Shapes in the Fire

by M.P. Shiel

Considered by some critics to be the most flamboyant works of the English decadent movement. August Derleth said M.P. Shiel was ." . . the Grand Viscount of the Grotesque . . . [with a] refulgently fanciful imagination and magical command of the English language." Arthur Machen said, "Here is a wilder wonderland than Poe ever dreamt of . . . It is Poe, perhaps, but Poe with an unearthly radiance."

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fantasy

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1896

About the author

Matthew Phipps Shiel was a prolific British writer of West Indian descent. His legal surname remained "Shiell" though he adopted the shorter version as a de facto pen name.

He is remembered mostly for supernatural and scientific romances. His work was published as serials, novels, and as short stories. The Purple Cloud (1901; 1929) remains his most famous and often reprinted novel.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decadence… Decadent visions… What one would’ve seen if one were looking in the fire for days?
Xélucha is an excerpt from the opium eater’s diary… Imagining a woman of his dream he literally competes with Song of Songs…

A breath from the conservatory rioted among the ambery whiffs of her forelocks, sending it singly a-wave over that thulite tint you know. Costumed cap-à-pie, she had, my friend, the dainty little completeness of a daisy mirrored bright in the eye of the browsing ox.

Wandering about the city at night he suddenly encounters her… But the one he meets turns out to be the spirit of eternity, the wraith of nonbeing… And she doesn’t talk of love… She talks only about sepulchers, death and putrefaction…
Maria in the Rose-Bush is a tale of beauty… Deianira is a young beauty and she adores art… Caspar – her admirer – worships her… He prefers beauty of nature… While Caspar is away Albrecht Dürer visits the castle… He and Deianira feel some inner affinity…

The penumbra of a profound melancholy fell upon these souls – penumbra, because though poignant, it was not painful, but, on the contrary, full of luxury. Without shadow of apparent cause, they walked continually on the borders of the misty-dripping lake of tears, by the twilight banks of a spectral river of sighs.

In the end this mental rapport resulted in a mournful tragedy…
Vaila is a maze of bizarreness… On the isle of Vaila there is mansion of brass built right under the ferocious waterfall… After a separation of twelve years the main character comes there invited by his old friend who lives in this house… And straight away he finds himself attending the funerals of his friend’s mother…

Death so rigorous, Gorgon, I had not seen. The coffin seemed full of tangled grey hair. The lady was, it was clear, of great age, osseous, scimitar-nosed. Her head shook with solemn continuity to the vibration of the house. From each ear trickled a black streamlet; the mouth was ridged with froth.

Staying in the grand abode the narrator eventually discovers that this hellish structure is but an hourglass of doom…
In Premier and Maker a sybaritic prime minister invites a penniless idler to his house and they talk… And their conversation isn’t unlike the colloquy of Pontius Pilate and Jesus Christ but even more inane…

‘You are a democrat.’ 
 ‘I am a revolutionnaire – a thing it may be ordained that you shall yet be.’ 
 ‘You answer everything.’ 
 ‘You spoke.’ 
 ‘In the multitude of words is folly.’

Tulsah is a manuscript of a Hindu who has risen from the dead…

The coffin itself was large enough to contain the body of a man. Long I lay, first in listless dream, then with the burgeoning consciousness of entity. I rose from the coffin; I cast off the cerements; I crawled from the chamber of rock. I looked at my limbs, the limbs of a well-grown boy, and saw that they were perfect, and withy, and beautifully brown.

On learning the destiny of his ancestors and attempting to avoid his fate he becomes a hermit…  
The Serpent-Ship is a Nordic ballad – a piece of curio…
Phorfor is a story of homecoming… But this homecoming is sad – it brings no joy…

I saw a noble, cold forehead. The body was robed in splendid volutions of cloth-of-gold; the red lamp of a ruby glowed large at his breast; the head was crowned with daphne: an expression all this, as I knew, of Count Zinzendorf’s whim, that death, so far from being the chill passage through any valley of any shadow, is, without metaphor, a jubilant bursting from sleep at day-break.

Nature and art don’t rival – they complement each other.

[Nancy Oakes]

first impressions (more to come later):

For those who want to get their weird on, a la late Victorian decadence -- patient readers only.

Favorite stories -- "Vaila," like Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher" on steroids and the best story in the collection (imo); "Tulsah: Translation of a Scorched Hindu MS," (this one was just damn creepy), and "Maria in the Rosebush." "Xelucha" is also good, and reminiscent of Poe, sort of Ligeia-ish.

It didn't really take me 12 days to read this book, more like 6.

Much more soon.

[Jim Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shoot Edgar Allan Poe in the face with the make-up gun from The Simpsons and you have the gawdy M. P. Shiel. In this bizarre, overripe collection we are presented with blatant rip-offs of Poe's Ligeia and The Fall of the House of Usher in Shiel's stories Xelucha and Vaila respectively. Shiel steals the basic plots, practically beat-by-beat, along with Poe's general style, but stuffs the prose with such outrageous language, decadent imagery and recherche references that his work becomes a worthwhile delirium its own.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Xélucha ⭐⭐⭐
Maria in the Rosebush ⭐⭐⭐
Vaila ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Premier and Maker ⭐⭐
Tulsah ⭐⭐⭐
The Serpent Ship (poem) ⭐⭐
Phorfor ⭐⭐⭐

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

PART I. SHAPE I.— XELUCHA 3.5⭐
PART I. SHAPE II. — MARIA IN THE ROSE-BUSH 2⭐
PART I. SHAPE III. — VAILA 3.25⭐

INTERLUDE — PREMIER AND MAKER 3⭐

PART II. SHAPE I.— TULSAH 4⭐
PARTII. SHAPE II. — THE SERPENT-SHIP 1.5⭐
PART II. SHAPE III. — PHORFOR 2.5⭐