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Lord of the Hollow Dark
At Balgrummo Lodging, a great decaying house near Edinburgh, gather the grotesque members, old and young, of a curious society. Given names from the poems of T.S. Eliot, they are the disciples of Mr. Apollinax, possessor of occult powers. He has promised his followers an intensity of experience they never had known before—a kind of immortality to be attained in a mystical "timeless moment" of transcendent sensation.
This rite is to be performed on Ash Wednesday, in the "Purgatory" that lives beneath Balgrummo Lodging: a pre-Christian and medieval maze sealed at the Pope's order in the sixteenth century. In this subterranean realm, to which ancient legends of diabolism cling, Apollinax will proclaim himself Lord of Time—with attendant horrors.
Yet has Apollinax underestimated the sardonic old being called Archvicar Gerontion, once "a brutal and licentious soldier," who is present at the Lodging as Apollinax's necromancer? Has Apollinax left out of his reckoning a dead man of power, the last Lord Balgrummo, perhaps lingering with his murderous axe in the hollow dark?
More than a yarn of occult adventure, Lord of the Hollow Dark is a parable, in which the actors shift from the world of the flesh to the world of the spirit—from infernal time to purgatotial time, and then to salvation—within the space of a few nights.
This rite is to be performed on Ash Wednesday, in the "Purgatory" that lives beneath Balgrummo Lodging: a pre-Christian and medieval maze sealed at the Pope's order in the sixteenth century. In this subterranean realm, to which ancient legends of diabolism cling, Apollinax will proclaim himself Lord of Time—with attendant horrors.
Yet has Apollinax underestimated the sardonic old being called Archvicar Gerontion, once "a brutal and licentious soldier," who is present at the Lodging as Apollinax's necromancer? Has Apollinax left out of his reckoning a dead man of power, the last Lord Balgrummo, perhaps lingering with his murderous axe in the hollow dark?
More than a yarn of occult adventure, Lord of the Hollow Dark is a parable, in which the actors shift from the world of the flesh to the world of the spirit—from infernal time to purgatotial time, and then to salvation—within the space of a few nights.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1979
2 people are currently reading
177 people want to read
About the author
Russell Kirk
168 books310 followersFor more than forty years, Russell Kirk was in the thick of the intellectual controversies of his time. He is the author of some thirty-two books, hundreds of periodical essays, and many short stories. Both Time and Newsweek have described him as one of America’s leading thinkers, and The New York Times acknowledged the scale of his influence when in 1998 it wrote that Kirk’s 1953 book The Conservative Mind “gave American conservatives an identity and a genealogy and catalyzed the postwar movement.”
Dr. Kirk wrote and spoke on modern culture, political thought and practice, educational theory, literary criticism, ethical questions, and social themes. He addressed audiences on hundreds of American campuses and appeared often on television and radio.
He edited the educational quarterly journal The University Bookman and was founder and first editor of the quarterly Modern Age. He contributed articles to numerous serious periodicals on either side of the Atlantic. For a quarter of a century he wrote a page on education for National Review, and for thirteen years published, through the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, a nationally syndicated newspaper column. Over the years he contributed to more than a hundred serious periodicals in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, and Poland, among them Sewanee Review, Yale Review, Fortune, Humanitas, The Contemporary Review, The Journal of the History of Ideas, World Review, Crisis, History Today, Policy Review, Commonweal, Kenyon Review, The Review of Politics, and The World and I.
He is the only American to hold the highest arts degree (earned) of the senior Scottish university—doctor of letters of St. Andrews. He received his bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University and his master’s degree from Duke University. He received honorary doctorates from twelve American universities and colleges.
He was a Guggenheim Fellow, a senior fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, a Constitutional Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a Fulbright Lecturer in Scotland. The Christopher Award was conferred upon him for his book Eliot and His Age, and he received the Ann Radcliffe Award of the Count Dracula Society for his Gothic Fiction. The Third World Fantasy Convention gave him its award for best short fiction for his short story, “There’s a Long, Long Trail a-Winding.” In 1984 he received the Weaver Award of the Ingersoll Prizes for his scholarly writing. For several years he was a Distinguished Scholar of the Heritage Foundation. In 1989, President Reagan conferred on him the Presidential Citizens Medal. In 1991, he was awarded the Salvatori Prize for historical writing.
