Selected Stories and Novellas

14 hrs. 28 min.

Language Russian

Author Algernon Blackwood

Narrator Mikhail Roslyakov

Description

Algernon Blackwood (Algernon Henry Blackwood, March 14, 1869, Kent — December 10, 1951) was an English writer and traveler, one of the leading authors of mysticism, a classic of horror and ghost story literature of the first half of the 20th century. He wrote 13 novels and more than 200 short stories and novellas, published in periodicals and numerous collections and anthologies.

Umbram fugat veritas (Shadow flees the truth—Lat.) — this dedication motto, received in the Temple of Isis-Urania of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1900, was fully embodied in Algernon Blackwood’s work. He shed light on such dark, irrational realms of the human spirit as traditional priestly knowledge dating back to prehistoric origins, and the orgiastic mysteries of ancient Egyptians; as bloody druidic practices infused with a pantheistic worldview and shamanic rites of North American Indians; as the mad Dionysian cults of the Mediterranean and gloomy occult rituals, with their intrusive otherworldly paranormal phenomena. Proof of all this is the present collection—chosen works of the English author never before translated into Russian—among which the novel “The Centaur” should be noted above all: here the theme of “the expansion of consciousness,” dominating that intimate opus, sounded with special force. According to the author, who attended an esoteric school of G. Gurdjieff in 1923, it opened the gates to another reality, allowing entry into the world of ancient Greek myths.

“Not even the slightest doubt can exist concerning Mr. Blackwood’s talent,” H. Lovecraft wrote in the article “Supernatural Horror in Literature”—“for no one has ever with such artistry, seriousness, and thorough accuracy rendered the overtones of some frightening oddness of everyday life; no one with such supernatural intuition has composed one detail after another to evoke feelings and sensations that help overcome the transition from the real world to the world beyond. He understands better than others that sensitive, refined people always live somewhere on the border of dreams—and that there is almost no difference between images created by the real world and those created by the world of fantasies.”

Contents:

The Island of Ghosts
The Country of Green Ginger
Of Water
The Temple of the Past
The Colonel’s Ring
Dr. Feldman
The Trap
The Doll
The Man Who Loved Trees
The Damned