THE DEEP ONES: "Twilight" by Michel de Ghelderode

"A Twilight" by Michel de Ghelderode

Discussion begins on March 6, 2019.

First published in Spells (1941).



ONLINE VERSIONS

https://weirdfictionreview.com/2017/06/a-twilight/

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1742776

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

Sortilèges et autres contes crépusculaires
Spells

MISCELLANY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_de_Ghelderode
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsjVIxXR67Q
https://vimeo.com/51204443
https://tinyurl.com/y6jzmubn

Just read it from the link. I note that said entitles it as "A Twilight", with an indefinite article. Anyone know which version is more correct? I can't check what ISFDB says because that appears to be down.

ISFDB (apparently back online) registers the original story as Un Crepuscule, so: with indefinite article.

Definitely a story long on atmosphere and short on plot. Still, I liked its building of atmosphere by the subjectivity of the narrator's moods and metaphors.

I'm not sure what happened yet. Is it all in the head of the narrator? Has some ominous presence entered the world ("the wrath of god")? Is the whole thing a metaphor for wartime Europe with its "slaughterhouse"?

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That last paragraph really throws a sudden, dark spin on the dream-like wanderings that come before. Those could actually be real cattle headed for the slaughterhouse in a return to the ordinary, carnal world. If you read it with a more misanthropic point of view, however, they become human cattle, satisfying "the wrath of the gods or the hunger of men" in what is almost certainly a metaphor for wartime Europe, as Randy notes. I'm inclined toward the latter. And what exactly are the "lunar searchlights?"

I do appreciate atmospheric pieces such as this, and also those in which events are ambiguous: are events supernatural, psychological-phenomenological, figurative, any / all? Key to such works, for me, is vivid and elegant writing, which Ghelderode brings in numbers (even accounting for the translation).

That said, it was my first taste of Ghelderode and somehow I anticipated a more substantive plot. With that atmosphere and sense of foreboding, even a minor key event would have packed a solid punch.

ETA It occurs to me that this story might well come across quite differently in the context of the collection in which it was first published. I gather Ghelderode worked on these shorts and conceived of them as a collective, so "A Twilight" may not be fully appreciated on its own.

Something similar applied to Shirley Jackson's "The Daemon-Lover", though certainly that story stood on its own plot-wise to a greater extent than "A Twilight".

>6 elenchus:

I think it probably does come across differently in the context of the collection as a whole. I was intrigued enough by the miscellany in >1 semdetenebre:, and by the chance to read a non-Anglophone author, to buy the Wakefield Press edition of Spells. So far, I've only read the introduction and the first story (which is more substantial, in the sense of having more of a story to tell, but shares A Twilight's sensibility of conveying the narrator's thoughts and impressions and perceptions - in that sense it's very much in the 20th Century Modernist tradition I would guess.

I think it's also part of a tradition I'm not really familiar with - a European conservative, Catholic tradition. The representatives of this tradition are only names to me that I've seen in passing references (Paul Claudel or Charles Péguy in poems by W. H. Auden and Geoffrey Hill for example - although I see from his Wikipedia entry that Péguy was co-opted by the Right (by Fascists in fact) despite being a lifelong Socialist. Knowing this background, I can't help feeling, would bring into focus what is unique about Ghelderode and what he shares with those other writers.

Another influence - I would guess - is Belgium itself (judging by - limited knowledge, once again! - the novel Bruges-la-morte and a 1994 Jonathan Meades documentary (currently up on YouTube) that argued for a surrealist country, and a particularly gloomy Northern Catholicism unrelieved by the sun and colour of southern Europe.

>7 housefulofpaper:

Hope you post again about the other stories in Spells, especially but not exclusively as they might influence "A Twilight"!

As everybody said, heavy on atmosphere and light on plot. I find my appreciation for such works grows with time, and I thought this one was pretty sweet.

I didn't reflect that the "cattle" at the end might be people to be lead to their deaths in WWII, but I like the idea. (Of such symbolism, that is, not the idea of people being led to their deaths!)

I guess the searchlights are "lunar" because their light is ghostly and without warmth, like the Moon's.

Just finished reading this, and passed it onto my friend who has far more knowledge about Biblical things and lore than I do, and religion in general, as I can't help but feel that I'm missing things.

This line here: "hypocritically filling the vat of St. Nicholas." I feel that something is there but I'm missing it.

Perhaps because I've been listening to a lot of Lovecraft lately, and also stories that feature bleak apartments and living areas, so the atmosphere definitely felt pronounced, and I wonder if this story is sort of a one man's look at things that most people just don't see, and we and the man in the story aren't sure which part is real and which isn't, or if something is more real than the others.

I think the introductory paragraph to the WFR page containing the story has it right when it mentions Cocteau and Artaud. There is something of the same feel and focus on strange detail, although not quite as intense.

I also got a kind of labyrinthian, Gormenghast-like feel from the description of the church.

Searchlights often indicate that someone is being sought out. Would it be our narrator? Escaping "cattle"?

