Stefan Grabiński - psycho-fantasies, doom-saturated tales of lonely men lost in hostile terrain, but the East European melancholy lifts to provide wonderful odd scenes, like the watchmaker whose death stops all the town clocks and the phantom train that always turns up unannounced, surprising the station staff.

Stefan Grabiński, The Motion Demon. Trans. by Miroslaw Lipinski. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013.   
                  

Macabre trains and maverick railwaymen inhabit the world of THE MOTION DEMON, a translation of the highly-original short story collection from the pen of Stefan Grabinski, first published in 1919. Sometimes called the “Polish Poe” or the “Polish Lovecraft,” Grabinski is a unique voice in fantastique literature who crafted his own style and addressed themes that no other horror/fantasy writer at the time was exploring. Grabinski’s work was largely ignored in his native country during his life, but in recent times there has been growing international interest in this writer, with notable voices, such as author China Mieville, proclaiming him a master of horror/fantasy. Translator Miroslaw Lipinski introduced the writings of Stefan Grabinski to English-speaking readership, first with translations in the small press, and then with the short story collections THE DARK DOMAIN (1993), THE MOTION DEMON (2005) and ON THE HILL OF ROSES (2012). Of Polish ancestry and British-birth, Lipinski resides in New York. He is currently working on a mammoth volume of Grabinski stories for Centipede Press' "Masters of the Weird Tale" series.

"Grabinski's stories are passionate, intense, and hallucinatorily vivid--even at times overwrought. They are all genuine stories, to grip devotees of narrative and character, as well as of philosophising.... The Motion Demon  is an outstanding book....  -- China Mieville

"In a previous column I quoted Jean Cocteau to the effect that the English-speaking world had a gift for the tale of the weird and macabre. The Polish writer Stefan Grabinski (1887– 1936) is eloquent proof that this gift is not uniquely Anglo-Saxon. His champion and translator Miroslaw Lipinski has followed up the earlier The Dark Domain with this first of a series that will reprint all of Grabinski’s collections as well as a number of uncollected tales. Grabinski writes in a deceptively simple style that takes the unusual occurrences he describes as matter-of-fact, but this very nonchalance serves to make the overall impression quite memorable." -- Weird Tales

Diabolique Magazine’s excursion into the world of original horror fiction continues with this month’s installment, “The Wandering Train” by Stefan Grabinski.

As time goes on, unknown wonders of culture begin to rise from obscurity, connecting to a global audience. Stefan Grabinski was originally dismissed in his own country of Poland due to being a writer in a place that did not understand the literature he was creating. Born in the small town of Kamionka Strumilowa, Poland on 26 February 1887, Grabinski became fascinated by the supernatural at a young age. Working as a teacher to support his living, his passion was writing, and his work came in the form of a unique breed of strange fantasy, concerned with psychological, philosophical, and metaphysical matters. He proposed to refer to his fiction as “psychofantasy” or “metafantasy.”
He originally began publishing under the pseudonym Stefan Zalny, but went unnoticed until his official debut, Na wgorzu roz (On the Hill of Roses) in 1918. His work was unlike any Polish literature that had been published prior, and it began to catch the attention of several critics. He continued writing short stories and several novels until his death from complications due to tuberculosis on November 12th, 1936. He had been sickly for much of his life, but before his death, he expressed bitter complaints about never receiving real recognition in his home country.

Yet, as the years went on, people began to take notice. In the late 1950s, Poland began to read the author, designating him the “Polish Poe.” Translators began to bring Grabinski’s work to readers in new places. Filmmakers and other artists began to adapt his stories or cite him as influential to their work.
In this installment of the EXHUMATION COLLECTION Diabolique Magazine is very excited to be featuring “The Wandering Train,” taken from Grabinski’s most successful short story collection in Poland, Demon Ruchu (The Motion Demon), translated by Miroslaw Lipinski. download
diaboliquemagazine.com/wandering-train-stefan-grabinski/

Stefan Grabiński, Passion: L'appassionata. NoHo Press, 2014.

