The frozen sea within us

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.*

- Franz Kafka writing to Oskar Pollak, 27 January 1905

"Poe, Grabiński, Ray, Lovecraft. Correspondences, Parallels, Comparisons" - international conference held in Poland

Savez-vous ce qu’il y avait derrière? Un mur énorme, noir, massif comme le roc. Il en fut de même d’une autre, puis d’une autre encore : j’étais prisonnier d’une ville toute en façades, sans bruit et sans autre vie que celle des flammes bleues, épouvantablement ardentes et pourtant ne brûlant pas. 

-- Jean Ray, La Choucroute

Two months ago while on vacation in the region of Katowice and Cracow, I've had the privilage of attending the international conference "Poe, Grabiński, Ray, Lovecraft. Correspondences, Parallels, Comparisons" held in Sosnowiec at the Institute of Romance Languages and Translation Studies of the University of Silesia. I first heard about the conference when I was invited by Claudio Salmeri, one of the organizers and conference co-secretaries, to participate as a presenter. Initially, I had high ambitions of preparing some materials on Jean Ray in French and to finally to dive deeper into his works - something I had on my mind for quite some time. I had to decide against getting involved as the first half 2016 continued busy for me with regards to my professional career and my ambitions for reskilling and my presence at the conference was very doubtful. 

Nevertheless, I was eager to engage in helping to spread the news about the event. The conference was held in four languages: Polish, English, French and Italian. The entire programme can be downloaded here. Multilingual international conferences on the subject of horror, gothic, or weird fiction are not very common in Europe, let alone in Poland, therefore, due to its international character, this particular conference deserves to be covered on Confusio Liguarum. 

I will focus here on those presentations that have particularly drawn my attention and on day 2 only, as it was this day that was fully dedicated to presentations delivered in English, French and Italian. 

Bibliography and Compilation of Blurbs by Thomas Ligotti

I have just published online my compilation of over 50 blurbs by Thomas Ligotti. This compilation is a small project I started while working on an extensive up-to-date bibliography of Thomas Ligotti’s works as bonus material for the Polish edition of Teatro Grottesco. I was expected to compile a list of English-language publications, whilst the translator Mateusz Kopacz was responsible for the list of publications that appeared in Poland.

The Last Balcony by D. F. Lewis

Highly sophisticated and wonderfully nightmarish imagination, an expertly controlled and sardonic vision that reminds me as much of avant-gardists like William Burroughs as it does the best traditions of horror literature.

-- Thomas Ligotti on D. F. Lewis in DAGON DFL SPECIAL 

In 2011, together with S. D. Tullis I was invited by the award-winning avant-garde author D. F. Lewis to help him choose stories for his collection The Last Balcony.
This was a very difficult choice as Des' oeuvres span over 2000 stories, most of which have been posted online in the so-called Weirdmonger Wheel - a web of websites, blogs and discussion forum posts where the stories are scattered.