The Dark Chamber

by Leonard Cline

Originally published in August 1927 while its author was bound over in jail awaiting trial, The Dark Chamber has achieved a legendary status among fans of weird fiction. Leonard Cline's third novel, it is remembered today thanks to H. P. Lovecraft, who called it extremely high in artistic stature. The novel has been called a precursor to Paddy Chayefsky's book Altered States, for it tells the tale of a man, Richard Pride, who, in attempting to recall the lost moments of his life, resorts to stimulation by means of music, smells, and drugs, until he taps into hereditary memory, into the dark chamber of his mind.

Genres: Horror, Classics, Fiction

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1927

About the author

Leonard Lanson Cline was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, and journalist. His writings were published in a variety of magazines: he New Republic, The American Mercury, The Smart Set, The Nation and Scribner's Magazine. His journalist work was published in the Baltimore Sun, The New York World, The Chicago Daily News, The New York Herald Tribune, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

In 1927, during a drunken quarrel, Cline shot his friend Wilfred Irwin, who died of his wounds several hours later. Cline was tried and sentenced to a year in prison for manslaughter. He was released after eight months for good behavior. Henry Luce gave Cline a job at Time when he got out of prison.

Reviews

[Jack Tripper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here's the 1969 Popular Library mass-market I'm reading (189 pages). Love the creepily evocative, 60s gothic romance-y vibe. Only instead of having the requisite gowned and candle-laden woman running away from the evil, she's heading toward it. One of my favorite vintage covers.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just recently, I had some words to say concerning British author J. B. Priestley's chilling second novel, "Benighted," which was released in 1927. But, as it turns out, that was not the only atmospheric and genuinely unnerving horror exercise to come out that year. On the other side of the pond, Michigan-born author Leonard Cline, in his third novel, "The Dark Chamber," would create a work so very macabre that it would later earn enthusiastic praise in H. P. Lovecraft's renowned essay entitled "Supernatural Horror in Literature." Cline, who was 34 when this novel was released, would ultimately gain some minor renown as the author of some half a dozen books, in addition to working as both a journalist and poet; by January 1929, he would be dead, a victim of heart failure, at age 35. Today, "The Dark Chamber" is the work for which he is probably best remembered, aided no doubt by that very laudatory Lovecraft review. But for many years, the book was virtually impossible to find. After its initial release as a $2 Viking Press hardcover in 1927, it would go out of print for a full 42 years, until its reintroduction as a Popular Library paperback in 1969. The copy that I recently read was its third incarnation, as a 1983 Pinnacle paperback, and for readers today, there is a 2005 edition from Cold Spring Press that should fit the bill nicely. And a good thing, too. Though seldom discussed today, Cline reveals himself here to be a writer with a unique style and sensibility, and his third novel is now something of a cult item, well deserving of a reintroduction to a new generation of readers. Something of a sui generis experience, "The Dark Chamber" will surely not prove acceptable fare for all reading tastes, but for those who are game, it just might prove a memorable ride.

The book is narrated by a youngish, aspiring composer/classical pianist named Oscar Fitzalan. Oscar, when we first meet him, has just settled into the gloomy, Gothic pile known as Mordance Hall; a wonderful name for a creepy abode, with its vague suggestion of death. This crumbling manse is located atop the Palisades, 15 miles north of Edgewater, NJ, and is the residence of Richard Pride and his family. Pride, as it turns out, has hired Fitzalan to assist him in his current scientific endeavors. He has been attempting to bring back to his conscious memory every moment of his long life, and with the aid of three stories' worth of accumulated papers, plus photos, mementos, recordings, various scents and a pharmacopoeia of illicit drugs (stimulants, sedatives, morphine, cannabis, hashish, opium), is already far along the road of recalling all the incidents of his 70+ years. Oscar, it seems, will perform, on piano, various selected pieces as a further mnemonic aid in Richard Pride's researches. But that's not all. Pride has latterly become interested in the subject of ancestral memory, and several dreams that he relates to Fitzalan clearly demonstrate that he has tapped into the memories of his own grandparents, and even, astoundingly, of when Pride's ancestor was a sea-dwelling prehistoric monstrosity during the Triassic period of some 250 million years ago! And Pride is now seeking to explore even further, and to open the titular dark chamber of his mind to the full. And if this weren't enough of a freaky setup for a novel, author Cline also gives us a household of characters that almost rivals the oddball Femm clan in "Benighted." Pride's wife, Miriam, is an astrology-loving, self-styled sorceress of sorts, with whom Oscar enters into a clandestine affair. Janet, the Prides' 20-year-old daughter with whom Oscar desperately falls in love, is something of a wanton free spirit, most assuredly sexually liberated for 1927. Wilfred Hough, Richard's secretary, is a dour, haggard man who is head over heels in love with Miriam and completely under her thrall. And then there is Tod, the family's enormous, black police dog, whose presence always seems a threat to Oscar, and whose name, in German, means "death." Oh, it is quite a bizarre collection of quacks and kooks, to be sure, and as Pride's experiments begin to spiral out of control, one that begins to crack under the stresses, leading to a general tragedy and dissolution....

