The anniversary of the nativity of Clark Ashton Smith occurred the other day as it always does this time of year. Contemplating that fortuitous event, it seemed to me that I should revisit my old essay for The Cimmerian, “The Sword-and-Sorcery Legacy of Clark Ashton Smith”. While recognition of Klarkash-Ton as the co-founder of Sword-and-Sorcery has increased since I wrote that essay in 2010—most notably in Brian Murphy’s excellent Flame and Crimson—it appears to me that Smith’s influence on the S&S genre is still very undervalued.

My intent this time around is to revisit and revise a few things--I've had a decade to ruminate--to clarify exactly what CAS tales I consider to be truly Sword-and-Sorcery and to trace the influence of Klarkash-Ton's tales upon later writers of S&S.

My 2010 essay can be found here:

“The Sword-and-Sorcery Legacy of Clark Ashton Smith”

Feel free to read it before proceeding. I'll be referencing it and glossing certain things discussed in it. Since that post has racked up over 15K hits since it debuted just over twelve years ago, I don't see the need to reiterate everything.

Also--for the tragically spoilerphobic--I will be hyperlinking each tale to be discussed, since there are spoilertastic elements in my analyses. Do yourself a favor and read the tales. They were foundational and influential and remain entertaining S&S stories right up to the Current Year. So, on with the show...

Here are the four Klarkash-Ton tales to be discussed. Feel free to read (or reread) them before proceeding:

"The Tale of Satampra Zeiros"

"The Colossus of Ylourgne"

"The Black Abbot of Puthuum"

"The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles"

Let me set the scene here. 1928 saw the publication of the Solomon Kane yarn, "Red Shadows" in Weird Tales. Some argue this was the first S&S tale. Two more SK tales appeared in 1929, followed by the Kull yarns, "The Shadow Kingdom" and "The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune". Both Kull stories are considered purebred S&S, with "The Shadow Kingdom" being widely lauded as the first 'true' S&S tale ever written. Clark Ashton Smith wrote "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" in 1929.

Nearly everything about this story screams 'Sword-and-Sorcery'. Two Hyperborean thieves, down on their luck, get drunk and decide to raid the (nearby) forbidden ruins of Commoriom, which they figure are full of abandoned treasures, due to the precipitous flight from the city by the entire populace--from the king on down. They soon discover why Commoriom was abandoned. Only the burly Satampra makes it back to tell the tale...

This story finally saw print in the November 1931 issue of Weird Tales after some hard-nosed lobbying by H.P. Lovecraft. Robert E. Howard--a fan of the story--would write "The Tower of the Elephant" less than six months later. I will also point out that there is far more action in this tale than in “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune”. Far more. Just sayin’.

Nothing like "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" had ever been seen in the pulps. Here was Zeiros, the burly, outlaw hero--in a fantasy milieu--attempting to plunder treasures from a ruined, cursed, jungled city only to lose his sidekick and not one pazoor of the treasure to show for it. Robert E. Howard never wrote such a yarn--up to that point. The story and its influence deserve a post of their own.

Satampra Zeiros runs for his life. He’ll leave a hand as (involuntary) sacrifice to mighty Tsathoggua.

"The Colossus of Ylourgne" came out in the June 1934 issue of Weird Tales. The protagonist, Gaspard du Nord, is a student of the dark arts in Smith's fictional French region of Averoigne. However, du Nord maintains enough integrity--when it becomes clear that his former master, Nathaire, is intent on perpetrating an epic act of evil--to thwart his mentor.

This story is the most borderline of the four, I'll admit. Gaspard doesn't rush out, broadsword in hand, to defeat Nathaire's charnel-house colossus. That would be idiotic. Even Conan couldn't put down what Nathaire had raised up.