In June 1927, the supreme Polish fantastist, Stefan Grabinski (1887-1936), took a rare excursion outside of his country in a planned Italian itinerary that was to include Rome, Naples, Capri and even Sicily. The first stop on his trip was Venice. Here he met a fellow Pole, Stefania Kalinowska. Little is known about his relationship with Kalinowska, but what is known is that Grabinski returned to Venice, after stopping in Rome, and spent the rest of his vacation with her in the city of canals, foot bridges and ornate architecture. Grabinski did admit to certain autobiographical features in “Passion,” which he began and finished in Venice, and it’s very probable that he saw, and investigated, someone who was the basis for one of his most memorable characters, Gina Vamparone. As to the romantic entanglements found in the story, it is up to the reader to imagine what the reality may have been in Grabinski’s life. Freed by the beautiful and languid atmosphere of Venice, “Passion” became Grabinski’s longest short prose work. The novelette would become the lead story in his Passion collection of five stories, published three years later and centered around theme of obsessive love. As is typical in Grabinski’s stories, strange elements enter into the lives of his characters, and “Passion” is no exception, making the story one of his most intriguing and haunting works. Born in London, translator Miroslaw Lipinski currently resides in New York City, where he is working on a massive edition of Grabinski’s stories for Centipede Press’ “Masters of the Weird Tale” series. His Grabinski translations have appeared in the collections: The Dark Domain, The Motion Demon, and On the Hill of Roses.

Stefan Grabiński, The Dark Domain. Trans. by Miroslaw Lipinski. Dedalus; 2nd ed., 2012.

'Grabinski's commitment to a marriage of the newly announced unconscious with the supernatural gives his extravagances some conviction. These short stories offer the pleasure of myths we can crack and skilfully chilling denouements.' David Buckley in The Observer

'Psycho-fantasies, doom-saturated tales of lonely men lost in hostile terrain, but the melancholy lifts to provide wonderful odd scenes, like the watchmaker whose death stops all the town clocks and the phantom train that always turns up unannounced, surprising the station staff' Time Out

'Stories that brilliantly convey his love of supernatural horror. It is not the horror of haunted houses or castles, but that found in everyday modernity around him. In this dark selection, lonely souls travel on trains, coming face to face with sinister conductors and wanton women.' The Herald

"Again and again, these stories attain a crescendo of sustained hysteria, while, for their invocation of primordial powers, their penetrating psychological insights, and their brooding, misanthropic pessimism, one might liken the ensuing effect to sitting in the company of Madame Blavatsky, escorted by Arthur Machen and Guy de Maupassant, and chaperoned by Arthur Schopenhauer, screaming at the top of their lungs on a runaway roller coaster." -- Asylum

"Moody, atmospheric tales ... whose sensibility to the psychological effects of horror was well in advance of the author's time." -- Science Fiction Chronicle

"Grabinski's commitment to a marriage of the newly announced unconscious with the supernatural gives his extravagances some conviction. These short stories offer the pleasure of myths we can crack and skillfully chilling denouements." -- The Observer

"A highly accomplished writer whose work certainly deserves to be firmly established within the canon of supernatural fiction greats." -- Necrofile

"The Dark Domain is a collection of psycho-fantasies, doom-saturated tales of lonely men lost in hostile terrain, but the East European melancholy lifts to provide wonderful odd scenes, like the watchmaker whose death stops all the town clocks and the phantom train that always turns up unannounced, surprising the station staff." -- Time Out

Stefan Grabiński, In Sarah's House. Trans. by Wiesiek Powaga. CB Editions, 2007. 

Aside from a 3,500 word introduction, the volume contains the following stories: In Sarah's House, The Grey Room, The Black Hamlet (the latter two were also published in the Dedulas fantasy book), White Virak, The Dead Run, and Szatera's Engrams. You can order directly from the publisher at: www.cbeditions.com

Meanwhile, I'm finishing my own Grabinski collection, which should be available in the early part of 2008. The provisional title of this nine story collection will be THE LUMINOUS LUNATIC. 

Stefan Grabiński, On the Hill of Roses, Hieroglyphic Press, 2012. 

