Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Great God Pan
    The Great God Pan
    The Great God Pan
    Ebook114 pages1 hour

    The Great God Pan

    By Arthur Machen

    3/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJun 1, 1977
    Author

    Arthur Machen

    Arthur Machen (1863–1947) was a Welsh author and actor best known for his fantasy and horror fiction. He grew up with intentions of becoming a doctor, but followed a boyhood passion of the supernatural and occult and started to write. In 1890, Machen began publishing short stories in literary magazines. Four years later, he released his breakthrough work, The Great God Pan. Decried upon initial publication for its depictions of sex and violence, the tale has since become a horror classic and has been hailed as “maybe the best [horror story] in the English language” by Stephen King. Machen continued to publish supernatural novels but spent time as actor in a traveling player company after his wife’s death. His literary career revived once more with the publication of his works The House of Souls and The Hill of Dreams. During World War I, Machen became a full-time journalist. Though he rallied for republications of his works, Machen’s literary career ultimately diminished, and he lived much of his life in poor finances. 

    Read more from Arthur Machen

    Related to The Great God Pan

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Six Phases Of The Moon

      Jun 1, 2023

      Six Phases Of The Moon
      6 min read

    • Article

      Trump Derangement Syndrome

      Feb 23, 2023

      Just like stains, some ghosts can prove more stubborn to remove than others. Whereas a quick splash of Holy Water and prayer might suffice to see off most spooks, others require rather more obscure methods of banishment. Yet for sheer oddness, the ef

      6 min read

    • Article

      New Romance Imprint From Entangled

      Jan 5, 2023

      Romance publisher Entangled Publishing has announced the launch of Red Tower Books, a new romantic science fiction and fantasy imprint, which will, the company says, ‘champion feminist and empowered perspectives in the fantasy and science fiction spa

      1 min read

    • Article

      Equinox

      May 18, 2022

      In this strange world, where identities change with the rising and setting of the sun, supernatural forces are at work – and they’re causing trouble… St Leonars prison was an appropriately imposing building. It rose out of the surrounding shacks and

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Quiet Boy

      Jan 28, 2019

      The Quiet Boy
      29 min read

    • Article

      The Beautiful South

      Nov 11, 2021

      The Beautiful South
      10 min read

    • Article

      Helicopter parent

      Dec 20, 2021

      Helicopter parent
      11 min read

    • Article

      Pick Your Punk

      Aug 13, 2019

      Pick Your Punk
      6 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Mar 1, 2024

      I was trying to look a little less like myselfand more like other humans, humans who belonged, so I put on a skort.Purchased in another life, when I had a husband and wrote thank-you notes and held dinner parties,the skort even had its own little poc

      6 min read

    • Article

      Nick Laird

      Dec 15, 2017

      I was trying to write like an adult.I had children.I was at the end of something. As I waited at my table by the window for the coffee,I saw that the sirocco had depositeda scrim of dust on the sill overnight,and it was the dark red of powdered blood

      3 min read

    • Article

      You Only Need Two Bricks

      Sep 23, 2022

      We sat in front of a blazing fire in the hearth of the tiny hunting cabin. The chimney drew well as long as the door was kept slightly open, like Lem Putt advised, to get the draft just right. We were sipping a most wonderfully aged 56-year-old Caber

      5 min read

    • Article

      Rock Hard

      Sep 10, 2020

      Rock Hard
      7 min read

    • Article

      Damion Searls

      Sep 15, 2019

      Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises. Vol. 2 (1683–84), the first known manual of printing J. M. begins his book,Every thought taken up from the block with a rollOf the ball and inked on the form,A Craft of the Hand which cannot be taught by Words:“I th

      6 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Sep 9, 2021

      With regard to Nick Guitard’s letter pooh-poohing the possible existence of tiny aliens [FT405:71], I would like to make the following observations. David Bowie, may he rock on, once said that the Internet is like an alien being has landed and that w

