Goose of Hermogenes

by Ithell Colquhoun, Peter Owen (Introduction), Eric Ratcliffe (Introduction)

The heroine of this story (described only as "I") is compelled to visit a mysterious uncle who turns out to be a black magician who lords over a kind of Prospero's Island that exists out of time and space. Startled by his bizarre behavior and odd nocturnal movements, she eventually learns that he is searching for the philosopher's stone. When his sinister attentions fall upon the priceless jewel heirloom in her possession, bewilderment turns into stark terror and she realizes she must find a way off the island. An esoteric dreamworld fantasy composed of uncorrelated scenes and imagery mostly derived from medieval occult sources, Goose of Hermogenes might be described as a gothic novel, an occult picaresque, or a surrealist fantasy. However one wants to approach this obscure tale, it remains today as vividly unforgettable and disturbing as when it was first published by Peter Owen in 1961.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Occult, Horror, 20th Century, Novels, Surreal

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1961

About the author

British surrealist painter and occult author, and the only significant biographer of S.L. MacGregor Mathers.

Reviews

[Jack Tripper · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Interior watercolor illustration by Colquhoun)

You know how when someone's telling you about this "crazy" dream they had and you have to act interested while they say things like, "then this monster was chasing me through these dark hallways, but sometimes the monster was just my dad, and then I suddenly fell into a giant swimming pool somehow and forgot how to swim so I was drowning..." etc. To them it was probably quite powerful, but describing the dream doesn't convey the very real emotions felt while experiencing it, so it comes out like a bunch of nonsense.

That's sort of how I felt at first while reading this. We the reader enter an ethereal dream world, but there's no real connection with the heroine, so it starts to feel like "just one damn weird thing after another." But I stuck with it (the entire novella is only 113 pages), and eventually got on the right wavelength to be pulled in by all the strange imagery. There's quite a lot of alchemical symbolism I didn't totally get -- for instance each chapter is named after a step in the alchemy process, or something -- but the overall eerie, hallucinatory atmosphere and beautiful gothic-style prose were more than enough to keep me absorbed once I got the hang of it.

Anyone into surrealism and weird fiction should give it a go. This latest edition features five mystifying (to me, at least) watercolor paintings by Colquhoun that were intended as illustrations from the beginning. It also includes a new foreword by her biographer, Richard Shillitoe, plus the 2003 Peter Owen foreword. They give a lot of insight into Colquhoun's life and interest in surrealism, alchemy, and the occult (Aleister Crowley supposedly once tried to seduce her), and how all that helped shape this uniquely otherworldly fairy tale.

4.0 Stars

[mark monday · Rating 3 out of 5]

such pretty nightmares. oh the monstrous architecture, the pastel-hued romance, the flora the fauna the statuary, the opaque surrealism of it all. I was particularly surprised by the idea of the Green-Light District: a bordello, of sorts, where unwilling sisters provide a nighttime pastime for melancholy spirits. shudder/swoon. such pretty nightmares, although that last chapter was quite disgusting.

synopsis: an alchemist covets his niece's jewelry, and more.

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ithell Colquhoun was a British surrealist painter and occultist who wrote travel books for Peter Owens (also publisher of the likes of Anna Kavan and the English translations of Tarjei Vesaas), was the subject of attempted romantic attentions from Aleister Crowley, and, according to Writers No One Reads, eventually became a Priestess of Isis. (see also: Isis cults in Leonora Carrington's The Hearing Trumpet. She also wrote one short novel, The Goose of Hermogenes.

Much as I love surrealism, I always recognize some risk in embarking upon a novel by a surrealist that I may be setting my prow into some impenetrable mist of automatic imagery and vaguely defined ideas. Fortunately, I've had pretty good luck so far: as with Carrington's novel, Colquhoun's manages to be exceedingly strange, and to diverge in multiple directions at once, without losing its narrative thread. The first half, especially, is striking in its focused sense of esoteric intrigue, dragging the reader forward to see what new eerie delights it might hold, as the nameless protagonist approaches and begins to explore her mysterious uncle's island home. As the chapters, each named for an alchemical process seeming to reflect its content, progress, the story dissolves somewhat into a set of occult/mythological vignettes (which certainly seem to merit further scrutiny and research in themselves), but still never quite loses sight of its narrative lures. I'm not altogether sure what the exact stations we've moved through by the finish signify, but they map some kind of hazy outline, and provide a strange satisfaction. Satisfying, too, is Colquhoun's language throughout, gothic and portentous, somewhere between myth and dream. Totally weird, totally fascinating, a small hard philosopher's stone of a book.