To begin this parade of letters we present On the Hill of Roses . Originally published in 1919 it was Grabinski's first collection under his own name and served as the official start of his arduous search for artistic recognition. Nearly a hundred years later these pieces stand as testament to their author's talent and on-going literary quest for the bizarre: in The Frenzied Farmhouse we witness the effect of a malignant anima mundi, Strabismus explores the conflict of beings over corporal identity while in the title story, On the Hill of Roses , the Decadents fascination with synthesia is used to unveil a tragic history.

‘ On the Hill of Roses offers a number of delightfully old-school tales of the dark fantastic and chilly horrific which, at the beginning of the 20th century, created the missing link towards such later practitioners in the similar vein, like Robert Aickman and Thomas Ligotti.’ - Dejan Ognjanovic

‘This edition is well-designed, with a beautiful dust-jacket appropriate to the title. Mark Samuels provides a brief, affectionate foreword about discovering Grabinski, and the translator a very helpful introduction, explaining just how singular Grabinski was in the Polish literature at the time, and outlining the tragedy of the author's life, and subsequent neglect. The stories will appeal to all connoisseurs of the fantastic and decadent in European literature.’ - Mark Valentine

                  

www.stefangrabinski.org/

Stefan Grabinski (1887-1936) is considered Poland's greatest writer of fantastic fiction. He suffered from tuberculosis of the bone and his sickly nature, coupled with an introspective disposition, led to him to write. He published his first collection of stories, On the Hill of Roses in 1918, followed by The Motion Demon in 1919 and The Book of Fire in 1922.

Stefan Grabinski (1887-1936) is often referred to as "The Polish Poe," but his works exhibit a trajectory of being impactingly original, entering into what he called psychofantasy or metafantasy. Grabinski explored the mysteries of life and human nature in the fiction he wrote. Much of his work deals with such themes as the power of thought, the vital energy of life, and sexuality. His characters tend to be mavericks and misfits, intellectually and psychologically intense. But even these attributes do not guarantee salvation. For those who are naively complacent, the situation is even more perilous.

Though he was regularly published in Poland and received attention for his train collection, Demon ruchu (The Motion Demon), Grabinski remained a marginal figure in his native land and was not part of any fashionable literary school or clique. Upon his death in 1936 (from tuberculosis), he was almost completely forgotten.

In the late 1950s, light began to shine again on his work, spearheaded by Professor Artur Hutnikiewicz's literary study, Tworczosc literacka Stefana Grabinskiego, and a 294-page collection of Grabinski stories published by Czytelnik. In 1975 renowned science fiction author Stanislaw Lem, an admirer of Grabinski, would edit his own edition of Grabinski's stories. The late 1980s saw the publication of several Grabinski volumes in German translation, and in 1993 Dedalus Ltd published the first English-translated Grabinski collection, The Dark Domain. Since then, there has been a gradual international appreciation of his work. Lately, Polish admirers have been leading the efforts in Grabinskiana, and new Polish editions of long-unavailable, even rare, writings are appearing with thankful rapidity. In Poland, these admirers have declared 2012 "The Year of Grabinski." Grabinski is now being rightfully recognized as one of the most unique voices in supernatural fiction. - http://www.stefangrabinski.org/

www.latarnia.com/stefangrabinski.html

Interview: Translator Miroslaw Lipinski on Stefan Grabinski



From the standpoint of English-speaking world, Eastern and central Europe remain The Dark Domain teeming with creatures unknown and unknowable. The Iron Curtain has long gone, but the language barrier remains, and numerous great authors, living and dead, still dwell in the shadows of obscurity, waiting for their works to be translated into English. Stefan Grabinski (1887-1936) is just one of such writers still waiting for a full recognition.

In his native Poland he was an oddity while alive, at the dawn of the 20^th century. He was a writer without roots, without tradition to rely on, an outcast. One Polish reviewer noted: "His short stories could easily be translations realized beyond our borders." His predilection to imaginative, dark fantastic and poetic horror made him a foreigner in his own country. He wrote: "For nine years no one deigned to notice I was creating a new type of literature previously unknown in Poland, that I was a pioneer of fantastique in the strictest meaning of the word, a neo-romantic fantastique of a spontaneous and autonomous character." Typically, he is one of those authors rediscovered and recognized only long after their death.