      17 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Nov 1, 2018

      In a hotel in a small town in Norfolk I am listening to someonethrowing glass bottles into a metal bin: toss-shatter, toss-shatter.There are no other sounds; it’s a quiet afternoonbut the one tossing them has a sense of rhythm and I havea sense that

      5 min read

    • Article

      John Ashbery

      Mar 15, 2019

      He could understand the things at home.—Wallace Stevens, “Things of August” Scribbled on the expansive mist, the desireof many dwindles to usand our “activities,” wholesomeor otherwise. Soon it becomes apparentthat neither they nor I have any prise o

      4 min read

    • Article

      Why We’re Drawn Into Darkness

      Oct 10, 2019

      Robert Macfarlane grew up obsessed twith climbing mountains and nearly died on several occasions as he scaled some of the world’s high peaks. He found a safer way to indulge his alpine passions, writing about the mystique of mountains. As someone dra

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Saturnian And The Sirian

      Mar 17, 2021

      The Saturnian And The Sirian
      6 min read

    • Article

      Building Struggles

      Jan 5, 2023

      Building Struggles
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Bargain

      Dec 10, 2022

      “Which one of you owns G2V3889?” Cygnus glided through a luminescent star field suspended in the center of an otherwise dark, oblong studio, then turned in a slow circle to survey the twenty Agents surrounding him. “Come on, speak up.” Vega shuddered

      16 min read

    • Article

      Worship On High

      Oct 18, 2021

      Worship On High
      5 min read

    • Article

      Oh, Corona

      Jan 1, 2024

      Books The Lights by Ben Lerner Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023 128 pp., $26.00 (hardcover) According to the latest Times article on the qualitative merits of bot art, Ben Lerner has lent excerpts from his new poetry collection to a group of venture c

      7 min read

    • Article

      Time And A Word – Or More

      Dec 2, 2021

      Brian Clegg Michael O’Mara Books 2021 Hb, 186 pp, £9.99, ISBN 9781789292916 The Science and Science Fiction Nick Redfern Visible Ink Press 2021 Pb, 332 pp, £14.99, ISBN 9781578597239 About the only common factor between these two books, apart from ha

      4 min read

    • Article

      First Passage

      Jun 3, 2021

      First Passage
      16 min read

    • Article

      A Bit Of TLC

      Mar 17, 2022

      Sam Llewellyn sails a 30ft ketch he rescued from dereliction It was a bright, breezy day in the yard. There was the sound of power tools and voices asking other voices to pass the paint, and could they borrow a wrench, and had they finished with the

      3 min read

    • Article

      Is The Search For Dark Matter An Act Of Faith?

      Oct 10, 2019

      The young physicist sits at his computer, watching for signals from Cygnus. His name is Christopher Toth, and his white lab coat is too big for him. Christopher speaks with calm clarity. His manner is modest, gracefully gentle, and I wonder if this c

      8 min read

    • Article

      Six Bestiary Poems

      Nov 1, 2020

      The world, is it finite? Pliny the Elderon what he saw and heard, 37 “books” toround that up, early C.E. as heproceeded to be infinite. His Naturalis. His Historia.First bestiary ever in Book 8. Land lifeand sea life and through-the-air and undergrou

      4 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Sep 1, 2022

      1. Here there’s no rainy season.Sun scalds my forehead,yet the pool is empty. Beside it,a toppled table, its glass surface shattered.The asphalt is too hot for bare feet. 2. Far away: white hillocksand white dunes under a deepblue sky. Swirling winds

