Halls of Eblis - The Uncanny and the Perception

Hysolakoj, Valerjana 2014: Halls of Eblis - T’Uncanny and t’Perception of Terror in William Beckford’s Vathek
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Article 44 in LCPJ
Halls of Eblis - The Uncanny and the Perception
of Terror in William Beckford’s Vathek
Abstract
This article will argue about the idea of the Uncanny in William
Beckford’s Vathek paying specific attention to the descending of the
Caliph Vathek (main character) in the nether regions, called in this novel
The Halls of Eblis. Beckford’s representation of Hell and damnation and
the perception of terror are the most important elements of what Freud
called Das Unheimliche. For Freud the uncanny is something unusual
and disturbing that comes to the surface right from the depths of the
unconscious colliding with the ego and bringing to light moments lived
in the past, forgotten and removed. Furthermore, we feel lost in a world,
which we do not know any longer, which is not familiar to us anymore.
Accordingly, Beckford’s Halls of Eblis is constructed as a dream; by getting
lost in those halls, wandering where they will lead; the confusion and the
uncertainty are those kinds of feelings that we have already experienced
in our dream-activity yet still disturbing us. The anxiety accompanies us
from the beginning of the descending of Vathek to the underworld, when
the doors of Eblis open, until the end of the novel where everyone gets
his/her own punishment.
Introduction
William Beckford is one of the most controversial characters of the
eighteenth century. His literary activity has not been very wide. Yet,
Vathek is one of the most interesting novels of the eighteenth century,
both for its contribution to the Gothic group of novels, and for linking
two extremely important eras of English literature: the eighteenth
century oriental tale and the romantic novel of the nineteenth century.
It is considered as the last book that closed the circle of the gothic novels.
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Hysolakoj, Valerjana 2014: Halls of Eblis - T’Uncanny and t’Perception of Terror in William Beckford’s Vathek
To be downloaded from www.lcpj.pro
The oriental setting is the consequence of Beckford’s passion for Orient
and it is reflected both in his literary creativity and his life. A good
example of this is his estate, Fonthill Abbey, which was built in some
kind of mixture between the oriental and the Gothic style. In his early
education, his tutors, like Alexander Cozens and Sir William Chambers,
had influenced him. The former, his drawing master, born in Russia,
taught Beckford Persian and Arabic, the latter, a Scottish architecture
who knew China quite well, taught him the principles of architecture.
Their tales and experiences motivated young Beckford to read and wish
to learn more about Orient. He tried to translate The Arabian Nights but
he never completed it. Therefore, while reading Vathek, we are under
the impression that it is just an Arabian tale. However, when the doors
of Eblis open, we face something different, which has nothing to do with
the mere oriental tale. It becomes an investigation of the unconscious,
both of our hero and of ourselves.
The uncanny and the Halls of Eblis
Vathek is seen as a kind of dream or nightmare containing supernatural
elements characteristic of the Gothic novel with changing scenes and
settings in some kind of blurred images. This is why it is similar to
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but unlike it, Vathek is thought to have
been written under the effects of drugs used on a Christmas party at his
estate at Fonthill Abbey. However, the author’s ‘way of being inspired’,
is similar to other literature characters of that period like Baudelaire, De
Quincey, Coleridge etc. Furthermore, the accuracy of oriental details, the
scenes of terror, which engross the reader making him wish for the end
but still trapping him in a kind of hidden sadistic desire to keep reading
about the characters’ vicissitudes, and of course the perversion that
characterizes the book, is what makes it one of the most valuable
works worldwide. It was first written in French and then translated in
English. The reason Beckford, an Englishman heir of a great fortune,
decided to write in French, relies in the flourishing of the oriental novel
in France in the eighteenth century. Accordingly, the reader was already
acquainted with the oriental framework, for that reason he knew that the
approach of the French public would have been very different and much
more generous to his work, compared to English readers.
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Hysolakoj, Valerjana 2014: Halls of Eblis - T’Uncanny and t’Perception of Terror in William Beckford’s Vathek
To be downloaded from www.lcpj.pro
“Vathek, the ninth Caliph of the race of the Abassids, was the son of
Motassem, and the grandson of Haroun al Raschid” (Beckford, 1823: 1).