In hindsight, it is easy to see just why Cline's novel held such great appeal for Lovecraft. The book features a scientist who defies the natural order of things and, in his excessive, uh, pride, seeks to pierce the veil of the unknown, as did so many of H. P.'s protagonists. Although lacking any outright suggestion of cosmic horror, "The Dark Chamber" is nonetheless suffused with an aura of incipient doom, which must also have struck a chord with the "Sage of Providence." And then there is the writing style of the book itself, a dense, poetical, baroque way of telling a story that demonstrates quite clearly Cline's love of the English language. Rife with obscure vocabulary (more on this in a moment) and allusions, the novel is a highly literate exercise that will most likely stun the reader, although, again, it is assuredly not for all tastes, and does require a great deal of patience. Still, as I say, it was a favorite of Lovecraft, who deemed it "extremely high in artistic stature," and who went on to say that "the atmosphere of this novel is malevolently potent."

As for that writing style of Cline's, which makes the book the especial feast that it is, a few examples may suffice:

"...She dropped to the piano bench, sitting sidewise and gazing at me with an expression that burgeoned with an April of scorn...."

"...Miriam was a felled trunk whose core swirled with the coiling glow of phosphorus, but dun outside, giving no sign of that fire. And Janet was a hill by a marsh, frantic with the flitting of will-o’-the-wisps...."

Also of Janet, we are told:

"...she was song before it is fashioned: the fugitive suggestion of melodies before, selected and defined, they are woven together in the one conclusive pattern. She was a tingle of sweet flesh bewildered by the multiple potentialities of life. She was beautiful, and surely she could be tender. She was yet to be composed...."

The entire book is like that, and one can't help but think that our narrator Fitzalan might well become a writer himself, if his work as a budding composer does not pan out!

"The Dark Chamber," it must be stressed, is not an "easy book"; as a matter of fact, it is a very challenging one. At least, it was for me, a copy editor of some 40+ years who considers himself of about average intelligence when it comes to both culture and vocabulary. But this book was indeed one for the books! Its range of reference is immense, for one thing, and it might be a good idea for potential readers to bone up on such writers as Wilhelm Muller, Gustavo Adolfo Becquer and Eliphas Levy before venturing in...as well as the poets Ernest Dowson and Theophile Gautier, psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, Incan religion, Grecian courtesan Lais of Corinth, and classical music in general. (Strangely enough, Wagner's 1867 opera "Der Meistersinger" is brought up, as it had in another book that I'd recently read, Cromwell Gibbons' 1938 offering "The Bat Woman.") And then there's the matter of vocabulary; dozens upon dozens of 10-cent words that Cline regales the reader with, to his or her delight or consternation (both, in my case, but then again, I've always been a reader who feels compelled to look up every single reference that he doesn't know). OK, here is just a sampling of some of the words you must be prepared to encounter when attempting this book: meeching, famulus, barghest, girandole, pathognomy, venust, vielle, shilpit, orpiment, filemot, eagre, cockchafer, domdaniel, monstrance, pyx, malapert, erethism, emprise, fetch candle, orgulous, blissom, psychasthenia, divagation, lucubration, plumule, appetent, dereistic, grandisonant, dousterswivel, megrims, portamento, hierophant, anthomaniac, astrolatry, expatiate, pier glass, acrocephalic, corybant, maenad, crapulous, flittermouse, compendiate, baalim, douce, desuetude, inglecheek, ecphorization, paregoric, perpend, queachy, demency, cotquean, orotund, morsure, forspent, hurr, merd, cenobite, dingle, saprophytic, dulcitory and desquamate. What a Scrabble player Cline would have made! Is it any wonder that a reviewer back in 1927 called the book "...an amazingly worded orgy of the more unspeakable human propensities"?

