The Town Herald

The netpaper about Elftowners, by Elftowners, for Elftowners.

Origins of Gothic Nightmare

by [Kaeirdwyn]





Origins of the Gothic Nightmare

By [Kaeirdwyn] Kristie Baker
The original word for the state of “a waking dream” is Nightmare. Currently it is associated with sleep paralysis with rapid eye movement or REM during sleep. The original definition from the book “A Dictionary of the English Language”, by Dr. Johnson, was known to include a “Morbid oppression in the night, resembling the pressure of weight upon the breast.”

Nightmares such as these were thought to be the work of demons that would sit upon the chests of sleeping people. The name for these beings in Old English was “mare” which shows the word Nightmare had nothing to do with horses. A victim of this demon would awaken with feelings of terror or horror, they would have what they believed to be a weight on their chests, with the inability to move, and difficult breathing. This was later found to be a condition called “sleep paralysis”. The demon was sometimes also seen as an old hag. Some also blame these night problems on undigested food, or going to bed too early. It was also believed that those who suffered from these nightmares had a disease of sorts.

In literature, the word ‘Gothic’ means fiction that deals with horrifying, terrible, or supernatural happenings and events. Horace Walpole published his novel ‘The Castle of Otranto’ in the 18th century after a period of time called The Enlightenment, where many had begun disbelieving in superstitions. He wrote it consciously making use of the superstitions of the past, with no belief in them whatsoever, freeing the imagination. Gothic literature often focuses on ancient and gigantic buildings such as cathedrals, churches, abbeys and of course, castles. In many gothic writings, there is a heavy handed style, dripping gloom and doom upon the readers, who seem to delight in the oppression and anxiety. A main part to gothic art, whether writing or images, is in cruelty either depicted or imagined to have happened and in decay, as in an ancient castle. A good example of this is ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ by Edgar Allen Poe(1809-1849). Most of his writings had some trappings of gothic surrounding them and many were basically nightmarish. Other examples of his gothic writing are: starting with what he is most famous and well known for; “The Raven” published in 1845, and a collection of short stories called “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque” published in two volumes in 1839. Those short stories include: “The Tell-Tale Heart”, where his focus was on guilt, “The Fall of the House of Usher” as previously mentioned, which was focused on fear, “The Gold-Bug”, “Hop-Frog”, “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Mask of the Red Death”, “The Pit and the Pendulum”, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, “The Black Cat”, “Berenice”, “Ligeia”, “The Man of the Crowd”, and “The Purloined Letter”. Other poetry he wrote included; “The Bells”, “The City in the Sea”, “Annabel Lee”, “Eldorado”, “The Haunted Palace”, “Lenore”, and lastly, “Ulalume”.

A great many gothic writers set their tales in Southern Europe, though in fact the original barbarian tribes known as ‘Goths’ were from Northern Europe. Also, many novels written after “Melmoth The Wanderer”, published in 1820, by Charles Maturin(1782-1824), did not follow as closely with the dictionary definition of gothic, yet still being heavy and oppressive in written style, can be defined as gothic by nature, whether they fall into the realm of the supernatural, horrifying or terrible or not. It is the style or writing that defines a piece as gothic, rather than each piece must have a gothic building, or creatures of the night, demons of old, lurking behind the words to jump out at unsuspecting readers.

Edgar Allan Poe, as well as H.P. Lovecraft, believed their work was directly influenced by their nightmares. Lovecraft said much of his earlier work was influenced by Poe. Lovecraft had the Macabre stories, which are categorized by grim and ghastly themes with a lot of symbolism of death. He also had the Dream Cycle stories, which is one of the three major categories of fictional works he published. The last set of stories of Lovecraft are categorized as the Cthulu Mythos, or the Lovecraft Mythos. These are special in that Lovecraft did not seem to mind when his friends, who were also authors, borrowed his ideas and wrote with them as well. The Lovecraft Mythos has shared characters, settings, themes and elements with the Cthulu Mythos, however the Cthulu Mythos has long since moved past the original conceptions of H.P. Lovecraft.

