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Strange Tales
Hanns Ewers (1871-1943) wrote some of the strangest tales of the period, including three (vaguely) autobiographical novels and several volumes of short stories many of which refer to his major themes of obsession, transformation, depravity and blood. This was in addition to his extensive travels worldwide, his activities as a propagandist/spy during WWI, screenwriter, poet, playwright, prodigious drug (ab)user and associations with members of Nazi elite. Hitler himself supposedly asked him to write the official biography of Horst Wessel which he did, but was subsequently declared an unperson by the Nazis (he was nationalistic rather than anti-semitic) his books banned and burnt. He died in Berlin of tuberculosis largely forgotten.
His novels and a few of his stories were translated and published in the 1920s but barring a volume by the Runa Raven press (published 2000) he is largely still unknown to the English speaking world not least because these volumes now command high prices on the second-hand market.
We are very pleased to announce that, in conjunction with the H.H.E. estate, a new volume of stories, including some newly translated works is now available, together with Ewers essay/paean to Edgar Allan Poe (first published in English in 1917).
Contents:
* Introduction by J. N. Hirschhorn-Smith
* ‘Carnival In Cadiz’*
* ‘The Dead Jew’*
* ‘John Hamilton Llewellyn's End’
* ‘Gentlemen of the Bar’*
* ‘The Tophar Bride’*
* ‘The Typhoid Mary’*
* ‘The Spider’
* ‘Fairyland’
* ’From The Diary Of An Orange Tree’
* ‘The Death of Baron Jesus Maria von Friedel’*
* ‘Mamoloi'
* Edgar Allan Poe
*=newly translated.
His novels and a few of his stories were translated and published in the 1920s but barring a volume by the Runa Raven press (published 2000) he is largely still unknown to the English speaking world not least because these volumes now command high prices on the second-hand market.
We are very pleased to announce that, in conjunction with the H.H.E. estate, a new volume of stories, including some newly translated works is now available, together with Ewers essay/paean to Edgar Allan Poe (first published in English in 1917).
Contents:
* Introduction by J. N. Hirschhorn-Smith
* ‘Carnival In Cadiz’*
* ‘The Dead Jew’*
* ‘John Hamilton Llewellyn's End’
* ‘Gentlemen of the Bar’*
* ‘The Tophar Bride’*
* ‘The Typhoid Mary’*
* ‘The Spider’
* ‘Fairyland’
* ’From The Diary Of An Orange Tree’
* ‘The Death of Baron Jesus Maria von Friedel’*
* ‘Mamoloi'
* Edgar Allan Poe
*=newly translated.
166 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1922
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459 people want to read
About the author
Hanns Heinz Ewers
215 books128 followersHanns Heinz Ewers (1871-1943) was a German actor, poet, philosopher, and writer of short stories and novels. While he wrote on a wide range of subjects, he is today known chiefly for his works of horror, particularly his trilogy of novels centered around the adventures of Frank Braun, a character modeled not too loosely on himself.
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May 6, 2018
This book by Side Real press is part of an ongoing attempt to get some of the work of foreign weird tales authors translated into English. In a unfortunately common approach, the presumed limited audience for the work justifies a small print run, high production values and high price. There is no doubt, the book itself is an absolutely beautiful object with strong binding, heavy stock covers and textured front. Previous to this book, I (like most weird fiction readers), primarily knew Ewers as the author of the wonderful, obsessive tale of suicide, "The Spider" (which first appeared in English in Dashiell Hammett's Creeps by Night anthology in 1931). But Ewers wrote a lot of short fiction (not to mention one of the pivotal early horror novels, Alraune), most of which languished untranslated (or were only available in old, rare editions).
The introduction by John Hirschhorn-Smith gives a compact, intriguing overview of the life of the complex, controversial, fascinating writer Hanns Heinz Ewers (1871-1943): popular author, decadent (much profligacy, many duels fought), Occultist & medium, compatriot of Edvard Munch and August Strindberg, bisexual androgyne, law student, early screenwriter/film director (movies having just been invented), nudist, German spy/propagandist in America in WWI (for which he was jailed), scandalous cabaret impresario, world traveler, Racialist (who, interestingly, believed that the Jewish people were the closest equals to the Aryans in Europe and was a great booster of the Jewish people and culture) and early member of the Nazi Party (later ejected and placed on Goebbels' enemies list)! He also created one of the earliest horror novel series characters - occultist, anthropologist & professional meddler Frank Braun, translated Aleister Crowley into German, researched Voodoo in Haiti & New Orleans, dabbled in chemical/biological warfare and wrote plays (he couldn't find a German who could write "blues music")! Whew!