Now, lest you think that I'm trying to scare you off here, rest assured that I am not. "The Dark Chamber" will surely demand much of the reader (better have that UNabridged dictionary handy!) but it is a book whose rewards will amply repay the efforts expended. It is one that grows wilder and more intense, stranger and ever more tragic, as it proceeds, and fair notice must be given that its body count is a high one. It is surely a novel that will linger long in the memory...and without the assistance of mnemonic devices, aroma cues, and a battery of psychoactive drugs! I'm not sure that I'll be attempting another Cline book anytime soon, but I'm very happy that I got to experience this one....

(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for fans of books such as this one....)

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Dark Chamber is told from the perspective of Oscar Fitzalan, who has come to a house called Mordance Hall. The book was written in the 1920s, so I'm assuming that's when it was set. Oscar has accepted a somewhat mysterious position where he is to assist the master of the house, a Richard Pride, who is working on some sort of strange psychological experiment involving human memory; also at the house is Miriam Price, Richard's wife, his daughter Janet, and a strange man who is Price's secretary, Wilfred Hough.

Price's experiment began with an exploration of combing his own memories; his theory was that the older a person became, the more memories he could recall. As he began to journal his memories, he hired an investigator to seek out the truth of his remembrances, and each time, the investigator proved Price's memories right. Now he has embarked on another quest, having gone as far back in his own life's memories as possible: he is investigating what he calls "ancestral memory," and his research will have some startling conclusions. His obsession with memory and his past most likely stems from his pathetic life in the present; his wife is whacko, his daughter is a stranger to him, and it is into this milieu that Oscar comes and finds himself becoming obsessed with figuring out what the heck is going on.

A very strong story; considering it was written in the 1920s, it is still amazingly clear and frightening in a psychological sort of way in the present. Recommended for readers of horror fiction.

[Eileen · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with T.E.D. Klein's The Ceremonies, I think people will either love this book or find it insufferably dull and plodding. My 1980s mass-market paperback edition makes it sound like a work of unrelenting terror, but it's actually very much a subtle slow burn. Like The Edge of Running Water by Cline's contemporary William Sloane, The Dark Chamber is a very silly premise salvaged by masterful prose, careful understatement, and close attention to atmosphere. Cline writes like an Art Deco Robert W. Chambers and it's a true pleasure to read. Hopefully he too will one day get NYRB Classics treatment.