More than a million copies of Kirk’s books have been sold, and several have been translated in German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Korean, and other languages. His second book, The Conservative Mind (1953), is one of the most widely reviewed and discussed studies of political ideas in this century and has gone through seven editions. Seventeen of his books are in print at present, and he has written prefaces to many other books, contributed essays to them, or edited them.
Dr. Kirk debated with such well-known speakers as Norman Thomas, Frank Mankiewicz, Carey McWilliams, John Roche, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Michael Harrington, Max Lerner, Michael Novak, Sidney Lens, William Kunstler, Hubert Humphrey, F. A. Hayek, Karl Hess, Clifford Case, Ayn Rand, Eugene McCarthy, Leonard Weinglass, Louis Lomax, Harold Taylor, Clark Kerr, Saul Alinsky, Staughton Lynd, Malcolm X, Dick Gregory, and Tom Hayden. Several of his public lectures have been broadcast nationally on C-SPAN.
Among Kirk’s literary and scholarly friends were T. S. Eliot, Roy Campbell, Wyndham Lewis, Donald Davidson, George Scott-Moncrieff, Richard Weaver, Max Picard, Ray Bradbury, Bernard Iddings Bell, Paul Roche, James McAuley, Thomas Howard, Wilhem Roepke, Robert Speaight
Dr. Kirk wrote and spoke on modern culture, political thought and practice, educational theory, literary criticism, ethical questions, and social themes. He addressed audiences on hundreds of American campuses and appeared often on television and radio.
He edited the educational quarterly journal The University Bookman and was founder and first editor of the quarterly Modern Age. He contributed articles to numerous serious periodicals on either side of the Atlantic. For a quarter of a century he wrote a page on education for National Review, and for thirteen years published, through the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, a nationally syndicated newspaper column. Over the years he contributed to more than a hundred serious periodicals in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, and Poland, among them Sewanee Review, Yale Review, Fortune, Humanitas, The Contemporary Review, The Journal of the History of Ideas, World Review, Crisis, History Today, Policy Review, Commonweal, Kenyon Review, The Review of Politics, and The World and I.
He is the only American to hold the highest arts degree (earned) of the senior Scottish university—doctor of letters of St. Andrews. He received his bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University and his master’s degree from Duke University. He received honorary doctorates from twelve American universities and colleges.
He was a Guggenheim Fellow, a senior fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, a Constitutional Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a Fulbright Lecturer in Scotland. The Christopher Award was conferred upon him for his book Eliot and His Age, and he received the Ann Radcliffe Award of the Count Dracula Society for his Gothic Fiction. The Third World Fantasy Convention gave him its award for best short fiction for his short story, “There’s a Long, Long Trail a-Winding.” In 1984 he received the Weaver Award of the Ingersoll Prizes for his scholarly writing. For several years he was a Distinguished Scholar of the Heritage Foundation. In 1989, President Reagan conferred on him the Presidential Citizens Medal. In 1991, he was awarded the Salvatori Prize for historical writing.
More than a million copies of Kirk’s books have been sold, and several have been translated in German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Korean, and other languages. His second book, The Conservative Mind (1953), is one of the most widely reviewed and discussed studies of political ideas in this century and has gone through seven editions. Seventeen of his books are in print at present, and he has written prefaces to many other books, contributed essays to them, or edited them.
Dr. Kirk debated with such well-known speakers as Norman Thomas, Frank Mankiewicz, Carey McWilliams, John Roche, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Michael Harrington, Max Lerner, Michael Novak, Sidney Lens, William Kunstler, Hubert Humphrey, F. A. Hayek, Karl Hess, Clifford Case, Ayn Rand, Eugene McCarthy, Leonard Weinglass, Louis Lomax, Harold Taylor, Clark Kerr, Saul Alinsky, Staughton Lynd, Malcolm X, Dick Gregory, and Tom Hayden. Several of his public lectures have been broadcast nationally on C-SPAN.