      5 min read

    Reviews for The Great God Pan

    3/5

    14 ratings15 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      A short novella, easily read in an hour or two. The story was based on an interesting idea, but I found the presentation too disjointed for my liking. The book is presented as a series of events. All are connected, but we don't know exactly how until the very end of the book. Most of the "atrocities" in the book take place out of our sight, so the reader is left to use his imagination for the most part. First published in the 1890's, the books writing style definitely shows it's age. I don't think it holds up as well as some others in the genre.
    • 5/5
      An exceptional, suspenseful story that prickles the imagination. Beyond its time, certainly, but a classic horror nonetheless.
    • 4/5
      Somewhat disjointed, but ultimately satisfying tale of the trespasses of science into the supernatural. Seems to be a bit of a theme with Machen, after reading Novel of the White Powder and this; the blending or imposition of the medical, scientific, rational worldview, and the the occult, mythological, spiritual system of belief upon one another. An author I will need to catch up more with in the future.
    • 2/5
      Stephen King has said that this is a horror story that has haunted him all his life. The influence on his novels and others (including H. P. Lovecraft) is undeniable, but despite all the apologists, it is hard to see this story as anything other than an expression of fear and othering of women, especially women who assert their independence. There are two female characters, neither of which gets to speak for herself. One is a meek victim who is violated without much sense of guilt or remorse; consider these words by the doctor who performs brain surgery on her without her consent, causing her to literally lose her mind: "As you know, I rescued Mary from the gutter, and from almost certain starvation, when she was a child; I think her life is mine, to use as I feel fit."The other woman never actually appears on the page, but is only talked about. She victimizes men, with their consent, at least at first. She also terrifies every man in the piece, but she didn't particularly terrify me. Helen is a woman of independent means, who does what she wants when she wants, who indulges her own pleasures, and who cannot be controlled; therefore, she must be destroyed.I often find that these Pan-inspired stories are seething with misogyny. Compare with Harvest Home.
    • 1/5
      So disappointing. I don't understand Machen's revered reputation. All his stories follow this same general pattern: 1) man makes aquaintence of another 2) 2nd guy is doing some sort of research but won't say what 3) 2nd man wanders off 4) 1st man finds notes telling of mysterious people 2nd is out to find 5) 2nd man goes missing and story ends. So essentially nothing happens, no answer is offered, and you realize you wasted your time reading a bunch of empty baloney.
    • 4/5
      An effective example of its genre - early cosmic horror, locating the horrific in inexplicable natural phenomena, and achieving its effectiveness through a lack of description of the specific horrors - but of course just as problematic as Victorian fiction will always tend to be. I'm intrigued by the fact, though, that there is a reading of this book, completely coherent with the text, where all the horrible consequences come from the original violation of a woman's agency and bodily integrity.
    • 4/5
      "Consider the matter well, Raymond. It's a great responsibility. Something might go wrong; you would be a miserable man for the rest of your days.""No, I think not, even if the worst happened. As you know, I rescued Mary from the gutter, and from almost certain starvation, when she was a child; I think her life is mine, to use as I feel fit. Come, it's getting late; we had better go in."Dr. Raymond believes that 'a trifling rearrangement of certain cells' in the brain would allow anyone to see the Great God Pan but his foolhardy attempt to prove his theory ends in disaster, to the horror of his friend Mr. Clarke who was invited to watch the surgery. The rest of the story concerns Mr. Clarke's occult interests, which lead him to the intertwined stories of a strange young girl fostered by a farmer, a beautiful but somehow repulsive woman who married and ruined a friend of a friend, and of a series of suicides by rich young men with everything to live for.The sort of horror story without any monsters, but where the sense of evil permeates everything.
