词条 | The Three Impostors |
释义 |
| name = The Three Impostors; or, The Transmutations | title_orig = | translator = | image = Three imposters.jpg | caption = | author = Arthur Machen | illustrator = | cover_artist = | country = United Kingdom | language = English | series = | genre = Horror | publisher = John Lane | release_date = 1895 | media_type = Print (hardcover) | pages = 215 }} The Three Impostors; or, The Transmutations is an episodic horror novel by British writer Arthur Machen, first published in 1895 in The Bodley Head's Keynote Series. It was revived in paperback by Ballantine Books as the forty-eighth volume of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in June 1972. Contents{{columns-list|colwidth=30em|
}} SynopsisThe novel comprises several weird tales and culminates in a final denouement of deadly horror, connected with a secret society devoted to debauched pagan rites. The three impostors of the title are members of this society who weave a web of deception in the streets of London—relating the aforementioned weird tales in the process—as they search for a missing Roman coin commemorating an infamous orgy by the Emperor Tiberius and close in on their prey: "the young man with spectacles".[1] CensorshipPublisher John Lane of The Bodley Head, wary of the atmosphere following the trial of Oscar Wilde, asked Machen to expurgate his manuscript; Machen refused.[2] Ultimately, however, Machen agreed to revise the description of the final scene of the book, in order to purge one word that Lane had found to be too explicit; the word was entrails.[3] Machen's later reflections on the novelPartly in response to criticism of the Stevensonian style of the book, Machen altered his approach in writing his next book, The Hill of Dreams. Following the death of his first wife in 1899, Machen developed a greater interest in the occult, joining the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He noted that a number of events in his life seemed to mirror events in The Three Impostors, most notably a conflict in the order between William Butler Yeats (a "young man with spectacles") and Aleister Crowley, which reached its height around this time. (These experiences are reflected on in Alan Moore's Snakes and Ladders.) In Things Near and Far (1923) Machen wrote: {{quote|It was in the early spring of 1894 that I set about the writing of the said "Three Impostors," a book which testifies to the vast respect I entertained for the fantastic, "New Arabian Nights" manner of R. L. Stevenson, to those curious researches in the byways of London which I have described already, and also, I hope, to a certain originality of experiment in the tale of terror.}}InfluenceAt least two of the novel's tales, "The Novel of the Black Seal" and "The Novel of the White Powder" influenced the work of H. P. Lovecraft. In his survey Supernatural Horror in Literature, Lovecraft suggested that these stories "perhaps represent the highwater mark of Machen's skill as a terror-weaver".[4] "The Novel of the Black Seal" was a model for some of Lovecraft's best-known stories: "The Call of Cthulhu",[5] "The Dunwich Horror",[6] and "The Whisperer in Darkness".[7] The story also bears strong resemblance to Lovecraft's story "The Lurking Fear", which tells of a deformed humanoid race living in a rural region of the Catskill Mountains. "The Novel of the White Powder", which Lovecraft said "approaches the absolute culmination of loathsome fright",[8] is pointed to as an inspiration for Lovecraft's stories of bodily disintegration, such as "Cool Air" and "The Colour Out of Space". The story "Rx… Death!" in issue 20 of Tales from the Crypt is an adaptation of "The Novel of the White Powder", except the poisonous "medicine" contains digestive enzymes rather than a witch's brew. References1. ^Reviewof The Three Imposters, The Bookman, February 1896. Reprinted in Jason Colavito, A Hideous Bit of Morbidity: An Anthology of Horror Criticism from the Enlightenment to World War I (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008), pp. 227–28. {{ISBN|978-0-7864-3968-3}} 2. ^{{cite journal |title=John Lane and Arthur Machen: A Correspondence |journal=Faunus: The Journal of the Friends of Arthur Machen |volume=16 |date=Summer 2007}} 3. ^{{cite journal |title=Machen's Labrynth: The Master of the Macabre 60 Years On |journal=Rare Book Review |volume=35 |page=13 |issue=376 |date=February 2008 |publisher=Countrywide Editions |oclc=229510102 |issn=1746-7101 |via=Google Books}} 4. ^Lovecraft, p. 92 5. ^{{cite book |last=Joshi |first=S. T. |authorlink=S. T. Joshi |last2=Schultz |first2=David E. |chapter=The Call of Cthulhu |title=An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia |pages=28–29}} 6. ^{{cite book |last=Price |first=Robert M. |authorlink=Robert M. Price |title=The Dunwich Cycle: Where the Old Gods Wait |publisher=Chaosium |year=1995 |pages=ix–x |series=The Cthulhu Cycle |oclc=35563193}} 7. ^{{cite book |last=Price |first=Robert M. |title=The Hastur Cycle |publisher=Chaosium |series=The Cthulhu Cycle |pages=xi–xiii |chapter=Introduction |edition=2nd |year=2006 |origyear=1993 |isbn=978-1-56882-192-4 |oclc=757756665 |via=Google Books}} 8. ^Lovecraft, p. 93. Sources
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9 : 1895 British novels|British fantasy novels|British horror novels|The Bodley Head books|Welsh horror fiction|Anglo-Welsh novels|Works by Arthur Machen|Cultural depictions of Tiberius|Victorian novels |
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