Opium and Other Stories

 

Opium and Other Stories by Géza Csáth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a tale about a book. Not this book only, but a specific copy of this particular book, the one that's sitting on the desk in front of me as I type this up.

I had not heard of Csath until a few months ago, when this book arrived as part of an exchange package with an author whose work I greatly admire. I traded one of my books for one of his and he sent "extras". I was very pleased with this, and this copy of Opium and Other Stories was part of the package. I saw that there was an introduction by Angela Carter and thought "well, if she wrote the intro, it can't be all that bad". And, of course, Opium. The connection to decadence (as well as the cover art - clearly from the Symbolist era, my favorite era of art) told me that I would at least like some of the stories contained therein.

I was mistaken. I liked all of the stories, and a few of them were exceptional.

But we'll get to that in a moment. Back to the story about the book. I was told that there were some pages missing from the book, but I completely and utterly forgot this by the time I began reading it. I don't typically look ahead at what I'm going to read outside of checking the next story up (in order to ascertain if I can read it with the time remaining that day/lunch hour/whatever or if I need more time, as I am an admittedly slow reader). So, I "discovered" (re-discovered, really) that some pages were missing . . . and to be quite honest, the missing pages made me love the book all that much more. Why? Because I am not a fan of tidy endings. And because I hate it when authors spoon-feed me too much information. I like the mystery of maybe not fully understanding everything that happened in a novel or story. Sure, I like to know enough to follow the thread, but I abhor when the author tries so desperately to tie off every single loose end. I much prefer that the author let me use my imagination to fill in the blanks and make the connections. That way, the story becomes "mine" in a way. And it sticks in my brain better that way. I am more vested in the happenings, the characters, even the setting if some bit of it is left to my imagination.

In this case, it wasn't the author who did this, it was the fact that a few pages were physically missing from the work. One story (the title story, in fact) was without a beginning, so I had to imagine one up. Another was missing the end, so I . . . imagined one up myself. Now, I wouldn't want to do this with something with an overly complex plot and lots of characters, but in this case, with these short stories, it worked for me and worked for me quite well.

Who was Csáth? He was a gifted neurologist who wrote on the side and who struggled with a powerful opium addiction throughout his short life. At one point he shot and killed his wife and tried to commit suicide, but was unsuccessful and was, thence, institutionalized. He escaped and, after being stopped by Serbian border guards, he swallowed poison, this time successfully committing suicide. A tragic life, to be sure, and one can sense traces of a troubled mind throughout these works, a few of which give graphic descriptions of animal torture and murder (of both animals and humans). there is no doubt that his artistic side was overshadowed with darkness. At least one of these stories ("The Black Silence"), I would consider required reading for horror aficionados. Had his work been available in English translation sooner and had his work been more widely distributed, I feel that this work would have been considered a classic.

But again, I'm getting ahead of myself. To remedy that, let me introduce my notes to the various stories:

"The Magician's Garden" is a wonderfully evocative tale of mysteries, somehow obfuscated by the characters' frank admittance of them. Attila Sassy's illustrations (peppered throughout the book) lend a distorted elegance to Csáth's beautiful prose. The words are strongly redolent of symbolism, the art somewhere between Beardsley and Klimt, with an utterly alien quality unique to Sassy.

"Paul and Virginia" is a simple story, self-effacingly so. And yet, with one small twist, Csáth sends the whole setup into a maelstrom of conflicting emotion. Iys incredibly effective for a four page piece of what moderns would call "microfiction". But there's nothing micro about it. This little twist sends the story well beyond the bounds of the words, deepens them into mixed poignancy and, perhaps, regret.

I want to say that "An Afternoon Dream" is a brilliant symbolist tale. But I don't really know what that means. Reminiscent of Symbolist art, I suppose (I am reminded of Gustave Moreau, in particular, or, perhaps - a bit later - Fernand Khnopff or Klimt), though this might just be some kind of artistic synesthesia which I suffer. Nevertheless, it is a beautiful tale, mythic, poetic, and, yes, brilliant.

"Saturday evening" is a quaint recollection of domestic life, with the ambiguously sinister (?) Sandman waiting in the wings, watching, looming.

don't think that it was just the name "Trepov" in the title "Trepov on the Dissecting Table" that made me think of Nabakov. No, the voice is similar, and the peasants-eye view of day to day life in the face of death was Nabakov to a "T". Strong echoes of the Russian here. Oh, and the story really is all about Russians.

"Erna" is a bitterly funny morality tale. It is, like most of the stories herein, very brief, so to say too much is to spoil it. It is a brilliant and cutting character study with a bit of a twisted sense of humor, which is to say, I liked it quite a bit.

At first, I thought that "The Surgeon," with its philosophical allusions, would delve into the depths of the epistemology of time, but the story took an abrupt term toward physiology that reveals the titular surgeon as an absinthe-addled madman. My kind of guy, truth be told.