If you are interested in how the weird tale manifested in other cultures - and can afford to track down a copy - this is certainly a book worth taking a look at.
And now, let me dig into the stories!
"Carnival In Cadiz" is an odd, weird tale (not really "horror") which almost reads like some strange folktale. At the costumed height of carnival, in the the Spanish town's central marketplace, a large tree appears - and begins to walk slowly back and forth. No one can understand why or, after some actions are taken, how.... This is a strange, enigmatic tale - it would have been nice if the introduction had offered some analysis/explication but, as it stands, one is left wondering whether it was meant to be taken at face value or whether at this late date the intended symbolism is inscrutable.
In "Mamaloi" we are given (in an epistolary frame) the details of a old, scandalous occurrence involving voodoo by a corrupt, decadent, aging German emigre to Haiti. The fact that the story (at least at the start) is deliberately calculated to scandalize the narrator's pious relative - and so contains offhanded remarks about taking sexual advantage of 8 year old children, fathering bastards and procuring aphrodisiacs - may make one pause as to its supposed veracity, but still...The narrator believed his Haitian servant/slave Adelaide may be a Voodoo priestess (he prepares for searching her room by reading detective stories!), which eventually proves to be true - and we are given a harrowing account of a ceremony in which a child is sacrificed and cannibalized at the height of a blood-lust driven orgy. There are the expected (yes, offensive racist language is used) subjective details of German racialist culture reflecting on/interacting with a "savage" populace (the belief that "human meat" was sold in the market at Easter) and belief system, but these also prove interesting - Vodun, at this time in weird fiction, tends to be seen from a British perspective. On the one hand, Ewers (with his occult background) is more interested in specific details of the practices and belief, but on the other hand he's more dismissive and derisive as the details are framed by his racist beliefs. Also, Ewers is surprisingly frank in his language - no Lovecraftian "blasphemous, unwholesome rites" eliding here - describing violent and sexual acts (including homosexuality) at the voodoo sacrifice - and he has the narrator drawn into the orgy! But then, Ewers is also much more psychologically sharp and frank about interrelationships (including sexual) between the German master and his slaves (which I doubt you'd get in a British story of the time) - as the story turns on the narrator's belief that he can exploit the (he presumes) gullible, superstitious natives for profit (which sounds like a dry run for Ewer's later Frank Braun novel The Sorcerer's Apprentice) which works for a while, but ends tragically. A very interesting story.
In "The Death Of Baron Jesus Maria Von Friedel" we're given a surprisingly frank discussion of other matters entirely - bisexuality or transgenderism - in a long character study that only frames itself as a "weird tale" in its outre (for the time) subject matter and suicidal conclusion. We hear the life story of the titular character from a friend - Freidel, an orphan raised by wealthy women and Romantic teachers, makes his way up the social/career later as he survives various sexual scandals (the story takes a moment for Ewers to take some swipes at his shared history with Strindberg, not to mention some gossip about Nietzsche's sister, of all things). In Paraguay the friend runs into Friedel living/dressing as a woman (it is intimated that he changes his gender identity on a whim) and when he finally gains his inheritance and returns to Europe, s/he sequesters hirself in a remote castle - from which the friend occasionally receives various obsessive journal-like "jottings" in distinctly different masculine / feminine handwriting (the feminine writes poetry, the masculine analyzes the Boer War). Through two different visions/memories - the masculine recounts a harrowing dream of multi-legged crabs advancing on a pauper's graveyard, the feminine a memory of seeing a male stage dancing act who moonlight in drag as women can-can dancers (their legs give them away) - it becomes obvious to the friend that Freidel's psyche is at war with itself. It doesn't end happily. The friend's psychoanalysis of Freidel ("a man who feels like a women and who sought out the company of lesbians, as they are women who feel like men"), and the story as a whole, really offers some interesting material for modern genre/gender studies (if one can place them in historical context).
"Gentlemen Of The Bar" is a meditation on corporal punishment, as a group of lawyers & judges discuss the death penalty, execution and the "injustice of justice", including how observing an execution makes one feel as if you are watching a foul, cowardly crime. One tells an anecdote about how the executioner's block gives the condemned a stage on which to exercise their inherent moral superiority over the condemners and crowd.
