THE DEEP ONES: "Die Spinne" by Hanns Heinz Ewers

"Die Spinne" by Hanns Heinz Ewers

Discussion begins July 17th.

Written in 1908. First published in 1915? First confirmed U.S. publication in Creeps by Night (1931).



ONLINE VERSIONS

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0605651.txt
http://www.digital-eel.com/blog/library/spider.htm

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1439869

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
The Century's Best Horror Fiction Volume 1
H.P. Lovecraft's Book of Horror
The Dead Valley and Others

MISCELLANY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Heinz_Ewers
http://hannsheinzewers.wordpress.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8WlOCjgPoM
http://sf-encyclopedia.co.uk/fe.php?nm=ewers_hanns_heinz
http://tinyurl.com/q2qll4c

Kind of a vague publishing history on this one. Appears to have been written in 1908. Next it seems to have been published in something in 1915 as "The Spider". A German version appeared in 1919. Hammett's anthology seems to have been it's major debut, and I like the cover, so I'll use it here! I'll be reading from The Dead Valley and Others.

That's a very nice cover!

I'm fortunate in being able to read this one from the Side Real Press collection of Ewers' short fiction, Nachtmahr: Strange Tales.

I hope it doesn't sound like bragging if I mention that I bought this book in the Atlantis Bookshop, the real-world model for the occult bookshop in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century: 1969.

>3 housefulofpaper: Ah, the Atlantis Bookshop. I see their ads in Fortean Times all the time.

I'll be reading this out of The Weird.

Just read it in Blood Thirst: 100 Years of Vampire Fiction.

>3 housefulofpaper:

I hope it doesn't sound like bragging if I mention that I bought this book in the Atlantis Bookshop, the real-world model for the occult bookshop in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century: 1969.

Not at all - glad you shared! 8)

Ewers was part of a German propaganda ring in the US ca. 1915, which maintained various periodicals as outlets (such as The International, under the editorship of Aleister Crowley). These would often "sweeten the pot" with literary content, and it's likely enough that it was published in one of these. (I got this context for Ewers from Spence's Secret Agent 666.)

>6 paradoxosalpha:

Yes! "The Spider" was first published in the December 1915 issue of The International. Here is some more background:

http://www.lashtal.com/forum/index.php?topic=2666.10;wap2

>3 housefulofpaper:

VERY cool! According to what's available on eBay, that Side Real edition goes for several times what a signed Ewers edition (different title) goes for!

http://www.ebay.com/sch/?_nkw=hanns%20heinz%20ewers&clk_rvr_id=499895434915

>6 paradoxosalpha: & 7

No mere publication date is a match for the research prowess of... THE DEEP ONES!

*symphonic music plays*

Well, that was fun. There was no "element of surprise" at all, I think. Would someone (perhaps not the superstitious Madame Dubonnet) informed by a reading of Bracquemont's journal later have the good sense to undertake the extermination of any spiders in #7?

I liked how Bracquemont imagined and then consolidated perceptual details: the name Clarimonda (later "seen" on a plate on the front of the building), and her physical characteristics admittedly obscured but "sensed." "When it is dark, Clarimonda is no longer there, but if
I close my eyes, I continue to see her."

Why, I wonder, did Bracquemont take longer to succumb than his predecessors in #7? Was it his erotic inexperience?

>10 paradoxosalpha:

I agree that there were no surprises here, but you're right that this was a fun weird tale. It really makes a fine companion to "Luckundoo" in that respect.

I thought that the spider crawling on (and out of) the victims made for a fine "ICK!" factor, but the story would have worked better without it. What did Clarimonde (spelled this way in the Joshi-edited text) do - kill her paramours and then scramble over to their apartment to do a little spider victory dance on them? Are these actually spider-minions that she sends over, wearing her colors?

The mating-mimicry scenes were eerie and made sense as the victim would find himself being gradually hypnotized - a nice explanation of the cause of the suicides. This allows the reader to enjoy the dreadful fascination of watching Bracquemont's inevitable fate come to pass.

I really liked Ewers' undeniably German writing style. I was reminded very much of Kafka and German Expressionism. This story made a great movie in my head! I'd like to read more Ewers, I think. This story also seems to presage The Tenant, both the book by Roland Topor and the fine film by Roman Polanski, with the doomed protagonist renting an apartment with a window he might want to avoid.

I like the Narrator. Documenting the fact, that from his point of view it was all a bit of a con, in his notes :-)

It makes a nice pair up with the first story that Basil Copper had published (also called 'The Spider'), which appears in And Afterward the Dark.