Read here what du Nord says to the Colossus--which abomination is animated by Nathaire--while he stands atop the tallest spire of the Vyones cathedral with no retreat possible:

The streets were now emptied of people; but, as if to hunt them out and crush them in their hiding-places, the [Colossus] thrust his cudgel like a battering-ram through walls and windows and roofs as he went by. The ruin and havoc that he left was indescribable.
Soon he loomed opposite the cathedral tower on which Gaspard waited behind the gargoyle. His head was level with the tower, and his eyes flamed like wells of burning brimstone as he drew near. His lips were parted over stalactitic fangs in a hateful snarl; and he cried out in a voice like the rumbling of articulate thunder:
"Ho! Ye puling priests and devotees of a powerless God! Come forth and bow to Nathaire the master, before he sweeps you into limbo!"
It was then that Gaspard, with a hardihood beyond comparison, rose from his hiding-place and stood in full view of the raging colossus. "Draw nearer, Nathaire, if indeed it be you, foul robber of tombs and charnels," he taunted. "Come close, for I would hold speech with you."

Balls out. A "hardihood beyond comparison", indeed. Much like Professor Armitage in Lovecraft’s "The Dunwich Horror", Gaspard uses a sorcerous substance to defeat the behemoth. However, is it that far removed from Conan using the shard of an Epemitreus-blessed blade to slay a demon in "The Phoenix on the Sword"? Or when Jirel took back Joiry with a Black God's kiss? Or the several times that Elric dispatched a powerful supernatural adversary by thaumaturgical means, since Stormbringer was ineffective?

Clark Ashton Smith's story laid down a template that would be followed mere months later by C.L. Moore in her own S&S tale of medieval France, the aforementioned "The Black God's Kiss". We know that Moore was a CAS fan. Are we to believe she wasn't influenced by "The Colossus of Ylourgne"? Why set the first Jirel story in France and not, say, England? The answer might lie with Clark Ashton Smith’s Averoigne.

The March, 1936 issue of Weird Tales debuted "The Black Abbot of Puthuum". Once again, we're looking at straight-up Sword-and-Sorcery (in capital letters). Here is the poetic epigraph and the first two paragraphs of CAS' classic tale, which is set in his classic fantasy milieu of Zothique:

Let the grape yield for us its purple flame,
And rosy love put off its maidenhood:
By blackening moons, in lands without a name,
We slew the Incubus and all his brood.
-- Song of King Hoaraph's Bowmen
Zobal the archer and Cushara the pikebearer had poured many a libation to their friendship in the sanguine liquors of Yoros and the blood of the kingdom's enemies. In that long and lusty amity, broken only by such passing quarrels as concerned the division of a wine-skin or the apportioning of a wench, they had served amid the soldiery of King Hoaraph for a strenuous decade. Savage warfare and wild, fantastic hazard had been their lot. The renown of their valor had drawn upon them, ultimately, the honor of Hoaraph's attention, and he had assigned them for duty among the picked warriors that guarded his palace in Faraad. And sometimes the twain were sent together on such missions as required no common hardihood and no disputable fealty to the king.
Now, in company with the eunuch Simban, chief purveyor to Hoaraph's well-replenished harem, Zobal and Cushara had gone on a tedious journey through the tract known as Izdrel, which clove the western part of Yoros asunder with its rusty-colored wedge of desolation. The king had sent them to learn if haply there abode any verity in certain travelers' tales, which concerned a young maiden of celestial beauty who had been seen among the pastoral peoples beyond Izdrel. Simban bore at his girdle a bag of gold coins with which, if the girl's pulchritude should be in any wise commensurate with the renown thereof, he was empowered to bargain for her purchase. The king had deemed that Zobal and Cushara should form an escort equal to all contingencies: for Izdrel was a land reputedly free of robbers, or, indeed, of any human inhabitants. Men said, however, that malign goblins, tall as giants and humped like camels, had oftentimes beset the wayfarers through Izdrel, that fair but ill-meaning lamiae had lured them to an eldritch death. Simban, quaking corpulently in his saddle, rode with small willingness on that outward journey; but the archer and the pike bearer, full of wholesome skepticism, divided their bawdy jests between the timid eunuch and the elusive demons.

A colorized version of Virgil Finlay’s original WT illo for “The Black Abbot of Puthuum”.

While journeying back to Yoros with the beauteous Rubalsa, Zobal and Cushara--compatriots in the finest S&S tradition--are forced to take shelter in a desert monastery presided over by a very disturbing abbot. By the end of the tale, the twain dispatch the abbot, who is revealed to be of demonic heritage.

