…undefinably it was of our world and of one not ours.
Its lineaments flowed from another sphere, …
This is one I’ve not yet read… But, based on the bare excerpt below, A. Merrit’s The Moon Pool seems to have a thematic and literary resonance with works by C.L. Moore, such as “Black Thirst”, “The Bright Illusion”, “The Black God’s Kiss” (especially!), and “Tryst in Time”, despite those stories having been penned in the thirties. Perhaps the tone and style of Merrit’s writing was an influence and inspiration upon Moore’s work? I don’t know; just an idea!
This Collier edition of The Moon Pool features a cover illustration by Don-Ivan Punchatz. Though I’ve never cared for his art, it’s still worthy of note, particularly given the significance of his illustrations for Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation, let alone the cover of the 1974 edition of Dune.
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Portrait of A. Merritt, from James Gunn’s Alternate Worlds – The Illustrated History of Science Fiction
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“Steady,” she commanded, pitifully.
“Steady, Goodwin.
You cannot help them – now!
Steady and – watch!”
Below us the Shining One had paused – spiralling,
swirling, vibrant with all its transcendent, devilish beauty;
had paused and was contemplating us.
Now I could see clearly that nucleus,
that core shot through with flashing veins of radiance,
that ever-shifting shape of glory through the shroudings of shimmering,
misty plumes, throbbing lacy opalescences, vaporous spirallings of prismatic phantom fires.
Steady over it hung the seven little moons of amethyst,
of saffron, of emerald and azure and silver, of rose of life and moon white.
They poised themselves like a diadem –
calm, serene, immobile – and down from them into the Dweller,
piercing plumes and swirls and spirals,
ran countless tiny strands, radiations,
finer than the finest spun thread of spider’s web,
gleaming filaments through which seemed to run – power – from the seven globes;
like – yes, that was it –
miniatures of the seven torrents of moon flame that poured through the septichromatic,
high crystals in the Moon Pool’s chamber roof.
Swam out of the coruscating haze the – face!
Both of man and of woman it was –
like some ancient, androgynous deity of Etruscan fanes long dust,
and yet neither woman nor man; human and unhuman, seraphic and sinister, benign and malefic –
and still no more of these four than is flame,
which is beautiful whether it warms or devours,
or wind whether it feathers the trees or shatters them,
or the wave which is wondrous whether it caresses or kills.
Subtly, undefinably it was of our world and of one not ours.
Its lineaments flowed from another sphere,
took fleeting familiar form – and as swiftly withdrew whence they had come;
something amorphous, unearthly – as of unknown unheeding,
unseen gods rushing through the depths of star-hung space;
and still of our own earth,
with the very soul of earth peering out from it,
caught within it – and in some – unholy – way debased.
It had eyes – eyes that were now only shadows darkening within its luminosity like veils falling,
and falling, opening windows into the unknowable;
deepening into softly glowing blue pools,
blue as the Moon Pool itself; then flashing out,
and this only when the – face – bore its most human resemblance,
into twin stars large almost as the crown of little moons;
and with that same baffling suggestion of peep-holes into a world untrodden, alien, perilous to man!
“Steady!” came Lakla’s voice, her body leaned against mine.
I gripped myself, my brain steadied, I looked again.
And I saw that of body, at least body as we know it,
the Shining One had none – nothing but the throbbing,
pulsing core streaked with lightning veins of rainbows;
and around this, never still, sheathing it,
the swirling, glorious veilings of its hell and heaven born radiance.
So the Dweller stood – and gazed.
Then up toward us swept a reaching, questing spiral!
Under my hand Lakla’s shoulder quivered; dead-alive and their master vanished –
I danced, flickered, within the rock;
felt a swift sense of shrinking, of withdrawal;
slice upon slice the carded walls of stone, of silvery waters,
of elfin gardens slipped from me as cards are withdrawn from a pack,
one by one – slipped, wheeled, flattened,
and lengthened out as I passed through them and they passed from me.
Gasping, shaken, weak, I stood within the faceted oval chamber;
arm still about the handmaiden’s white shoulder;
Larry’s hand still clutching her girdle.
The roaring, impalpable gale from the cosmos was retreating to the outposts of space –
was still; the intense, streaming, flooding radiance lessened – died.
“Now have you beheld,” said Lakla, “and well you trod the road.
And now shall you hear, even as the Silent Ones have commanded,
what the Shining One is – and how it came to be.”
The steps flashed back; the doorway into the chamber opened.
Larry as silent as I – we followed her through it.
For your further distraction, diversion, speculation, and wonder…
A. Merritt, at…
… Internet Speculative Fiction Database
… Project Gutenberg (The Metal Monster, and, The Moon Pool)
… The Locus Index to Science Fiction, 1984-1998
The Moon Pool, at…
… Internet Speculative Fiction Database
Don-Ivan Punchatz, at…
… Internet Speculative Fiction Database
… Spectrum – The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art
A Book
Gunn, James E. (with Introduction by Isaac Asimov) Alternate Worlds – The Illustrated History of Science Fiction, A&W Visual Library (by arrangement with Prentice-Hall, Inc.), Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1973
