Pitanje za poznavaoce opusa Roberta Aickmana

[Sam Loomis]

Obzirom da imam u planu da se bacim u svet Ajkmanovih "strange stories" a izbor je prilicno limitiran,
imam pitanje za poznavaoce njegovog dela (ako ih ima).
Kako su cene na Ebay za njegove knjige previsoke (i po par stotina dolara/funti jer su u pitanja stara izdanja)
jedino sto je trenutno u ponudi su ove tri knjige, izdanje Faber & Faber:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wine-dark-Sea-Robert-Aickman/dp/0571244270/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242146793&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cold-Hand-Mine-Robert-Aickman/dp/0571244254/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242146793&sr=1-2
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Unsettled-Dust-Robert-Aickman/dp/0571244262/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242146793&sr=1-6

dakle, da li je ovo reprezentativno glede njegovog opusa i vredi li uzeti?

[Ghoul]

jeste, tu su mu mnoga od najboljih dela, ne žali para, kupi sve 3!

meni je krivo što ne dadoh 50$ kad sam mogao i ne kupih mu SABRANA DELA - ajkman je najbolji horor pisac XX veka.

[Sam Loomis]

vala 'oću...

da li se "pojavljivao" možda nekada u Utopiji?

[Ghoul]

nije, điđi je slabo verziran po pitanju horora (radim na tome da ga obrazujem!) - do nedavno on nije bio čuo ni za lavkrafta a nekmoli za ajkmana!

[besnilo]

imam kompilaciju cold hand in mine kao ebook trebalo bi uskoro da se bacim na citanje
ajde ako ima rapolozenih a da su je procitali neka kazu nesto o pricama sadrzanih u njoj koje se posebno izdvajaju a ujedno i da se kaze koja rec o ovom genijalnom piscu

ako neko zeli neka ostavi mail i poslacu mu price...

[Ghoul]

pročačkajte malo po forumu, već sam negde pisao o ovom velikom piscu i već odgovarao na pitanja koja se ovde postavljaju.

[besnilo]

Robert Aickman's "The Trains"


Aickman's despair of his age (everything prior to the year of his birth in fact was golden, a golden past that mirrored the views of, amongst others, the Roman satirist, Juvenal) is resonant of Sartre's. But where Sartre may declare: "Tu n'es rien d'autre que ta vie" (you are nothing else but your life), Aickman goes one step further, seeming to suggest the very fabric of "modern" life has become tainted: the situation is thus hopeless; "you are nothing else but your life, which is inherently flawed and beyond repair". Hence you are damned.

I sense faint resonance (whether intended or not) between Aickman's "The Trains" and Jean Paul Sartre's 1944 play "No Exit" (one might also suggest resonance of a kind with Algernon Blackwood's "The Lost Valley"). The gothic elements in Sartre's play are reflected in Aickman's gothic pastiche. The two female characters in "No Exit", Estelle, an infanticide, and Inez, a lesbian, are pale reflections of Aickman's "heroines" in "The Trains" (or rather, vice versa). Sartre's play contains four characters enclosing an abyss , Aickman's story makes repeated use of groups of four, whether in groups of stones or people, but again enclosing vacuity. To Sartre hell is other people. To Aickman it is life itself.

However, Aickman's use of four would also reflect his knowledge that the ancients believed there were four elements, four essential energy forces, fire, water, air and earth. The Sylph, for example, were spirits of the air in communion with the divine. These elements were seen as vital components of the human body – the maintenance of physical and psychological health depended on keeping a balance between them. A similar balance is required in the exterior world (Jungian psychology, of course, has continued this tradition by envisaging the psyche in terms of four aspects, thought, emotion, intuition and the senses).

Interestingly, while the ancients looked on rain as life-giving, a deluge could be caused by the wrath of the Gods purging the earth of corruption (in such circumstances the innocent would perish alongside the guilty). The valley, as symbol, was seen as protective, feminine, associated with fertility; however in Christian tradition it became linked with darkness and the unknown.

In his introduction to "The Fontana Book of Ghost Stories" in which "The Trains" appeared, Aickman wrote about his story: "sometimes you can't tell whether or not it is a ghost story".

He wrote "Strange Stories" rather than ghost stories.

But where's the ghost, then? (you may ask)

Well, ummm, they're all dead – so they're all ghosts, right? (I might reply, hesitantly)

But surely "The Trains", whatever else it may be, is an exploration of sexual identity? (you demand, tired of further prevarication)

Mmmm, well, yes – (I'm going to change the subject, of course) -
Aickman professed a love of railways and rail travel, thought it one of the more "civilized" forms of transportation. The power of those big steam locomotives was impressive. And being steam they were a product of a time prior to the terrible upheavals of 1914 – 18. But the abrupt appearance of new trains, of closed in trains, what does that signify?

In "The River runs Uphill" Aickman wrote:

"I believe that the key to the modern world lies in Samuel Butler's suggestion that the machine is an evolutionary development, and that it is in the process of reducing man from homo sapiens to homo mechanicus; virtually to greenfly status. That machines have their own purposes and intelligences though entirely different from the purposes and intelligences of men, that they are rapidly taking over from men, seems to me plain."

Could these new trains stand as a symbol of "modern" technology? Could they be the "closed" hospital trains returning from the front with the worst of the wounded? The windows of the carriages blacked out to hide the appalling mutilations of the poor wretches within. Could these "modern" trains be an "evolutionary development" reducing humankind to the status of greenfly? Could ghosts walk the corridor, coach to coach?

A tenuous argument, at best – but where's that darn ghost, then? (you ask, patience finally, understandably, exhausted)

Ultimately, of course, there can be no answer to that question. If Aickman had thought an answer was required, he would have provided one – but that's not what he was about, was it?

(I could at this point throw in a couple of paragraphs about the pseudo-couple: the early hiatus; these separate yet utterly dependant individuals; two sides of a single coin, but lacking psychic unity yet simultaneously fulfilling a socially symbolic role – but I won't on this occasion)

Aickman claimed mankind "took a wrong turning" when it suggested "by application of reason and the scientific method, everything will be known...Spirit is indefinable, as everything that matters is indefinable". So if his work 'matters' it must follow by definition that it is indefinable. Aickman believed in a world beyond, a "world elsewhere", a place, perhaps, not too dissimilar to the location of Plato's "forms"?

So no definitive explanation – and no ghost (or as many as you chose? It's up to you!).

preuzeto odavde: http://bookmanpeedeel.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/robert-aickmans-the-trains/