from the Saragossa Manuscript are such uniquely structured and intense reads, also two of my very favorite books. As you said Vathek is a linear narrative with sort of a sequel of three stories and a postscript. It works for me, but I haven't read other versions of Vathek and the episodes. It reminds me of "The Arabian Nights" more than anything else I've read.

34benbrainard8
nov 21, 2021, 6:08 pm

I just finished it, and the only thing that pops to mind is how the "mother" is quite a naughty character, and the resolution is quick.

Yes, like a darker version of "Arabian Nights".