Tag: Weird

For an anthropological reading of the "Journey into the Matamonia of Esagro Noroi", by Lucio Besana

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Anthropology, Italian Literature, Characters, Guests Book

"A journey into the Matamonia of Esagro Noroi ”by Lucio Besana, contained in the collection "Stories of the crimson series" (Edizioni Hypnos 2021), accompanies the reader through a pilgrimage with uchronic connotations, showing the limits and tensions of the symbol, both given by its dependence on the processes of natural and sacral reification. The story takes the destructive symptomatology of the present to an extreme, an Enlightenment residue that tends to demystify the cultural power of a given object, thus resizing the value and potential of the human being.

Keep reading…

The diabolical conferences of Arthur Christopher Benson

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Esotericism, folklore, Italian Literature, Characters, Guests Book

Dagon Press recently published in Italian - with the title "The closed window" (translation by Bernardo Cicchetti) - the supernatural tales of Arthur Christopher Benson, along with Montague Rhodes James one of the most significant "ghost-writers" English of the early twentieth century, as well as comparable in suggestions and themes to writers roughly contemporary to him and equally "esoteric" such as Arthur Machen, HP Lovecraft and Algernon Blackwood.

Keep reading…

β€œWeird literature: narrating the unthinkable”. Interview with Francesco Corigliano

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Interviews, Italian Literature, Characters

We interview Francesco Corigliano, the author of the essay recently published by Mimesis that investigates the characteristics and the deep meaning of a genre that is difficult to define, through the use of three contemporary masters: Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Stefan GrabiΕ„ski and Jean Ray.

Keep reading…

Out now! "Cheetah, the Cheetah Girl" by Christopher Blayre

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Press releases and updates, Italian Literature, Publications

It just came out in bookstores, thanks to Dagon Press, The Cheetah Girl by Christopher Blayre (aka Edward Heron-Allen), "cursed" novel hitherto unpublished in Italy, written in the 20s and remained virtually unknown until the end of the XNUMXth century due to its burning themes, between extreme eroticism and eugenics. It contains seven appendices, including our afterword Β«Fatal and feral females in fantasy and horror literatureΒ».

Keep reading…

The Waves of Destiny: The Tales of the North Seas by Jonas Lie

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: folklore, Italian Literature, Mito, Characters, Guests Book, History of Religions

Thanks to the Dagon Press, the disturbing stories "Weird Tales from the Northern Seas" (1893) by the Norwegian writer Jonas Lie are finally available in Italian, entirely inspired by Nordic folklore: stories focused on meeting "other" entities such as the draug and the supernatural bride, as well as on the sea as a symbol of the mystery and invincible forces of nature.

Keep reading…

The Geist, the Mana and the "magic naturalis" in Clark Ashton Smith's sword & sorcery

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Anthropology, Philosophy, Italian Literature, Characters, History of Religions

Zothique is a non-place, albeit very concrete and real: Clark Ashton Smith imagines a world in which our current technology does not exist, and men live immersed in concrete elemental forces and invisible powers, but which act on what is earthly.

Keep reading…

Eyes, puppets and doppelgΓ€nger: the "uncanny" in "Der Sandmann" by ETA Hoffmann (I)

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Esotericism, Italian Literature, Characters, Guests Book

Two centuries after its publication, ETA Hoffmann's "Man of the Sand" is still today one of the literary works indispensable for understanding the poetics of the "uncanny", destined to influence the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Jentsch, the works of Hesse and Machen, the films of Lynch and Polanski.

Keep reading…

Rudyard Kipling's India between folklore, terror and wonder

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: folklore, Italian Literature, Characters, Guests Book

In the "Anglo-Indian Tales of Mystery and Horror", Kipling places himself in the position of Western observer and narrator of an 'other' and atavistic culture such as the Indian one, which if necessaryΒ reveals itself to his eyesΒ as a mirror of ours.

Keep reading…