And little he knew of the things that ink may do, how it can mark a dead man's thoughts for the wonder of later years, and tell of happenings that are gone clean away, and be a voice for us out of the dark of time, and save many a fragile thing from the pounding of heavy ages; or carry to us, over the rolling centuries, even a song from lips long dead on forgotten hills." Lord Dunsany
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Books
The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"To plunge into the depths of the abyss-heaven or hell. What does it matter? Into the heart of the unknown. To seek the new."_______Baudelaire
Heroes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Dunsany
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Writings
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Dunsany was a prolific writer, penning short stories, novels, plays, poetry, essays and autobiography, and publishing over sixty books, not including individual plays. He began his authorial career in the late 1890s, with a few published verses, such as "Rhymes from a Suburb" and "The Spirit of the Bog", but he made a lasting impression in 1905 when he burst onto the publishing scene with the well-received collection The Gods of Pegana.
Dunsany's most notable fantasy short stories were published in collections from 1905 to 1919. He paid for the publication of the first such collection, The Gods of Pegana, earning a commission on sales. This he never again had to do, the vast majority of his extensive writings selling.[4]
The stories in his first two books, and perhaps the beginning of his third, were set within an invented world, Pegana, with its own gods, history and geography. Starting with this book, Dunsany's name is linked to that of Sidney Sime, his chosen artist, who illustrated much of his work, notably until 1922.[5]
Dunsany's style varied significantly throughout his writing career. Prominent Dunsany scholar S. T. Joshi has described these shifts as Dunsany moving on after he felt he had exhausted the potential of a style or medium. From the naïve fantasy of his earliest writings, through his early short story work in 1904–1908, he turned to the self-conscious fantasy of The Book of Wonder in 1912, in which he almost seems to be parodying his lofty early style.
Each of his collections varies in mood; A Dreamer's Tales varies from the wistfulness of "Blagdaross" to the horrors of "Poor Old Bill" and "Where the Tides Ebb and Flow" to the social satire of "The Day of the Poll."
The opening paragraph of "The Hoard of the Gibbelins" from The Book of Wonder, (1912) gives a good indication of both the tone and tenor of Dunsany's style at the time:
The Gibbelins eat, as is well known, nothing less good than man. Their evil tower is joined to Terra Cognita, to the lands we know, by a bridge. Their hoard is beyond reason; avarice has no use for it; they have a separate cellar for emeralds and a separate cellar for sapphires; they have filled a hole with gold and dig it up when they need it. And the only use that is known for their ridiculous wealth is to attract to their larder a continual supply of food. In times of famine they have even been known to scatter rubies abroad, a little trail of them to some city of Man, and sure enough their larders would soon be full again.
After The Book of Wonder, Dunsany began to write plays — many of which were even more successful, at the time, than his early story collections — while also continuing to write short stories. He continued to write plays for the theatre into the 1930s, including the famous If, and a number for radio production.
Although many of Dunsany's stage plays were successfully produced within his lifetime, he also wrote a number of "chamber plays" which were only intended to be read privately (as if they were stories) or performed on the radio, rather than staged[citation needed]. Some of Dunsany's chamber or radio plays contain supernatural events — such as a character spontaneously appearing out of thin air, or vanishing in full view of the audience — without any explanation of how the effect is to be staged — a matter of no importance, since Dunsany did not intend these works actually to be performed live and visible.
Following a successful lecture touring in the USA in 1919–1920, and with his reputation now principally related to his plays, Dunsany temporarily reduced his output of short stories, concentrating on plays, novels, and poetry for a time.
His poetry, now little seen, was for a time so popular that it is recited by the lead character of F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise.
Dunsany's first novel, Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley, was published in 1922. It is set in "a Romantic Spain that never was," and follows the adventures of a young nobleman, Don Rodriguez, and his servant in their search for a castle for Rodriguez. It has been argued that Dunsany's inexperience with the novel form shows in the episodic nature of Don Rodriguez. In 1924, Dunsany published his second novel, The King of Elfland's Daughter, a return to his early style of writing, which is considered by many to be Dunsany's finest novel and a classic in the realm of the fantasy writing.
In his next novel, The Charwoman's Shadow, Dunsany returned to the Spanish milieu and to the light style of Don Rodriguez, to which it is related.
Though his style and medium shifted frequently, Dunsany's thematic concerns remained essentially the same. Many of Dunsany's later novels had an explicitly Irish theme, from the semi-autobiographical The Curse of the Wise Woman to His Fellow Men.
One of Dunsany's best-known characters was Joseph Jorkens, an obese middle-aged raconteur who frequented the fictional Billiards Club in London, and who would tell fantastic stories if someone would buy him a large whiskey and soda. From his tales, it was obvious that Mr Jorkens had travelled to all seven continents, was extremely resourceful, and well-versed in world cultures, but always came up short on becoming rich and famous. The Jorkens books, which sold well, were among the first of a type which was to become popular in fantasy and science fiction writing: extremely improbable "club tales" told at a gentleman's club or bar.
Dunsany's writing habits were considered peculiar by some. Lady Beatrice said that "He always sat on a crumpled old hat while composing his tales." (The hat was eventually stolen by a visitor to Dunsany Castle.) Dunsany almost never rewrote anything; everything he ever published was a first draft.[6] Much of his work was penned with quill pens, which he made himself; Lady Beatrice was usually the first to see the writings, and would help type them. It has been said that Lord Dunsany would sometimes conceive stories while hunting, and would return to the Castle and draw in his family and servants to re-enact his visions before he set them on paper.
I loved the Rhyme of the Ancient mariner, just stunning... Now, here's something of a nautical, but yet more nonsensical nature..."We know what we are, we are sailors headed toward the future..."
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