Fitz-James O’Brien occupies a particular, if typically neglected, place in nineteenth-century Gothic literature, bridging the spectral introspection of American darkish romantics with the folkloric terrors of his Irish heritage. Greatest identified for his macabre quick fiction, O’Brien was equally adept as a poet, crafting verse that mingles psychological unease with supernatural spectacle. His Gothic creativeness thrives in liminal areas—between life and dying, dream and waking, the fabric and the immaterial—the place characters confront forces that expose their deepest vulnerabilities.
In poems comparable to “The Demon of the Gibbet” (1856) and “The Ghosts” (1859), O’Brien attracts upon the European ballad custom, metaphysical reflection, and the period’s rising fascination with dying’s metaphoric resonance. These works showcase two complementary aspects of his darkish artistry: the folkloric Gothic, steeped in Celtic legend and the uncanny violence of the supernatural world, and the psychological Gothic, the place the fear arises from inward dissolution and existential dread.
Taken collectively, they place O’Brien as a transitional Gothic poet whose work anticipates later developments in horror and symbolist verse, revealing a author preoccupied with the porous boundaries that separate the residing from the useless.
No anthology of Fitz-James O’Brien could be full with out this, certainly one of his most well-known items of writing – his most generally anthologized poem. The story advised right here is an historic legend – that of the Demon Lover. Generally the evil spirit is a ghost, a troll, a gnome, a fairy, and elf, a demon, or a zombie, however invariably it arrives to kidnap a residing particular person to move them to the realm of the supernatural. Featured prominently in folks ballads, the victims are sometimes youngsters, stunning virgins, espoused girls (kidnapped on their marriage ceremony day), and troubled dreamers. Typically the sufferer has been conscious of the eminent abduction, knowledgeable by desires or premonitions. On different events the kidnapping is capricious and startling. The occasion typically happens on horseback or in a carriage the place the sufferer is chased, later disappearing or expiring. The ethical is certainly one of dying’s egocentric greed – the victims being universally harmless and younger, though on this case there are hints that the couple are en path to a scandalous elopement, and the demon would possibly then be learn because the manifestation of unchecked lust: violent, egocentric, and damaging. It might probably typically be seen as a meditation on the cruelty of dying and the vulnerability of innocence.
“The Demon of the Gibbet” is undoubtedly impressed by the folklore of Eire and Nice Britain, and particularly the folks songs which revolve across the theme of the Demon Lover. The Germans established the trope as a poetic subject – most famously by Gottfried Augustus Bürger in his influential masterpiece, “Lenore,” and J. W. von Goethe in his world-famous “The Erlking” – a poem tailored in a depressing artwork track by Schubert. Variations are manifold, however some are excellent. It then grew to become greatest explored as a theme in English-language quick fiction: traditional examples embrace Edith Nesbit’s “John Charrington’s Wedding ceremony” and “Man-Measurement in Marble,” E. F. Benson’s “The Face,” Charles Dickens’ “To Be Learn at Nightfall,” and Rhoda Broughton’s “The Man with the Nostril.” Most notably, nonetheless, is the story of O’Brien’s countryman, J. Sheridan Le Fanu: “Schalken the Painter,” which makes use of the motif of wine and nourishment getting used to revitalize these trapped within the spirit world. For a extra developed tackle this story learn Le Fanu’s masterpiece.
There was no west, there was no east,
No star overseas for eyes to see;
And Norman spurred his jaded beast
Exhausting by the horrible gallows-tree.
“O, Norman, haste throughout this waste[1],—
For one thing appears to comply with me!”
“Cheer up, expensive Maud, for, thanked be God,
We nigh[2] have handed the gallows tree!”
He kissed her lip: then—spur and whip!
And quick they fled throughout the lea[3].
However useless the heel, the rowel[4] metal,—
For one thing leaped from the gallows-tree!
“Give me your cloak, your knightly cloak,
That wrapped you oft past the ocean!
The wind is daring, my bones are outdated,
And I’m chilly on the gallows-tree!”
“O holy God! O dearest Maud,
Fast, fast, some prayers—the perfect that be!
A bony hand my neck has spanned,
And tears my knightly cloak from me!”
“Give me your wine,—the crimson, crimson wine,
That in a flask hangs by your knee!
Ten summers burst on me accurst[5],
And I’m athirst on the gallows-tree!”
“O Maud, my life, my loving spouse!
Have you ever no prayer to set us free?
My belt unclasps,—a demon grasps,
And drags my wine-flask from my knee!”
“Give me your bride, your bonnie bride,
That left her nest with you to flee!
O she hath flown to be my very own,
For I am alone on the gallows-tree!”
“Cling nearer, Maud, and belief in God!
Cling shut!—Ah, heaven, she slips from me!”
A prayer, a groan, and he alone
Rode on that evening from the gallows-tree.
Curt however haunting, O’Brien’s “The Ghosts” is a profound little verse that hums with the identical existential meditations as Hawthorne (“The Ocean”), Poe (“Annabel Lee,” “Ulalume”), Whitman (“O Captain! My Captain!”), and Dickinson (“As a result of I couldn’t cease for dying,” “I heard a Fly buzz — once I died,” and so forth., and so forth.). The traces “I’ve no worry of ye! I appear to share / Your dim vitality” are significantly akin to Dickinson’s pretty, rolling cadence. The content material broods over the inevitability of dying, and the ways in which the useless are in some methods extra alive than a number of the residing. The ghosts which wreath concerning the speaker’s mattress – presumably the reminiscences of the departed, haunting ideas of previous episodes in his life – mock his draining life and name into query who, precisely, is extra alive (that’s, extra in contact with the philosophical realities of life). As the person dies (or imagines himself dying), he surrenders himself into the murky indistinctness of the ghosts, abandoning himself to a worldview which resists clear definitions of excellent and evil, life and dying. In the long run, he sighs, it’s all mist, all a floating fog of morphing shadows and refracted mild. At this level in his life, O’Brien was significantly obsessive about doom and future, fixating on an unstated destiny – imprecise, discomforting, and aloof, which however looms out of the long run and makes its arrival a certainty. Actuality was starting to really feel imprecise to him in 1859, and the assured black-and-white of his early romanticism was congealing into an vague, marbled gray: much less sure, extra speculative, extra uneasy. “The Ghosts” makes use of a supernatural metaphor to ponder the shifting, windblown vapors of life, idealism, and mortality.
Pale shapes advancing from the mid-night air,
Beckoning with misty finger spherical my mattress,
Bending your pale faces o’er my head,
I’ve no worry of ye! I appear to share
Your dim vitality – mine’s well-nigh fled.
I really feel the human outlines soften away ;
These skinny, grey palms that lie on the damp sheet
Are virtually vapory sufficient to fulfill
Yours within the grasp of fellowship. My hair
Appears turning into cloud. The quickened[6] clay
That partitions me in is cracking, and I try
In the direction of ye by way of the breach. Am I alive?
Or are ye useless? All’s imprecise – a large grey sea.
Hark! The cock crows! Now, spirits, welcome me!
[1] Wilderness, desolate countryside
[3] Grassland, fields, open countryside
[4] The spherical, spiky wheel of a spur that truly “spurs” the horse
[5] That’s, he has been useless – and powerfully thirsty – for ten years
[6] “Quickened clay” is an older poetic or biblical-style phrase. It means clay that has been given life — in different phrases, residing flesh shaped out of earth