Beckford begins the novel by presenting to the reader his main character.
The story is very simple: Vathek is a very powerful and rich monarch
devoted to pleasures with a great appetite for knowledge. This hunger
of his leads to the building of a big tower needed to read the planets and
everything they could tell him about his future. They do preannounce
him great conquests and in particular the arrival of a strange man who
will be the vehicle to those achievements. The prophecy is soon fulfilled.
A terrible man with terrible eyes comes to the palace and sells a dagger to
our Caliph. Here starts the way of our Caliph to the Halls of Eblis where
he is promised to find the great treasures of the preadamite Sultans and
gain an absolute power but only if he abjures God and Islamic religion
followed by the sacrifice of 50 children to be given to the Giaour. After
a few years of travelling towards Eblis, Vathek has stained his soul of
many crimes, has practiced black magic and has denied God. Finally,
when he enters Eblis, while walking through its halls, he sees suffering
souls wandering around like automations, great kings reduced to mere
shadows, pain, affliction etc. Slowly he realises his faith.
The whole novel seems to be a dream and like a dream, the narrator seems
to allow himself any exaggeration he may have thought as appropriate.
The hyperbole, in the first part of the story, leaves the reader with a smile
while flipping through the pages. By using adjectives as “a hundred
fountains”, “fifteen hundred stairs of his tower”, “three hundred dishes that
were daily placed before him” etc., Beckford tries to make the reader feel
comfortable since he creates a distance between what happens in the
book and the reader himself. We know that what we are reading is
not something that can happen to us; therefore, we do not worry. The
confusion for the reader begins later on, exactly with Vathek descending
the underworld, the so-called Halls of Eblis. Right from the opening of
the doors, the narrator changes the adjectives. They have now become
indefinite, no longer quantified as they used to be at the beginning: “a
vast portal of ebony”, “an immeasurable plain”, “an infinity of censers”, “of this
immense hall” etc.
Furthermore, the description of the Halls becomes more like the
description of a labyrinth, where there is no end for us to see, where
everything can be possible. We already know this kind of feeling, since
we have experienced it before, while our unconscious has manifested
itself in our dreams. It uses symbols often incomprehensible to our logic,
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Hysolakoj, Valerjana 2014: Halls of Eblis - T’Uncanny and t’Perception of Terror in William Beckford’s Vathek
To be downloaded from www.lcpj.pro
yet essential to communicate with our conscious, since they have to know
each other at least a little, in order to cohabit.
“They went wandering on, from chamber to chamber; hall to hall; and
gallery to gallery; all without bounds or limits; all distinguishable by
the same louring gloom; all adorned from the same awful grandeur; all
traversed by persons in search of repose and consolation; but, who sought
them in vain for every one carried within him a heart tormented in flames.”
(Beckford, 1823: 217)
The atmosphere is gloomy as they walk through the halls. This wandering,
without knowing where the galleries will lead, is what Beckford wants
us to feel: disorientation. Nothing is clear, there are no definitions, or
doors, or ends, or purpose to this wandering. Therefore, we feel lost, just
as much as the main character. Freud called this confusion Unheimliche,
which in English has been translated approximately with Uncanny. The
word Unheimliche has had some difficulties in being translated in other
languages, since it has two opposite meanings, which in German are
perfectly acceptable to be used in the same word, but not every language
allows that. Unheimliche in German means something unfamiliar, which
is extraneous to us or which we do not know. Still, if we take a closer
look, we will see that it is all about the subconscious and the desires and
fears populating it then, suddenly, coming to surface. Therefore, the
uncanny is thought as something familiar, since we are aware of what
inhabits our inner world, which we try to hide and remove in order to
avoid distress/perturbation.