"Meeting Mother" is a ghost story, I suppose, but different than any other ghost story I've read. Or it is a hallucination, who can tell?

"Murder" strips the act of any kind of romantic notions and wallows in the utterly futile banality of what it feels like to take another man's life. It's disturbing for the profound emotional effect it has on the one telling the tale. The continuously surging regret is palpable.

Don't let the title fool you, "Little Emma" is the most horrific thing I've read in a long time - animal torture, caning, and hangings throughout. This is highly disturbing stuff!

And, oddly, the next page in this copy of the book is missing, so I'm going to start the next story "Opium" three pages in, not knowing what came before. Intriguing . . . an adventure!

Csath gives an interesting argument for "Opium," namely that only during the transcendental high are we truly alive, and what appears to be hours to the outside are thousands of years to those who are living. Thus, it's all worth the sacrifice. While I don't agree that it's all worth it, I've been in that headspace before, and it's always a temptation to dive back in. Too bad Csath imploded.

What's a decadent collection of stories without a tale of insanity and unfaithfulness? Such is "A Young Lady".

"Festal Slaughter" is a tale of peasants, but not idyllic. These are rough people, treated roughly, especially Rosie, whose only respite from her hard life and the harder life to come, lay in the comforts of sleep. I wonder if Jonathan Wood's excellent novella The Deepest Furrow wasn't at least partially inspired by this tale.

"A Joseph in Egypt" is a wonderful subversion of the story of Potiphar's wife in the form of a dream. It evokes a certain dream sense of simultaneous longing and contentment that often accompanies the best dreams.

"Musicians" is a communally-depressing piece, well, maybe just more fatalistic, about an end of an era and those who got out just in time. Reminiscent of Steven Millhauser's work, in ways, but definitely a step darker in mood (which is saying something, if you've read much of Millhauser).

I am absolutely convinced that if "The Black Silence" had a wider audience, it would be considered a classic of horror literature. It is an extremely effective story packed into very few words. It is written such that the emotional effect bursts out far beyond the confines of the story itself. This really is a must read!

"Railroad" teaches a hard lesson: silence and inaction exact a price, a festering inner rot from which one cannot escape. Brutality must be met with justice, or the brutalized may decline, even die, because justice has not been sought by the victim.

"Toad" is the first story in this volume that was a decidedly "meh" story. I suppose it was inevitable. Not a bad story, just so-so.

"The Pass" the highly-erotic tale of a young man's journey across fields of nude figures, is balanced on the edge between Symbolism and Surrealism. One is left wondering what to think of the observer/narrator and his cultural milieu as much as how to puzzle out the protagonist's actions and inaction.

My copy of this book is missing the last page of the story "Matricide". I love that fact. It makes this book unique and quirky. Now, I shall have to make up an ending:

The constable discovered their mother dead the next morning. Irene's father, a drunkard who had been out the night before, was blamed for the crime. The elder married Irene, then the younger tortured and killed them both. The end.

I chose to listen to a black metal album while reading "A Dream Forgotten" just for some background music, specifically Andavald's album "Undir skyggoarhaldi". Turns out, this was the perfect soundtrack of anguished dirges for this story. Perfect, or as the narrator laments: "Horrible. Horrible."

Anyone who has spent time alone with the dead remains of a loved one knows the poignancy and strange, numb pain of the story "Father, Son". I'm one of those. This story breaks my heart a little bit more. Simple, but powerful for those who know, and I know . . .

"Souvenir" is a reminiscence of an author (not Csáth himself, I mean, but a character in his story) that touches on the hidden pangs of longing after a lost, young love, the premature ending and subsequent spoiling of a nascent youthful romance. I remember those feelings . . .

"The Magician Dies" is strangely prescient, at least by way of Symbolism, of Csáth's forthcoming death by opium, or by reason of opium (via suicide). A haunting choice for the last story in this remarkable volume, tying the artist to his legacy through one of his own stories. Yes, "haunting" is exactly the right word.

And "haunting," like the feeling slightly sickening feeling that one has after reading highly disturbing works, but with less "ick" factor, is how I would describe the collection. There is no doubt that this was written by an opium addict. Even without the explicit references to drug use, one can sense the dream-like quality (some of the stories are explicitly about dreams, obviously) tainted with an underlying darkness, a sinister something lurking within many of the narrative voices throughout the work that struggles with an epiphanic, almost angelic other that pulls the reader simultaneously heavenward and down to hell. Csáth's life was clearly spent being torn in both directions and ultimately torn apart by those diametrically-opposed pulls. Would that his life (not to mention his wife's) not ended so, but one wonders what his stories might have been like had he not suffered so. We'll never know, just as I'll never know the true beginning or ending of two of the stories in this volume - and I don't care to know. Let me live my mystery!

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