One might presume that a book should only come at you with one approach - i.e., that a reader can only hold a work of fiction, or one of non-fiction, in their hands at once. “ Dark Awakenings offers generous heapings of fiction and ‘dark theology’: there are seven high quality Weird Tales (in the proper sense of that phrase, as many of them are eldritch stories, directly or indirectly related to the Cthulhu Mythos) and three artful, multi-part works of literary criticism on the diverse religious and philosophical elements of supernatural tales (from the Bible to Romero films). A master of terror and dread, he ranks among the foremost authors of contemporary American horror.” His otherworldly divinations will have you lying awake in the dark, counting stars in that most pitiless gulf that yawns above us all. “Matt Cardin channels visions of dark, maniacal intensity. Again, this quality of Cardin’s work can be seen in the writings of Poe and Lovecraft, two other felicitous freaks who merged the antagonistisms of their imagination into a chimera as awful as it is awe-striking.” His analyses of supernatural horror and its practitioners are also dark awakenings in the dual manner of his stories, with one eye on the black abyss and the other on an enlightened transcendence without denomination. In the tradition of Poe and Lovecraft, Cardin’s accomplishments as a writer are paralleled by his expertise as a literary critic and theorist, as readers can witness in this volume. To both the morbid and the cosmically minded, who may be one and the same, he delivers his visions and nightmares in a master’s prose. “In Dark Awakenings, Cardin proves himself to be an adept in the fullest sense of the word. This thinking-man’s book of the macabre is capped by three essays, all of which speak eloquently to the supernatural themes of the stories.” Cardin’s tales are rich with references to Lovecraft, Nietzsche, and other writers whose work gives them unusual philosophic depth. “Life is a horror for which there is neither remedy nor release in the seven metaphysical terror tales that make up the bulk of Cardin’s provocative second collection (after Divinations of the Deep). Gods and Monsters, Worms and Fire: A Horrific Reading of Isaiah PRAISE Loathsome Objects: George Romero’s Living Dead Films as Contemplative Tools Icons of Supernatural Horror: A Brief History of the Angel and the Demon Nightmares, Imported and Domestic (with Mark McLaughlin) At over 300 pages and nearly 120,000 words, it offers a substantial exploration of the religious implications of horror and the horrific implications of religion. This volume collects nearly all of Cardin’s uncollected fiction, including his 2004 novella “The God of Foulness.” It contains extensive revisions and expansions of his popular stories “Teeth” and “The Devil and One Lump,” and features one previously unpublished story and two unpublished papers, the first exploring a possible spiritual use of George Romero’s Living Dead films and the second offering a horrific reading of the biblical Book of Isaiah.
ARTFUL AWAKENINGS SERIES
In Dark Awakenings, author and scholar Matt Cardin explores this primal intersection between religion and horror in seven stories and three academic papers that pose a series of disturbing questions: What if the spiritual awakening coveted by so many religious seekers is in fact the ultimate doom? What if the object of religious longing might prove to be the very heart of horror? Could salvation, liberation, enlightenment then be achieved only by identifying with that apotheosis of metaphysical loathing?
Lovecraft asserted that weird supernatural horror fiction arose from a fundamental human psychological pattern that is “coeval with the religious feeling and closely related to many aspects of it.” The American psychologist William James wrote in his classic study The Varieties of Religious Experience that the “real core of the religious problem” lies in an overwhelming experience of cosmic horror born out of abject despair at life’s incontrovertible hideousness.
The German theologian Rudolf Otto located the origin of human religiosity in an ancient experience of “daemonic dread.” American horror writer H. Cover art and design by Jason Van Hollanderįrom its earliest origins, the human religious impulse has been fundamentally bound up with an experience of primordial horror.
0 kommentar(er)