"John Hamilton Llewellyn's End" - a number of British clubmen discuss their eventual demises and the titular painter opines that art, or women, will likely do him in. And, years later, we find out that this is exactly true. Llewellyn is hired to paint the British Museum's secret new acquisition - a frozen prehistoric women - stored in a refrigerated vault in the basement. But unfortunately he becomes obsessed with her as both his love and his muse, with disastrous results. This story has a macabre ending that conflates near-necrophilia and the climax of H.P. Lovecraft's classic "Cool Air" (21 years before that story was written).
In "The Dead Jew" an actor recalls a terrible memory of his student years, where he is roped into seconding at an early morning duel. The duel is between a bullying student and a mild-mannered Jew, Selig Perlmutter, who dared to stand up to antisemitic abuse at a tavern. Ewers' racialist beliefs in the strength of the Jews underscores this sad story, which moves on from the terrible event to a harrowing, nightmarish carriage ride that goes on for hours. This is a very good story and deserves to be revived. Oddly, this is one of the few pieces here where the proofreading seems to have been rushed (a few incorrect tenses and dropped punctuation)
"The Spider" is a classic, as I said earlier. A medical student, Richard Bracquemont, tricks the police (through high-handed occult bloviating) into letting him be the next person to occupy a notorious room wherein three previous tenants, without obvious reason, have hanged themselves (the last a police detective sent to investigate the crime!). We then get his journal entries which track his boredom and then descent into imaginative fascination with the woman across the street whom endlessly knits. He eventually fixates on her and believes they share love, even while they play repetitive "gesture games" and his identity and autonomy is slowly subsumed under her control. This is a powerful little "descent into obsession" story (the bits where he realizes he is not the one in control are quite good) which also climaxes with the Lovecraftian cliche of "writing until the final moment" climax. I've always felt it owed something to Erkmann-Chatrian's "The Invisible Eye."
"My Burial" - a bit of a different tone here, much more in a "Black Humor/Absurdist" vein, as a man arranges his own transport, burial and mourning - communicating with the transport crew from his coffin. Brother Theodore would be proud! Eventually, it resolves into bureaucratic slapstick at a court of law where the dead man must demand his own status as deceased be acknowledged!
"From The Diary Of An Orange Tree" is, again, something different - the journal of an asylum inmate attempting to convince his doctor that he is becoming an orange tree, this is actually a rather powerful and striking bit of dark fantasy. He describes his introduction to Lady Emy Steenhop (who holds all the local military men enraptured - until some begin to disappear) and then digresses on occult/philosophical views on the nature of matter and consciousness. There's some beautiful fantasy writing here as the patient recounts his romantic ensorcellment (at one point he regales her with a poem of love in which many Decadent writers are name checked) - in a way, a very traditional narrative of the femme fatale, but wonderfully done.
"The Tophar Bride" is the oldest piece in the collection - a macabre tale of a man who agrees to share extra rooms in his new lodgings with a stranger - one Fritz Beckers - who is somewhat secretive and despised by the narrator's girlfriend Aenny (who suffers fainting spells due to her weak heart). Beckers routinely receives strange packages in the mail (one, opened by mistake, divulges a compliment of dead cats!) but is a fine conversationalist. One evening Aenny disappears and much later, the narrator is invited by Beckers to a strange party. Years later, having moved on in his life, the narrator attends an archeological exhibit and receives a shocking surprise...All in all, an enjoyable little weird crime tale.
"The Typhoid Mary" is an interesting story - not weird so much as a postscript to the decadent movement, it begins as notorious artist, author and libertine Marie Stuyvesant is brought before a council of gentlemen (all but one known to her). There, they accuse her - through her artwork, fiction and daredevil lifestyle (which includes much drug use) - of being a negative/destructive influence on individuals and the overall culture of humanity (despite she herself remaining "spiritually pure"). Thus, they argue, she is a moral/cultural version of the notorious Typhoid Mary, who remains immune to her own bad habits while she designs sexualized clothes, throws fashion balls that devolve into orgies, influences young people to abandon societal norms and become alcoholics, while inspiring others to take risky chances. To end her pernicious corruption, they demand that she consider suicide - which she laughingly rejects, defusing their argument and stating "the little sparks I throw out can only kindle great fires if they strike the right tinder." This is an interesting piece, as it shows Ewers directly grappling with the moral/ethical questions raised by the decadent movement's influence, as well as the arguments raised against *all* subversive and transgressive art and action.
