The Garden of Survival
4/5
()
About this ebook
Algernon Blackwood
Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) was an English journalist, novelist, and short story writer. Born in Shooter’s Hill, he developed an interest in Hinduism and Buddhism at a young age. After a youth spent travelling and taking odd jobs—Canadian dairy farmer, bartender, model, violin teacher—Blackwood returned to England and embarked on a career as a professional writer. Known for his connection to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Blackwood gained a reputation as a master of occult storytelling, publishing such popular horror stories as “The Willows” and “The Wendigo.” He also wrote several novels, including Jimbo: A Fantasy (1909) and The Centaur (1911). Throughout his life, Blackwood was a passionate outdoorsman, spending much of his time skiing and mountain climbing. Recognized as a pioneering writer of ghost stories, Blackwood influenced such figures as J. R. R. Tolkien, H. P. Lovecraft, and Henry Miller.
Read more from Algernon Blackwood
The Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volume 4 (30 short stories) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Willows Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volume 1 (30 short stories) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Christmas Library: 250+ Essential Christmas Novels, Poems, Carols, Short Stories...by 100+ Authors Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Famous Modern Ghost Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Willows Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Greatest Christmas Stories: 120+ Authors, 250+ Magical Christmas Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Supernatural Mysteries of Dr. John Silence: Complete Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Best British Short Stories of 1922 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBest Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wendigo (Unabridged): Horror Classic - A dark and thrilling story, which introduced the legend to horror fiction Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings50 Classic Christmas Stories Vol. 4 (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMasterpieces of Mystery: Ghost Stories, Detective Stories, Mystic-Humorous Stories & Whodunit Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIncredible Adventures Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries: What the Shepherd Saw, The Mystery of Room Five, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle... Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFamous Modern Ghost Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Kit Bag & Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Garden of Survival
Related ebooks
The Garden of Survival Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Grden Of Survival Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Story of a Lover Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsL'Innocente: The Victim Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Jane Talbot Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Intruder Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Intruder: A Novel of Love and Treachery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWolf Magic Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLeonora Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Medieval Mind - Volume II of II Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClarissa Harlowe Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sweet Cheat Gone (The Fugitive) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Essential Novelists - Gabriele D'Annunzio: the aesthetic of excess Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlood Love Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Strange Story — Volume 07 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJourney into the Feminine Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Fugitive Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClarissa Harlowe, or The History of a Young Lady Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThreads: The Reincarnation of Anne Boleyn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Leaf: A Psychedelic Account of Romantic Tribulations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Woman Who Fell Out Of Fear: The Avery Victoria Spencer Fables, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFalling Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Memoirs of Casanova Volume IV Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDrysau Ceudodol: Book Three: Homecoming Queen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBittersweet Symphony Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Minor Expectations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shadowcast: Ascendant, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sorrows of Young Werther Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDoctor Faustus Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Minding Things Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
General Fiction For You
The Priory of the Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Ends with Us: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The King James Version of the Bible Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unhoneymooners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nettle & Bone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rebecca Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Outsider: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heroes: The Greek Myths Reimagined Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beartown: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Meditations: Complete and Unabridged Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dry: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Terminal List: A Thriller Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Good and Evil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ulysses: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cabin at the End of the World: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The City of Dreaming Books Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Shantaram: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Candy House: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Garden of Survival
1 rating1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a story of a military man's man who was inspired by a presence outside of himself that slowly led him to a great epiphany in his life regarding love, beauty, truth, death and eternity. Obviously God plays a major role here. The story takes the form of a letter from one twin brother to the other. I found it very moving, and Blackwood gets extra points in many of his stories for understanding those secret pangs of the human heart. I'm not sure how he does it, but usually he hits the nail on the head. With this story, it may not be everyone's cup of tea, but those out searching will find something to think about here.
Book preview
The Garden of Survival - Algernon Blackwood
Blackwood
CONTENT
I
IT will surprise and at the same time possibly amuse you to know that I had the instinct to tell what follows to a Priest, and might have done so had not the Man of the World in me whispered that from professional Believers I should get little sympathy, and probably less credence still. For to have my experience disbelieved, or attributed to hallucination, would be intolerable to me. Psychical investigators, I am told, prefer a Medium who takes no cash recompense for his performance, a Healer who gives of his strange powers without reward. There are, however, natural-born priests who yet wear no uniform other than upon their face and heart, but since I know of none I fall back upon yourself, my other half, for in writing this adventure to you I almost feel that I am writing it to myself.