How is this not S&S?

The first hardcover publication of “The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles”, courtesy of August Derleth’s Arkham House.

As I've noted before, Fritz Leiber had written "Adept's Gambit" a few months prior to this tale seeing print. However, that first story of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser was set in historical times, during the Seleucid rule of the Levant. Did Klarkash-Ton's Zothiquean example show the way for Fritz to set the rest of his similarly-toned stories in Nehwon? We know that Leiber was a CAS fan who actually visited the Bard of Auburn. That is indisputable.

Our final S&S story from Smith is "The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles". It was one of the last stories Clark ever penned. It is another tale of Satampra Zeiros, written almost thirty years later. Once again, pure Sword-and-Sorcery. There are those who say that this is a sequel to "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" and others who argue the opposite. I tend toward the latter view.

Zeiros finds himself partnered with one Vixeela, a former temple-'virgin' of the god, Leniqua. The two decide to steal the golden and begemmed chastity-girdles of Leniqua's 'virgins' using a combination of sorcerous and larcenous means. All does not go as planned...

Beyond the fact that 'Girdles' is a rollicking S&S yarn, it also features one of the early unsung heroines of Sword-and-Sorcery: Vixeela. Here is how CAS--by way of Zeiros--describes her:

Often I think of Vixeela, my one true love and the most adroit and courageous of my companions in burglary. She has long since gone to the bourn of all good thieves and comrades; and I have mourned her sincerely these many years. But still dear is the memory of our amorous or adventurous nights and the feats we performed together. Of such feats, perhaps the most signal and audacious was the theft of the thirty-nine girdles.
These were the golden and jeweled chastity girdles, worn by the virgins vowed to the moon god Leniqua, whose temple had stood from immemorial time in the suburbs of Uzuldaroum, capital of Hyperborea. The virgins were always thirty-nine in number. They were chosen for their youth and beauty, and retired from service to the god at the age of thirty-one.
The girdles were padlocked with the toughest bronze and their keys retained by the high-priest who, on certain nights, rented them at a high price to the richer gallants of the city. It will thus be seen that the virginity of the priestesses was nominal; but its frequent and repeated sale was regarded as a meritorious act of sacrifice to the god.
Vixeela herself had at one time been numbered among the virgins but had fled from the temple and from Uzuldaroum several years before the sacerdotal age of release from her bondage. She would tell me little of her life in the temple; and I surmised that she had found small pleasure in the religious prostitution and had chafed at the confinement entailed by it. After her flight she had suffered many hardships in the cities of the south. Of these too, she spoke but sparingly, as one who dreads the reviving of painful recollections.
She had returned to Uzuldaroum a few months prior to our first meeting. Being now a little over age, and having dyed her russet-blonde hair to a raven black, she had no great fear of recognition by Leniqua's priests. As was their custom, they had promptly replaced her loss with another and younger virgin; and would have small interest now in one so long delinquent.
At the time of our foregathering, Vixeela had already committed various petty larcenies. But, being unskilled, she had failed to finish any but the easier and simpler ones, and had grown quite thin from starvation. She was still attractive and her keenness of wit and quickness in learning soon endeared her to me. She was small and agile and could climb like a lemur. I soon found her help invaluable, since she could climb through windows and other apertures impassable to my greater bulk.
We had consummated several lucrative burglaries, when the idea of entering Leniqua's temple and making away with the costly girdles occurred to me. The problems offered, and the difficulties to be overcome, appeared at first sight little less than fantastic. But such obstacles have always challenged my acumen and have never daunted me.

Zeiros was one hard-boiled badass, just like Conan or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

Vixeela was one tough--and comely--chick. Apparently, she and Zeiros shared numerous adventures before her untimely passing. It's a pity that Klarkash-Ton didn't chronicle their further exploits. Vixeela definitely reminds me of how Leiber later portrayed Vlana and Ivrian, the paramours of of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in his classic tale, "Ill Met in Lankhmar". Especially Vlana.

So, how are these Klarkash-Tonian tales not Sword-and-Sorcery?

