Eye of the Lynx

[crawling chaos]

I really like a lot of the style and works used on Mr Ligotti's book, I currently am reading a lot of the stories, but I am getting problems in knowing what really is happening. I would really like your opinion on "Eye of the Lynx", I really don't get the end, where the woman has a puppet, and the main character seems to know her, it is confusing, but there is something on the story that is really apppealing to me, so I was really looking for your comments.......

 

[matt cardin]

I don't have much to add here other than the fact that when I first dived into Ligotti's world a few years back and was reveling in the fact that his stories seemed to have been written solely for me -- I felt as if I understood them deeply and effortlessly on both an intellectual and emotional level, as if they had been written by my Real Self, and then I later found that many other readers have shared the same experience -- I was stopped cold by "Eye of the Lynx." It completely baffled me. It seemed utterly opaque and confusing. And I haven't returned to it since.

So although I don't really have any helpful interpretive comments to offer, I thought you might like to know that you're not the only one who finds this story to be incomprehensible. As for me, I suppose a second reading might be in order to see whether anything has changed and things have become clearer with the lapse of time. If I come up with anything, I'll let you know.

 

[yellowish haze]

I don't have much to add here other than the fact that when I first dived into Ligotti's world a few years back and was reveling in the fact that his stories seemed to have been written solely for me -- I felt as if I understood them deeply and effortlessly on both an intellectual and emotional level, as if they had been written by my Real Self

That's exactly what I felt after reading Ligotti's "The Shadow, the Darkness" and "The Bungalow House" (my first stories by TL). Previously I would read different anthologies (rather skimming through them) and would never stop to check the author. I couldn't do the same thing with Ligotti. After reading those stories I went totally insane for a day, as if I have rediscovered the world. An incredible feeling, indeed!

 

[The Silent One]

Good, but in a way the nadir; Not half as excellent as "Drink to Me Only...", "The Bungalow House", or "Nethescurial", but worth looking at. Yes, the incomprehensible ending is the turn-off, but one must contemplate....

 

[ventriloquist]

The only thing I can point to for possible clues is the theme of borders/barriers being broken (or being extremely tenuous and perhaps nonexistent to begin with), which seems to apply to the identities of certain characters. But exactly what this means... well, I certainly haven't figured that out and would be wasting my breath in claiming any real insight on the matter.

I also agree with the Silent One, in considering it to be the nadir among what I've read of Ligotti so far. Everything else is almost uniformly excellent, with a few tales like "The Bungalow House" and "Alice's Last Adventure" standing a head above the rest in my own estimation (I like the "sad ones" ). This is the only ending of his I can think of that seems to be stretching a bit.

 

[crawling chaos]

O.k.. I was just becoming insane, thinking why I did not get the ending.. I think I have my own point of view towards the end of this story, but it is a vague one... Thank you guys for your insight, this story in my opinion is very underrated, because of the end, which is confusing, but what I like is that maybe is one of the only stories of Ligotti so far I read, that is kinda sexual... Correct me if there is any other story, but this one is in a brothel, not very normal indeed... I seem to like the mood, the description of all the characters at the begining. I think it is good story, for being different, and the ending....well, I guess everyone will have their own version.

 

[eldritch00]

From what I understand myself, and I can see this is where you guys are also coming from, it is precisely

the theme of borders/barriers being broken (or being extremely tenuous and perhaps nonexistent to begin with)

which is quite clear, right from the very beginning of the story ("No architectural go-betweens divided the doorway..."). It's the details which are a bit ambiguous, and I'm a bit lost myself about that.

I remember feeling a bit let down by this the first time I read it, especially since it came right after "Drink to Me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes," but it of course remains an interesting piece from Ligotti for several reasons (and no, I'm not implying that any of you above thought that it wasn't).

There is that sexual element, of course, and when you introduce that to a horror story, then you can bring in Freudian concepts of Eros and Thanatos if you wish, and how distinctions between the two tend to blur.

(And I find this quite unusual, because despite Ligotti's rootedness in the best of the traditions of horror fiction, his work seems to be so sui generis that the typical Freudian reading to horror fiction is hard to apply with his works...or at least I think so, given my limited exposure to Freudian theory.)

There is also that image of the arm shooting out near the end. Ugh, in the best senses of the term! :lol:

Editor Michele Slung, who included "Eye of the Lynx" in Shudder Again, her second anthology of "tales of sex and horror" (which I thought was way better than other similar anthologies, because she included Arthur Machen and Robert Aickman in these volumes) wrote a blurb introducing the story. It's not telling us anything we don't already know, based on previous responses, but I guess it can't hurt to have it here:

In each new generation of horror writers, a few figures are quickly awarded cult status--but, even so, the admiration Tom Ligotti has elicited from his peers is rather extraordinary. One theme, however, central to all of the praise he has gathered, is that, somehow, what he's doing is truly different. Ligotti himself will cite the influence of Lovecraft and Poe, as well as Beckett, Borges, Nabokov, and others, yet Ramsey Campbell has correctly noted: "Despite faint echoes of writers he admires...Ligotti's vision is wholly personal."

