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A review by april_does_feral_sometimes
The Willows by Algernon Blackwood
4.0
Two young men, nameless in ‘The Willows’ except for the designations of the Swede and the first person narrator, are on a boating trip down the Danube. They decide to camp for the night on an island in the middle of the fast-rising river, but it isn’t long before the narrator begins to experience a sense of eery nervousness as they go through the familiar motions of setting up their tent and securing their canoe. The island feels wrong…
“The rest of the island was too thickly grown with willows to make walking pleasant, but I made the tour, nevertheless. From the lower end the light, of course, changed, and the river looked dark and angry. Only the backs of the flying waves were visible, streaked with foam, and pushed forcibly by the great puffs of wind that fell upon them from behind. For a short mile it was visible, pouring in and out among the islands, and then disappearing with a huge sweep into the willows, which closed about it like a herd of monstrous antediluvian creatures crowding down to drink. They made me think of gigantic sponge-like growths that sucked the river up into themselves. They caused it to vanish from sight. They herded there together in such overpowering numbers.”
Blackwood, Algernon (2010-03-09). The Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics) (Kindle Locations 20880-20885). Halcyon Press Ltd.. Kindle Edition.
“But my emotion, so far as I could understand it, seemed to attach itself more particularly to the willow bushes, to these acres and acres of willows, crowding, so thickly growing there, swarming everywhere the eye could reach, pressing upon the river as though to suffocate it, standing in dense array mile after mile beneath the sky, watching, waiting, listening. And, apart quite from the elements, the willows connected themselves subtly with my malaise, attacking the mind insidiously somehow by reason of their vast numbers, and contriving in some way or other to represent to the imagination a new and mighty power, a power, moreover, not altogether friendly to us.”
Blackwood, Algernon (2010-03-09). The Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics) (Kindle Locations 20896-20901). Halcyon Press Ltd.. Kindle Edition.
“The eeriness of this lonely island, set among a million willows, swept by a hurricane, and surrounded by hurrying deep waters, touched us both, I fancy. Untrodden by man, almost unknown to man, it lay there beneath the moon, remote from human influence, on the frontier of another world, an alien world, a world tenanted by willows only and the souls of willows. And we, in our rashness, had dared to invade it, even to make use of it! Something more than the power of its mystery stirred in me as I lay on the sand, feet to fire, and peered up through the leaves at the stars. For the last time I rose to get firewood.”
Blackwood, Algernon (2010-03-09). The Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics) (Kindle Locations 20978-20982). Halcyon Press Ltd.. Kindle Edition.
Is it simply the young man’s imagination?
“Outside there was a sound of multitudinous little patterings. They had been coming, I was aware, for a long time, and in my sleep they had first become audible. I sat there nervously wide awake as though I had not slept at all. It seemed to me that my breathing came with difficulty, and that there was a great weight upon the surface of my body. In spite of the hot night, I felt clammy with cold and shivered. Something surely was pressing steadily against the sides of the tent and weighing down upon it from above. Was it the body of the wind? Was this the pattering rain, the dripping of the leaves? The spray blown from the river by the wind and gathering in big drops? I thought quickly of a dozen things.”
Blackwood, Algernon (2010-03-09). The Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics) (Kindle Locations 21075-21079). Halcyon Press Ltd.. Kindle Edition.
Is something actually haunting the island? This 1907 novella has an overwhelmingly mysterious atmosphere of threat and murderous ghosts that 19th-century writers of gothic literature pioneered, but is it just nerves or is something on the island truly looking to spill the blood of visitors? Gentle reader, perhaps there is real danger. Only those brave enough to read to the last page will know the answers!
"In 1884, Edwin A. Abbott wrote the seminal novel exploring this concept called Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. It describes a world of two dimensions inhabited by living squares, triangles, and circles, called Flatland, as well as Pointland (0 dimensions), Lineland (1 dimension), and Spaceland (three dimensions) and finally posits the possibilities of even greater dimensions. Isaac Asimov, in his foreword to the Signet Classics 1984 edition, described Flatland as "The best introduction one can find into the manner of perceiving dimensions."
In 1895, The Time Machine by H. G. Wells used time as an additional "dimension" in this sense, taking the four-dimensional model of classical physics and interpreting time as a space-like dimension in which humans could travel with the right equipment. Wells also used the concept of parallel universes as a consequence of time as the fourth dimension in stories like The Wonderful Visit and Men Like Gods, an idea proposed by the astronomer Simon Newcomb, who talked about both time and parallel universes; "Add a fourth dimension to space, and there is room for an indefinite number of universes, all alongside of each other, as there is for an indefinite number of sheets of paper when we pile them upon each other"."
