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From: Don <g@crcomp.net>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Gothic Horror
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2024 16:45:08 -0000 (UTC)
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Bobbie Sellers wrote:
> Don wrote:

<snip>

>>      Yet, despite my proclivity for YA, the fight continues. Robert
>> Frederick offers world class research on Bacon. He recently released
>> another free episode:
>>
>>      The Gnostic Romeo and Juliet: Sex, Death, Violence and Vampires
>>
>>      Romeo and Juliet is possibly the most famous and popular
>>      play of all time- it's filled with death, not love and
>>      there is barely any romance! I make a detailed scene by
>>      scene case that this play is hiding a horror movie.
>>
>>      <https://thehiddenlifeisbest.com/post/episode-17>
>
>        I would tend to agree with your evaluation of the Romeo and Juliet and
> perhaps with the aid of the Monk it becomes a Gothic
> tale. Modern enactment do not properly emphasis the horror of
> the situation.  Two children seduced by Love(I hear it is a drug)
> die rather that live without each other.

Up until now, my mind associated Gothic with gloomy Germanic people. You
motivated me to look a little deeper. Here's one definition of Gothic
Horror:

    The Basics

    If you're looking for a basic answer for what makes up gothic
    horror, some of the hallmarks are:

    Haunted and decayed settings (castles, homes, etc.)
    Supernatural elements (especially ghosts)
    Themes of isolation and/or confinement (both physical and mental)
    Emotional and psychological overwhelm (characters doubting their
      reality, facing emotional turmoil like grief and loss, etc.)
    Morally ambiguous characters (these characters engage the reader's
      thinking on a deeper level)
    Discussions of religion or philosophy (often tied to the morally
      ambiguous character)
    Terror vs. horror (terror is when authors use suspense to
      build unease, and horror is when the promise of that terror
      is delivered) ...

The author says "almost anything by Edgar Allan Poe" qualifies as gothic
horror. Poe's my favorite author. Despite my massive family, and
professional network, isolation beckons.
    Russian generals Nevsky, Suvorov, and Rokossovsky retired into
monastic isolation. Le Carre touches on this trait in SMILEY'S PEOPLE:

    'How long was the journey?' Smiley interrupted, as he
    continued writing.
        Across town, Grigoriev replied vaguely. Across town,
    then into countryside till dark. Till we reached this one
    little man like a monk, sitting in a small room, who seemed
    to be their master.
        Once again, Toby insists on bearing witness here to
    Smiley's unique mastery of the occasion. It was the
    strongest proof yet of Smiley's tradecraft, says Toby -
    as well as of his command of Grigoriev altogether - that
    throughout Grigoriev's protracted narrative, he never once,
    whether by an over-hasty follow-up question or the smallest
    false inflection of his voice, departed from the faceless
    role he had assumed for the interrogation. By his self-
    effacement, Toby insists, George held the whole scene 'like
    a thrush's egg in his hand'. The slightest careless movement
    on his part could have destroyed everything, but he never
    made it. And as the crowning example, Toby likes to offer
    this crucial moment, when the actual figure of Karla was for
    the first time introduced. Any other inquisitor, he says, at
    the very mention of a 'little man like a monk who seemed to
    be their master,' would have pressed for a description - his
    age, rank, with the mention of a 'little man like a monk who
    seemed to be their master', Not Smiley. Smiley with a
    suppressed exclamation of annoyance tapped his ballpoint pen
    on his pad, and in a long-suffering voice invited Grigoriev,
    then and for the future, kindly not to foreshorten factual detail:
        'Let me put the question again. How long was the journey?
    Please describe it precisely as you remember it and let us
    proceed from there.'


C S Lewis' MERE CHRISTIANITY exposits emphemeral love. In the beginning,
love shares the intense feelings of excitement, euphoria, and energy
experienced with recreational drug use. Then there's the Come Down.

    Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last;
    but feelings come and go. And in fact, whatever people
    say, the state called 'being in love' usually does not
    last. If the old fairy-tale ending 'They lived happily
    ever after' is taken to mean 'They felt for the next fifty
    years exactly as they felt the day before they were married',
    then it says what probably never was nor ever would be true,
    and would be highly undesirable if it were. Who could bear to
    live in that excitement for even five years? What would become
    of your work, your appetite, your sleep, your friendships? But,
    of course, ceasing to be 'in love' need not mean ceasing to
    love. Love in this second sense-love as distinct from 'being in
    love'-is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by
    the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by
    (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and
    receive, from God.

Danke,

--
Don.......My cat's  )\._.,--....,'``.     https://crcomp.net/reviews.php
telltale tall tail /,   _.. \   _\  (`._ ,.    Walk humbly with thy God.
tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'    Make 1984 fiction again.