The desire for confession is upon me: this thing must out. It is a story, though an unfinished one. I mention this at once lest, frightened by the thickness of the many pages, you lay them aside against another time, and so perhaps neglect them altogether. A story, however, will invite your interest, and when I add that it is true, I feel that you will bring sympathy to that interest: these together, I hope, may win your attention, and hold it, until you shall have read the final word.
That I should use this form in telling it will offend your literary taste—you who have made your name both as critic and creative writer—for you said once, I remember, that to tell a story in epistolary form is a subterfuge, an attempt to evade the difficult matters of construction and delineation of character. My story, however, is so slight, so subtle, so delicately intimate too, that a letter to some one in closest sympathy with myself seems the only form that offers.
It is, as I said, a confession, but a very dear confession: I burn to tell it honestly, yet know not how. To withhold it from you would be to admit a secretiveness that our relationship has never known—out it must, and to you. I may, perhaps, borrow—who can limit the sharing powers of twin brothers like ourselves?—some of the skill your own work spills so prodigally, crumbs from your writing-table, so to speak; and you will forgive the robbery, if successful, as you will accept lie love behind the confession as your due.
Now, listen, please! For this is the point: that, although my wife is dead these dozen years and more—I have found reunion and I love. Explanation of this must follow as best it may. So, please mark tie point which for the sake of emphasis I venture to repeat: that I know reunion and I love.
With the jealous prerogative of the twin, you objected to that marriage, though I knew that it deprived you of no jot of my affection, owing to the fact that it was prompted by pity only, leaving the soul in me wholly disengaged. Marion, by her steady refusal to accept my honest friendship, by her persistent admiration of me, as also by her loveliness, her youth, her singing, persuaded me somehow finally that I needed her. The cry of the flesh, which her beauty stimulated and her singing increased most strangely, seemed raised into a burning desire that I mistook at the moment for the true desire of the soul. Yet, actually, the soul in me remained aloof, a spectator, and one, moreover, of a distinctly lukewarm kind. It was very curious. On looking back, I can hardly understand it even now; there seemed some special power, some special undiscovered tie between us that led me on and yet deceived me. It was especially evident in her singing, this deep power. She sang, you remember, to her own accompaniment on the harp, and her method, though so simple it seemed almost childish, was at the same time charged with a great melancholy that always moved me most profoundly. The sound of her small, plaintive voice, the sight of her slender fingers that plucked the strings in some delicate fashion native to herself, the tiny foot that pressed the pedal—all these, with her dark searching eyes fixed penetratingly upon my own while she sang of love and love's endearments, combined in a single stroke of very puissant and seductive kind. Passions in me awoke, so deep, so ardent, so imperious, that I conceived them as born of the need of one soul for another. I attributed their power to genuine love. The following reactions, when my soul held up a finger and bade me listen to her still, small warnings, grew less positive and of ever less duration. The frontier between physical and spiritual passion is perilously narrow, perhaps. My judgment, at any rate, became insecure, then floundered hopelessly. The sound of the harp-strings and of Marion's voice could overwhelm its balance instantly.
Mistaking, perhaps, my lukewarm-ness for restraint, she led me at last to the altar you described as one of sacrifice. And your instinct, more piercing than my own, proved only too correct: that which I held for love declared itself as pity only, the soft, affectionate pity of a weakish man in whom the flesh cried loudly, the pity of a man who would be untrue to himself rather than pain so sweet a girl by rejecting the one great offering life placed within her gift. She persuaded me so cunningly that I persuaded myself, yet was not aware I did so until afterwards. I married her because in some manner I felt, but never could explain, that she had need of me.
And, at the wedding, I remember two things vividly: the expression of wondering resignation on your face, and upon hers—chiefly in the eyes and in the odd lines about the mouth—the air of subtle triumph that she wore: that she had captured me for her very own at last, and yet—for there was this singular hint in her attitude and behaviour—that she had taken me, because she had this curious deep need of me.
This sharply moving touch was graven into me, increasing the tenderness of my pity, subsequently, a thousandfold. The necessity lay in her very soul. She gave to me all she had to give, and in so doing she tried to satisfy some hunger of her being that lay beyond my comprehension or interpretation. For, note this—she gave herself into my keeping, I remember, with a sigh.
It seems as of yesterday the actual moment when, urged by my vehement