Here, indeed,
Huneker riots in the aesthetic occultism that he loves. Music slides
over into diabolism; the Pobloff symphony rends the firmament of Heaven;
the ghost of Chopin drives Mychowski to drink; a single drum-beat
finishes the estimable consort of the composer of the Tympani symphony.
In "The Eighth Deadly Sin" we have a paean to perfume--the only one, so
far as I know, in English. In "The Hall of the Missing Footsteps" we
behold the reaction of hasheesh upon Chopin's ballade in F major....
Strangely-flavoured, unearthly, perhaps unhealthy stuff. I doubt that it
will ever be studied for its style in our new Schools of Literature; a
devilish cunning if often there, but it leaves a smack of the
pharmacopoeia. However, as George Gissing used to say, "the artist
should be free from everything like moral prepossession." This lets in
the Antichrist....
Huneker himself seems to esteem these fantastic tales above all his
other work. Story-writing, indeed, was his first love, and his Opus 1 a
bad imitation of Poe, by name "The Comet," was done in Philadelphia so
long ago as July 4, 1876.
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