Elric in the Dream Realms - Michael Moorcock [157]
The last of the great Gothic hero-villains was Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (University of Nebraska Press, 15/-or $1.70). Melmoth (a combination of Faust and Mephistophilis) is doomed to virtual immortality, wandering the world as an agent of the Devil, seeking to purchase another’s soul in order to get his own out of pawn. One of the best Gothics, thought by some to be the form’s culmination, it is spoiled by lengthy and largely boring sub-plots in the form of whole tales embedded in the main narrative—tales which don’t serve any noticeable purpose in furthering the basic story. This is about Melmoth, a tragic, menacing and mysterious figure who always arrives on the scene when someone is about to suffer a nasty fate—he then tries to tempt them to barter their souls to Satan for an easier lot. He never succeeds.
The book was published in 1820 and Maturin’s development of the Faust theme helped later writers to produce even subtler workings of the basic story. Technically, it relies on a mystery element involving the reader’s curiosity about Melmoth’s motives, which are only very gradually made clear—a device used to good effect by Wilkie Collins and more recent mystery writers, as well as authors of less sensational novels. At the end of 150 years, having failed to find one person who would agree to his proposition, Melmoth knows he must perish: “No one has ever exchanged destinies with Melmoth the Wanderer. I have traversed the world in the search, and no one, to gain the world, would lose his own soul!” He then dreams of his fate:
His last despairing reverted glance was fixed on the clock of eternity—the upraised black arm seemed to push forward the hand—it arrived at its period—he fell—he sunk—he blazed—he shrieked! The burning waves boomed over his sinking head, and the clock of eternity rung out its awful chime—”Room for the soul of the wandered!”—and the waves of the burning ocean answered, as they lashed the adamantine rock—”There is room for more!”—The Wanderer awoke.
Having wakened, the Wanderer discovers he has aged hideously and tells his visitors, “I am summoned, and must obey the summons—my master has other work for me! When a meteor blazes in your atmosphere—when a comet pursues its burning path towards the sun—look up, and perhaps you may think of the spirit condemned to guide the blazing and erratic orb.”
He warns them that if they watch him leave the house “your lives will be the forfeit of your desperate curiosity. For the same stake I risked more than life—and lost it!” He leaves and terrible shrieks are heard from the nearby cliffs overlooking the sea, indescribable sounds are heard all night over the surrounding countryside. In the morning there is only one trace of the Wanderer on the rocks above the sea—his handkerchief.
Robert Spector in his introduction to Seven Masterpieces of Gothic Horror (Bantam Books, 95¢) says that “Melmoth the Wanderer is a Faust story that begins in contemporary Ireland but re-creates the adventures of John Melmoth, who has lived since the seventeenth century through a pact with the devil. Through six episodes of terror, Maturin creates the experiences of modern anguish. Maturin combines the myths of Faust and the Wandering Jew with all the horrible episodes of the Gothic romances, and yet he never depends on blood and gore for his effects. What Maturin does is to probe the psychological depths of fear, and in doing so, he was a little ahead of his audience. Although Melmoth has come to be regarded by many as the masterpiece of terror fiction, it attracted little attention until psychological Gothicists like Poe and the French Romantics resurrected it some years later.”
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