Finally we have Ewer's beautiful essay "Edgar Allan Poe" - framed/interspersed with the author visiting and commenting on The Alhambra (including a short nod to Washington Irving's TALES FROM THE ALHAMBRA) this is Ewer's reflecting on the great author. It starts with warnings to not read authors critiquing your favorite authors until you know they are worthy of the task (Rufus Wilmot Griswold & John Henry Ingram are dismissed, "only Charles Baudelaire comprehended Poe") and the simple tasks of noting important dates and places before, again, moving on. From there, Ewers notes the importance of intoxication to Poe's (and others) works and writing in general, and how this is used as a prop for prudes to dismiss their greatness while arguing that all true artists, in one form or another, in one way or another, use intoxicants (if not actual, then cultural or spiritual) to inspire their insight. He argues that Poe precedes Émile Zola's "genius is application" maxim, while paralleling an American version of Théophile Gautier's "Art for Art's Sake." He talks a bit about genre (finding Jules Verne & Arthur Conan Doyle pale imitators of Poe) and then cogitates on how, starting with Poe, authors no longer need to aim their works at their national/racial audience (as the common man cares little anyway), but instead the modern author writes for "the nation of culture." There's also an interesting bit where he argues that no author before Poe was both so objective and so subjective - which reminded me of the Edmond de Goncourt & Jules de Goncourt's take on Poe. Quite a moving essay, you can tell that Ewers, like many other writers of the time, felt a great affinity & respect for the ground Poe broke ahead of them.
Quite an interesting collection of fiction!
The introduction by John Hirschhorn-Smith gives a compact, intriguing overview of the life of the complex, controversial, fascinating writer Hanns Heinz Ewers (1871-1943): popular author, decadent (much profligacy, many duels fought), Occultist & medium, compatriot of Edvard Munch and August Strindberg, bisexual androgyne, law student, early screenwriter/film director (movies having just been invented), nudist, German spy/propagandist in America in WWI (for which he was jailed), scandalous cabaret impresario, world traveler, Racialist (who, interestingly, believed that the Jewish people were the closest equals to the Aryans in Europe and was a great booster of the Jewish people and culture) and early member of the Nazi Party (later ejected and placed on Goebbels' enemies list)! He also created one of the earliest horror novel series characters - occultist, anthropologist & professional meddler Frank Braun, translated Aleister Crowley into German, researched Voodoo in Haiti & New Orleans, dabbled in chemical/biological warfare and wrote plays (he couldn't find a German who could write "blues music")! Whew!
If you are interested in how the weird tale manifested in other cultures - and can afford to track down a copy - this is certainly a book worth taking a look at.
And now, let me dig into the stories!
"Carnival In Cadiz" is an odd, weird tale (not really "horror") which almost reads like some strange folktale. At the costumed height of carnival, in the the Spanish town's central marketplace, a large tree appears - and begins to walk slowly back and forth. No one can understand why or, after some actions are taken, how.... This is a strange, enigmatic tale - it would have been nice if the introduction had offered some analysis/explication but, as it stands, one is left wondering whether it was meant to be taken at face value or whether at this late date the intended symbolism is inscrutable.
In "Mamaloi" we are given (in an epistolary frame) the details of a old, scandalous occurrence involving voodoo by a corrupt, decadent, aging German emigre to Haiti. The fact that the story (at least at the start) is deliberately calculated to scandalize the narrator's pious relative - and so contains offhanded remarks about taking sexual advantage of 8 year old children, fathering bastards and procuring aphrodisiacs - may make one pause as to its supposed veracity, but still...The narrator believed his Haitian servant/slave Adelaide may be a Voodoo priestess (he prepares for searching her room by reading detective stories!), which eventually proves to be true - and we are given a harrowing account of a ceremony in which a child is sacrificed and cannibalized at the height of a blood-lust driven orgy. There are the expected (yes, offensive racist language is used) subjective details of German racialist culture reflecting on/interacting with a "savage" populace (the belief that "human meat" was sold in the market at Easter) and belief system, but these also prove interesting - Vodun, at this time in weird fiction, tends to be seen from a British perspective. On the one hand, Ewers (with his occult background) is more interested in specific details of the practices and belief, but on the other hand he's more dismissive and derisive as the details are framed by his racist beliefs. Also, Ewers is surprisingly frank in his language - no Lovecraftian "blasphemous, unwholesome rites" eliding here - describing violent and sexual acts (including homosexuality) at the voodoo sacrifice - and he has the narrator drawn into the orgy! But then, Ewers is also much more psychologically sharp and frank about interrelationships (including sexual) between the German master and his slaves (which I doubt you'd get in a British story of the time) - as the story turns on the narrator's belief that he can exploit the (he presumes) gullible, superstitious natives for profit (which sounds like a dry run for Ewer's later Frank Braun novel The Sorcerer's Apprentice) which works for a while, but ends tragically. A very interesting story.