    • 1/5
      It could be me but the ending of this novel confused me. The end result is clear and also how the ending relates to the beginning. It is only hinted at what Helen actually was and what had happened in the woods.
    • 5/5
      A young woman named Mary -- a foundling picked up off the streets by one Dr. Raymond -- becomes the unwitting subject in an experiment to allow a human to see what many consider to be the "real world", a wondrous place in which nature and all manner of creatures live just beyond the veil of what humans normally see. Witnessed by Dr. Raymond and his colleague Mr. Clarke, Mary wakens from the experiment, her eyes appearing to focus on something beautiful and far away. But soon her expression changes to horror, and she collapses to the floor in a fit of madness.Time passes and Mr. Clarke runs into a beggar who turns out to be an old chum. They walk together, and Clark learns of how his friend wound up in such dire circumstances. His friend tells him of his wife, a strange woman named Helen, who many claim to be beautiful and yet no one enjoys being in her presence. A sinister air hangs about her person and their home. She ruined him, he claims, and then disappeared. Clarke investigates further, and tales of madness and unexplained deaths surrounding a similar woman begin cropping up. Curious if she is somehow connected to the events with Mary, he questions Dr. Raymond about that night. The Doctor warns him to leave things be before something happens to him. Clarke, however, is determined to uncover the truth.Perhaps not as horror-filled by today's standards, The Great God Pan still manages to evoke chills not by blood and gore, but by providing moods and glimpses of evil. It's as if you notice something's not quite right, something that you can't see or explain, but you can't pinpoint it. The story works on your mind, wreaking havoc with your fears and imagination until you can't escape. That unknown element is probably more terrifying than knowing that a vampire or a zombie or some familiar creature is lurking about."The Great God Pan" is quite an unnerving tale and has earned its place as a classic horror tale. If you've not read it, I recommend checking it out.
    • 3/5
      On the positive, the work set a nice gothic tone at the outset and created an interesting story line. Lots of potential.Unfortunately, unnecessary characters ultimately made the narrative a bit confusing and the ending was very unsatisfying, e.g., simplistic and unimaginative.
    • 3/5
      This novella was written in 1894 and is included in NPR best 100 Horror Novels and Stories. This story has a doctor who believes he has the right to mess with a young girl that he is taken in and therefore her life is his. A picture of the paternalism of the medical field in this period of time when men were the dominate members of physicians. The doctor does some kind of surgical procedure and Mary is able to see into the world beyond our reality. She has an encounter with what is considered the God Pan, a Roman god. A satyr, Satan. Mary's life is destroyed but not only her life but her child and many other men are destroyed because this physician felt he had the right to do this experiment on this young woman. It is a bit disjointed and somewhat hard to follow. There are characters that are briefly introduced and I am not so sure they really needed to be. Over all, I can understand why this was included in NPRs list of 100 best horror novels and stories. This one is a novella.
    • 4/5
      I didn't find The Great God Pan (or the other stories in this volume) as scary as I expected to, given the introduction, but there's definitely a sense of chill, a sense of the uncanny. I think they're just so very restrained compared to the guts and gore you come across now -- I don't find these tales as horrifying as Val McDermid's The Mermaids Singing, for example, and I don't think that's intended to be horror. There's something very sedate about Machen's writing, and something picturesque, too.