And with equally idiosyncratic flair, he's also given to revealing in odd hybrid creations (works that are part story, part pedagogy, and alwas irresistibly quotable) his own guiding beliefs and metaphysical speculations on weird literature. For example, here's an idea from "Professor Nobody's Little Lectures" (Songs of a Dead Dreamer): "Supernatural horror, in all its bizarre constructions, enables a reader to taste a selection of treats at odds with his well-being."

Certainly, the curious noir-gothic narrative that follows--one of Ligotti's most unsettling "dreams for sleepwalkers"--superbly illustrates the way we willingly, even eagerly, allow the altered consciousness of a stranger's shifting nightmare to become our own.

So, should we revisit the story and do a close reading, attempting to finally get over our initial reactions to this piece? It would distract from the frustration I feel about seeing "Professor Nobody's..." once again being cited and me not ever having read it!

(Although I am greatly enjoying Notebook of the Night, but that's another thread altogether...)

Also, am I sick for thinking that this is probably the only kind of brothel I would ever want to visit?

 

[eldritch00]

I'm trying to work on this story, starting with ventriloquist's reference to borders and barries ("Locked doors were no obstacle."), but the first paragraph alone is important enough to yield several clues, and I'm getting bogged down with all the nits I'm picking! :?

In the meantime, I was curious about the title, and a Google search turned up a science book called The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History (written by David Greenberg and published by the University of Chicago Press in 2003). Of course, the later publication of that book vis-a-vis Ligotti's story nullifies any direct influence, but I became curious about even earlier instances of the metaphor.

Tweaking the search led me to a few interesting links, and though I'm not advocating a position where understanding the story requires a knowledge of all these other pieces of information, I found certain interesting echoes in the Ligotti story.

From a page of annotated bibliographies from the library at Northwest University:

Taylor, Paul Beekman. "Chaucer's Eye of the Lynx and the Limits of Vision." 28 (1993): 67-77.
Chaucer adds the image of the lynx's eye to his translation of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy. Jean de Meun also uses the traditional qualities of Lynceus's eyes. Alanus de Insulis's Anticlaudianus and Adam de la Bassée's gloss, as well as the works of Eustache Deschamps, also use this image for sharp sight. Isidore of Seville and John Trevisa's translation of Proprietatibus associate the lynx with the ruby, giving the stone extraordinary healing qualities. Chaucer questions the insight associated with the lynx's eye in the Monk's Tale. Ultimately it becomes a symbol "of the limits of the artist's ability to see and express the perfection of form beneath the ugly matter of things" (75).

The reference to a ruby might explain the predominant use of red in Ligotti's story, and the ideal of a perfection of form beneath the ugly matter of things has echoes in how the story ends with a rather warped version of the kind of union that ends most romances:

the ultimate intersection of our flesh...as well as our dreams.

A chapter from a 1916 text (I'm not sure what it is) called The Life of the Caterpillar by one J. Henri Fabre has something even more interesting to say about the "eye of the lynx":

The perceptive faculties can receive information from a distance by means of three agents: light, sound and smell. Is it permissible to speak of vision in this instance? I will readily admit that sight guides the visitors once they have passed through the open window. But before that, in the mystery out of doors! It would not be enough to grant them the fabulous eye of the Lynx, which was supposed to see through walls; we should have to admit a keenness of sight which could be exercised miles away. It is useless to discuss anything so outrageous; let us pass on.

Seeing through walls/barriers? (Oh, and check out the URL of that one: it's "eldritch"! :lol: )

From "The Story of the City of Brass" from The Thousand and One (Arabian?) Nights, another reference to red in the form of fire:

He had hair upon his head like the tails of horses, and two eyes like two burning coals, and he had a third eye, in his forehead, like the eye of the lynx, from which there appeared sparks of fire.

Finally, from "Sign-Language and Mythology as Primitive Forms of Representation" from an interestingly-titled text called Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World by one Gerald Massey:

Sometimes the zootypes are continued and remain apparent in the personal name. Some neighbors of the present writer; who are known by the name of Lynch, have a Lynx in their coat-of-arms, without ever dreaming that their name was derived from the Lynx as their totem, or that the Lynches were the Lynxes. This is one of numerous survivals of primitive totemism in modern heraldry. Again, the Lynx is one of the animals which have the power of seeing in the dark. The Moon is an eye that sees by night, or in the dark. This was represented as the eye of the Lynx or the Cat, the Seer being divinized as a Lynx in Mafet, an Egyptian Goddess. The seeing power thus divinized is marked in later language by the epithet "Lynx-eyed".