In "The Death Of Baron Jesus Maria Von Friedel" we're given a surprisingly frank discussion of other matters entirely - bisexuality or transgenderism - in a long character study that only frames itself as a "weird tale" in its outre (for the time) subject matter and suicidal conclusion. We hear the life story of the titular character from a friend - Freidel, an orphan raised by wealthy women and Romantic teachers, makes his way up the social/career later as he survives various sexual scandals (the story takes a moment for Ewers to take some swipes at his shared history with Strindberg, not to mention some gossip about Nietzsche's sister, of all things). In Paraguay the friend runs into Friedel living/dressing as a woman (it is intimated that he changes his gender identity on a whim) and when he finally gains his inheritance and returns to Europe, s/he sequesters hirself in a remote castle - from which the friend occasionally receives various obsessive journal-like "jottings" in distinctly different masculine / feminine handwriting (the feminine writes poetry, the masculine analyzes the Boer War). Through two different visions/memories - the masculine recounts a harrowing dream of multi-legged crabs advancing on a pauper's graveyard, the feminine a memory of seeing a male stage dancing act who moonlight in drag as women can-can dancers (their legs give them away) - it becomes obvious to the friend that Freidel's psyche is at war with itself. It doesn't end happily. The friend's psychoanalysis of Freidel ("a man who feels like a women and who sought out the company of lesbians, as they are women who feel like men"), and the story as a whole, really offers some interesting material for modern genre/gender studies (if one can place them in historical context).
"Gentlemen Of The Bar" is a meditation on corporal punishment, as a group of lawyers & judges discuss the death penalty, execution and the "injustice of justice", including how observing an execution makes one feel as if you are watching a foul, cowardly crime. One tells an anecdote about how the executioner's block gives the condemned a stage on which to exercise their inherent moral superiority over the condemners and crowd.
"John Hamilton Llewellyn's End" - a number of British clubmen discuss their eventual demises and the titular painter opines that art, or women, will likely do him in. And, years later, we find out that this is exactly true. Llewellyn is hired to paint the British Museum's secret new acquisition - a frozen prehistoric women - stored in a refrigerated vault in the basement. But unfortunately he becomes obsessed with her as both his love and his muse, with disastrous results. This story has a macabre ending that conflates near-necrophilia and the climax of H.P. Lovecraft's classic "Cool Air" (21 years before that story was written).
In "The Dead Jew" an actor recalls a terrible memory of his student years, where he is roped into seconding at an early morning duel. The duel is between a bullying student and a mild-mannered Jew, Selig Perlmutter, who dared to stand up to antisemitic abuse at a tavern. Ewers' racialist beliefs in the strength of the Jews underscores this sad story, which moves on from the terrible event to a harrowing, nightmarish carriage ride that goes on for hours. This is a very good story and deserves to be revived. Oddly, this is one of the few pieces here where the proofreading seems to have been rushed (a few incorrect tenses and dropped punctuation)
"The Spider" is a classic, as I said earlier. A medical student, Richard Bracquemont, tricks the police (through high-handed occult bloviating) into letting him be the next person to occupy a notorious room wherein three previous tenants, without obvious reason, have hanged themselves (the last a police detective sent to investigate the crime!). We then get his journal entries which track his boredom and then descent into imaginative fascination with the woman across the street whom endlessly knits. He eventually fixates on her and believes they share love, even while they play repetitive "gesture games" and his identity and autonomy is slowly subsumed under her control. This is a powerful little "descent into obsession" story (the bits where he realizes he is not the one in control are quite good) which also climaxes with the Lovecraftian cliche of "writing until the final moment" climax. I've always felt it owed something to Erkmann-Chatrian's "The Invisible Eye."