According to Freud, “[…] the uncanny would always be that in which
one does not know where one is, as it were.” (Freud, 1955: 221) Here
there are no more bounds of the real and the unreal, yet there is a fusion
between them in order to create a new world, the surrealistic one. It
becomes confusing and perturbing, since we do not know if we are
dreaming or if we are awake, what is real and what is not. This feeling
of being lost generates anxiety, since we have no more the illusion of
rationality (the conscious) to understand what is actually happening
around us. The unconscious prevails over the conscious; there we find
a place, which we do not know, though it is inside us, and at the same
time, it is extraneous to us. Consequently, the subject becomes stranger
and extraneous to himself.
“They reached, at length, a hall of great extent, and covered with a lofty
dome; around which appeared fifty portals of bronze, secured with as
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Hysolakoj, Valerjana 2014: Halls of Eblis - T’Uncanny and t’Perception of Terror in William Beckford’s Vathek
To be downloaded from www.lcpj.pro
many fastenings of iron. A funereal gloom prevailed over the whole scene.”
(Beckford, 1823: 211)
“Their eyes retained a melancholy motion: they regarded one another
with looks of the deepest dejection; each holding his right hand,
motionless, on his heart.” (Beckford, 1823: 212)
The look in the damned ones’ eyes and the silence that Vathek encounters
at this hall represent another important point of the Uncanny. The vacant
stare of the wandering ones, together with the silence that reigns all around
the hall produce anxiety to Vathek on one hand and to the reader on the
other, as that vision seems unreal. The absence of eyes, expressive-looking
ones, and the absence of a voice, or sound, make the wandering ones
mere shadows that can represent a nightmare, a projection of Vathek’s
anxiety; his anxiety of ceasing to exist; that of not being recognised from
the others, since they are the ones that establish our existence by looking
and talking to us. Their voice calling our names makes us real and living.
Here, the Cartesian philosophy “Cogito ergo sum” (= ‘I think therefore I
am’) is not applicable, since the dimension, which is represented, is not
that of the conscious thinking ego, but that of the absurd unreality of
the unconscious. Therefore, we come across the fears and anxiety of our
hero. He perceives this scene, on the other hand, as a mirror or a painting
looking back at him. Yet he is tottering in front of himself and becoming
transparent to his self-cognition (Rimondi, 2006: 43).
Vathek is not the classic novel with a classic heroic character. It is about
vice, temptation, castration, necrophilia and incest. It is about what
humanity tries to restrain: the unspeakable desires and fears. There is
no moral but only gratification of pleasure. That is its main purpose, even
when descending the underworld. Punishment comes only at the very
end as an inevitable consequence.
Conclusion
In his analysis of Vathek, J.L. Borges claims that the difference between
Dante’s Inferno and Beckford’s Halls of Eblis relies in the fact that the
former is a place where people find their punishment for what they
have done during their life, while the latter is a place where they find
both temptation and punishment. That is what makes Beckford’s
underworld the most atrocious one of the whole literature (Borges, 2000:
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Hysolakoj, Valerjana 2014: Halls of Eblis - T’Uncanny and t’Perception of Terror in William Beckford’s Vathek
To be downloaded from www.lcpj.pro
138). Concluding, we can say that reading Vathek, even if we know
that what he deserves is a punishment for his sins, we sympathize with
him, we live his anxiety while thumbing through the pages, especially
in descending the Halls of Eblis; we get lost with him, we get confused,
just as he does. Beckford achieved his intent: the reader is involved both
with his conscious and with his unconscious, because what he wishes,
what we all wish, is to throw off our inhibitions and self-control just as
his characters do.
References
Beckford, W 1823: Vathek. London: Clarke, 1, 211 – 212, 217.
Borges, J.L 2000: Altre Inquisizioni. Milano: Adelphi, 138.
Freud, S 1955: The Uncanny. London: The Hogarth Press Limited, 221.
Rimondi, G 2006: Lo straniero che è in noi. Cagliari: CUEC, 43.
The total number of words is 2130
© LCPJ Publishing 2014 by Valerjana Hysolakoj
Valerjana Hysolakoj is currently concluding MS in European, American
and Postcolonial Languages and Literatures at Ca’ Foscari University
of Venice, where she has also got the Bachelor’s Degree in Modern
and Contemporary Languages and Literatures. Her interest concerns
literature and communication between the literary text and the reader
(Comparative Literature).
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