What transpires here, within this article, may unveil, a lifting away of a curtain, may reveal major plot elements in and motifs central to J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Schalken the Painter.” To those wishing to avoid spoilers of any nature or kind, here now is your opportunity to flee. This informal review, this interpretation, this criticism, this brief assessment, is but a subjective piece predicated on my personal, mercurial opinions, interpretations, and on my sensibilities that are concomitant with my desire to generate artistic dialectic.

When I look at J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Schalken the Painter,” while I think the story is a smidgen moralistic, I see a representation, or symbol, of cruelty and the business of brutality that the human race inflicts upon itself, what it traps itself within.

Human beings possessed by past trauma, or by something else perhaps—humanity is trapped in knotted bonds of tragedy it cannot annul nor endure interminably, as if driven by merciless forces wielding influence greater than human power and manipulating humankind through the administration of abject vicissitudes.

“Schalken the Painter” blends into one a ghost story, a gothic story, a horror story, and some light tones of the bizarre. This conglomeration sits in some interstitial liminality where the ghost story and the weird bond. The evils wrought by living beings, the blight of social hierarchies, and the corruption of human society tout à fait: these concepts permeate the narrative through a chiaroscuro of ghost story ciphers and weird hues. But with an overtone of religious moralizing left unbalanced, the artistry failing to counterbalance a bluenose concern for godly regulations, this tale, not altogether a very scary one, manifests like a dowdy stained glass of dull colors and meagre lighting.

It would seem that Le Fanu may have been attempting to create with this piece, in which few sincerely chilling moments are to be found, a puritan shade of fear focused on the notion of transgressions as being a source of terror, perhaps part of a fear of anything too closely related to a disreputable past and a profane future. Though distorted, this attitude is part of its charm, and its Icarian lesson. One might even further be compelled to reflect on the precarious position held by modern art and by future science, the shadows of the past and the future undoubtedly having an effect on artistic integrity. While pondering the role or direction of art, religion, economics, and marriage, the text evokes a sort of reflection or illustration of a certain Victorian fear of cultural, spiritual, scholastic, and artistic regression. The human body, matrimony, love, and death are mocked; collectively these instances of violation represent anxiety concerning otherness and scientific discoveries and avant-garde advancements and sociological revolutions, like an à la mode, forward-thinking scholar being hungry for excavation and knowledge yet afraid of new findings and obstructed by their own vestigial, démodé superstitions. Throughout the events of the work, trouble is had whether a character embraces the backward or the forward.

Almost like wondering about the probable future while forming new commitments, new designs for the time to come, for New Year’s Day transformations, “Schalken the Painter” shows a character (Schalken) with a painful past, who has seen his romantic aspirations for the future mocked and ruined, and who has resolved to make a life that is more successful yet more melancholy or flawed. Time’s pitiless flow transformed Schalken, who now cares solely about his art and celebrity, apparently.

At the start is a description of a painting which depicts the story’s finale, yet it might be portraying something that is slightly different than what actually occurs at the conclusion. The beginning of the central story paints the main character, Schalken, as being impolite and dirty and hell-bent. The remainder of the account, occurring in the past, sketches out a Schalken who was in love, who was passionate and possibly respectful.

None of the characters have any real autonomy, everyone acting as parts of a machine with a design for horror and loss, and Schalken is forced to become a piece in the very machinations that will rob him of his beloved.

The woman (Rose Velderkaust) whom Schalken loved is a victim and a victimizer: the fate all the main characters share. At the end of the short story, Rose mocks Schalken and humiliates him through a cruel prank. Rose lures him through the dark, and then finally forces him to see the man who has purchased her: Vanderhausen.

Vanderhausen being in a bed is, in my view, a symbol of a sexual, romantic conquest. It is castration. Could that be why the painting is made with the male figure with a sword, and has the painting returned masculinity to the painter?

Rose’s true and ultimate act of the story is a joke at the expense of Schalken: she uses Schalken and the demonic Vanderhausen as pawns in an emasculating scheme, analogous to how she had been used in a scheme of taboo marriage: the living joined with the dead.

The dead, the living, the past, the future—they wed one another, in this tale, through the outré.  

Merciless, time wastes all; its passing plays such cruel games.

Chin-chin to the future. . . .

Matthew Pungitore’s short story “Wychyrst Tower” appeared in Cirsova Magazine (Winter 2021).

He has written various articles for the DMR Books blog. In the past, he has done volunteer work for the Hingham Historical Society. Matthew is the author of The Report of Mr. Charles Aalmers and other stories, Fiendilkfjeld Castle, and Midnight's Eternal Prisoner: Waiting For The Summer. Matthew graduated with a Bachelor of Science in English from Fitchburg State University.

If you’re curious, visit his BookBaby author-page.

Contact him at: matthewpungitore_writer@outlook.com