(As photographed by Man Ray, 1932.)

[Merl Fluin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a reread for me, and I did it in a single sitting. It was the first time I'd read the whole book cover to cover in such a concentrated way, and it intensified and enhanced the hallucinatory quality. It was like turning the pages of a book of exquisite alchemical illustrations and watching them come to life, one by one, with each chapter.

[Crippled_ships · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ah, what an exquisite delight it is to find a book that suits my tastes so perfectly! Reading this book was like walking into a chamber in a building where the neighbouring rooms might be Roussel's "Locus Solus", Daumal's "Mount Analogue", and other internal, symbol-laden landscapes. It was like peering through a window into someone else's dream, or rather someone else's inner life; intimate and ineffable - yet also strangely familiar.

I hereby welcome Ithell Colquhoun into my pantheon of patron saints - This is love!

[Adam Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a book for those who like linear narrative, this is a surreal (in the true sense of the word) story with alchemical and magickal overtones. Without a traditional plot, and quite stilted in style, our nameless heroine describes her adventures as she explores her strange uncle's country house, slowly piecing together a picture of his strange occult activities. It's quite a compliment that it's so difficult to find a direct comparison to the Gothic-fairytale image-laden prose of this book, the writings of Raymond Roussel and the wonderful Valerie and Her Week of Wonders being the closest. Definitely worth a look if you are interested in Surrealism, the occult or less mainstream literature.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I probably would have enjoyed this less, if I wasn't in a buddy read with GR friends. I would still have loved the main narrative, but might have lost patience with the dense dream-like digressions. There's so much to pick through here, and I keep going back to google an odd term, or a grimoire with a fabulous-sounding title that turns out to actually exist. Thanks especially to S̶e̶a̶n̶ for instigating the buddy read, and Merl for the alchemy primer.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was familiar with Colquhoun's otherworldy, occult-saturated visual art but had no idea she had written as well, so when I came across this during a book store browse I eagerly snapped it up. It's wonderful: short, cryptic, evocative, a gothic fairy tale with its dainty filigreed feet firmly planted in nightmare.

Though really it evokes more of a sensation of somnambulism, of being suspended in a state somewhere between wakefulness & sleep. It would have made for a wonderful surrealist-tinged silent film, or one of those 1960/70s Eastern European horror films that so exquisitely intertwine eroticism, hermeticism, & the uncanny. I'm already looking forward to my revisit.

"Was my room haunted? As an infant has difficulty in believing that it has left the womb, so a new ghost has difficulty believing that it has left the world. Sometimes the ghost feels, acts, decides as though it were still blown-through by the breath of life. It has to remind itself constantly, and concentrate its attention upon the fact that it is no longer alive: otherwise hauntings occur."

[Quill&Queer · Rating 1 out of 5]

That incest foreplay orgy with her uncle whipping her sure was something huh?

[Nate D]

A new edition with Colquhoun's paintings and a new chapter is an excellent cue to re-read. And her clearly drawn yet mythically opaque dreamworld quest is full of details that will always reward revisiting.

Colquhoun was one of the the finest seekers of the surrealist era, and well outliving it to continue her art into a kind of esoteric-hermetic divination after archetypal color-forms. Would love, eventually, to read an actual biography, but until then, we have her occult travelogue/memoirs of Ireland and Cornwall.

[Chris Browning · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extraordinarily dense and strange for such a short book. I cannot pretend to understand any of the allusions - with which the book is positively dripping - but even without that understanding of what the whole thing *means* there’s a definite sense of something approaching a genuine dream/ fever dream/ nightmare. A glorious book

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A surrealist/occultist writer can make for some slow reading, but every page glistens with esoteric menace. There's something glittering just out of reach, but I think I'll follow the books own advice: "A voice from the air around seemed to tell me to leave it undisturbed, and that one day it would awake from it's creative trance."

[Victor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read it, I immediately re-read it, I bought all of her other fiction, and I re-read it again. Hidden masterpiece.

[Darius Hinks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderfully strange and haunting. Like slipping into an odd dream. Highly recommended. I would have scored it higher, but the later passages don't seem to match the rest of the book and seem out of place. Beautiful new edition by Peter Owen.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this short novella, a young woman travels to an island to visit her uncle, only to gradually realise that he practices occultism and black magic, and that he invited her only to serve his own ambitions. The narrative is surreal and dreamlike, almost like a feverish nightmare. The heroine remains emotionally detached from the events unfolding around her. Nothing is explained, and the writing itself and the atmosphere are gothic and dark.