There was an artist by the name of Henry Fuseli(1741-1825), born in Switzerland, the second of eighteen children, who created a painting called “The Nightmare” that has changed history in how art has been perceived. He actually painted several renditions of “The Nightmare”. The first was painted in 1781 to immediate acclaim. The second famous one was done in 1802. Both of these can be viewed at a wikipedia website. Both rendition websites will be given at the end of this article.

He was a writer as well as a painter, supporting himself with his writing first, before he was willing to do anything with his sketches and paintings. Once he had shown his art to a Sir Joshua Reynolds, who told him to focus only on it, he no longer stayed in the priesthood that his father had groomed him for, but devoted himself totally to his art. In 1770 Fuseli made an art pilgrimage to Italy and after changed his name from Johann Heinrich Fussli, to Henry Fuseli so it would sound more Italian. He must have had great admiration for the Italian painters. He worked on several commissions and had great admiration for Shakespeare, doing several works of art concerning Shakespeares’ writings. Unlike most artists, Fuseli was fairly rich at the time of his death, aged 84, and was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Henry Fuseli painted over 200 paintings but did not exhibit very many of them. He was an inventive painter aspiring to the heights of excellence. He was among the first of painters who specialized in the themes of horror, violence, and the supernatural in the visual arts.

The term Gothic is associated with him and a couple of other artists because of the taste for the fantastic and supernatural which dominated the culture of Great Britain from circa 1770 to 1830. Other artists who tended to be attracted to the same sort of art as he was, were William Blake(1757-1827), though Blake did not seem to paint as Fuseli did, he did write poems that included how he felt about Fuseli’s art.

While Gothic has often been seen as in poor taste, it has been terrifically influential for modern writers, television and film; from Horace Walpole’s novel in 1764, ‘The Castle of Otranto’ to Nosferatu and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Sir Christopher Frayling, a curator at a Gothic Nightmare exhibition in Great Britain said; “Literary scholars have always said there’s a mystery in Gothic literature. What happens between {the book} ‘The Castle of Otranto’ (1764) and the novels of Radcliffe{which appeared in the 1790’s}? The answer is the painters take up Gothic with a vengeance.” He went on to say that “If you look at Damien Hirst and the Chapman brothers, you could argue that Gothic is the mainstream aesthetic today.”

The 18th-century Swiss theologian Johann Casper Lavater wrote of Fuseli: “Specters, demons and madmen’s phantoms, exterminating angels; murders and acts of violence-such are his favorite subjects; and yet, I repeat, no one loves with more tenderness.”

Fuseli’s “The Nightmare” brought him wide public acclaim and instant fame when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1790. The unsettling and strange subjects along with the treatments reveal the differences of his influences of Classicism, from studying Michelangelo, to the grotesque and the strange; as can be seen in the works of Arcimboldo and in the works of William Blake.

An early history of Gothic publications and shows:

--1764: Horace Walpole publishes the first Gothic novel, ‘The Castle of Otranto’
---1782: Henry Fuseli shows “The Nightmare” at the Royal Academy, London
---1796: The Monk(1796) published by Matthew Lewis(1775-1880)
---1801: “Phantasmagoria shows” - animated slide-shows with sound effects and shocking images - arrive in Britain from France
---1818: Mary Shelley publishes “Frankenstein”
---1820: “Melmoth the Wanderer” published by Charles Maturin(1782-1824)
---1838: first publishing; The majority of the works of Edgar Allan Poe(1809-1949).
---1897: Dracula written by Bram Stoker(1847-1912)
---1905: first publishing; The majority of the works of H.P. Lovecraft(1890-1937)
---1922: Nosferatu, a silent movie-based on the Dracula story, reaches cinemas.
The websites for two of the renditions of the paintings of “The Nightmare” are:
This is the first painting done in 1781.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:John_Henry_Fuseli_-_The_Nightmare.JPG
This is the second painting done in 1802.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Johann_Heinrich_F%C3%BCssli_053.jpg




Return or Go To:
TH Issue 16 Index page
The Town Herald - Issue 16 entrance page
The Town Herald official wiki page