"My Burial" - a bit of a different tone here, much more in a "Black Humor/Absurdist" vein, as a man arranges his own transport, burial and mourning - communicating with the transport crew from his coffin. Brother Theodore would be proud! Eventually, it resolves into bureaucratic slapstick at a court of law where the dead man must demand his own status as deceased be acknowledged!
"From The Diary Of An Orange Tree" is, again, something different - the journal of an asylum inmate attempting to convince his doctor that he is becoming an orange tree, this is actually a rather powerful and striking bit of dark fantasy. He describes his introduction to Lady Emy Steenhop (who holds all the local military men enraptured - until some begin to disappear) and then digresses on occult/philosophical views on the nature of matter and consciousness. There's some beautiful fantasy writing here as the patient recounts his romantic ensorcellment (at one point he regales her with a poem of love in which many Decadent writers are name checked) - in a way, a very traditional narrative of the femme fatale, but wonderfully done.
"The Tophar Bride" is the oldest piece in the collection - a macabre tale of a man who agrees to share extra rooms in his new lodgings with a stranger - one Fritz Beckers - who is somewhat secretive and despised by the narrator's girlfriend Aenny (who suffers fainting spells due to her weak heart). Beckers routinely receives strange packages in the mail (one, opened by mistake, divulges a compliment of dead cats!) but is a fine conversationalist. One evening Aenny disappears and much later, the narrator is invited by Beckers to a strange party. Years later, having moved on in his life, the narrator attends an archeological exhibit and receives a shocking surprise...All in all, an enjoyable little weird crime tale.
"The Typhoid Mary" is an interesting story - not weird so much as a postscript to the decadent movement, it begins as notorious artist, author and libertine Marie Stuyvesant is brought before a council of gentlemen (all but one known to her). There, they accuse her - through her artwork, fiction and daredevil lifestyle (which includes much drug use) - of being a negative/destructive influence on individuals and the overall culture of humanity (despite she herself remaining "spiritually pure"). Thus, they argue, she is a moral/cultural version of the notorious Typhoid Mary, who remains immune to her own bad habits while she designs sexualized clothes, throws fashion balls that devolve into orgies, influences young people to abandon societal norms and become alcoholics, while inspiring others to take risky chances. To end her pernicious corruption, they demand that she consider suicide - which she laughingly rejects, defusing their argument and stating "the little sparks I throw out can only kindle great fires if they strike the right tinder." This is an interesting piece, as it shows Ewers directly grappling with the moral/ethical questions raised by the decadent movement's influence, as well as the arguments raised against *all* subversive and transgressive art and action.
Finally we have Ewer's beautiful essay "Edgar Allan Poe" - framed/interspersed with the author visiting and commenting on The Alhambra (including a short nod to Washington Irving's TALES FROM THE ALHAMBRA) this is Ewer's reflecting on the great author. It starts with warnings to not read authors critiquing your favorite authors until you know they are worthy of the task (Rufus Wilmot Griswold & John Henry Ingram are dismissed, "only Charles Baudelaire comprehended Poe") and the simple tasks of noting important dates and places before, again, moving on. From there, Ewers notes the importance of intoxication to Poe's (and others) works and writing in general, and how this is used as a prop for prudes to dismiss their greatness while arguing that all true artists, in one form or another, in one way or another, use intoxicants (if not actual, then cultural or spiritual) to inspire their insight. He argues that Poe precedes Émile Zola's "genius is application" maxim, while paralleling an American version of Théophile Gautier's "Art for Art's Sake." He talks a bit about genre (finding Jules Verne & Arthur Conan Doyle pale imitators of Poe) and then cogitates on how, starting with Poe, authors no longer need to aim their works at their national/racial audience (as the common man cares little anyway), but instead the modern author writes for "the nation of culture." There's also an interesting bit where he argues that no author before Poe was both so objective and so subjective - which reminded me of the Edmond de Goncourt & Jules de Goncourt's take on Poe. Quite a moving essay, you can tell that Ewers, like many other writers of the time, felt a great affinity & respect for the ground Poe broke ahead of them.
Quite an interesting collection of fiction!