11 > Maybe it does have a bit of an 'Ick!' factor to the spider crawling on the victims, but it does feel to me like he nailed his adversary at the end (depending on whether you see the spider as a minion or the mistress).

Joshi points out in his notes in The Dead Valley and Others: H.P. Lovecraft's Favorite Horror Stories that this story - particularly the diary and the frantic scribbling in it toward the end - bears a certain resemblance to HPL's "The Haunter of the Dark".

12 > Yeah, I was wondering whether the spider was Clarimonda's familiar, or if Clarimonda was a phantasm projected by the spider. The ending could be taken as supporting the later.

I was surprised by Richard's lasting as long as he did. No real hint of why in the story - paradoxalpha's suggestion may be it, but the erotic experience of the others isn't touched on beyond Dubonnet's suggestion of Krause's romantic sorrows (and the relationship may've been platonic for all we know).

Re the name, Clarimonde seems more to be expected in France, esp. as Richard is French himself. But the edition I read also has Clarimonda.

>14 AndreasJ:

Hmmm...... Clarimonde as hypno-bait while the spider is actually in the room with the victim does work....

> 11, 12, 14, 15

I tend to agree with Andreas that Clarimonda was "a phantasm projected by the spider," rather than a mysterious ghost using spider agents. In favor of this reading, we have the extent to which she seems to be constructed from dubious, highly-subjective elements (per my #10), besides the actual vacancy of the apartment across the way.

Maybe the first three men succumbed more quickly to arachnogenic phantasms that looked to them like women they had known and adored, whereas in Bracquemont's case, a phantasm had to be built out of unformed materials, and consequently integrated some telling arachnid details--perhaps even leading to his conscious vengenance on the spider at the end.

I'm still wondering what (if anything) the bluff about the Apocalypse might have referenced.

In Unutterable Horror, Volume 2 Joshi reminds us that the name Clarimonde comes from Théophile Gautier’s ‘celebrated tale of seductive vampirism, “La Morte amoureuse”’. He points out that it is not clear whether Richard Bracquemont is a victim of physical vampirism or the psychic variety.

Ewers handles Richard’s entanglement very deftly, particularly the March 13 diary entry about the ‘little tragedy’ with the actual spiders. We do not appreciate this fully until March 24 when he observes ‘I don’t play with Clarimonde – she plays with me.’ This suggests not just that Richard is doomed but that the ‘play’ of the male spider of March 13 was also involuntary.

Oddly enough, the black spider with purple spots is not particularly harmful to humans. It appears to be a Steatoda grossa, which can be mistaken for the black widow spider, but which lacks the red hour-glass pattern. I’m not sure if this is intentional on the part of Ewers.

Perhaps this spider acquired super-powers from ingesting some of Marie Curie's ore tailings from the isolation of radium?

I particularly like the fact that this story may be supernatural but may also be entirely natural. The fact that the apartment of Clarimonde was empty for months supports either the reading that she is supernatural or that she is a hallucination induced by actual spider bites. I’m thinking of the hallucinogenic parasitic organism of Upstream Color http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084989/.

Since Richard was discovered with the spider crushed between his teeth, does that mean there will be no more hangings at No. 7? Or will the tradition be carried on by Clarimonde’s daughters? BTW, what does Clarimonde get out of these transactions?

7 Rue Alfred Stevens is an actual address in the 9th Arrondissemont. Here is a description of the location from a current rental listing: ‘This apartment is perfectly located between the Place Pigalle and its Moulin Rouge and the Grands Boulevards.’ Sounds like a convenient location for a student. http://www.paris-be-a-part-of-it.com/beapart/index.php?id=325&model=view, spiders not included.

> 17 7 Rue Alfred Stevens ... from a current rental listing



Ha! Awesome.

>14 AndreasJ:, 16, 17

Good info, bertilak! Now that I'm reading the story from the reverse direction, as it were, I like it even more. Thanks, guys!

BTW, what does Clarimonde get out of these transactions?

That one little issue remains unexplained. This is one unusual spider!

>17 bertilak:,18

Such a cozy looking little room. What's that little black dot I can just make out up in the ceiling? In the corner - with those little purple flecks...

The introduction to the Side Real Press edition includes a quote from Ewers about this story. It appeared in an appendix to the newspaper Berliner Tageblatt, in December 1908 (the information that the story has the alternative title "Lilith" helps make sense of the quote). Here it is: "Lilith that is: Adam's first wife. Or: the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Or: the inadequate which becomes the phenomenon...the idea of a strange force, which is capable of exercising some sort of exterior dark will upon us."

