The novel recounts the life of a young man, Lucian Taylor, focusing on his dreamy childhood in rural Wales, in a town based on Caerleon. The Hill of Dreams of the title is an old Roman fort where Lucian has strange sensual visions, including ones of the town in the time of Roman Britain. Later, the novel describes Lucian's attempts to make a living as an author in London, enduring poverty and suffering in the pursuit of art and history.
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The novel recounts the life of a young man, Lucian Taylor, focusing on his dreamy childhood in rural Wales, in a town based on Caerleon. The Hill of Dreams of the title is an old Roman fort where Lucian has strange sensual visions, including ones of the town in the time of Roman Britain. Later, the novel describes Lucian's attempts to make a living as an author in London, enduring poverty and suffering in the pursuit of art and history.
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Add this copy of The Hill of Dreams to cart. $14.59, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2021 by Classy Publishing.
Arthur Machen, one of the 20th Century?s most talented writers of supernatural horror fiction, wrote Hill of Dreams, his autobiographic novel, in 1922. The novel concerns a gifted young writer, Lucien Taylor, whose calling to write great (not just good) works of literature dooms him to self-destruction. The novel follows Lucien?s life from boyhood until his mid-twenties. Lucien grows up in a rural village in Wales near the ruins of an ancient Roman fortress (Machen himself grew up in Caerleon, Wales near the ruins of the Roman citadel, Isca Silurum). While exploring these ruins, Lucien undergoes a mystical awakening and becomes fascinated with ancient Roman culture, paganism and the supernatural. His imagination is so captured, it is only a matter of time until he starts to write fiction with supernatural and pagan themes. While still in his teens, Lucien sends a manuscript to a publishing firm. The publisher rejects the manuscript. A few months later, Lucien purchases a newly-published novel which contains entire chapters lifted from his ?rejected? manuscript. Saddened and angered, Lucien again wanders to the Roman ruins. There, he happens to meet a neighbor girl and has a sexual encounter which he associates with the fauns and nymphs of Roman mythology. Lucien?s imagination is so active that the border between reality and fantasy is sometimes blurred. In an effort to reach new heights of imagination and expression, Lucien begins to induce mystic experiences and trances. He dabbles in the occult, engages in masochistic rituals and starves himself to induce visions. His neighbors and relatives notice the changes in Lucien and encourage him to eat, to get plenty of rest, to give up writing and to pursue a real occupation. Unexpectedly, Lucien receives an inheritance which enables him to move to London and devote himself to writing full time. By this time, Lucien is caught in a downward spiral of increasingly disturbing visions, induced by a number of unhealthy methods. He manages to completely erase the border between fantasy and reality, but ironically, he has so disabled himself that he can no longer write coherently. Machen?s story reads almost like poetry and is told in an artful, subtle fashion. The imagery of the first chapter is indescribably beautiful. The final four chapters, detailing his character?s descent into insanity, are vivid and horrific. Machen describes the final sensations of a dying brain so vividly and in such detail that I cannot help but wonder how close Machen came to the same fate. Hill of Dreams is among the finest portrayals of the self-destructive artist, ranking with Coleridge?s Kubla Khan, Mann?s Doctor Faustus and Berlioz?s Symphonie Fantasique. Through repeated allusions to Poe, Coleridge and DeQuincey, Machen pays tribute to other great writers who have tried the same path to greatness. Although Machen has achieved cult icon status (due, in part, to his role in the creation of the Angel of Mons legend), he is underrated as an author. I am greatly impressed with all of his works that I?ve read thus far. Hill of Dreams is the most impressive of his works.