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conocí esta obra gracias a Emiliano González, pues le dedica un capítulo en su libro Almas visionarias. Lo describió como el libro "más decadente y más inencontrable que pueda concebirse".
Ante tal premisa no dude en conseguirlo. Más de un década habría de pasar desde la publicación del libro de Emiliano para que Valdemar en su colección el Club Diógenes la editara en español.
El decadentismo y el simbolismo son dos sensibilidades que siempre me han asombrado. Aquellas cosas que se alejan del pensamiento racional y el materialismo y que nos llevan lentamente, al son de la música y las sensaciones exquisitas, a otros mundos más allá, bajo formas estéticas sugestivas y bellas. Por medio de ciertos estímulos se puede llevar al lector al éxtasis simbolista, y creo que hay obras literarias que logran elevarnos a otras esferas.
La estancia oscura de Leonard Cline, autor poco conocido y que murió prematuramente a la edad de treinta y seis años, es una obra plasmada en el lienzo de un lenguaje bello, musical y sugerente. Nos habla de un músico, el señor Oscar Fitzalan, quien es contratado por Richard Pride para llevar a cabo una serie de experimentos de índole misteriosa y excéntrica, los cuales serían realizados en un lugar apartado en el bosque, en la estancia oscura, a una distancia prudente de la mansión de Mordance Hall, un lugar decadente, oscuro y en ocasiones siniestro. Pride, dueño y señor de la mansión, otorga a Oscar el tiempo suficiente, meses, estaciones, para que se acostumbre al lugar y pueda trabajar con cierta libertad. Con el tiempo conoce a Miriam y Janet Pride, esposa e hija de Richard respectivamente. Ambas comienzan a influir sobremanera en Oscar conforme su estadía en la mansión se prolonga.
Antes de tratar el tema más "terrorífico" del libro, quiero hablar sobre algo que llamó mi atención. La música. No encontré información sobre si Cline fue compositor o interprete, pero vaya, ¡cómo siente la música y cómo se expresa sobre ella! Usa elementos como la armonía, el contrapunto, la disonancia, la polifonía, a los grandes compositores como Bach, Schumann, Schubert, Debusy, Mendelson, Beethoven, entre otros, para describir visiones y sentimientos como el amor, el miedo y la incertidumbre, e incluso para describir la personalidad de varios personajes, como Janet Pride, de la cual Oscar se enamora, y la define como la melodía que a penas se está gestando en la mente, que se siente en el aire por su esencia, pero que aún no toma una forma concreta. De manera paralela o subterránea a la trama principal se gesta una idea, o mejor dicho, una visión, que gira en torno a la obra musical, en forma de oratorio acompañado de instrumentación, llamada Helion, la cual es la síntesis de la vida y la cosmovisión del artista, de Oscar. En ella incorpora a Janet Pride, la hace partícipe de su obra magna. Aunque Janet, quien es fácilmente influenciable e impresionable, dejándose llevar a donde la corriente arbitraria tire con más fuerza, es un espíritu indomable y voluble para un artista como Oscar. Un ejemplo de esto es cuando llega otro invitado a Mordance Hall, un español llamado del Prado y por quien Janet pierde los estribos, decayendo el interés que inicialmente sentía por Oscar.
Con el telón de fondo del lenguaje pintoresco de Cline y la música se mueven otros temas como la astrología, las profecías, la locura. Miriam Pride, la esposa de Richard, una mujer atractiva, seductora y muy inteligente, usa la astrología para manipular, o tal vez no, a los peones de su juego de ajedrez. Una vez que Janet se escapa con del Prado, por supuesto, gracias a una profecía con la que Miriam la asusta y la convence de abandonar la mansión, Oscar encuentra refugio en la astróloga. Aún así, hay algo que le aterra y le sugestiona sobre ella. No encuentra Paz. El suicidio del mayordomo de la mansión, Hough, que fue provocado por Miriam, hace que Oscar en un futuro se vea como el siguiente sacrificado.
Richard Pride es un hombre de mundo, lleno de vitalidad, imponente y de un aspecto temible al mismo tiempo. Ha conocido casi todo el mundo, ha tenido aventuras y experiencias extraodinarias a lo largo de su vida. Para preservar y poder volver a vivir cada experiencia, para que ninguna caiga irremediablemente en el olvido y se pierda para siempre, comienza a trabajar en una serie de experimentos, los cuales con el paso del tiempo se vuelven enfermizos, denigrantes y aterradores. Valiéndose de todo tipo de instrumentos asociativos para poder despertar ciertos recuerdos, logra vivir, adentrarse en sus experiencias pasadas. Pero todo se vuelve confuso y peligroso cuando descubre que los recuerdos no sólo se limitan a su propia vida. El terror y la putrefacción de su humanidad comienza cuando, en palabras de Lovecraft "...su ambición va más allá de su vida y llega hasta los negros abismos de la memoria hereditaria..., alcanzando incluso los tiempos prehumanos de las ciénagas del periodo carbonífero, y las inimaginables profundidades de los tiempos y seres primordiales".
En la estancia oscura estaba Oscar al piano tocando melodias folkloricas, improvisando y poseído por una especie de ensoñación; con diferentes drogas exóticas en esos tiempos como la marihuana, la cocaína, el opio, etc.; con diversos objetos recolectados a lo largo y ancho del mundo; con todos estos estímulos asociativos, es que Richard Pride logra ser inducido al trance infernal que lo vuelve un ser alejado de toda humanidad, rebosante de hedores mefíticos provenientes de tiempos primigenios. Incluso su enorme perro de nombre Tod comienza a rehuir de él, aterrado, percibiendo, como todo animal sensible, las presencias abismales y de más allá del tiempo que ya comenzaban a levantar el velo que nos separa de ellas.
Sin embargo, no todo fue decadencia espiritual y física. Cline pinta bellos paisajes, repletos de simbolismo y dotados de una belleza embriagadora. Por ejemplo en la página 137, hay una pintura hermosa que recuerda a las obras medievales, con ese sol blanco de rayos fríos, con la cual nos proporciona una idea interesante, y es que de esa imagen tiene como esencia a la música, y que existe en ella como parte de una tonalidad. Los personajes de esa visión forman parte de otro mundo que está más allá, de la melodía que menciona.
El final, del cual revelaré muy poco, me pareció contundente y en cierta medida purificador, pues la vida que pertenece al sol y no la vida que pertenece a la oscuridad y a la muerte, renace.
La estancia oscura es un libro que recomiendo no sólo a los amantes del buen terror. Lo recomiendo a aquellos gusten de la literatura sugestiva y decadente, bella por sus formas las cuales se dibujan con medios ajenos a la razón y al pensamiento común.