His tales are told "in an old-fashioned style evoking the bygone era of provincial pre-war Poland, mixing elements of the supernatural with realistically depicted scenery, filled with a lingering lyricism suddenly rent by violent images, and laced with a menacing sense of entrapment and frustrated eroticism", as a foreword to one of his collections says. Sadly, his fate in the English-speaking world seems consigned to rare, pricey, slim, hard-to-find small press editions such as Motion Demon (2005) and In Sarah's House (2007). The only English edition of his tales which was substantial in both number of stories collected (not less than 11!) and number of copies printed, with a reasonable price and tolerable availability, remains The Dark Domain (1993) from Dedalus.

The latest collection of his stories, On the Hill of Roses, has just been published by Hieroglyphic Press: it is a lovingly produced, slim but beautiful volume, sewn and jacketed hardcover limited to 300 copies. This means that if you're intrigued by this review, better hurry before it's sold out.

            The contents are made of the full selection of Grabinski's original edition of On the Hill of Roses (Na wzgorzu roz, 1918) – plus one additional tale, "Projections", from his 1930 collection Passion (Namietnosc). These 134 pages contain a solid introduction into Grabinski's world of eccentric, alienated characters in the grip of either insanity or fantastic events which bring them to the verge of losing their minds – or lives. In either case, just as in Poe's best stories, they try to remain lucid and to analyze that which refuses to be named and defined; they try to contain the uncontainable, to understand that which surpasses them, and are usually crushed by the dark forces from within or without.

            On the Hill of Roses opens with a Foreword by Mark Samuels and a helpful Introduction by Miroslaw Lipinski, Grabinski's leading translator and proponent. These are the stories within the beautiful covers designed by Eleni Tsami.

            On the Hill of Roses: A solitary man is attracted to a walled-in garden with opulent scents. But there is a ghostly secret waiting there, and another smell – smell of death – becomes more prominent towards the end.

The Frenzied Farmhouse: This archetypal story of a Bad Place (TM) somewhat prefigures Lovecraft's "The Colour from out of Space" – although the origin of the "evil" which affects the inhabitants of a secluded farm remains shrouded in mystery: "K. maintained that in certain places certain events had to occur. In other words, that places exist whose character, nature and spirit await the fulfillment of events connected with them..." 

On a Tangent: A man's obsession with omens and signs turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy, and he is led i.e. he leads himself through a series of "accidental" encounters and portents to a grimly grotesque conclusion. 

Strabismus: A rather unconventional story of a split personality (or is it a Doppelganger? or a spirit possession?) about a man pestered by his complete opposite, and later haunted by his spirit from a walled-in room next to his own. This story is also in The Dark Domain. All the others are available in English for the first time in this collection.

Shadow: A man looking for a meaning of life and working on a treatise on "Symbols in nature" comes across a strange unmoving shadow image on a window of an isolated cabin in the woods. Intrigued by the mystery of the figures frozen in the act of violence, he befriends the old man who inhabits it, hoping to unravel the secret of the shadowy crime from the past... A haunting tale in more senses than one.

At the Villa by the Sea: Another atmospheric story about a past crime which refuses to stay in the past. A man's visit to his old friend at his isolated villa awakens the "ghost" of a poet killed there many years ago who won't stay buried.

Projections: Another lonely bachelor comes to his doom, this time through his attraction to the ruins of an old nunnery and to the signs of past Satanic shenanigans in its dungeons. The ending is original in its sadism and uncommonly gory for otherwise mostly restrained Grabinski.

* * *

On the Hill of Roses offers a number of delightfully old-school tales of the dark fantastic and chilly horrific which, at the beginning of the 20th century, created the missing link towards such later practitioners in the similar vein, like Robert Aickman and Thomas Ligotti. If you like them, you should definitely treat yourself with some Grabinski. He looms like a shadow from out of time and from behind the iron curtain – a spicy, exotic, Slavic Catholic taste of horror for demanding palates. His doom and gloom will certainly be refreshing in the midst of the feelgood light entertainment that passes for "horror" these days.   

Note: Some of the illustrations inspired by Grabinski's works used in this post are by Ryszard Wojtynski; more of them, here.