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| "Oedipus & the Sphinx" by Gustave Moreau [1826-1898] | |
The Weird Poetry of George Sylvester Viereck
Jessica Amanda Salmonson
Richard A. Lupoff's alternate-history novel Lovecraft's Book (Arkham House, 1985) posits a struggle between Lovecraft's Jewish wife Sonia & a pro-Klan pro-Nazi German agent for the political soul of H. P. Lovecraft.
The villain of the piece was an actual writer of weird fiction & verse, a man in too many ways exactly as Lupoff portrayed him. And though his friendship with HPL was a clever fiction, Lovecraft's letters reveal himself as having been a naive & only slowly-evolving man who might indeed have been mistaken as the very author to approach with a commission to write an American Mein Kampf. That history's H. P. Lovecraft did evolve beyond such ill-considered support for Hitler becomes a central reality of Lupoff's finally heroic tale.
I was charmed by Lupoff's mischievous use of actual literary figures. And by right of being an Arkhan House book, Lupoff set a number of Arkham collectors upon quests to find out who this historical poet cum Nazi & fictional friend of HPL really was -- in the process rediscovering the antagonist's long-neglected weird verses.
For all his lack of genius, I've quite enjoyed the poems of George Sylvester Viereck (1884-1962), whose son Peter Viereck (b. 1916) is also a well known poet, as well as a leading conservative thinker. Several of George Viereck's poems are about vampiric women especially in the person of Lilith or the Sphinx -- the same as inspired Wilde, George Sterling, Rosetti, & Viereck's actual hero, Algernon "beat me whip me" Swinburne. Viereck also wrote a very rare & much sought-after horror novel The House of the Vampire (Moffat Yard, 1907); a bestselling trilogy of heroic fantasies with Paul Eldridge; & a final fantasy novel today completely forgotten, The Nude in the Mirror (Woodford Press, 1953; in the UK as Gloria: A Novel, Duckworth, 1952).
His poetry collections include much weird fantasy. Nineveh & Other Poems (Moffat Yard, 1912) is described in The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror as "Steeped in the aestheticism of Poe & Wilde" & singles out the erotic ghost poem "The Haunted House" as well as "The Smile of the Sphinx" & "When Idols Fall" for especial praise. Here's the entirety of "The Haunted House":
I lay beside you . . . on your lips the while Hovered, most strange . . . the mirage of a smile, Such as a minstrel lover might have seen Upon the visage of some antique queen -- Flickering like flame, half choked by wind and dust, Weary of all things saving song and lust. How many days and years and lovers' lies Gave you your knowledge? You are very wise And tired, yet insatiate to the last. These things I thought, but said not; and there passed Before my vision in voluptuous quest, The pageant of the lovers who possessed Your soul and body even as I possess, Who marked your passion in its nakedness And all your love-sins when your love was new. They saw as I your quivering breast, and drew Nearer to the consuming flame that burns Deep to the marrow of my bone, and turns My heart to love even as theirs who knew From head to girdle each sweet curve of you, Each little way of loving. No caress, But apes the part of former loves. Ah yes, Even thus your hand toyed in the locks of him Who came before me. Was he fair of limb Or very dark? What matter, with such lures You snared the heart of all your paramours! To-night I feel the presence of the others, Your lovers were they and are now my brothers And I have nothing that has not been theirs, No single bloom the tree of passion bears They have not plucked. Beloved, can it be? Is there no gift that you reserve for me -- No loving kindness or no subtle sin, No secret shrine that none has entered in, Whither no mocking memories pursue Love's wistful pilgrim? I am weary too, With weariness of all your lovers, and when I follow in the ways of other men, I know each spot of your sweet body is A cross, the tombstone of some perished kiss. With all its beauty and its faultless grace Your body, dearest, is a haunted place. When I did yield to passion's swift demand, One of your lovers touched me with his hand. And in the pang of amorous delight I hear strange voices calling through the night.
Also of interest is Songs of Armageddon & Other Poems (Kennerley, 1916) for which the long "Faust's Descent from Heaven" is centerpiece, but too much of the other content is annoyingly political. The Candle & the Flame (Moffat Yard, 1912) is more fully in keeping with the Aesthete tone of Nineveh.
Candle includes a long introduction that is partly a young aesthete's manifesto punctuated by such declarations as "Sin I respect" & partly a dismissal of aestheticism & a threat never to write another such volume since "I no longer worship beauty" finding Wall Street more thrilling, noting "J. Pierpont Morgan himself, so I am told, was a poet before finance enthralled him." Seems to me the seeds of idiocy were well sprouted in the twenty-something poet & no wonder he became politically more & more obscene. But if truly he respected sin, perhaps Ultimate Evil which for the Catholic Huysman was a flirtation with Satan worship must indeed be Hitler for the increasingly materialistic Viereck.
Before he went all Nazi he was an important figure -- even the central figure -- of a poetry society in New York city. He was at the time regarded a great lyric poet despite his obsession with horror themes -- & despite that aestheticism & la belle dame sans mercy in particular were already regarded old-hat. His reputation evaporated over his unyielding support of Germany. He became Roosevelt's "pro-nazi" advisor but Roosevelt quickly repudiated him. Viereck wrote several influential books & periodical pieces in praise of such figures as Mussolini & successfully raised money from German Americans to send to Germany. As Nazi perfidy became increasingly impossible to ignore, Viereck was to become persona non grata everywhere; his writing career would never recover & even his closest loved ones would have no more to do with him.
