BLACK MAGIC (1909) Marjorie Bowen
‘I do not sin,’ he smiled. ‘I am Sin.’
I started this over at Internet Archive after seeing that Penguin would be republishing it as part of their ‘Weird Girls’ [yes, girls] series with funky faux psychedelic covers. At first I thought they looked kind of fun but the more you look at them the more they look like amateurish cut and paste jobs with no real feel for the ambience they would like to convey. But that’s neither here nor there; I was struck by this tome because I was completely unfamiliar with it. The original cover above certainly looks like fun. And I was already in a gothic frame of mind after breezing through Wilkie Collins’ The Haunted Hotel — itself part of a vintage Penguin gothic scheme — because someone (RomGoth Sam?) mentioned its ending which is chortlesome for any author who has had trouble finding just the right words to wrap up a story.
I must admit that after Wilkie Collins, Bowen was hard going at first. Her prose runs toward purple, especially in description. There’s a lot of overwrought emotion at times, too. I was struck by the overwhelming homoerotic subtext. Dirk the youngster who is first discovered gilding a devil for a chapel in Flanders really falls for Thierry, the young scholar who is travelling with a nobleman seeking news of the woman to whom he was betrothed but never even met, resenting the arranged marriage and having eyes for another. Dirk has been waiting for this day to be free, his duty to the dead woman now discharged. He sees in Thierry a glimmering of the shadowy obsessions for black magic and the two meet secretly in the night to explore their occult studies together.
They become fast friends and swear allegiance to one another and head off to study together. Thierry plagued by inconstancy–one minute he’s all about the power and the magic, the next he wonders if he should repent and leave the smoke and incense and alchemy behind him. But Dirk is proving as obsessive with the studies as he is arrogant with the other students.
An unfortunate incident with a similarly arrogant student leads to the two of them fleeing, finding shelter with a minor noble woman that Thierry had met by chance at the side of the river in town. He is captivated with the haunted Jacobea, who has an air of mystery about her. Dirk is exasperated with his sighs, because he ‘has never cared for women’ and wants to press on to Frankfurt and the court of the Emperor where he is eager to try his powers.
I sometimes hesitate to see homoerotic subtext in historical works; we have a different and puritanical attitude toward male affection in our time. It’s so gratifying to see the tender care and love between male characters in the Lord of the Rings films (which some do see as homoerotic but don’t have to be). Yet this narrative was so pointed in its reflection of the love between these men. There’s even a queer coding to the magic at times that is quite plain.
As the narrative ramps up to poisonings and power and betrayals and disguises — no ghosts, which seems almost odd because we have just about every other thing on the Gothic Checklist — it keeps you entertained and distracted wondering what next. This becomes epic black magic on an international scale involving not only the Emperor but also the Pope!
I’m glad I stuck with it; I’m glad it paid off so well all of these fascinating aspects of the storytelling. I hope you can read this without hearing too much about the latter part of the story as it was most rewarding (I made soooooo many notes along the way about gender, magic and Gothic tropes. Yes, the usual assortment of prejudices of the time: racism and orientalism, ableism. But a fascinating work that captures early twentieth century thoughts and styles, and once you get past the awkward start, a fun read. A challenging alchemy but a worthwhile one.
