#can such things be?

[drowningparty]

“Over all the dismal landscape a canopy of low, lead-coloured clouds hung like a visible curse. In all this there was a menace and a portent—a hint of evil, an intimation of doom. Bird, beast, or insect there was none. The wind sighed in the bare branches of the dead trees and the grey grass bent to whisper its dread secret to the earth; but no other sound nor motion broke the awful repose of that dismal place.”

Ambrose Bierce, An Inhabitant of Carcosa.

[books0977]

Can Such Things Be? Ambrose Bierce. New York: The Cassell Publishing Co., [1893]. First edition.

Bierce's ghosts are not the ethereal messengers of the Gothic tradition that colored so much of Victorian weird fiction as well. They are gruesome and grotesque – and malevolent. And Bierce's style, in treating the enigmatic and bizarre with a brevity and vigor gained from journalistic discipline, shows a similar balance of the otherworldly and the matter-of-fact. Elliptical and straightforward, detached and passionate, grotesque and sublime: that's Bierce.

[awolfinpeopleclothes]

The most attractive object in the world is the face we instinctively cover with a cloth. When it becomes still more attractive–fascinating–we put seven feet of earth above it.

Ambrose Bierce, ‘The Night-Doings at “Deadman’s”’

[btciiyeehemengir]

Doubtless you do not hold with those (I need not name them to a man of your reading) who have taught that all matter is sentient, that every atom is a living, feeling, conscious being. I do. There is no such thing as dead, inert matter: it is all alive; all instinct with force, actual and potential; all sensitive to the same forces in its environment and susceptible to the contagion of the higher and subtler ones residing in such superior organisms as it may be brought into relation with, as those of man when he is fashioning it into an instrument of his will. It absorbs something of his intelligence and purpose–more of him in proportion to the complexity of the resulting machine and that of its work.

Ambrose Bierce, Moxon’s Master

[btciiyeehemengir]

'What is a "machine"? The word has been variously defined. Here is one definition from a popular dictionary: "Any instrument or organization by which power is applied and made effective, or a desired effect produced." Well, then, is not man a machine? And you will admit that he thinks–or think he thinks.'

Ambrose Bierce, Moxon’s Master

[btciiyeehemengir]

He to whom the portentous conspiracy of night and solitude and silence in the heart of a great forest is not an unknown experience needs not to be told what another world it all is–how even the most commonplace and familiar objects take on another character. The trees group themselves differently; they draw closer together, as if in fear. The very silence has another quality than the silence of the day. And it is full of half-heard whispers–whispers that startle–ghosts of sounds long dead. There are living sounds, too, such as are never heard under other conditions: notes of strange night-birds, the cries of small animals in sudden encounters with stealthy foes or in their dreams, a rustling in the dead leaves–it may be the leap of a wood-rat, it may be the footfall of a panther. What caused the breaking of that twig?–what the low, alarmed twittering in that bushful of birds? There are sounds without a name, forms without substance, translations in space of objects which have not been seen to move, movements wherein nothing is observed to change its place. Ah, the children of the sunlight and the gaslight, how little you know of the world in which you live!

Ambrose Bierce, A Tough Tassle

[btciiyeehemengir]

Fear has no brains; it is an idiot. The dismal witness that it bears and cowardly counsel that it whispers are unrelated. We know this well, we who have passed into the Realm of Terror, who skulk in eternal dusk among the scenes of our former lives, invisible even to ourselves and one another, yet hiding forlorn in lonely places; yearning for speech with our loved ones, yet dumb, and as fearful of them as they of us. Sometimes the disability is removed, the law suspended: by the deathless power of love or hate we break the spell—we are seen by those whom we would warn, console, or punish. What form we seem to them to bear we know not; we know only that we terrify even those whom we wish to comfort, and from whom we most crave tenderness and sympathy

Ambrose Bierce, The Moonlit Road