April 25, 2010
Hanns Heinz Ewers was truly a Satanic Renaissance man, a man that dabbled darkly in a variety of fiendish fields including philosophy, poetry, Pro-German World War I propaganda (he was even imprisoned as an alien spy), artistic cinema innovator, fencing, the Occult, and a variety of other rather dubious things. Ewers was even an associate of Guido von List, Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, and Aleister Crowley. Although a Philo-Semite (claiming that Jews were the only other race comparable to the Nordic type), Hanns Heinz Ewers would also be the writer of the biography of Nazi Martyr Horst Wessel which Adolf Hitler personally asked Ewers to write. Due to his undeniable degeneracy (both in his personal life and in some of his artistic achievements), the National Socialists booted Hanns Heinz Ewers out of their club and he died virtually penniless. National Socialist philosopher Alfred Rosenberg even describes Ewers as a degenerate artist in his masterwork "The Myth of the Twentieth Century."
Nowadays, Hanns Heinz Ewers is virtually an unknown figure despite his many accomplishments. The only place Ewers receives any recognition is in the world of horror fiction. Ewers was even an influence of the great H.P. Lovecraft who stated in his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature" (1927) the following about Ewers...: "In the present generation German horror fiction is most notably represented by Hanns-Heinz Ewers, who brings to bear on his dark conceptions an effective knowledge of modern psychology. Novels like "The Sorcerer's Apprentice and "Alraune" and short stories like "The Spider" contain distinctive qualities which raise them to a classic level."
It is more than obvious reading Hanns Hans Ewers that his wonderful horror stories were no doubt an influence on Lovecraft. Ewers traveled around the world and had the luxury of staying with a variety of primitives where he even once saw a Haitian boy sacrificed by a Voodoo tribe. In the book "Strange Tales" the story "Mamaloi" describes this semi-autobiographical VooDoo horror. While taking a tour of the Southern United States, Ewers was also involved in grave robbing. After touching a corpse, Ewers contracted eczema on his palm that would leave a haunting reminder of his devilish deeds. Hanns Hans Ewer's horror writing is as esoteric as they come making for very eerie reading.
A short introduction/biography is featured in "Strange Tales" written by Stephen E. Flowers. This short description of Ewers's very wicked life (the only "bio" written on Ewers in English) makes the book worth reading alone. I don't think I would be exaggerating when I say that Hanns Heinz Ewers is my favorite horror writer, but to simply describe his stories as "horror" (especially in context with how the genre has been bastardized today) would be obscene.
Runa-Raven has already had "Strange Tales" go out-of-print once, so I highly recommend ordering a copy of the book ASAP. "Strange Tales" is no doubt already one of my favorite books in my small library now. I just hope other publishers will come to their senses and publish the works of a Philo-Semitic nudist Nazi turned Nazi-reject.
Nowadays, Hanns Heinz Ewers is virtually an unknown figure despite his many accomplishments. The only place Ewers receives any recognition is in the world of horror fiction. Ewers was even an influence of the great H.P. Lovecraft who stated in his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature" (1927) the following about Ewers...: "In the present generation German horror fiction is most notably represented by Hanns-Heinz Ewers, who brings to bear on his dark conceptions an effective knowledge of modern psychology. Novels like "The Sorcerer's Apprentice and "Alraune" and short stories like "The Spider" contain distinctive qualities which raise them to a classic level."
It is more than obvious reading Hanns Hans Ewers that his wonderful horror stories were no doubt an influence on Lovecraft. Ewers traveled around the world and had the luxury of staying with a variety of primitives where he even once saw a Haitian boy sacrificed by a Voodoo tribe. In the book "Strange Tales" the story "Mamaloi" describes this semi-autobiographical VooDoo horror. While taking a tour of the Southern United States, Ewers was also involved in grave robbing. After touching a corpse, Ewers contracted eczema on his palm that would leave a haunting reminder of his devilish deeds. Hanns Hans Ewer's horror writing is as esoteric as they come making for very eerie reading.
A short introduction/biography is featured in "Strange Tales" written by Stephen E. Flowers. This short description of Ewers's very wicked life (the only "bio" written on Ewers in English) makes the book worth reading alone. I don't think I would be exaggerating when I say that Hanns Heinz Ewers is my favorite horror writer, but to simply describe his stories as "horror" (especially in context with how the genre has been bastardized today) would be obscene.
Runa-Raven has already had "Strange Tales" go out-of-print once, so I highly recommend ordering a copy of the book ASAP. "Strange Tales" is no doubt already one of my favorite books in my small library now. I just hope other publishers will come to their senses and publish the works of a Philo-Semitic nudist Nazi turned Nazi-reject.