This isn’t a linear story by any means. At times, the author writes entire chapters as a stream of consciousness, where she, or rather, her heroine, describes everything she sees, referencing well-known works of art and occult symbols. I strongly recommend reading the book if you also enjoy surrealistic novels, but I would advise checking the trigger warnings. Although it's never made explicit, it’s unclear whether certain things really happened or were drug-induced hallucinations. Some of them might hurt if you are unprepared.

Thanks to the publisher for a free ARC. All opinions are my own.

[Alex Sarll]

Ithell Colquhoun is already having a bit of a revival, and no wonder when she's both expelled female Surrealist and early psychogeographer. Next year looks set to kick that up a gear, with a Tate retrospective of the art and new Pushkin editions of some of her writing, but while this deeply odd novel is one of the chosen books, I suspect it might remain a niche proposition. Reading it feels like having someone recount under hypnosis* an epic dream they had after a long day poring over Hermetic landscapes; there is a plot of sorts, the unnamed narrator imprisoned on her uncle's island because he wants her jewels for his 'alchemystic' work, but often that's in the background to layers of enigmatic images and eerie transitions, where the story starts on "the erratic local bus" but soon slides into a realm of winged monks, sunken cathedrals and brothels for demons. There are layers within layers to the dream, all of them feeling like the lead story while you're in them, and I'm sure if one were so minded a lifetime could be spent unpacking the significance with which every detail feels freighted. Personally, I was content just to go along for the ride and mostly treat it as an immersion in numinous prose-poetry:
"Under granite the saints lie buried; here a monument measured to human form still stands, there a tree takes shape from the bones beneath, an honourable vessel. In yet earlier rock there pulses an ancient sensual life, but the saints must be roused up first. Their diadems are bright with Sunday flowers, already they lift head and shoulders from their covering slabs."

*I say this because of the curiously even tone in which the wonders and nightmares are told. At the end of the book is Hexentanz, a chapter included in the original manuscript of Goose but excised from its original publication, "perhaps due to its nature as a stand-alone story with a different setting". Which seems a curious supposition on the editor's part when, say, the flying love story found in Conjunction is equally distant from the ostensible plot. But that doesn't feel out of place, or at least not any more than anything else here, whereas Hexentanz really does, not on account of being extraneous or separate but because its antic, frantic tone and revelling in disgust break the smooth surface which elsewhere prevails.

(Edelweiss ARC)

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I open my veins to the east I open the veins of my arm with the cut of a sliver of silicon. Blood pours out from the left flows out till it reaches the sea goes on flowing pours inexhaustible through the inexhaustible sea without chafe or pause till it surrounds the island a line veining marble a red line in the green sea taut from my arm making a long arm to his home circling the island a ribbon of stain in the foam unmixing like a rusty chain to bind him in binding his home so he never can go nor a boat’s prow cut through a crown renewed without end of mercurial metal from far-away gap whence it flows only his tooth could mend the gap whence it flows only his tongue lick up the stream at its source only his tooth and his tongue. [91–2]

🔈 øjeRum / The Blossoming of the Nothingness Trees

[Jess M · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3 1/2 stars )

A fascinating novella. Surreal, Mystical and Erotic with an alchemical foundation. An excellent companion to author’s / artist’s works on canvas. Written in late 1940's with a language and meter of English prose from the previous century. Thoroughly enjoyable.

[Darcey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mieville mentioned Colquhoun in The Last Days of New Paris, so I thought I would see what her book was about. It was strange (though less strange than I was expecting), and read more like a dream diary than a novel; I nonetheless found it surprisingly compelling. I quite enjoyed Colquhoun's writing style.

I've been told that this book has secret alchemical meanings, but since I know nothing about alchemy, I was unable to detect or interpret them.

