1. CAS, letter to AWD, June 6, 1931 (ms, SHSW).
2. SS 16-167.
3. CAS, letter to AWD, July 10, 1932 (SL 180).
4. FW, letter to CAS, July 13, 1932 (ms, JHL).
5. CAS, letter to AWD, December 3, 1932 (ms, SHSW).
6. FW, letter to CAS, February 9, 1934 (ms, JHL).
7. CAS, letter to AWD, February 20, 1934 (ms, SHSW).
8. CAS, letter to RHB, June 15, 1934 (ms, JHL).
The White Sybil
It has often been remarked, by Farnsworth Wright, Donald Sidney-Fryer, and others, that many of Clark Ashton Smith’s ultra-imaginative short stories are extended poems in prose,1 and this is well illustrated by “The White Sybil.” As Smith was turning his creative energies exclusively toward fiction, his output of poetry fell drastically. Late in 1929, Smith was moved to compose a series of ten poems in prose, which he called “prose pastels” in echo, conscious or otherwise, of Stuart Merrill’s collection Pastels in Prose (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1890). The third of these, completed on December 22, 1929, was “The Muse of Hyperborea” (see Appendix 3).
“The White Sybil of Polarion” is the second entry in Smith’s Black Book, which he described as “a notebook containing used and unused plot-germs, notes on occultism and magic, synopses of stories, fragments of verse, fantastic names for people and places, etc., etc.” when he allowed excerpts to appear in the Spring 1944 issue of Francis T. Laney’s fan magazine The Acolyte:2
A pale, beautiful, unearthly being, goddess or woman, who comes and goes mysteriously in the cities of Hyperborea, sometimes uttering strange prophecies or cryptic tidings. Tortha, the young poet, sometimes seeing her on the streets of Cerngoth in Mhu-Thulan, is deeply smitten, and seeks to follow and find her dwelling-place. Pursuing her into a bleak mountainous region verging on the eternal glaciers, he loses sight of her in a great snow-storm that falls suddenly from the clear summer heavens. Wandering in this storm, and losing his way, he emerges presently in an unknown fantastic land, where, in a faery bower, he is received by the White Sybil, who seems to look kindly upon him. She kisses him on the brow; but trying to clasp her, he finds a frozen mummy in his arms; and a moment later the trees and blossoms of the faery bower dissolve in whirling snow. Later, Tortha, with the mark of frost-bite on his brow, where the Sybil kissed him, is found on the barren mountain-side; and he recovers slowly, remembering only dimly what has happened.
3
The genesis for this story may be traced to the earlier “prose pastel,” although we might suggest that this plot synopsis found among CAS’ papers may also have contributed to the development of the story:
“The Hyperborean City:” A lost explorer who is freezing to death in the Arctic falls, into a dream, in which he lives through a long drama that takes place in some ancient Hyperborean city, before the Ice Age. He is aroused by his companions at the moment when, in his dream, he is about to wed the lovely princess Alactyssa. Still possessed by the vision, which he cannot throw off, he wanders forth again in the snows, and is lost this time forever.
4
Originally entitled “The White Sybil of Polarion,” Smith first mentions the story in a letter to Genevieve Sully, mentioning that it was “a title I have long had in mind to use, though I didn’t think up the story until recently,” and describing it as “poetic and romantic.”5 He completed the story on July 14, 1932 and submitted it to Weird Tales, but Wright, while acknowledging its “poetic quality,” reluctantly returned it.6 CAS put the story aside until mid-November, when he devoted his efforts to revising some rejected stories for resubmission. It was at this time he gave “The Beast of Averoigne” its new “twist to the climax,” and mentions “the similarly treated White Sybil.” The revision was completed on November 21; he cut out approximately two hundred words and changed the ending to a wryly romantic one. Unfortunately, while the effort paid off for “The Beast of Averoigne,” Wright still could not convince himself that the story would appeal to his readership.
When a teenage science fiction fan from Everett, Pennsylvania named William L. Crawford (1911-1984) solicited stories from CAS for a semi-professional magazine called Unusual Stories, Smith sent him the revised version, now called simply “The White Sybil.” Crawford, who would later publish Lovecraft’s The Shadow over Innsmouth in book form, printed it, along with “Men of Avalon” by David H. Keller, as a pamphlet in 1934. When Lovecraft read the copy sent to him by CAS, he contrasted Smith’s tale with that of Dr. Keller, “whose tale is mawkish & naive, while its companion is a splendid specimen of Klarkash-Tonic fantasy.”7 (A year later, HPL would downgrade his estimate, writing to R. H. Barlow that “The White Sybil is good, but hardly stands out among other Clericashtonia.”8)
During the 1940s, Smith attempted to sell the story to Mary Gnaedinger of Famous Fantastic Mysteries, who had expressed interest in reprinting “The City of the Singing Flame,” as well as to Dorothy McIlwraith, Wright’s successor as editor at Weird Tales. Smith fumed about the latter, “I was rather disgusted last January when she fired back my White Sybil and Kingdom of the Worm after holding them for several months. They were ‘too poetic’ or something.”9
Smith presented the original typescript to Mrs. Sully, and did not keep a copy for his own files. We used this as the foundation for our text, along with reference both to the typescript sent to Crawford, now in a private collection, and to two copies of the 1934 pamphlet that Smith had corrected by hand. We have restored Smith’s original ending, but are including the published ending as Appendix 2.
1. See Wright’s remarks in the notes to “The Abomination of Yondo,” ES 256; also Sidney-Fryer, The Sorcerer Departs: Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) (Dole, France: Silver Key Press, 2007), p. 46: “Regarded more exactly as extended poems in prose, which is what many of them are....” S. T. Joshi, on the other hand, expressed a slightly more hesitant view in “Lands Forgotten or Unfound: The Prose Poetry of Clark Ashton Smith,” in FFT 147: “To the extent that nearly all Smith’s prose tales employ poetic prose, they could all be classed as prose poems.”
2. Reprinted in BB p. 77.
3. BB item 2.
4. SS 157.
5. CAS, letter to Genevieve K. Sully, July 12, 1932 (ms, private collection).
6. CAS, letter to AWD, August 21, 1932 (ms, SHSW).
7. HPL, letter to RHB, c. December 1, 1934 (O Fortunate Floridian: H. P. Lovecraft’s Letters to R. H. Barlow, ed. S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz [University of Tampa Press, 2007), p. 192).
8. HPL, letter to RHB, c. April 20, 1935 (O Fortunate Floridian: H. P. Lovecraft’s Letters to R. H. Barlow, ed. S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz [University of Tampa Press, 2007), p. 252).
9. CAS, letter to AWD, April 23, 1943 (ms, SHSW).
The Ice-Demon
Smith returned to Hyperborea with “The Ice Demon,” which he completed on July 22, 1932. A plot synopsis for this story forms the very first item in the Black Book:
Quangah the huntsman and two merchants of Mhu-Thulan, seeking the lost treasure of a king who had fled from the north before the glacial ice and had perished with his retainers in an outland region, enter the realms of eternal ice and snow during the summer season. They find the cave in which the treasure is hidden, together with the preserved bodies of the king and his followers; but departing with their loot, they are followed by an invisible icy presence. One of the merchants is found frozen to death on the morning after their first stop. Later, the second perishes in like fashion; and Quangah, fleeing into a warm, semi-tropic volcanic valley, is also overtaken, and dies of cold. The thing manifests itself as a sort of spiral wind or gust, enfolding the victims from head to foot. A kind of sub-auditory whispering is also connected with its presence.