He was born in Munich & was rumored to be the illegitimate grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm I. His support for Germany in the first world war was a questionable stance though understandable & forgivable. But that he should be America's foremost Nazi apologist before, during & immediately after World War II is most irredeemably discrediting. That I can stand to have Viereck's poems in my personal collection at all is saying a lot for them, because I don't easily overlook Nazi sympathies. He served prison time as a German agent during which period his humiliated wife liquidated all their assets to divide between Jewish & Catholic charities, then divorced him -- good for her! Only much later did Viereck partially question any of his actions & made efforts to overcome his once-notorious racism & antisemitism to the extent of supporting negro rights. A few of his former Jewish friends (notably Ludwig Lewisohn & Elmer Gertz) guardedly forgave him, though it was known that even his most dubious German ties were never really severed.
He dragged down Paul Eldridge's career too. Paul was not a Nazi sympathizer but his name appears with George's on three important fantasy novels that were best sellers in their day, a sweeping Decadent epic trilogy consisting of My First Two Thousand Years: The Autobiography of the Wandering Jew (Macaulay, 1928), Salome: The Wandering Jewess (Liveright, 1930) & The Invincible Adam (Liveright, 1932), the middle portion of which is amazingly colorful. That antisemitic Viereck should select mythic Jewish femme fatales as his womanly ideal is not in the least a surprising perversity. The warped masochistic feminism of the portrait of Salome (as also Lilith) is pure Viereck who spoke vehemently in favor of suffrage in the early 'teens before American women could vote, the while writing poems in praise of some imaginary castrating demoness-muse, placing women not so much on a pedestal as in the depths of a cavernous bed. Some men just naturally prefer the cruel harlot to the nurturing bride.
Paul Eldridge separately wrote poetry & short stories, including weird tales. Some of his best will be found in Irony & Pity: A Book of Tales (Joseph Lawrence, 1926) introduced by Vincent Starrett & including a truly first-rate high fantasy "Emperor of Micamaca." Of equal interest is the painfully rare And the Sphinx Spoke (Stratford, 1921) introduced by Benjamin de Casserers, consisting of very appealing weirds in the Aesthete spirit. "Paradise Regained" is an especially fine high fantasy with a strikingly cynical denouement. Condemned by association, few were willing to give Paul any slack for being George's pal for several years, & his post-Invincible Adam works were barely distributed by minor publishers.
In retrospect it's obvious that Viereck's reputation as an "important" lyric poet could never have been sustained even if he'd not been politically detestible. He's a washout compared to Teasdale, St Vincent Millay, or Margaret Widdemer, the latter also devoted to themes of the weird. But I nevertheless enjoy such pieces as "The Singing Vampire," "The Virgin Sphinx" & "Queen Lilith" in The Candle & the Flame, the last-named given here in its entirety:
"Lady of mystery, what is thy history?
Where is the rose God gave to thee,
Where is thy soul's virginity?"
"Lord, my Lord, is thy speech a sword?
What is it thou wouldst have of me?"
"There are pleasant passes of tender grasses
Where the kine may browse and the wild she-asses,
Between the hills and the deep salt sea,
But where is the spot that is branded not
With the Sign of the Beast on thy fair body?"
"Lord, my Lord, ask thy Scarlet Horde!
Who spilt my love and my life like wine?
Who threw my body as bread to swine?
If my sins in heaven be seventy times seven,
What between heaven and hell are thine?"
'"Lady, where is it thy fancies hover,
With wolves' eyes prying restlessly
For some naked thing that they might discover,
Some strange new sin or some strange new lover,
Beyond the lover who lies with thee?"
"Lord, my Lord, who has struck the chord
That holds my heart in a spider's mesh?
Prince of the soul's satiety,
Whence springs that hunger beyond the flesh,
That only the flesh can appease in me?"
"By the love of a love that is strange as myrrh,
By the kiss that kills and the doom that smileth,
By my cloven hoof and my fiery spur,
Thou art my sister, the Lady Lilith,
I am-- "
"My brother Lucifer!"
"I am thy lover, I am thy brother,
Time cannot prison us, space cannot smother,
Proudest of Jahveh's kindred we,
Whom Chaos, the terrific mother,
Begot from stark Eternity.
"I am the cry of the earth that beguileth
God's trembling hosts though they loathe my name,
The dauntless foe of His loaded game!
But where is the tomb that had hidden Lilith,
Of the Deathless Worm and the Quenchless Flame?
"I hunted thee where the Ibis nods,
From the Brocken's crag to the Upas Tree,
My lonesomeness was as great as God's,
When He cast us out from His Holy See,
But now at the last thou art come to me!'
"Let Mary of Bethlehem lord it in Heaven,
While stringĖd beads her seraphs tell,
(How art thou fallen, Gabriel!)
Thy bridesmaids shall be the Deadly Seven,
And I will make thee a queen in Hell!"
Or "The Princess with the Golden Veil" in imitation of Poe's own femme fatale fascination, including this sample stanza:
"Your lips are silent as the grave,
And with strange fear my cheek is pale;
Have mercy on the King, your slave,
O Princess of the Golden Veil."Much else among his verse is worthy of praise in that very narrow & limited category specifically of rhymed horror.
Weird poetry gets included in the
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