Saturday, March 16, 2019

The Titans in Tartarus

Read "The Titans in Tartarus" at The Eldritch Dark:

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/poetry/583/the-titans-in-tartarus


Note that the version of this poem at The Eldritch Dark does have several typos, but they are fairly obvious in context, so I won't elaborate on them here.

Here is another poem by Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) that deals with the titans of Greek mythology, a subject that he treated several times early In his poetic career.  This time around, the vision is quite dark, yet articulated with some of CAS' characteristic verbal magic, as in this brief example:



The flaming tumult of disastrous fight,
Taking their outward fire, had left them bleak
As their own statues, who yet ached within.


That's a powerful image of defeat, and the phrase "left them bleak / As their own statues" is chilling in its finality.  The general "action" of the poem features the humiliated titans groping about in the dark and lamenting their fate, a grim subject rendered with a suitably slow-burning narrative.

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