No lurcher posts for nearly two weeks. Boo hiss. Next week we’ll have a new chapter of Lurchers for Beginners. But for now, grit your teeth. We have a really weird special for you – books, paintings, film and music. What connects writers Roger Zelazny and Edgar Wallace, the actor Boris Karloff, Greek vampires, the artist Roger Dean, the composer Rachmaninoff and the most influential Art Nouveau typeface/font? M’shimba M’shamba knows…

This is a trail which began many years ago. For decades we have recommended Roger Zelazny, and in the process cited his novel Lord of Light as one of the most inventive and wonderful SF/F novels ever written. It isn’t exactly written sequentially, it doesn’t base itself on European myths, and how much of it is SF, how much is fantasy, is up to the reader. It’s full of religious and social truths, but riddled with human failings and hopes. We used to buy multiple copies so we could give them to people, on the grounds that they’d never follow up a drunken recommendation at 2 in the morning.

But this article isn’t about Lord of Light. We just had to get it in, as usual. The book we’re on is Zelazny’s Isle of the Dead (1969). Months ago we mentioned those interesting but dubious works of Edgar Wallace, the Sanders of the River stories. And particularly his African God of Storms, M’shimba M’shamba, who strides in thunder:

“M’shimba M’shamba was abroad, walking with his devastating feet through the forest, plucking up great trees by their roots and tossing them aside…”

Isle of the Dead is science fiction, except that it may also be a religious morality tale. Put briefly, it concerns Francis Sandow (who appears in two other Zelazny stories), a man who has bonded with – or become possessed by – a deity from the pantheon of the dying but long-lived alien race, the Pei’ans. Don’t worry, there won’t be questions at the end.

Sandow is a human who has survived through centuries as a result of suspended animation. He is immensely rich, and as a result of his bonding with the Pei’an god, a telepath and worldscaper who can terraform and transform planets. He is the only non-Pei’an ever to have taken on the aspects of a deity. On one of his planets, he re-creates what he calls “that mad painting by Boecklin, The Isle of the Dead.” This island is the scene for the final confrontation between Sandow and his enemies.

Apart from wanting to know more about the painting he mentions, we were struck by the fact that the alien deity involved was Shimbo of Darktree, Shrugger of Thunders, whose powers in the novel seem to be identical to those ascribed to M’shimba M’shamba in the Sanders cycle. Had Roger Zelazny read the Sanders and Bones stories? Shimba → Shimbo? We don’t suppose we’ll ever know, unless someone comes up with a letter in which Zelazny says “Got drunk and bored, nicked Edgar’s god. I have this idea about an island…”

Whatever the answer, Zelazny’s Isle of the Dead is a cracking bit of SF/fantasy if you like a change. It does need more than one read if you want to really take in the Pei’an and religious/moral bits properly. You can either get the paperback second-hand, or get the e-book version below:

isle of the dead/eye of cat (kindle)

Now, back to the Isle of the Dead (the painting), and the key link to everything.

Arnold Böcklin (1827 – 1901) was a Swiss symbolist painter who produced at least five versions of this painting between 1880 and 1886. A number of his works have a weird vibe, but this one is particularly on our wavelength. Böcklin himself described it as “a dream picture: it must produce such a stillness that one would be awed by a knock on the door.” Rather than describe it, here are a couple of the versions to consider for yourself:

The isle is said to reflect two distinct real-life sources. Three versions were painted at and influenced by the English Cemetery in Florence, close to Böcklin’s studio:

The source of the overall image is supposedly the island of Pontikonisi, just off Corfu. Pontikonisi not only fits the outline, but it has an 11th century Byzantine chapel on it, surrounded by cypresses:

As an aside, in Greek storytelling, Odysseus’s boat is said to have been transformed into the island of Pontikonisi by the sea god Poseidon. Bet you didn’t know that. Or really need to.

