Episode 41: Mr Arcularis by Conrad Aiken

Conrad Aiken Conrad Aiken was an American poet and author born in Savannah, Georgia in 1889 and died in Savannah in 1973 aged 84. His family were wealthy, originally from New England, but his father was an eye surgeon who moved to Savannah.  Most bizarrely and disturbingly, Aiken’s father murdered Aiken’s mother and shot himself in 1901. Aiken was 11 at the time. He heard the shots and ran through to find the bodies. Aiken then went to live with his great aunt in Massachusetts. He went to Harvard where he became a life-long friend of the poet T S Eliot. Aiken was deeply interested in philosophy and was taught by George Santayana. This influenced his poetry as did his admiration for the work of Walt Whitman. Aiken was also heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud and was due to go and meet him but never did, because he had second thoughts and money was running short. Aiken was a prolific writer and very influential in literary circles. It was his influence which led to to the recognition of Emily Dickinson as a great poet. Aiken moved to England with his Canadian wife and had three children there in Sussex. His daughter Joan became a well-known writer of children’s stories, including the famous Wolves of Willoughby Chase. Aiken was divorced in 1929 and then he returned to America. He suffered from nervous problems and was terribly frightened he was going mad. He attempted suicide at least once.  Mr Arcularis Conrad Aiken published Mr Arcularis in 1931. It was selected by the Library of America for inclusion in a two hundred year retrospective volume of American fantastic tales.  Mr Arcularis is a strangely disquieting story. Not quite a ghost story, because he isn’t dead but dreaming until the end. The narrative becomes more dreamlike as it goes on and is threaded with the fantastic. The unsettling oddness has something of Robert Aickman’s stories to it. It’s not a moral story either. I suppose, to me it’s a curiosity — very well put together. And, on reflection i