      His is more a horror of not-knowing-quite-what, of things out there in the dark that aren't understood, of rationality meeting the unexplained. I think I prefer it to more modern horror, even if it doesn't give me quite the chill it should.
    • 3/5
      Not really decadent enough for my tastes, though the ontological horror at the end is almost enough of a pay off.

      I can imagine folks complaining about Machen's inability to vary his tone. All his characters sound the same (so no wonder virtually everyone's of the same class of Drones). For example, here are two characters talking:

      "I was wide awake enough. Even if I had been dreaming as you say, what I saw would have roused me effectually."

      "What you saw? What did you see? Was there anything strange about Crashaw? But I can't believe it; it is impossible."

      We might say that Machen's displayed the smooth workings of this world of humans, beyond which lies the horror of Pan's world, where we have, for example, "the hideous form upon the bed, changing and melting before your eyes from woman to man, from man to beast, and from beast to worse than beast." In other words, the very blandness and sameness of the dialog, the indistinguishability of the characters, perfectly represents the world's unvarying and proper order. Change itself, then, is Machen's great horror.

    • 4/5
      A wonderful Victorian melodrama, as recommended by Javier Marias, Guillermo del Toro, Nicholas Lezard & Stephen King. Clearly the work of a lunatic.
    • 3/5
      When I was young I swore by H P Lovecraft while my friend championed Machen. At the time I thought The Hill of Dreams pretty insipid compared to anything with Cthulhu in it. Several decades on I felt that I have to give Machen another chance, as it were, and this edition of The Great God Pan (and the two companion pieces in this volume, The White Pyramid and The Shining People) provided the opportunity.Machen fin-de-siècle novels are still a taste I have yet to acquire. By today's standards the horror (and Machen tends to get his characters to refer to 'horror' in case we can't put a word to their feelings) is pretty tame, more alluded to than described. The title story is about the degradations that are begat on a particular individual and visited on those that come into intimate contact with her. The answers to the mysteries are obvious to the reader, but the narrators and protagonists, not to mention the dilettantes and flaneurs of Late Victorian Britain, seem blind to the implications of what they are investigating, and the tale seems rather overlong as a consequence.The other two slighter tales are, strangely, more convincing. The White People suffers from a clumsy framing device, but the ever-flowing and scattergun chattiness of the child narrator in the central portion strike me as typical of children's descriptions generally, in the way that the dialogue in the opening section (on the nature of evil) is rather artificial and less true to life. The Shining Pyramid has been described as almost an occult Sherlock Holmes story, but I find the detective figure's deductions, for all their apparent logic, come over as pure leaps in the dark as far as realism is concerned, and the climax oddly anti-climactic.Machen's strengths are in creating atmosphere, whether in gloomy London or the eerie depths of the countryside. Claustrophobia is induced by descriptions of dark streets or fog-bound moors and woods, intensified by a general geographical vagueness. Characterisation is less successful; in all three stories I had little sense of individuality, for the men in particular, and had to keep looking back in the text to see who was who in any given passage. While I was unmoved by these tales, I would still like to revisit some of his other stories like The Great Return to see if time has played more fairly with them in my memory. But I'm almost certain my youthful obsession with Lovecraft is a thing of the past, so I shan't waste time on him.A brief word of praise here for this edition's cover artist Chris Iliff, due to his capturing precisely the look I imagined Machen ascribing to the title story's femme fatale. No wonder men went mad staring into those eyes! The Foreword by Ramsey Campbell is, like Machen's prose, strong on atmosphere but comes over chiefly as eulogising, while Tomos Owen's notes (which add in some of the historical, cultural and literary contexts) are workmanlike if not very inspired.

    Book preview

    The Great God Pan - Arthur Machen

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great God Pan, by Arthur Machen

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

    almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

    re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

    with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

    Title: The Great God Pan

    Author: Arthur Machen

    Posting Date: August 12, 2008 [EBook #389]

    Release Date: January, 1996

    Last updated: July 3, 2013

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT GOD PAN ***

    Produced by Brandi Weed.  HTML version by Al Haines.

    THE GREAT GOD PAN

    by

    ARTHUR MACHEN

    CONTENTS

    I

    THE EXPERIMENT

    I am glad you came, Clarke; very glad indeed. I was not sure you could spare the time.

    I was able to make arrangements for a few days; things are not very lively just now. But have you no misgivings, Raymond? Is it absolutely safe?

    The two men were slowly pacing the terrace in front of Dr. Raymond's house. The sun still hung above the western mountain-line, but it shone with a dull red glow that cast no shadows, and all the air was quiet; a sweet breath came from the great wood on the hillside above, and with it, at intervals, the soft murmuring call of the wild doves. Below, in the long lovely valley, the river wound in and out between the lonely hills, and, as the sun hovered and vanished into the west, a faint mist, pure white, began to rise from the hills. Dr. Raymond turned sharply to his friend.

    Safe? Of course it is. In itself the operation is a perfectly simple one; any surgeon could do it.

    And there is no danger at any other stage?