Rather than trying to summarize the book's plot, I will instead relate a dream that I had while reading it. I was back in my parents' neighborhood, visiting a neighbor of theirs who had never liked me. Her daughter (who had also never liked me) had just had a baby, whom I was helping to watch. These neighbors acted very warm and welcoming to me, despite their earlier dislike; I wondered whether this was genuine. At one point, I and another guest ventured outside to their backyard. The portion directly outside their house was normal: ordinary grass, mowed to an ordinary length, with picnic tables and yard furniture and children's toys. But then the grass very abruptly gave way to a lush field, stretching up a hill, with woods behind it. The field was completely full of low, leafy plants, maybe 4 or 5 inches tall, and all of these plants were completely full of berries: some strawberries, and some other kind which looked like blue cloudberries. I stayed in the ordinary mowed grass; I had an intuition that we shouldn't step into the field. But my companion, standing in the ordinary grass, knelt down, and reached across the threshold, to pick and eat a berry from the field. Just in time, the neighbor rushed out the door and warned my companion to stop, explaining to her that this field was a burial ground for her family's ancestors, and that if my companion were to set foot in this field, or to eat a berry from it, she would surely die. My companion, looking frightened and relieved, thanked the neighbor for the warning. I turned to the neighbor and said, "Given that this danger exists, don't you think you should put up a fence, or a warning plaque, or something to prevent people from going into the field?" And my neighbor said no. And I said "No, seriously; my companion was about to die. This wasn't just me being an idiot with no social skills; a totally normal guest at your house almost ran into this problem. It's clearly a real danger for people, and you should do something about it!" But the more I argued, the more my neighbor pursed her lips and looked down her nose at me in disapproval. Eventually I gave up arguing and went back inside.

[Francesca · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5

📚 L'intera recensione si può leggere sulla mia pagina Substack o sul mio sito (link in bio).📚

[...] La trama, se di “trama” si può parlare per un testo la cui logica deliberatamente elude la linearità, ruota attorno al viaggio di una giovane donna verso un’isola remota appartenente al suo enigmatico Zio, figura immersa in pratiche alchemiche ed esoteriche. Il suo arrivo inaugura una serie di incontri inquietanti, percezioni cangianti ed esperienze quasi rituali che costituiscono un’immersione progressiva in un paesaggio simbolico. Senza rivelare sviluppi cruciali, si può dire che l’esplorazione dell’isola da parte della protagonista assume la forma di una ricerca metafisica, una sorta di viaggio sulla comprensione e sulla coerenza spirituale in mezzo a forze che minacciano al contempo di inghiottirla e riforgiarla secondo il loro volere. [...]

L’universo narrativo dell’intera opera obbedisce a una logica iniziatica: oggetti, gesti e paesaggi non sono meri ornamenti, ma codificano processi di trasformazione. L’isolamento dell’isola assume una funzione filosofica, in quanto diventa una zona liminale in cui le strutture del tempo “reale” si dissolvono, sostituite da una (a)temporalità ciclica e archetipica. Questo può far sembrare il romanzo profondamente antirealistico, dal momento che identità, spazio e conoscenza si fanno fluidi, mutando secondo principi più vicini al simbolismo alchemico che al realismo psicologico. Tuttavia, come accennato per la protagonista, questo modo è affatto voluto, perché la storia non si muove secondo logiche razionali, ma in una dimensione “altra”. [...]

[Andrew H · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange affair from start to finish. Ithell Colquhoun was an occultist with the gift of synaesthesia--words became colours in her imagination. And the prose is filled with colours and mystic experiences. The plot is simple: a young woman is snared by a mysterious uncle, who is a powerful alchemist. The novel's twelve chapters are named after alchemical stages and these compose a path of self-discovery. One section deals with psychic rape! Clearly, Colquhoun was familiar with the works of Dion Fortune and her methods of psychic attack and self-defence. The Goose of Hermogenes (a symbol for the philosopher's stone) is Magic realism before Gabriel Garcia Marquez invented it! Most of alchemy is patriarchal and written from the adept's point-of-view. Here, Colquhoun stands the tradition on its head and writes from an early Feminist perspective. A rare bird indeed!

[ash · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dreamlike, Gothic and very much surreal, Ithell Colquhoun's novella is only vaguely structured; the basic narrative of an isolated, magical island with the sinister uncle of an unnamed protagonist calls to mind the grim but decadent fairytales of various cultures, with very clear allusions to many other authors as seen in the quote headings of the chapters.

But the 'grounded' quality of the narrative really ends with that summary. A reader will transition from one scene to the next, listlessly floating through the plot with the same curiosity and helplessness as our protagonist, but this is no flaw. Colquhoun's long, labyrinthine sentences unfurl vivid and hypersensitive imagery, the sort of liminal and ornate vision that can only come from both a writer and an artist, and that's where Goose truly shines. However, its surrealist quality is a double-edged sword, as there are moments of too much obfuscation in the prose that, without a healthy amount of clarity, can confuse a reader as to what is really happening. But that's a small price to pay for the unique atmospheric intrigue that Colquhoun paints with her words.