So it seems that eyes might be a good way to look into this story (pun intended). Aside from the first paragraph in which the doorway was described as if it looked painted (artistic illusion and all that), there are several other relevant passages:

In the far upper corner of this entranceway a closed circuit camera was bearing down on us all, and I wondered how the camera's eye would translate that redly dyed room into the bluish hues of a security monitor.

"Do you see anything you like?" we both asked me at the sme time. From my expression and casual glances somewhere beyond the claustrophobic space of that tiny foyer, she could see right away that I didn't see anything, or at least that I wanted her to think I didn't. We were on the same infra-red wavelength.

The entire paragraph in which the narrator weaves what he perceives to be the blonde-woman's Gothic fantasy ("with blood-dyed hair" from the lights) begins with:

And what did those eyes tell me? They told me of her life as she lived it in fantasy...

Now to connect all of these to notions of puppets...("Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech" has that beautiful metaphor of "eyes rolling like mad marbles"...)

 

[G. S. Carnivals]

Thank you guys for your insight, this story in my opinion is very underrated, because of the end, which is confusing, but what I like is that maybe is one of the only stories of Ligotti so far I read, that is kinda sexual... Correct me if there is any other story, but this one is in a brothel, not very normal indeed...

crawling chaos, the story "My Work Is Not Yet Done" has a scene set in a sort of House of Chains. Gruesome.

I finished rereading "Eye of the Lynx" a few hours ago. My own take is not deeply symbolic or profound. Consider the House of Chains as a metaphor for the world/universe/existence. Our kinky visitor has a really perverse need: a desire to confront and control the whip hand, which in this case is the cruelty of everyday life. Pardon the pun: If you you can't beat 'em, join 'em. But make damned sure you're better at it than they are.

"'You're almost there now. Just fall into my arms, into my heart, into--- There, that was easy, wasn't it?'"

 

[G. S. Carnivals]

"'Show me the worst,' I said, eyeing the undersized door before us.

The situation here was as transparent as the others. Only this time it wasn't pet leopards, pathetic clowns, or paranoid shadows. It was, in fact, two new characters: a wicked witch and her assistant in the form of an enchanted puppet. The clumsy little creature, due to an incorrigibly mischievous temperament, had behaved badly. Now the witch was in the process, which she had down to perfection, of putting him back in line. She swept across the room, her dark dress swirling like a maelstrom, her hideous face sunken into an abundant hood. Behind her a stained-glass window shone with all the excommunicated tints of corruption. By the light of this infernal rainbow of wrinkled cellophane, she collared her naughty assistant and chained him hands and feet to a formidable-looking stone wall, which buckled aluminum-like when he collapsed against it. She angled down her hooded face and whispered into his wooden ear.

'Do you know what I do with little puppets who've been bad?' she inquired. 'Do you?'

The puppet trembled a bit and would have beamed bright with perspiration had he been made of flesh and not wood.

'I'll tell you what I do,' the witch continued half-sweetly. 'I make them touch the fire. I burn them from the legs up.'

Then, surprisingly, the puppet smiled.

'And what will you do,' the puppet asked, 'with all those old dresses, gloves, veils, and capes when I'm gone? What will you do in your low-rent castle with no one to stare, his brow of glittering silver, into the windows of your dreams?'

Perhaps the puppet was perspiring after all, for his brow was now glistening with tiny flecks of starlight."

Thomas Ligotti - "Eye of the Lynx"
​

While typing up this quotation, I suddenly discerned the theme of artificiality in "Eye of the Lynx." Nothing earth-shattering, but it is a personal revelation. I now appreciate the story with an added dimension of meaning. Consider placing it in the same general category as "The Mystics of Muelenburg" or "The Mechanical Museum" which was written in collaboration with John B. Ford.

 

[starrysothoth]

I've now had the chance to read over the new version of "Eye of Lynx" from Subterranean Press' SOADD a couple times. Tom has done so much with this story, seemingly to clarify what actually goes on in the House of Chains, but there's a lot of mystery left after reading the deeper meanings on the "Eye of the Lynx" mentioned here.

Maybe I missed it in the original version, but the parallels with a particular scene near the end of MWINYD are definitely there. I don't think there's any overt connection between the two stories. But the narrator of "The Eye of the Lynx" in the new version reminded me of Mr. Can with his ability to open up and consume others. He's like a less primal Can out for his own designs, though, rather than pure hunger. The Can in "Eye of the Lynx," if he indeed can be considered one, is after a different prey altogether, and shares a more complicated power relationship with his sustenance.