La edición que leí es de Valdemar, el club Diógenes, 2002. Traducción de Santiago García.

[Boris Cesnik · Rating 2 out of 5]

A narrative full of contrasts that leaves no memories behind.
The anachronistic language clashes splendidly in my opinion with the story but only benefits the reading exercise up to a certain point.
None of the characters are fully developed. They all seem ghosts in search of a soul that would define them. Bored, ridiculous and simplistic in their behaviour, they seem to live hundreds of years behind their time.
A mixed bag of a cauldron where random elements are thrown in without a sensed connection or logical/illogical explanation.
The only thing that could have saved this novel would have been a shocking ending - unfortunately neither here the author gave me any hope. It all ended in the dark chamber of this formalistic soulless of a book.

[Jesús T. Liljehult · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recogí esta novela en la biblioteca cercana a mi casa por mera casualidad, y me convenció que fuera de Editorial Valdemar, famosa por traducir textos poco conocidos en español, especialmente de horror. Después me di cuenta que era bastante difícil de conseguir en inglés, dejó de imprimirse hace tiempo. El autor estaba encarcelado por matar a alguien cuando la escribió, entonces eso incrementó un poco mi curiosidad morbosa.

El drama en la novela es bastante extraño, los personajes tienen motivaciones algo difíciles de comprender, pero me gustó su desarrollo. Sin embargo lo más interesante (el 20% del libro) es la manera en la que uno de los personajes se obsesiona con hacer experimentos relacionados con la memoria, y descubre cosas que el narrador describe de manera impecable y brillante. Eso fue lo mejor de la novela, que influyó a Lovecraft y Clark Ashton Smith según algunas fuentes. Sin dudas no es una novela perfecta, pero merece una mayor difusión y más reimpresiones en inglés o español.

[Diana Isaura · Rating 3 out of 5]

A family full of secrets, all suspicious of each other. Love triangles, reminded me of Wuthering Heights. Would have enjoyed it more if the story would have dwelled more on Richard Pride's dark chamber (experiments) but I understand why it didn't.

[Harvey Dias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leonard Cline was a really superb writer. It's a shame he didn't live to write more masterpieces like this.

[Miki Ruiz Gonzalez · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sinceramente no cumple lo que se describe en la sinopsis. El libro está bien escrito pero la historia es como poco engañosa