Among Kirk’s literary and scholarly friends were T. S. Eliot, Roy Campbell, Wyndham Lewis, Donald Davidson, George Scott-Moncrieff, Richard Weaver, Max Picard, Ray Bradbury, Bernard Iddings Bell, Paul Roche, James McAuley, Thomas Howard, Wilhem Roepke, Robert Speaight
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 17, 2017
I'm on my fourth or fifth re-reading of Lord of the Hollow Dark. Each time, there is something new to appreciate. If you like mazes and labyrinths, archaeology, ghost stories, history, spelunking, metaphysics, Gothic atmosphere, or a combination of all of them, you will love this book.
In this story, Manfred Arcane, the central figure of A Creature Of The Twilight, returns to battle powers and principalities in a moldering Scottish mansion, trying to head off a diabolic ritual set in the underground caves of a medieval Purgatory. Along the way he finds allies among the dead and the not-quite-so-dead. He also adds to his collection of rescued souls, though that requires some very tough love (the best thing he can say to one of his proteges is 'at least your vices are natural vices'.)
Note that there are two prequels to this book among Kirk's short stories: 'Balgrummo's Hell' and 'The Peculiar Demesne of Archvicar Gerontion'. It isn't required to read these before Lord of the Hollow Dark, but it would add to one's enjoyment.
As other reviewers have noted, the story moves slowly, and there is no overt horror (though a few chills are delivered along the way). Actually, I appreciate that; my imagination is quite capable of filling in the blanks if I feel like it.
There's a strong Christian element in the story, but the conflict boils down to good vs. evil, and all of us (I hope) have a dog in that fight. And the uplifting ending makes Lord of the Hollow Dark a book for all seasons: good reading for the Spring as well as the darkening Fall.
In this story, Manfred Arcane, the central figure of A Creature Of The Twilight, returns to battle powers and principalities in a moldering Scottish mansion, trying to head off a diabolic ritual set in the underground caves of a medieval Purgatory. Along the way he finds allies among the dead and the not-quite-so-dead. He also adds to his collection of rescued souls, though that requires some very tough love (the best thing he can say to one of his proteges is 'at least your vices are natural vices'.)
Note that there are two prequels to this book among Kirk's short stories: 'Balgrummo's Hell' and 'The Peculiar Demesne of Archvicar Gerontion'. It isn't required to read these before Lord of the Hollow Dark, but it would add to one's enjoyment.
As other reviewers have noted, the story moves slowly, and there is no overt horror (though a few chills are delivered along the way). Actually, I appreciate that; my imagination is quite capable of filling in the blanks if I feel like it.
There's a strong Christian element in the story, but the conflict boils down to good vs. evil, and all of us (I hope) have a dog in that fight. And the uplifting ending makes Lord of the Hollow Dark a book for all seasons: good reading for the Spring as well as the darkening Fall.
February 21, 2018
After loving the short stories in his collection, Ancestral Shadows: An Anthology of Ghostly Tales, I was rather disappointed with Lord of the Hollow Dark. It is usual Kirk fare, Gothic spiritual horror, along the lines of Charles Williams. The setting is the old Scottish Lodging of Balgrummo, set atop an underground labyrinth, with lots of history and dead bodies, etc.
It had all the right ingredients and started off promising enough, but seemed more like a short story stretched; not bad, but not great either. That doesn’t mean I won’t try other Russell Kirk novels, however, nor will it keep me from rereading his short stories which are my favorites, immediately behind Flannery O'Connor.
It had all the right ingredients and started off promising enough, but seemed more like a short story stretched; not bad, but not great either. That doesn’t mean I won’t try other Russell Kirk novels, however, nor will it keep me from rereading his short stories which are my favorites, immediately behind Flannery O'Connor.
April 12, 2021
An excellent read, with some important caveats. First, it's not a "fun, fast, thrilling read." This is a story you take your time with. There's lots of exposition, though Kirk's prose is very readable, and not leaden at all. Lots of philosophy here about good and evil, eternity, and the soul. Second, it's not really horror, per se, but more of a supernatural gothic, (though a modern one, for the time), and the supernatural element is brief. Again, the concepts of this novel are more important than the "effect."
