Vathek [Paperback]

Vathek is a caliph who is loved but also feared by his people. In fact, if he really loses his temper, just the sight of his gaze can cause death. His court makes The Satyricon look like a sunday school with its voluptuousness and excess. There are even five wings of his palace, with each one dedicated to a sense with names such as "The Delight of the Eyes" and "The Palace of Perfumes". Oh, the decadence! Of course someone as attached to physical gratification as Vathek is sure to stomp on the moral and religious boundaries of Allah and get in trouble.

Much like God and Yahweh in the Book of Job, Allah allows Vathek to be tempted and tried by demons as a bizarre test of his faith. Actually, maybe in both cases it was a test of God's faith in man. The faith that man will do the right thing in the end. That he will turn away from evil. That he will have an epiphany which will redeem him. Vathek isn't so lucky.

An evil being in the disguise of a man, called the Gaiour, comes to Vathek's court with all sorts of magical artifacts which seem to give their bearer otherworldy powers. Vathek becomes entranced by the thought of having powers over spirits and other men and begins to follow a direct line to eternal hell. In order to court evil spirits, Vathek becomes a mass murderer, a blasphemer, a betrayer, a killer of his own people. He is helped in this by his mother, Carathis, who hasn't even heard the word goodness. She constructs a tower much like the Tower of Babel, in order to reach to the gods and to serve as storage for her arcane items.

The book, much like Dante's Inferno, becomes a little much at times. I mean, how many deeds of evil can we experience before we go, "ok, he's going to Hell now!" Sometimes you sense that some of this is intentional and tongue in cheek. At other times, you're horrified at the evil that most of the characters do. Any characters that are good are trampled upon by the evil. The last couple of pages are truly disturbing. I liked this book and would recommend it to anyone that keeps an open mind about fantasy or who is interested in the question of how much knowledge is too much knowledge.

In the standard Gothic tale, allusions to Roman Catholicism, thought of by respectable Englishmen as a dark, oppressive, and half-pagan faith, were part of the conventional apparatus. Beckford chose instead to imagine the world of Islam, an even more exotic milieu that added some flashes of bright colours to the dark and sorcerous background of his book. His choice of an even more exotic setting allowed him greater freedom in portraying characters who defied social convention and fell into exotic habits of mind.

My understanding is that it is a matter of some debate to what extent the English text of -Vathek- is a translation from the French, or an original English composition. I do not have the French text in front of me, but it has been represented to me that Beckford's "original" French is rather like the French of Oscar Wilde's -Salome-, and needed extensive editing to be acceptable to a French readership.

At any rate, -Vathek- is a prime example of early dark fantasy. The description, of course, will be richer than you are used to, but Beckford's prose actually seems to move quite quickly. Fans of H. P. Lovecraft or Clark Ashton Smith will find that it is quite easy to slip into. And the tale is indeed a vivid one, right up to the exceptional ending when Vathek and Carathis are damned to the halls of Eblis, their hearts seared with unquenchable fire.

This is a good edition of the story, and the notes and maps are helpful.