Having also read one of Ewers "Frank Braun" novels (Alraune), I have to say that that short quote sounds more like Ewers' authentic voice than the story "Die Spinne" does - not that this weakens the story, in fact I like its comparative lack of expressionistic bombast.

I've tentatively developed a little theory about Ewers' short fiction, based on the stories in Nachtmahr: Strange Tales up to and including "Die Spinne". Basically, I think Ewers is doing pastiches of other authors. A story called "John Hamilton Llewellyns End" struck me as using elements from M. P. Shiel's The Purple Cloud; "The Dead Jew" seemed like an attempt at the "grotesque and arabesque" side of Edgar Allan Poe. This one, in the context of these other stories, seemed like an attempt at a Guy de Maupassant story - something like "The Horla", with the same psychological focus and slow build up to an inevitable end.

An enjoyable tale. I particularly liked passages like this one:

There is no doubt that I am drawn to Clarimonda, but with this attraction there is mingled another feeling, fear. No. That's not it either. Say rather a vague apprehension in the presence of the unknown. And this anxiety has a strangely voluptuous quality so that I am at the same time drawn to her even as I am repelled by her. It is as if I were moving in giant circles around her, sometimes coming close, sometimes retreating... back and forth, back and forth.

And this:

If I still wait, it is only to prolong this exquisite torture. Yes, that's it. This breathless anguish is my supreme delight. I write quickly, quickly... just so I can continue to sit; so I can attenuate these seconds of pain.

It's almost as if Ewers is writing a horror story that is itself about the pleasure of reading a horror story; I think that's neat. I was also struck by the erotic overtones of those passage, and considering that they are from a story that climaxes (haha) with the protagonist's demise, I was reminded of the French euphemism for orgasm: la petite mort ("the little death"). Looking up the Wikipedia article on same (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_petite_mort), this passage caught my eye:

Literary critic Roland Barthes spoke of la petite mort as the chief objective of reading literature. He metaphorically used the concept to describe the feeling one should get when experiencing any great literature.

Interesting, yes?

Whether a quite specific hallucination via spider bite or the spider as manifestation of a supernatural force which also gives us the form of Clarimonde, there is a lot of enigma here.

I liked how Ewers boxed himself in as far as building to a crescendo. Between the title, the description of Clarimonde, the detail of the spider in the mouths of the corpses, and the account of the mating spider, Ewers goes way beyond just foreshadowing. Bracquemont's fate is never in doubt. But Ewers keeps us interested with a look at Bracquemont's state of mind. (I particularly like him seeing nothing wrong or unusual in spending a whole day playing his game with Clarimonde.)

I liked the element of time and flirtation with predestination. Bracquemont realizes he has the arrow of causality reversed. He's imitating Clarimonde. Then, of course, there are elements of prophesized doom. Bracquemont alludes to the prophetic Book of Revelations. There is a timetable for the deaths, and Ewers violates our expectations by Bracquemont avoiding death on the first Friday night. But, of course, he doesn't avoid his destiny the next week. Perhaps the force called Clarimonde is the web and trap of destiny.

>13 semdetenebre: Of course, Bracquemont scribbling away in his last few minutes is reminiscent of Lovecraft's "Dagon" and "The Haunter of the Dark". Did Lovecraft ever read this given it was written in German? I don't recall seeing that he did.

>21 artturnerjr: I was reminded of one of Clark Ashton Smith's more frequent themes (perhaps best epitomized by "The City of the Singing Flame"): people perversely seeking out their own destruction though here, of course, Bracquemont doesn't realize, until the end, that Clarimonde is lethal.

>22 RandyStafford:

Did Lovecraft ever read this given it was written in German? I don't recall seeing that he did.

Yeah, he did, actually. This is what he had to say about Ewers in Supernatural Horror in Literature:

In the present generation German horror-fiction is most notably represented by Hanns Heinz Ewers, who brings to bear on his dark conceptions an effective knowledge of modern psychology. Novels like The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Alraune, and short stories like “The Spider”, contain distinctive qualities which raise them to a classic level.

>22 RandyStafford:, 23

HPL could well have read "The Spider" in the 1931 Hammet anthology, which would have left ample time for it to have influenced 1935's writing of "Haunter". Not sure if he would have had a copy of the earlier issue of The International or if he could even have read the 1919 German edition.

Doomed scribbling is older than Ewers of course - Poe's "MS found in a bottle" comes to mind (which HPL doubtlessly knew of), and I'd if anything be surprised to learn Poe was the first.