Black Marsden

by Wilson Harris

Wilson Harris's tenth novel, first published in 1972, is set in Edinburgh but, like much of his subsequent work, bridges continents by its imaginative reach.''Doctor Black Marsden', tramp, shaman, and conjurer, is an ambivalent Merlin-figure representing both the hero's personal (and archetypal) shadow, and the creative, magus-like activity of the author himself.' Michael Gilkes, Journal of Commonwealth Literature'... my many visits to Scotland, and books I have read, have given me the sensation of a tone or inner vibrancy that may be due to the languages (English, Scottish, Gaelic) that are present in the subconscious imagination of sensitive Scots... [These] make for the cross-culturality (not mono-cultural) that came into play in Black Marsden.' Wilson Harris, 2008

114 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Born in Guyana in 1921 and based in England since 1959, Wilson Harris is one of the most original novelists and critics of the twentieth century. His writings, which include poems, numerous essays and twenty-four novels, provide a passionate and unique defense of the notion of cross-culturalism as well as a visionary exploration of the interdependence between history, landscape and humanity. In 2010 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to literature.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I have two souls…, the one being all unconscious of what the other performs.”
James Hogg – The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
Black Marsden is baroque and enigmatic…

I came upon him in a corner of the ruined Dunfermline Abbey of Fife like a curious frozen bundle that may have been blown across seas and landscapes to lodge here at my feet. On the journeys I had made through Fife last year I had been aware of the harlequin cloak of the seasons spread far and wide into strange intimacies and dissolving spaces.

The unexpected find is Doctor Black Marsden – Clown or Conjurer or Hypnotist Extraordinary… Later on Black Marsden brings in or, probably, conjures up three other personas… Is Black Marsden the narrator’s alter ego? Or is it vice versa?

Black Marsden laughed. His teeth looked perfect and even. “The beggar of memory resides within an order of solipsis into which we are all securely tied. He represents us and reminds us of ourselves. He is our infallible initiate, our infallible intimate. We are already inside, so to speak, the particular economic dress or religious dress or sexual dress he plays.”

Is the narrator’s personality split? Is he crazy and raving mad? Is he asleep and seeing dreams? Or both?

In his diary of infinity Goodrich had been constructing for many years a diagram to symbolize his existences on earth through intensities of love and hate. For one lived many lives, died many deaths through others. There was a renascence or flowering, or a deeper accent of eclipse upon buried personalities – actors in a tabula rasa drama – in every encounter one enjoyed or endured. Something died. Something was born. Each element of participation carried within it new and undreamt-of senses or constellations.

If one isn’t mad enough one can’t be a prophet.