In my opinion, the nature of the threshold symbolism has also changed between this new incarnation and the older one. The new "Eye of the Lynx" draws our focus much more to pleasure-pain and dream-reality boundaries rather than physical ones (though there are still a few of those). TL greatly uses the horror-humor dichotomy that's often at work in his fiction to his advantage here. I couldn't help but laugh at the word play and the way the demonic narrator leads his chosen collectible/sustenance/victim on, pretending he is ignorant and submissive, but then I felt a bolt of horror at the realization that we are being similarly led on--especially if a reader doesn't have a good sense that this is no ordinary man from the story's beginning!

I can see how someone new to Ligotti might even feel a sharp sense of awe when they get to the surprising turn of events in the last few pages. And it's easier to take it all in, at surface level, now that some of the previously baffling incidents in this tale are clarified.

Anyway, I really just wanted to share some thoughts drifting through my head the last couple weeks about this tale. I hope I'm not the only one who has been deeply taken and bemused by this altered "Eye of the Lynx"?

 

[Nemonymous]

Eventually to complete my recent reviews of stories on this SONGS OF A DEAD DREAMER section on TLO, i.e. the stories having now been reread in the Penguin Classics collection:


EYE OF THE LYNX

"See the funny clown! Or rather jester in a jingly cap."

A story written by a more youthful YellowJester (if possibly edited by an older one), a story that is the stunning apotheosis of the gothic - and of the age's experimental in baroque gothic literary style (if those are not contradictions in style terms).

Here, too, we at first assume that we are in the mind of this trilogy's abusive or grooming leasehold narrator ("The underground world in which I move was on the alert: don't talk to strangers and so on.")
There are a million forking paths or potential allusions in that 'and so on', and we never know for certain which free-wheeling or didactic route we should follow next. But here's my take -

The perceived abuser of this book (so far) is no longer in inimical power over the proposed victims, here visiting a sort of crummy-doorwayed bordello (The House of Chains). The presiding woman and the narrator in fact seem in mutual symbiosis, each echoing the other's thoughts, as if this promises to be a resolution where powers are evened out or reversed - a Horror Without Victims?

Neither of the two protagonists is "a dabbler in darkness and degeneracy, but a real pro", as one might perceive the freehold author feels about himself, if one looks back today with hindsight at his later literary and philosophical audit trail. But that comes too close to the Intentional Fallacy for my taste.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS: That balance or symbiosis does reach a culmination, the 'hybrid harmony' shattered as the narrator prevails. No mere dabbler, nor pathetic puppet, whatever competing forces that narrator happens to meet, forces vying to outdo his darkness. No "tacky sideshow" for the narrator. This story surely disturbs. No mere display window in a storefront. Not a self dying into dolls, but dolls dying into a self, "in flesh as well as dreams." The Trilogy prevails.

"I'll be keeping a keen eye out for those who walk this world in glad submission to gloom."

(An extract from my on-going review of the Penguin Classics collection.)

 

[Nemonymous]

Eventually to complete my recent reviews of stories on this SONGS OF A DEAD DREAMER section on TLO, i.e. the stories having now been reread in the Penguin Classics collection:


EYE OF THE LYNX

"See the funny clown! Or rather jester in a jingly cap."

A story written by a more youthful YellowJester (if possibly edited by an older one), a story that is the stunning apotheosis of the gothic - and of the age's experimental in baroque gothic literary style (if those are not contradictions in style terms).

Here, too, we at first assume that we are in the mind of this trilogy's abusive or grooming leasehold narrator ("The underground world in which I move was on the alert: don't talk to strangers and so on.")
There are a million forking paths or potential allusions in that 'and so on', and we never know for certain which free-wheeling or didactic route we should follow next. But here's my take -

The perceived abuser of this book (so far) is no longer in inimical power over the proposed victims, here visiting a sort of crummy-doorwayed bordello (The House of Chains). The presiding woman and the narrator in fact seem in mutual symbiosis, each echoing the other's thoughts, as if this promises to be a resolution where powers are evened out or reversed - a Horror Without Victims?

Neither of the two protagonists is "a dabbler in darkness and degeneracy, but a real pro", as one might perceive the freehold author feels about himself, if one looks back today with hindsight at his later literary and philosophical audit trail. But that comes too close to the Intentional Fallacy for my taste.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS: That balance or symbiosis does reach a culmination, the 'hybrid harmony' shattered as the narrator prevails. No mere dabbler, nor pathetic puppet, whatever competing forces that narrator happens to meet, forces vying to outdo his darkness. No "tacky sideshow" for the narrator. This story surely disturbs. No mere display window in a storefront. Not a self dying into dolls, but dolls dying into a self, "in flesh as well as dreams." The Trilogy prevails.

"I'll be keeping a keen eye out for those who walk this world in glad submission to gloom."

(An extract from my on-going review of the Penguin Classics collection.)

Rationale: Le NŒUD de Ligotti - THE NIGHTMARE NETWORK