>11 semdetenebre:

Given that it was written during WWII, I assumed the searchlights were looking for enemy aircraft (or friendly ones, I guess, if you were a Belgian without Ghelderode's German sympathies.)

I would be more inclined to think aircraft, since I've only seen searchlights pointing up in the sky, though it was usually in a celebratory fashion rather than practical. Given his focus on the sky, the search lights could be relating to that, or maybe he's alluding to the liquid light shapes he mentions earlier, if the lights are coming from the sky and not the ground.

It was late when I read it, and I was more focused on the atmosphere than the literal writing, so I'm not 100% on things I'm describing.

>15 frahealee: the guy fell asleep during Mass for some vigil, and awoke abruptly when the bells began to ring

We read a story that is very reminiscent of that premise, and I can't recall the author or title. Despite a run through the DEEP ONES honour roll, I still couldn't identify it. It began with the narrator in church, during Mass, and he sees someone walking around and is distracted ....

Anyone know the one I mean?

>16 elenchus:

It began with the narrator in church, during Mass...

Possibly "Never to Be Heard" by Ramsey Campbell?

http://www.librarything.com/topic/162183

...and he sees someone walking around and is distracted ...

Could also be "Count Magnus" by M.R. James.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/152533

>18 semdetenebre:

Neither of those, though I can see why they came to mind. First-person narrator telling of his own experience, and it was in present tense I think. Story opens with him in the church, complaining about the church music and marvelling that none of the congregants seem bothered by it.

Ha, so many churches!

>20 frahealee:
That recent one was Vernon Lee's "Amour Dure", also not the one I'm thinking of. Driving me mad, I'll keep looking for it.

>16 elenchus:

Would you be thinking of Chambers' "In the Court of the Dragon"?

>22 AndreasJ:

THAT is the one. Goodness, just a year ago and I couldn't put my finger to it.

The online discussion is here.

I should perhaps read it again but I'm still rolling around in the atmosphere, and too much occupied with other things, but correct me if I mention something not in the text.

The wet and watery atmosphere didn't get to me much at first and I found it hard to really appreciate the mood, though probably because the way he describes things as though sort of swimming makes me think of just that, which is pretty awesome to me. I have a love affair with water that I don't indulge near enough.

I feel that there is a perspective shift going on with the narrator, perhaps beyond his control and for whatever reason be it a dream, hallucination, or having the mother of all head colds. When I think of the statue of Christ and his comment that his twisted face appears in torment as though strangled by someone with a garrote, I imagine this fellow looking at what should be a reminder of the suffering endured by Christ to help humanity (pretty secular here so also not 100% on religious things), turns into torment, and instead of enduring the suffering, it's "help me" and the image has gone from sacrifice to murder. It's perhaps the same with God in the sky, being the only one left. On the one hand, it could be seen as God never abandoning anyone, or it could be more sinister in that there is nothing up there (heaven perhaps) BUT God, and he's laughing at you.

I also think of the wet and mucky atmosphere as possibly being related to simple bodies and flesh and the mundane, ugly parts of Earth and being alive. It's a contrast with the fleshy and profane versus the spiritual and sacred and in this narrative, the fleshy lumps of biology are winning.

And I could well be talking out of imagined things here. I really need to quit posting this sort of stuff at horrible hours of the morning.

>8 elenchus:
Having read all the stories in the collection, I’d stand by what I wrote with regard to the overall mood or tone of it. There are not really any connections, other than thematic ones, between the stories. There is actually another short and relatively plotless piece, which again focuses on a church, and could be regarded as a companion piece to “A Twilight”.

The other stories feature what might be considered standard weird “props” - a wax figure, a masked festival, hauntings which seem to be generated by place or weight of history as much as a specific past event. The protagonists are evidently thinly-veiled versions of Ghelderode himself and as such are solitary figures with no apparent family and little in the way of social interaction.

The introduction to my edition explains the psychological issues Ghelderode had at the time of composition. The weird occurrences in the stories, inanimate objects that seem to be alive, hauntings, psychic attacks and astral travel in dreams, could equally be the symptoms of a breakdown. In fact I think, like Maupassant’s "Le Horla" these stories could be read “conventionally” as records of incidents of mental crisis or collapse.

I can’t avoid discussing one particular story. This was in the first (1941) edition but removed for the books second (1947) edition. It was because it’s blatantly anti-Semitic. In “Eliah the Painter” the Ghelderode character’s misanthropy and transferred self-disgust are directed at the shabby title character. Although he’s as vividly drawn as a minor character in Dickens he’s never allowed his human dignity either by the narrator or Ghelderode the writer. Instead he’s subject to some frankly slapstick indignities but they are allowed to escalate to what at one points is almost a lynching.

It is one of the strongest stories in the collection and beneath the surface almost attains degree of self-knowledge which perhaps could have turned it into a dissection of anti-Semitism, instead of an example of it.

Ah, appreciate you taking the time for that follow-up, housefulofpaper. Based on your description I readily see why it was pulled (especially given the date of publication), but sense too that I'd agree with your predilection for it and the insights it can bring. If we're courageous enough to look at it without knee-jerk reactions or defensiveness.