Ace Books later commissioned Dean Ellis to do a new cover for Zelazny’s book, drawing on the Böcklin painting for inspiration:

Böcklin’s other paintings vary in their subject matter, but the two below seem perfect as inspirations for ghost stories in the style of M R James or his peers:

Unfortunately his later Isle of Life, painted in 1888, is quite frankly disappointing, proving that the Devil has all the best tunes, or something like that.

Nabokov also references the Isle of the Dead in his novel Despair, but sadly we haven’t read it. And we don’t why anyone would want to know this, but the painting features a number of times in the US TV series Pretty Little Liars, and may be a clue. A clue to what we have no idea, as we’ve never watched it.

Which brings us to the horror film The Isle of the Dead, starring Boris Karloff. It is 1912, during the First Balkan War, and General Pherides (Karloff) visits his wife’s grave on a small Greek island. As so often happens when you do this sort of thing, someone dies, there is fear of disease, his wife’s tomb is empty and a young girl on the island is suspected of being a vampiric creature called a vorvolakas. We had a Tuesday like that last week. You can see from the screenshot below how this film was influenced by Böcklin.

If you add fear of premature burial, a brooding atmosphere on the island and septicaemic plague to the vorvolakas myth, you get a pretty good horror film, more a moody classic than an out-and-out shocker.

Vorvolakas, or vrykolakas, are interesting in their own right. The Isle of the Dead film is unusual for using this Greek folk myth rather than going for the standard vampire. Because they crop up all over the Balkans under similar names, there are contradictory tales about them being werewolves, vampires or even werewolves who have become vampires.

Note that vorvolakas do not have to be blood-drinkers, and they are not Bram Stoker-type vampires. No capes or pointy fangs. Mentions of vorvolakas in literature go back at least as far as De quorundam Graecorum Opinationibus by Allatios (1645). They are, in essence, part of the widespread fear of dead people rising from the grave to cause mischief or bodily harm to the living.

The animated corpses can rise on every day but Saturday, and on that day they can be killed. Burning was a good way to do that; piercing the heart with iron nails was another one. Prevention was by burying the corpse upside down, or by leaving a coin in its mouth, a metal cross in the coffin or a sickle at its throat, approaches which are echoed across other parts of Europe. A particularly neat legend is that a vorvolakas will knock once on your door, and if you do not answer, will pass by. So always wait for the second knock, listeners.

We promised Rachmaninoff, though, and we shall deliver. Isle of the Dead (Opus 29) is his romantic symphonic poem inspired by seeing a version of Böcklin’s painting in Paris. He saw the black and white version, and wrote his tone-poem in 1908. After he saw a colour version later, he was rather disappointed, and said that he might not have written Opus 29 if he’d seen that one first. Have a listen – it starts slow, but it’s pretty powerful after a while.

If you’re classically inclined, five years later the composer Max Reger (1873 – 1916) also wrote Die Toteninsel as one of four tone-poems inspired by Böcklin.

If you’re not classically inclined, you might be more excited by the fact that exactly 100 years after Arnold Böcklin finished his last version of The Isle of the Dead, the heavy metal band Manilla Road recorded their own. We have, however, no idea if Manilla Road were Böcklin fans at the time. Perhaps they wandered into an art gallery whilst stoned and had one of those “Oooh!” moments.

Our final major rabbit from the hat (approved by Animal Welfare) connection is that in 1904, Otto Weisert produced the typeface called Arnold Böcklin, which went on to become the best known Art Nouveau typeface and font, one you will have seen all over the place on posters and book covers. It was also used by the SF, fantasy and album cover artists Roger Dean.

By the way, there is even a Giger metallo-organic version of Isle of the Dead, which really has to be included here.

In light of all of this, we can only end by saying “Thanks, Arnold.”

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End-Note Thingy: As often happens in these excursions, long after putting this article together bit by bit, we discovered a site devoted to looking at some of the influence of The Isle of the Dead painting – Toteninsel.net. This would have been a Good Thing to find before we started, and would have made life a lot easier.

toteninsel.net

That’s it. We are so weighed down by writing commitments, interviews we’ve haven’t planned out properly and being dragged through six-inch deep mud by longdogs that we have no idea what is to come next time…