May 1, 2012
While dabbling in the realm of supernatural fiction, I came across Ewers's masterful "The Spider" in a compilation of stories that influenced H.P. Lovecraft. Since then, I embarked on a quest to seek out and find any story that the almost forgotten Austrian created. Side Reel Press is currently translating and printing a decent amount of his work, BUT no other edition demonstrates Ewers's craftmanship or genious like Strange Tales, the translation is amazing and really captures Ewers's penchant for bleakness and imagination. The price for this is often steep, but indefinitely worthwhile. Tales such as "Diary of an Orange Tree," "Tomato Sauce," and aforementioned "The Spider" really raises the standard for even Classic horror/ imaginary fiction in general; reject the masses and don't ignore this amazing writer.
October 20, 2021
I discovered Hanns Heinz Ewers like most people probably do nowadays: from being mentioned in H. P. Lovecraft's essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature," in which he gives the German decadent great praise as a modern master. Ewers was extremely popular in his time but had mostly dropped off the face of the Earth. Or rather, as the modern term goes, was canceled.
This book starts with a very helpful biography of Ewers that sheds light on the heavily autobiographical aspects of his writing. He was interested in the occult, supposedly even seeing a child sacrificed in a voodoo ceremony, had a number of homosexual affairs, was a pioneer of cinema as art, gave lectures internationally on the greatness of Satan, was briefly suspected of being the Vampire of Duesseldorf, travelled the world and, unfortunately and however briefly, was involved with the nazis. In this brief bio I've found him to possibly be the most fascinating writer I've ever come across.
As for the stories collected here, they are probably the most nasty and violent I've ever seen from this era. Much less gruesome writings were decried as society-shaking in their time. He treats topics like rape, torture and pedophilia with a kind of casual indifference. There is a biting cruelty to that casualness, as if the world is far too awful to even bother with caring.
This book starts with a very helpful biography of Ewers that sheds light on the heavily autobiographical aspects of his writing. He was interested in the occult, supposedly even seeing a child sacrificed in a voodoo ceremony, had a number of homosexual affairs, was a pioneer of cinema as art, gave lectures internationally on the greatness of Satan, was briefly suspected of being the Vampire of Duesseldorf, travelled the world and, unfortunately and however briefly, was involved with the nazis. In this brief bio I've found him to possibly be the most fascinating writer I've ever come across.
As for the stories collected here, they are probably the most nasty and violent I've ever seen from this era. Much less gruesome writings were decried as society-shaking in their time. He treats topics like rape, torture and pedophilia with a kind of casual indifference. There is a biting cruelty to that casualness, as if the world is far too awful to even bother with caring.
April 17, 2021
Dark and disturbing stories from a strange and unusual man.
Ewers' best known work (in English translation at least) is 'The Spider', of course, and this absolute masterpiece of a weird tale is included in this volume. All of the other stories were new to me, every one of them was completely different, not only from each other, but from everything else.
There is a strand of strangeness, an unknown and alarming perspective, which runs through all of these stories. The most hideous and cruel sufferings are recounted with delicacy and refinement. Values are revaluated and turned around at every step.
In reading these tales, we are witness to an imagination and a creative will which are far beyond the pale. The informative and lucid biographical introduction places his life into perspective, and this assists greatly in appreciating his art.
There is more to offend the offendable in these pages than I can be bothered recounting, but since art must always conquer taste I feel no regard for such people in any case. For the few who can think for themselves, these stories are a window into the imagination of a darkly splendid genius.
Ewers' best known work (in English translation at least) is 'The Spider', of course, and this absolute masterpiece of a weird tale is included in this volume. All of the other stories were new to me, every one of them was completely different, not only from each other, but from everything else.
There is a strand of strangeness, an unknown and alarming perspective, which runs through all of these stories. The most hideous and cruel sufferings are recounted with delicacy and refinement. Values are revaluated and turned around at every step.
In reading these tales, we are witness to an imagination and a creative will which are far beyond the pale. The informative and lucid biographical introduction places his life into perspective, and this assists greatly in appreciating his art.
There is more to offend the offendable in these pages than I can be bothered recounting, but since art must always conquer taste I feel no regard for such people in any case. For the few who can think for themselves, these stories are a window into the imagination of a darkly splendid genius.
June 23, 2014
Wonderful collection!
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