What separates truly fine writing from the merely competent? In this searching essay, a great master of the weird tale sets out to name the elusive quality he calls ecstasy.
First published in 1902, this influential work of criticism finds Arthur Machen – the Welsh author famed for supernatural classics such as The Great God Pan – arguing his case through the voice of an unnamed Literary Hermit, a reclusive scholar of Barnsbury. For the Hermit, the mark of true art is not realism or instruction but a kind of rapture, a withdrawal from the ordinary that lifts prose and poetry toward the sublime. Wide-ranging and provocative, it remains one of the most original statements ever written on the aesthetics of imaginative literature.
This edition features:
- An accessible presentation of Arthur Machen's landmark 1902 meditation on what raises writing to the level of true art.
- The complete argument of the Literary Hermit, tracing the quality of rapture across prose, poetry, and myth.
- An illuminating window on the aesthetic thought of a writer better known for his tales of horror and the supernatural.
- A rewarding read for students of criticism, Decadence, and the fin-de-siècle debate over the purpose of imaginative art.