    None; absolutely no physical danger whatsoever, I give you my word. You are always timid, Clarke, always; but you know my history. I have devoted myself to transcendental medicine for the last twenty years. I have heard myself called quack and charlatan and impostor, but all the while I knew I was on the right path. Five years ago I reached the goal, and since then every day has been a preparation for what we shall do tonight.

    I should like to believe it is all true. Clarke knit his brows, and looked doubtfully at Dr. Raymond. Are you perfectly sure, Raymond, that your theory is not a phantasmagoria—a splendid vision, certainly, but a mere vision after all?

    Dr. Raymond stopped in his walk and turned sharply. He was a middle-aged man, gaunt and thin, of a pale yellow complexion, but as he answered Clarke and faced him, there was a flush on his cheek.

    Look about you, Clarke. You see the mountain, and hill following after hill, as wave on wave, you see the woods and orchard, the fields of ripe corn, and the meadows reaching to the reed-beds by the river. You see me standing here beside you, and hear my voice; but I tell you that all these things—yes, from that star that has just shone out in the sky to the solid ground beneath our feet—I say that all these are but dreams and shadows; the shadows that hide the real world from our eyes. There is a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and this vision, beyond these 'chases in Arras, dreams in a career,' beyond them all as beyond a veil. I do not know whether any human being has ever lifted that veil; but I do know, Clarke, that you and I shall see it lifted this very night from before another's eyes. You may think this all strange nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients knew what lifting the veil means. They called it seeing the god Pan.

    Clarke shivered; the white mist gathering over the river was chilly.

    It is wonderful indeed, he said. We are standing on the brink of a strange world, Raymond, if what you say is true. I suppose the knife is absolutely necessary?

    "Yes; a slight lesion in the grey matter, that is all; a trifling rearrangement of certain cells, a microscopical alteration that would escape the attention of ninety-nine brain specialists out of a hundred. I don't want to bother you with 'shop,' Clarke; I might give you a mass of technical detail which would sound very imposing, and would leave you as enlightened as you are now. But I suppose you have read, casually, in out-of-the-way corners of your paper, that immense strides have been made recently in the physiology of the brain. I saw a paragraph the other day about Digby's theory, and Browne Faber's discoveries. Theories and discoveries! Where they are standing now, I stood fifteen years ago, and I need not tell you that I have not been standing still for the last fifteen years. It will be enough if I say that five years ago I made the discovery that I alluded to when I said that ten years ago I reached the goal. After years of labour, after years of toiling and groping in the dark, after days and nights of disappointments and sometimes of despair, in which I used now and then to tremble and grow cold with the thought that perhaps there were others seeking for what I sought, at last, after so long, a pang of sudden joy thrilled my soul, and I knew the long journey was at an end. By what seemed then and still seems a chance, the suggestion of a moment's idle thought followed up upon familiar lines and paths that I had tracked a hundred times already, the great truth burst upon me, and I saw, mapped out in lines of sight, a whole world, a sphere unknown; continents and islands, and great oceans in which no ship has sailed (to my belief) since a Man first lifted up his eyes and beheld the sun, and the stars of heaven, and the quiet earth beneath. You will think this all high-flown language, Clarke, but it is hard to be literal. And yet; I do not know whether what I am hinting at cannot be set forth in plain and lonely terms. For instance, this world of ours is pretty well girded now with the telegraph wires and cables; thought, with something less than the speed of thought, flashes from sunrise to sunset, from north to south, across the floods and the desert places. Suppose that an electrician of today were suddenly to perceive that he and his friends have merely been playing with pebbles and mistaking them for the foundations of the world; suppose that such a man saw uttermost space lie open before the current, and words of men flash forth to the sun and beyond the sun into the systems beyond, and the voice of articulate-speaking men echo in the waste void that bounds our thought. As analogies go, that is a pretty good analogy of what I have done; you can understand now a little of what I felt as I stood here one evening; it was a summer evening, and the valley looked much as it does

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1