I have read [b:Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions|433567|Flatland A Romance of Many Dimensions|Edwin A. Abbott|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1435435775s/433567.jpg|4243538] and I liked it.
“The rest of the island was too thickly grown with willows to make walking pleasant, but I made the tour, nevertheless. From the lower end the light, of course, changed, and the river looked dark and angry. Only the backs of the flying waves were visible, streaked with foam, and pushed forcibly by the great puffs of wind that fell upon them from behind. For a short mile it was visible, pouring in and out among the islands, and then disappearing with a huge sweep into the willows, which closed about it like a herd of monstrous antediluvian creatures crowding down to drink. They made me think of gigantic sponge-like growths that sucked the river up into themselves. They caused it to vanish from sight. They herded there together in such overpowering numbers.”
Blackwood, Algernon (2010-03-09). The Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics) (Kindle Locations 20880-20885). Halcyon Press Ltd.. Kindle Edition.
“But my emotion, so far as I could understand it, seemed to attach itself more particularly to the willow bushes, to these acres and acres of willows, crowding, so thickly growing there, swarming everywhere the eye could reach, pressing upon the river as though to suffocate it, standing in dense array mile after mile beneath the sky, watching, waiting, listening. And, apart quite from the elements, the willows connected themselves subtly with my malaise, attacking the mind insidiously somehow by reason of their vast numbers, and contriving in some way or other to represent to the imagination a new and mighty power, a power, moreover, not altogether friendly to us.”
Blackwood, Algernon (2010-03-09). The Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics) (Kindle Locations 20896-20901). Halcyon Press Ltd.. Kindle Edition.
“The eeriness of this lonely island, set among a million willows, swept by a hurricane, and surrounded by hurrying deep waters, touched us both, I fancy. Untrodden by man, almost unknown to man, it lay there beneath the moon, remote from human influence, on the frontier of another world, an alien world, a world tenanted by willows only and the souls of willows. And we, in our rashness, had dared to invade it, even to make use of it! Something more than the power of its mystery stirred in me as I lay on the sand, feet to fire, and peered up through the leaves at the stars. For the last time I rose to get firewood.”
Blackwood, Algernon (2010-03-09). The Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics) (Kindle Locations 20978-20982). Halcyon Press Ltd.. Kindle Edition.
Is it simply the young man’s imagination?
“Outside there was a sound of multitudinous little patterings. They had been coming, I was aware, for a long time, and in my sleep they had first become audible. I sat there nervously wide awake as though I had not slept at all. It seemed to me that my breathing came with difficulty, and that there was a great weight upon the surface of my body. In spite of the hot night, I felt clammy with cold and shivered. Something surely was pressing steadily against the sides of the tent and weighing down upon it from above. Was it the body of the wind? Was this the pattering rain, the dripping of the leaves? The spray blown from the river by the wind and gathering in big drops? I thought quickly of a dozen things.”
Blackwood, Algernon (2010-03-09). The Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics) (Kindle Locations 21075-21079). Halcyon Press Ltd.. Kindle Edition.
Is something actually haunting the island? This 1907 novella has an overwhelmingly mysterious atmosphere of threat and murderous ghosts that 19th-century writers of gothic literature pioneered, but is it just nerves or is something on the island truly looking to spill the blood of visitors? Gentle reader, perhaps there is real danger. Only those brave enough to read to the last page will know the answers!
Spoiler
I was curious that this 1907 story introduces creatures from another dimension as the spooky cause of the threat against the protagonists' lives so I looked up what ideas were known then. I found in Wikipedia:"In 1884, Edwin A. Abbott wrote the seminal novel exploring this concept called Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. It describes a world of two dimensions inhabited by living squares, triangles, and circles, called Flatland, as well as Pointland (0 dimensions), Lineland (1 dimension), and Spaceland (three dimensions) and finally posits the possibilities of even greater dimensions. Isaac Asimov, in his foreword to the Signet Classics 1984 edition, described Flatland as "The best introduction one can find into the manner of perceiving dimensions."
In 1895, The Time Machine by H. G. Wells used time as an additional "dimension" in this sense, taking the four-dimensional model of classical physics and interpreting time as a space-like dimension in which humans could travel with the right equipment. Wells also used the concept of parallel universes as a consequence of time as the fourth dimension in stories like The Wonderful Visit and Men Like Gods, an idea proposed by the astronomer Simon Newcomb, who talked about both time and parallel universes; "Add a fourth dimension to space, and there is room for an indefinite number of universes, all alongside of each other, as there is for an indefinite number of sheets of paper when we pile them upon each other"."
I have read [b:Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions|433567|Flatland A Romance of Many Dimensions|Edwin A. Abbott|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1435435775s/433567.jpg|4243538] and I liked it.