J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's Long Lost "Spalatro"

commentary by Jim Rockhill

   

J. Sheridan Le Fanu Spalatro: Two Italian Tales (Sarob Press, 2001) xxxi + 60 pp. Wraparound jacket illustration & two interior illustrations by Douglas Walters. Frontispiece portrait of the author.

   

"Spalatro" is a decidedly odd tale, a miniature Gothic novel in fifty pages of small print, complete with frame translator, recording monk & a long episodic narrative given by a man who spurns confession, but offers to explain why he has done those deeds for which he has been sentenced to death.

The narrative proper falls into four distinct episodes. The first is taken up by the titular character's childhood - distant father, loving mother, scornful step-father & all. The most interesting & relevant portion of this opening concerns the youth's monkish, though profane tutor, who flees following after an attempted rape of the step-sister. This is not the last we will see of him.

There follows a well-developed episode set around one of those murderous wayside inns so beloved of popular nineteenth century literature. Le Fanu describes the murder of one of the guests with relish. It is not quite up to the famous trepanation scene in The House by the Church-Yard, but a worthy precursor. From the monk's narrative of Spalatro's criminal fame & capture as well as the childhood reminiscences & this gruesome episode, all constituting the first of the tale's two published installments, one would expect this to be an entirely picaresque tale, but this is not to be. The supernatural appears with increasing force throughout the second installment.

Having escaped the inn, Spalatro finds himself at Carnival in Rome, where he indulges himself in rather generalized debauchery. We are to take Spalatro at his word when he tells us,

"recklessly I courted danger: wildly I plunged into the unfathomable gulf of sin, & madly did time fly by." p. 25.

Nonetheless, a fascinating episode now takes place when Spalatro finds himself lured away from the crowd by a harlequin claiming to rescue him from peril. The identity of this malevolent, mesmeric harlequin & his power over Spalatro change the tenor of the tale drastically. We are now conscious of powers at work intent upon shaping Spalatro's destiny, powers that Spalatro himself, the monk recording his tale and, in spite of his attempts at the end to provide a rational explanation a' la Hesselius, the translator & editor of the tale cannot fully explain.

Spalatro's liking for the monk, but contempt for his religion begins to make sense. This is characteristic of Le Fanu's more familiar work such as "Green Tea," "Mr. Justice Harbottle," "Schalken the Painter," "Ultor de Lacy," etc. in that the ostensibly moral, Christian frame-work of the tale is consistently undermined by a failure on the part of Christianity's symbols or spokesmen to save anyone from anything. Spalatro knows he is damned, has always been damned & that nothing the monk or anyone else can do will save him.

Also characteristic of Le Fanu is the occasional odd sentence, which portrays the ominous & simultaneously makes gentle mockery of that ominousness:

"The street was dark & narrow - the houses on either side tall, sombre, & antique, & withal carrying upon them a character of decay & neglect which added gloom & sadness to a scene already sufficiently uncheery." p. 30.

Do we not detect a wry smile in those last five words? This tone is followed up a few paragraphs later by lines that seems to echo that tone:

"More shocked than I can describe at what I heard & saw, I stood silently by, scarcely knowing what course to take. I soon, however, grew weary of my foolish situation, and, beg(an) to regard the whole thing as rather comic than imposing." p. 31.

The next episode is marvelous, with its old man turned mage, its parody of the eucharist, its figures appearing from beyond a curtain of mist, its unwilling femme fatale & the three mysterious portraits. If the first portrait is the mage & the second his dead-alive daughter, brought to life by chalices of blood, just whose portrait is that beside theirs? Is it the harlequin, seen by everyone else as not a man, but a slinking otter, felt on the bedside at night following dreams or whose face appears beneath Spalatro's bed of a morning? Is it the face of the Devil, to whom Spalatro may be in thrall should he eat, drink or make pledge of his love within the old man's house? Or does it portray Spalatro himself, whose destiny it has been to stand with all the other lost souls in that place?

For all the richness of its episodes, the tale is fascinating but ultimately frustrating, because little attempt has been made to successfully integrate all of its elements. They never quite add up to a coherent whole. Though there are links between the descriptions of Spalatro's childhood & the events of Part II, the episode at the inn has little if anything to do with the rest of the story. Considering that this is a famous robber speaking, one who is offering an uncontrite apologia for his life, we are given a vague estimate of the number of men he has slain at the beginning & end of the tale & a few vague descriptions of the world of sensuality & vice he has plunged himself into, which are about as convincing as Lovecraft's descriptions of decadent behavior in "The Hound". Not that one expects graphic descriptions of vice & mayhem, but Le Fanu offers little transition from the inquisitive hedonist who kills only out of self-defense & the "gigantic ruffian" credited with killing "more than two hundred men in various broils & actions with his own hand" beyond the statement that his experiences in the house of the old man have made him "a blind, desperate instrument of hell". Although individual scenes are excellent, the creation of brooding intensity & slowly mounting doom are absent, as if Le Fanu were content to allow the remoteness of the setting to do that work for him. This then is a good rather than a great tale, the seams of which creak somewhat under the pressure placed upon them.

"Borrhomeo the Astrologer" is nowhere near as ambitious, occupying a mere twelve pages including one full-page illustration. Set in Milan during the plague of 1630, it relates the attempts of said astrologer to acquire the grand Arcanum, capable of conferring long life & turning base metals into gold. The young man, the hideous dog, the hunchback & the great assembly he meets all bring him closer to that goal. The wafer of skin with which he seals the bargain by creating a mask for the bargainer is an interesting conceit as is the obligatory trick whereby Borrhomeo suffers by gaining exactly what he sought. The tale, if slight, is effective & well-crafted.

Miles Stribling's Introduction is informative, especially as it relates to the publication of Le Fanu's works in periodicals, but leans very heavily on W. J. McCormack's Sheridan Le Fanu & Victorian Ireland, convincing me of the need to finally acquire & read a copy of that book myself. His linkage of names & motifs in "Spalatro" to other woks by Le Fanu is ingenious. He also sees a greater linkage between Parts I & II of the novella through such images as blood & decapitation than I do.

Douglas Walters illustrations, appositely dramatic & atmospheric, are among his best work.

   

Copyright © by Jim Rockhill, all rights reserved

   

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