The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence Read Online Free Page A
Author: Alexei Panshin, Cory Panshin
irresponsible person in some former time and place. As Marshal, he went on in his preface to apologize at length for the marvels in his story:
The solution of the author’s motives is however offered as a mere conjecture. Whatever his motives were, or whatever effects the execution of them might have, his work can only be laid before the public at present as a matter of entertainment. Even as such, some apology for it is necessary. Miracles, visions, necromancy, dreams, and other preternatural events, are exploded now even from romances. That was not the case when our author wrote; much less when the story itself is supposed to have happened. Belief in every kind of prodigy was so established in those dark ages, that an author would not be faithful to the manners of the times who should omit all mention of them. He is not bound to believe them himself, but must represent his actors as believing them.
If this air of the miraculous is excused, the reader will find nothing else unworthy of his perusal. Allow the possibilities of the facts, and all the actors comport themselves as persons would do in their situation. 12
What? Excuse the miraculous, the very inspiration and fabric of his story, as “unworthy”? Plead verisimilitude and plausibility? Here the mask of the weird priest Muralto slips aside and we see the author of the preface for a moment revealing himself as the author of the story, a modern attempting to conjure up the miraculous again in a bygone setting for a modern audience that could not accept the miraculous as a fact in its own daily life.
So—hiding behind a false title page, hiding behind a misleading and apologetic preface, hiding behind two different false beards—Walpole gave his story of the miraculous to the Eighteenth Century British public . . . and a miracle occurred! Walpole’s dream-begotten fancy was enthusiastically received.
The 500-copy first edition of The Castle of Otranto, published in December 1764, quickly sold out. When a second edition was published in April 1765, Walpole’s initials were on the title page, a clear indication of his identity to the reading public of the time. In a new preface, Walpole explained his intentions more honestly and directly, this time writing not as an uncertain miracle-monger attempting to slip one over on the public, but as a successful artist, hailed as a breath of fresh air, who is explaining how his special trick is performed:
It was an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern. In the former all was imagination and improbability: in the latter, nature is always intended to be, and sometimes has been, copied with success. Invention has not been wanting; but the great resources of fancy have been dammed up, by a strict adherence to common life. But if in the latter species Nature has cramped imagination, she did but take her revenge, having been totally excluded from old romances. The actions, sentiments, conversations, of the heroes and heroines of ancient days were as unnatural as the machines employed to put them in motion.
The author of the following pages thought it possible to reconcile the two kinds. Desirous of leaving the powers of fancy at liberty to expatiate through the boundless realms of invention, and thence of creating more interesting situations, he wished to conduct the mortal agents in his drama according to the rules of probability; in short, to make them think, speak and act, as it might be supposed mere men and women would do in extraordinary positions. 13
This is what Walpole, under his masks, had been saying and not-saying in his original preface: his aim, as a modern, was to combine the transcendent mystery of ancient romance with the plausible characters of the contemporary novel. The rest of the preface is devoted to a defense of Shakespeare as a model of this kind of mixture.
And, clearly, The Castle of Otranto is, on one level, warmed-over ersatz Shakespeare. On another
The solution of the author’s motives is however offered as a mere conjecture. Whatever his motives were, or whatever effects the execution of them might have, his work can only be laid before the public at present as a matter of entertainment. Even as such, some apology for it is necessary. Miracles, visions, necromancy, dreams, and other preternatural events, are exploded now even from romances. That was not the case when our author wrote; much less when the story itself is supposed to have happened. Belief in every kind of prodigy was so established in those dark ages, that an author would not be faithful to the manners of the times who should omit all mention of them. He is not bound to believe them himself, but must represent his actors as believing them.
If this air of the miraculous is excused, the reader will find nothing else unworthy of his perusal. Allow the possibilities of the facts, and all the actors comport themselves as persons would do in their situation. 12
What? Excuse the miraculous, the very inspiration and fabric of his story, as “unworthy”? Plead verisimilitude and plausibility? Here the mask of the weird priest Muralto slips aside and we see the author of the preface for a moment revealing himself as the author of the story, a modern attempting to conjure up the miraculous again in a bygone setting for a modern audience that could not accept the miraculous as a fact in its own daily life.
So—hiding behind a false title page, hiding behind a misleading and apologetic preface, hiding behind two different false beards—Walpole gave his story of the miraculous to the Eighteenth Century British public . . . and a miracle occurred! Walpole’s dream-begotten fancy was enthusiastically received.
The 500-copy first edition of The Castle of Otranto, published in December 1764, quickly sold out. When a second edition was published in April 1765, Walpole’s initials were on the title page, a clear indication of his identity to the reading public of the time. In a new preface, Walpole explained his intentions more honestly and directly, this time writing not as an uncertain miracle-monger attempting to slip one over on the public, but as a successful artist, hailed as a breath of fresh air, who is explaining how his special trick is performed:
It was an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern. In the former all was imagination and improbability: in the latter, nature is always intended to be, and sometimes has been, copied with success. Invention has not been wanting; but the great resources of fancy have been dammed up, by a strict adherence to common life. But if in the latter species Nature has cramped imagination, she did but take her revenge, having been totally excluded from old romances. The actions, sentiments, conversations, of the heroes and heroines of ancient days were as unnatural as the machines employed to put them in motion.
The author of the following pages thought it possible to reconcile the two kinds. Desirous of leaving the powers of fancy at liberty to expatiate through the boundless realms of invention, and thence of creating more interesting situations, he wished to conduct the mortal agents in his drama according to the rules of probability; in short, to make them think, speak and act, as it might be supposed mere men and women would do in extraordinary positions. 13
This is what Walpole, under his masks, had been saying and not-saying in his original preface: his aim, as a modern, was to combine the transcendent mystery of ancient romance with the plausible characters of the contemporary novel. The rest of the preface is devoted to a defense of Shakespeare as a model of this kind of mixture.
And, clearly, The Castle of Otranto is, on one level, warmed-over ersatz Shakespeare. On another
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