Here is one reason I was given on the Interwebz:

Internet Guy: Clark Ashton Smith didn't write S&S.
Me: Why not?
Internet Guy: Because he didn't.
Me: That's all you got?
Internet Guy: Well, he didn't write any series characters. That's traditional in S&S.
Me: What about Satampra Zeiros?
Internet Guy: CAS didn't write S&S.

Sometimes, you just gotta walk away.

In my opinion, at least a portion of it comes down to ‘branding’. Smith never called those stories ‘sword-and-sorcery’. He wrote the last one before the term was even invented. He would die just a few months after Fritz Leiber coined the term in 1961.

It didn’t help that Leiber never mentioned those CAS tales as being S&S, despite his own S&S stories owing so much to the template Clark laid down. I mean, what do these summaries sound like?

Two heroes, one burly and the other smaller, attempt to steal a treasure in a forest, Massive sorcerous complications arise. The tale is told in a wry and sardonic manner.
A burly thief and his female companion attempt a major heist from a powerful local organization. Bad luck ensues. All told in a mordant and cynical manner.

While not exactly what Leiber wrote, plot-wise, in “The Jewels in the Forest” and “Ill Met in Lankhmar”, the resemblance is close enough for government work. Perhaps Fritz thought he brought some sort of ‘special sauce’ to the same basic concepts. I don’t know.

L. Sprague de Camp didn’t do the whole ‘branding’ thing much good, either. In Swords and Sorcery, he included “The Testament of Athammaus”. Fair enough. While I would call it ‘heroic fantasy’ and not ‘Sword-and-Sorcery’, it’s still in the ballpark. In The Spell of Seven, Spraguey wanders further afield, reprinting “The Last Eidolon”. The tale is a classic, but there’s no way it could be called ‘Sword-and-Sorcery’. I wouldn’t even (quite) call it ‘Grimdark’. What did readers think when they read it? Why didn’t LSdC reprint one of the four tales I examined above?

Let’s look at de Camp’s definition of Sword-and-Sorcery:

“Heroic fantasy” [i.e., what de Camp later called ‘Sword-and-Sorcery’] is the name of a class of stories laid, not in the world as it is or was or will be, but as it ought to have been to make a good story. The tales collected under this name are adventure-fantasies, laid in imaginary prehistoric or medieval worlds, when (it’s fun to imagine) all men were mighty, all women were beautiful, all problems were simple, and all life adventurous. In such a world, gleaming cities raise their shining spires against the stars; sorcerers cast sinister spells from subterranean lairs; baleful spirits stalk crumbling ruins; primeval monsters crash through jungle thickets; and the fate of kingdoms is balanced on the bloody blades of broadswords brandished by heroes of preternatural might and valor.

Out of the four tales I examined above, only “The Colossus of Ylourgne” might be disqualified by Spraguey’s definition. Why did he ignore the CAS tales that were a closer fit?

Even more mind-boggling is how Lin Carter dropped the ball. He was a huge CAS fan. He also ‘completed’ several CAS fragments. Meanwhile, in the 1970s, Lin was cranking out S&S anthologies. How did he end up excluding Klarkash-Ton from the club?

Here is Lin’s definition of S&S:

*Flashing Swords #1*, wherein Lin Carter laid down his definition of Sword-and-Sorcery.

We call a story Sword & Sorcery when it is an action tale, derived from the traditions of the pulp magazine adventure story, set in a land, age or world of the author's invention - a milieu in which magic actually works and the gods are real - a story, moreover, which pits a stalwart warrior in direct conflict with the forces of supernatural evil.

Once again, ‘Colossus’ would be the only one that could possibly be disqualified. Quite honestly, I’m shocked that Carter never did a series of pastiche stories starring Zeiros.

When all is said and done, Clark Ashton Smith was getting his own tales of Sword-and-Sorcery written and published within just a few years of Robert E. Howard’s first ground-breaking yarns. These tales were written with a more sardonic and cynical tone than seen in the Howard yarns. In the process, CAS established a few of his own S&S tropes, providing a broader, stronger foundation for later authors like Moore, Leiber, Moorcock, Jack Vance, John Brunner, Tanith Lee , Michael Shea, Keith Taylor, C.L. Werner, Byron Roberts and our own D.M. Ritzlin to build on.