Thank you to Pushkin Press Classics for the ARC through NetGalley.

[Ashley Lambert-Maberly · Rating 2 out of 5]

That was ... odd. Odder than I was hoping! I stumbled across this while looking for books similar to The Hearing Trumpet (which I love), but it lacked The Hearing Trumpet's delightful characters and intelligible plot ... rather it seemed like a handful of dreams uneasily stuck together and about as interesting as that might seem. A few passages or moments were compelling, but the form was just too amorphous to be involving, for me. (If you're looking for a compelling dream-like read, try Ishiguro's The Unconsoled, the afore-mentioned Trumpet if you want a great read from a Surrealist artist, and a bazillion other books if you're keen on the woman-tries-to-escape-Uncle's-home angle (which is, to the extent that there is any, the plot).

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

A book that belongs nearer to poetry than general literature. I found this short book difficult to read, as if I was reading about another person's dreams. Yes, it is surreal, abstract sometimes, and it has many occult references. However, it has little plot, characterisation or suspense. I found my mind drifting to things I had to do the following day, or making a shopping list, so as a work of fiction it barely held my attention.

[GD · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think if I'd actually met the writer I would have laughed immediately and made fun of her for being a loopy occultist. Nevertheless, the imagery and atmospheric paranoia in this book is incredible, and I can't really think of anything to compare it to. I wavered between 4 and 5 stars on this.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

now thats what i call surrealism.
i think a lot of symbolism (occult references) went over my head, because I'm not an occultist.
if i decide to become an occultist i'll probably have to re-read this.

[emmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘It were not right ever to cease lamenting.’

Trancelike, unnerving, yet architecturally stunning! A similar feeling at times to Rogomelec and The Hearing Trumpet, but more scrambled and focused on the occult in a refreshing way! To be read lightly like living an echoed dream!

[Chelsea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy

Goose of Hermogenes by Ithell Colquhoun is a first person-POV classic fantasy. The unnamed narrator travels to her uncle’s enchanted island and finds herself the center of a plot to steal her magical stones. As she experiences multiple visions, including ones of romantic love, she also has to contend with the possibility that she could lose her life.

The prose is a lot less straight-forward than I’m used to in modern fantasy. There’s constant metaphors, poetic imagery, and references to classics that make Goose of Hermogenes feel very different. If it came out now, I would probably argue it’s literary fantasy because Ithell Colquhoun is a lot more interested in the artistry of language than she is in telling a very clear plot that goes from A to B to C. I’m probably going to return to this book so I can soak up the language more.

As this book was written in 1961, some of the language in it is outdated, including the use of racialized terms for Asians and Black people. While I am personally fine with preserving the language of a text because it was written in the context it was written in and those word choices preserve our understanding of different time periods, I do think it is also important to warn readers when that kind of language is in a book.

I would recommend this to fans of classic fantasy looking for something more literary-leaning

[Rachel Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a strange little book. If someone told me that Colquhoun wrote down every dream that she had for a decade, then wove the strangest of them into this book, I would believe it.

Colquhoun was into alchemy, and the chapters of this books are named after the steps required for creating the philosopher’s stone. I suspect that I would enjoy the story more if I knew something/anything about alchemy, but alas, I do not. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the bizarre narrative and imagery.

The 4th chapter, “Conjunction,” invents a delightful backstory for two of the figures found in Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. The 5th chapter, “Putrefaction,” made so little sense to me that I may as well have skipped it. The ninth chapter, “Fermentation,” surprised me with ghost prostitution. The thirteenth and final chapter, “Hexentanz,” seemed not be part of the book at all and indeed was not included in the original publication; this final chapter is exceedingly gross.

Overall, at under 150 pages, it’s worth the experience.

Thank you to Pushkin Press and netgalley for free access to this book.

[Alf Broadbean · Rating 4 out of 5]

there is no goose in this book 🪿. Thought I should let people know before they read. However Colquhoun is the most eloquent wordsmith and her writing is so poetic and lyrical and I very much enjoyed this book (even though there is no goose)! It is in fact very Surreal and dreamy and it actually reads like a dream - I loved how suddenly yet matter of factly she narrated things and the richness of vocabulary. A little bit wacky at times but to be expected! Gorgeously descriptive writing - spellbinding and mystical!