Finally, even more so than in his short stories and his other gothic novel, OLD HOUSE OF FEAR, Kirk's conservative philosophies (which are a far cry from the Far Right Wing Nuts of today, to be fair) and his Catholic beliefs are on full display, here. Think of a gothic novel written by Dean Koontz at the height of his game (it wouldn't surprise me in the least if Koontz read this at this some point), with more robust prose than Koontz offers, and you're in the right ball park. In any case, if you can find an inexpensive copy of this (hard to do) and all this sounds interesting to you, definitely worth your time.
Finally, even more so than in his short stories and his other gothic novel, OLD HOUSE OF FEAR, Kirk's conservative philosophies (which are a far cry from the Far Right Wing Nuts of today, to be fair) and his Catholic beliefs are on full display, here. Think of a gothic novel written by Dean Koontz at the height of his game (it wouldn't surprise me in the least if Koontz read this at this some point), with more robust prose than Koontz offers, and you're in the right ball park. In any case, if you can find an inexpensive copy of this (hard to do) and all this sounds interesting to you, definitely worth your time.
February 14, 2018
Elegant metaphysical puzzle posing as a gothic novel. You shan't find exciting action or visceral frights here. In fact, this novel's extremely slow, dialogue-heavy nature and its reliance on subjective perceptions of its characters, coupled with its (seemingly) formulaic plot, might repulse many a reader early on. On top of that, novel is packed with M.R. James-like antiquarian element, with detailed discussion of mansion's history and architecture that might be dry and tiresome for some readers.
All the trappings of those olden gothics are used: entrapped heroine, scheming lord, lost heir, rambling ancient mansion filled with secret passages and dark secrets and so on...
But, beneath that, this is a deeply philosophical tale of eternal battle, of spiritual transformation, of quest for the Centre, for that point "when time and the timeless intersect". Familiarity with Eliot's poetry is very much required, and familiarity with Kirk's own analysis of it very much welcome as is some understanding of classical symbolism. Also, if one is familiar with his short story "Balgrummo’s Hell" (found in "Ancestral Shadows", collected edition of Kirk's strange tales that can still be acquired for reasonable price), then enjoyment will be all the more complete, especially in the case of Apollinax's final fate.
All the trappings of those olden gothics are used: entrapped heroine, scheming lord, lost heir, rambling ancient mansion filled with secret passages and dark secrets and so on...
But, beneath that, this is a deeply philosophical tale of eternal battle, of spiritual transformation, of quest for the Centre, for that point "when time and the timeless intersect". Familiarity with Eliot's poetry is very much required, and familiarity with Kirk's own analysis of it very much welcome as is some understanding of classical symbolism. Also, if one is familiar with his short story "Balgrummo’s Hell" (found in "Ancestral Shadows", collected edition of Kirk's strange tales that can still be acquired for reasonable price), then enjoyment will be all the more complete, especially in the case of Apollinax's final fate.
January 5, 2018
I really liked this book. Part of the conceit is extensive references to TS Eliot, which was somewhat interesting. More than that, it followed very well on the heels of my reading of Charles Williams. It was a very Williams-esque novel. I will definitely look for more of Kirk's fiction to read.
October 24, 2022
Halfway between an adventure novel and a gothic ghost story, with lots of fascinating layers to peel back.
November 16, 2017
Some good parts, but I think much of the exposition tends to meander and the coincidences seem a bit forced.
November 25, 2023
a little clunky in setup but once the guests are all arrived at Balgrummo Lodging, Kirk lets loose a delightfully arcane adventure.
October 15, 2016
Entertaining and well done light 1970's horror story, long on atmosphere and characters. The plot moves slowly but the pleasures of the story and the characters are such that this is a minor quibble. Not an easy book to track down but well worth reading.
March 23, 2011
The allegory is elaborate, and requires the reader to work, but it is immensely rewarding if its followed through
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews