In some of the most terrifying stories of Montague Rhodes James emerges the Hoffmannian-Ligottian theme of man as a puppet or marionette, at the mercy of demonic entities that hide behind the scenes of reality: particularly successful is "The Haunted Doll's House", which has partially inspired by Ari Aster's film “Hereditary”.
di Marco Maculotti
cover: the doll's house from the film “Hereditary”, 2018
In first article of this 'double' dedicated to the genius of Montagu Rhodes James, one of the greatest exponents of the literary vein of supernatural horror at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - as adequately recognized by HP Lovecraft in the essay Supernatural Horror in Literature (1927) -, we have had the opportunity to underline how his famous ones "Ghost tales" are in reality only partially - and somewhat insufficiently - definable as such. In this regard, we have been able to rule that:
"[...] the literary creations of a James or a Hoffmann detach themselves significantly from the canonical" ghost story "of the Gothic school, starting from the characteristic of being deeply focused on the supernatural-esoteric-magical element rather than on that of a sentimental-psychological nature. Thus, for James as for Hoffmann (but also later, for Machen, Lovecraft and Blackwood) the ghostly apparitions become a "spy" to introduce and stage much larger and indefinable horrors, with distinctly anti-human characteristics and anti-rational: the world of (black) magic is a kind of upside-down world in which absolute chaos reigns and where the values of the world of humans are neither recognized nor in force »
Men and dolls
Another theme that sometimes peeps out in the horror stories of Montague Rhodes James, and that we intend to deal with in our second article dedicated to him, is that ofhuman being as a puppet or marionette, whose fate turns out to be ultimately in the hands of far more powerful and enigmatic entities, who lie behind the scenes of the real: spirits of never really dead witches, vampire entities, hellish demons, and so on. We have already noted how in one of the most terrifying short stories ever written by James, Topi (“The Rats”, 1929), the reason for the horror is a kind of living scarecrow, or rather an individual who was once a human being, and who is now a kind of undead puppet, trapped by a curse in a condition suspended between life and death.
In other Jamesian tales the leitmotiv the puppet man is exploited differently, giving life to suggestions hoffmannian and Ligottiane. This is the case, for example, of the Story of a disappearance and an apparition (“The story of a disappearance and an appearance”, 1913), whose climax of terror is to be identified in a dream experience lived by the narrator with an extremely cinematic flavor, notably Lynchian. He dreams of attending a puppet show (this sequence may bring to the reader's mind some of the more "theatrical" sequences of The steppe wolf by Hermann Hesse, which will be printed in 1927) whose main character, Pulcinella, is cloaked in a sort of "satanic" aura, which makes it similar, in the eyes of the protagonist, to the "Vampire in Fuseli's crazy sketch":
“It started with what I can only define as a curtain that opened: after that I found myself sitting in one place, and I don't know if it was outdoors or indoors. There were people - not many - around me, but I didn't recognize anyone, nor did I pay any attention to them. They didn't open their mouths, but from what I remember they all looked grave and pale in the face, staring into space. In front of me I had the scenery of a show by Pulcinella and Colombina, perhaps much larger than normal, painted in black designs on a red-yellow background. [...] I was "suspended" in a very high degree of anxiety and at any moment I expected to hear pipes and bells. Instead, a sudden and enormous [...] and single ringing of bells came, I don't know how far away, somewhere over there, back there. The little curtain has risen and the drama has begun. »
From Montague Rhodes James to the silver screen: Hereditary by Ari Aster
Extremely Hoffmannian as it is inspired by the theme of the human being as a puppet he is also The haunted house of the dolls (“The Haunted Doll's House”, 1923), one of the most amazing stories to come out of our pen. Here, as never before, the role ofobject that opens to the inner eye of the protagonist the unspeakable vision of an 'other' world which, however, sometimes collides with our own: as in the novel by Abraham Merritt Ishtar's ship (published the following year, 1924) it will be a model of a sailing ship that takes on a life of its own and leads the protagonist into a world apart, in miniature compared to ours and with its own laws. dolls ”, a very popular toy in Victorian England, to reveal itself as a real one image would, or how un world within another world, in the manner of a matryoshka.
In addition to this, it returns almost twenty years after the publication of The treasure of Abbot Thomas ("The treasure of abbot Thomas", 1904) the characterization of one of the demonic apparitions (the devourer of children) with amphibious characteristics along the lines of the Lovecraft of Dagon/Innsmouth:
A new kind of light, neither lamp nor candle, began to flicker all around the door frame. This was reopening. Our viewer, Dillet, does not like today to dwell on what he saw entering through that door; he says he could be described as a frog - the size of a man - but with sparse white hair around his head. He busied himself around the loungers but not for long. There were cries of cries - faint as if coming from a great distance - and yet indescribably chilling. And then the whole house went into a terrifying agitation: lights going up and down, doors opening and closing and figures running past the windows. The clock on the stable turret chimed and it was dark again. "
“The Haunted Doll's House” is without a doubt one of the biggest sources of inspiration for Hereditary - The roots of evil, a film by Ari Aster (also director of Midsummer) released almost a century after the publication of the Jamesian story (2018), starting with the expedient of the animated doll's house. Here's how James describes her in her story:
“He didn't wonder, until the early hours of the morning, why, even though there was no light in the room, the dollhouse on the desk was surrounded by the most complete light. Yet it was indeed so: one had the impression that the rounder full moon was illuminating the facade of a large house in white stone, distant, it seemed, a quarter of a mile; and yet every detail was photographically perfect. There were also trees all around, trees sprouting from behind the chapel and the house. Dillet even thought he could smell the scent of a cool September night […]. Finally, and it was another blow, he realized that, above the house, he was staring not at the walls of his room with the pictures and all, but at the deep blue of a night sky. There were lights, more than one, in the windows, and Dillet immediately realized that this was not a four-room house with a removable facade, but a mansion with numerous rooms and stairs ... a real house, in short, as seen, however, through an inverted telescope. "Do you want to show me something, by any chance?" she muttered to herself, not taking her eyes off the lighted windows. In real life, he thought she, they would have curtains and blinds, no doubt; instead, this being the case, the sight of what is happening in those rooms is not intercepted by anything. "
In addition to the animated doll's house, which seems to have a life of its own, the entire plot of James' tale anticipates many of the themes covered in the film: in the supernatural show of the animated doll's house, which 'airs' every night at one o'clock. o'clock, the protagonist Dillet reconstructs a tragedy that took place many years earlier in a mansion in the district: a married couple, following the death of the father of one of the two and the stripping of the will, take out their two children to steal them the legacy, which according to the will of the deceased would be legally entitled.
But that's not all: the modalities of the crime appear extremely strange, in all probability connected, as in Aster's film, with black magic. The bride, exactly as in Hereditary, is terribly terrified of a mysterious presence, to the point that James writes that:
«[…] The expression on her face was that of one who fights with all her strength against a fear that threatens to take over her completely and overcome her. A very ugly face, too: big cunning, squashed. "
It is precisely this demonic presence that haunts the wife - described, as mentioned above, as an anthropomorphic batrace - that kills the children, devouring them. Following this supernatural scene, as also happens in Ari Aster's film, "Here the whole house went into a terrifying agitation: lights going up and down, doors opening and closing and figures running past the windows". James also describes, at this point in the story, "Black figures with lighted torches in hand" around the house, as well as "even darker figures [who] descended the steps, carrying, first one then the other, two small coffins", recalling to the viewer's mind the final scenes of Aster's film.
Although in Hereditary the evoked demon does not have the outward characteristics of that of the Jamesian tale - it is in particular about paimon, one of the eight demons rulers of Hell, represented there La Little Key of Solomon like a man crowned astride a dromedary - the influence of "The Haunted Doll's House", published almost a century earlier, is evident, from the family tragedy conjured up 'magically' by the animated doll's house, toinheritance of the patriarch of the family (in the story the grandfather, in the film the grandmother) up to obviously the references to black magic and the evocation of infernal entities that claim their 'property' over the children of the accursed family.
Editions consulted:
- Montague Rhodes James, Torn hearts, curated by Dino Buzzati, Bompiani, Milan 1967
- Montague Rhodes James, Ghosts and other horrors, edited by Gianni Pilo and Sebastiano Fusco, Newton, Rome 1995