Welcome to Litsy!

Of the many excellent stories in this collection, "St. Ginolph's Urn" is the one which has stayed longest with me. Meyrink's tendency is to puncture the tension of his macabre stories with a final satirical flourish. In this one, the morbid sorrow and tragic horror of domestic abuse, manipulation and infanticide are maintained throughout. If only the perpetrators of abuse could have the faintest glimpse of the monstrousness of their actions...

"Murderer! Just think how clever they were to choose that word. Think of the sound. There's really something of the death-rattle in it.
It's the repeated 'ur'-sound that expresses the horror. How cleverly people have wrapped us round in suggestion."

- "A Suggestion"

If it's anything practical, I'll let you know ... 🐕💩

"An icy fear sweeps across the room - the intangible that lies beyond all thought and comprehension, the choking fear of death that has lost its root and origin and no longer rests on any cause, the formless mother of horror."
- "The Rings of Saturn"

Meyrink builds effect on effect in this story, rising to a climax, which he utterly skewers with a satirical denouement. He's a skilful writer.

Painting: "Monster Brains" by Alfred Kubin

"At certain times of the night the soulless shades of dead planets come sliding into the realm of visibility, eager for life, exchanging mysterious confidences among themselves by means of strangely tentative gestures, instilling an uncertain and indefinable horror into our souls."
- 'The Rings of Saturn'

Next up is Meyrink's short story collection, "The Opal". From the introduction: "He presents an alternative subversive underworld of mysterious uncertainties, inexplicable by the rational means of Western thought. It is a world of absurdities, of dreams & nightmares of occult oriental magic, of the horrors that lie beneath the surface, which may be raised through the extension of reality by means of a little imagination." Sounds trippy! ??