on the anniversary of the death of j.sheridan le fanu

according to russell kirk, in his essay a cautionary note on the ghostly tale j.sheridan le fanu ‘is believed to have literally died of fright’ but kirk does not give the circumstances. (source: wikipedia -  checked 7th feb 2019 the anniversary of his death).

on the anniversary of the death of j. sheridan le fanu - horsemouth watched dreyer’s vampyre - largely performed by a non-professional cast and based on le fanu to celebrate. he watched lars von trier discussing dreyer and in particular his joan of arc (also largely filmed with a non-professional cast and simplified down to a series of tightly framed static shots).


‘we encounter a divided world defined by the clash of opposites, bitter hatreds, and the unmitigated conflict of absolutes.’ - the foreward to belarmino and apolonio by ramon perez de ayala (1921).

the next word (in this excellent piece of stall-setting out) is spain, but they could just so easily be brexit britain. horsemouth has bought a copy of derek raymond’s a state of denmark (calthorp street project -99p). in this a broken down writer is pursued to his hiding place in the tuscany (that much is autobiographical) and enticed back to his death in uk by the evil fascist british regime. it’s kind of a 70ies 1984 (curiously enough it must have been written in the late 60ies). famously andy and kate attempted to read it (on horsemouth’s recommendation) and were just ground down by the sheer miserableness of it. 

there was a similar sense of end times in the anarcho-punk of the 80ies, from conflict’s the serenade is dead to zounds’ dancing - and pretty much everything by the mob has this feeling. later (of course) horsemouth read v for vendetta - later still there was a movie (but by then it was too late).

when he was an anarchist punk horsemouth pretty much took these as an accurate diagnosis of the present and prediction of the future. but later, during the years of new labour prosperity and widespread gainful employment, horsemouth thought he had been scaring himself unnecessarily, that in fact the uk’s system of government was so overwhelmingly stable that there was simply no need for the ruling class to pull on the black leather gloves of fascism. ok ok people at the margins could be treated like shit, but campaigns for justice could succeed. still, great central stability no sudden moves and no sudden surprises.

please don’t let him be wrong.

horsemouth is not of course reading either of these books right now, he’s only just got them. (nor is he listening to conflict and the mob for that matter - the only bands he retains much affection for from that era are zounds and blyth power). instead he has been reading cabeza de vaca’s the shipwrecked men - an eyewitness account of the shipwreck of a group of conquistadores near galveston in texas and the subsequent journey of the handful of survivors through the tribes of native americans to mexico and thus back to spain.

they left spain on the 27th of june 1527 and did not make it back to lisbon until the 9th of august 1537.

it is a life of horrific material poverty - starving, naked, frozen cold, beaten their captors, their feet bleeding, cannibalism, it is like something out of platonov but it is real, for the native americans are doing little better (though to be fair the native americans were thoroughly horrified by the cannibalism) . cabeza de vaca (head of a cow) and the others discover they can perform faith healings - this is what saves them. this power cabeza asserts comes from possessing nothing.