/lit/ - Literature

The beginning of "The Eternal World" where the guy gets trapped in an never-ending moment in the Platonic world of forms at the end of time gave me anxiety as fuck.

>>22648719
Forgot pic

>just pick up the dictionary every 20 or so words bro
>yeah that word hasn't been used in 300 years, who cares?

>>20791390
Clark Ashton Smith is both the best and least known writer of the "big three" pulp writers (him, Howard, and Lovecraft)

Why isn't he as popular as Lovecraft? I think he was a better writer.

>>18740139

Discuss.

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/2/the-abominations-of-yondo

Clark Ashton smith only attended high school yet he had fantastic prose and a delirious imagination. He became erudite on his own time largely.

where does he rank on the spooky fiction list?

*dragon ball z teleports behind u sound*

The flower Devil by Clark Ashton smith

“In a basin of porphyry, at the summit of a pillar of serpentine, the thing has existed from primeval time, in the garden of the kings that rule an equatorial realm of the planet Saturn. With black foliage, fine and intricate as the web of some enormous spider; with petals of livid rose, and purple like the purple of putrefying flesh; and a stem rising like a swart and hairy wrist from a bulb so old, so encrusted with the growth of centuries that it resembles an urn of stone, the monstrous flower holds dominion over all the garden. In this flower, from the years of oldest legend, an evil demon has dwelt- a demon whose name and whose nativity are known to the superior magicians and mysteriarchs of the kingdom, but to none other. Over the half-animate flowers, the ophidian orchids that coil and sting, the bat-like lilies that open their ribbèd petals by night, and fasten with tiny yellow teeth on the bodies of sleeping dragonflies; the carnivorous cacti that yawn with green lips beneath their beards of poisonous yellow prickles; the plants that palpitate like hearts, the blossoms that pant with a breath of poisonous perfume - over all these, the Flower-Devil is supreme, in its malign immortality, and evil, perverse intelligence- inciting them to strange maleficence, fantastic mischief, even to acts of rebellion against the gardeners, who proceed about their duties with wariness and trepidation, since more than one of them has been bitten, even unto death, by some vicious and venefic flower. In places, the garden has run wild from lack of care on the part of the fearful gardeners, and has become a monstrous tangle of serpentine creepers, and hydra-headed plants, convolved and inter-writhing in lethal hate or venomous love, and horrible as a rout of wrangling vipers and pythons.

And, like his innumerable ancestors before him, the king dares not destroy the Flower, for fear that the devil, driven from its habitation, might seek a new home, and enter into the brain or body of one of the king's subjects- or even the heart of his fairest and gentlest, and most beloved queen!”

>>16174611
yes

>>16153141

I don’t care.

Kino

Was he better than Lovecraft?

I have a library copy of a book signed by Clark Ashton Smith checked out right now.

>>14930494
Clark Ashton Smith is easily the most /lit/ horror writer

what are your thoughts on clark ashton smith?

What does /lit/ think of Clark Ashton Smith? I read a few of his short stories and I feel pretty good about him so far.

To Howard Phillips Lovecraft
By Clark Ashton Smith

>Lover of hills and fields and towns antique,
How hast thou wandered hence
On ways not found before,
Beyond the dawnward spires of Providence?
Hast thou gone forth to seek
Some older bourn than these—
Some Arkham of the prime and central wizardries?
Or, with familiar felidae,
Dost now some new and secret wood explore,
A little past the senses' farther wall—
Where spring and sunset charm the eternal path
From Earth to ether in dimensions nemoral?
Or has the Silver Key
Opened perchance for thee
Wonders and dreams and worlds ulterior?
Hast thou gone home to Ulthar or to Pnath?
Has the high king who reigns in dim Kadath
Called back his courtly, sage ambassador?
Or darkling Cthulhu sent
The sign which makes thee now a councilor
Within that foundered fortress of the deep
Where the Old Ones stir in sleep
Till mighty temblors shake their slumbering continent?
Lo! in this little interim of days
How far thy feet are sped
Upon the fabulous and mooted ways
Where walk the mythic dead!
For us the grief, for us the mystery. . . .
And yet thou art not gone
Nor given wholly unto dream and dust:
For, even upon
This lonely western hill of Averoigne
Thy flesh had never visited,
I meet some wise and sentient wraith of thee,
Some undeparting presence, gracious and august.
More luminous for thee the vernal grass,
More magically dark the Druid stone,
And in the mind thou art forever shown
As in a magic glass;
And from the spirit's page thy runes can never pass.


I cried.

the dark souls of literature doesn't exi-

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/2/the-abominations-of-yondo

looking for authors like this handsome lad. already read poe, lovecraft, and hodgson, so in other words, what are some books with this atmosphere featuring world-weariness, time, decay, loss of innocence, and anything else along that train of thought. gene wolfe's book of the new sun is one of my favourite books, for reference.

Clark Ashton Smith is the greatest genre fiction writer of all time.
Why isn't he appreciated like he should?

>>11958652
Clark Ashton Smith never even attended high school.