Scientific Development & Cosmic Horror in The Great God Pan

Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan evokes existential dread through the portrayal of preternatural forces which transcend the boundaries of Victorian scientific understanding [1]. This essay will demonstrate how cosmic horror within the text amplifies Victorian anxieties relating to the scientific developments of evolution and deep history before the novella’s publication in 1894.

In The Great God Pan, the motif of voids and abysses symbolises both forbidden knowledge and the limitations of Victorian scientific understanding. This is demonstrated through Dr Raymond’s expository meditations on seeing beyond the veil of human comprehension:

Suppose that an electrician of to-day were suddenly to perceive that he and his friends have merely been playing with pebbles and mistaking them for the foundations of the world; suppose that such a man saw uttermost space lie open before the current, and words of men flash forth to the sun and beyond the sun into the systems beyond, and the voices of articulate-speaking men echo in the waste void that bounds our thought [2].

The use of metaphor ascribes a patronising childishness to the advancements and scientific erudition of Victorian society. Furthermore, the structure of Raymond’s monologue, with the repetition of verbs and nouns alongside the ‘and’ connective, prolongs the sentence to convey rambling inarticulacy. This expresses the doctor’s inability to eloquently convey his limited knowledge of the void and what ‘seeing the God Pan’ entails [3]. Through this inept portrayal of the scientist figure, Machen parodies Victorian pursuits of scientific advancement to suggest the existence of knowledge that humanity lacks sufficient maturity to comprehend. Machen compounds this view by establishing a foreboding characterisation of the preternatural forces he alludes to: ‘I stood here, and saw before me the unutterable, the unthinkable gulf that yawns profound between two worlds’ [4]. Alongside the ominous associations of voids and abyss’ with darkness, the personification of a gaping mouth ascribes a monstrous characterisation to this representation of knowledge outside of Victorian cognition. Aaron Worth convincingly argues that recurring imagery of depths within the novella reflects Victorian anxieties surrounding ‘the prospect of deep time’ and ‘abysses of temporality’ [5]. However, Worth limits his conclusions surrounding deep time to fears of ‘reverse evolution and atavistic retrogression’ [6]. While these points are valid, the monstrosity Machen ascribes to abysses and deep time also resembles contemporary characteristics of cosmic horror. For this essay, cosmic horror can be defined, in line with the commentary of Brian Johnson, as the ‘existential dread’ manifested from portrayals of the ‘irrelevance of human beings to a mechanistic-materialist universe’ [7]. Moreover, deep time and the portrayal of dark abysses of unknown knowledge evokes the same existential dread by revealing the limited extent of Victorian scientific development in a world governed by incomprehensible, mysterious forces.

Ineffective depictions of phenomena within the text compound the evocation of existential dread by undermining empiricist approaches to scientific understanding. This can be seen in the description of Mr Clarke’s unsettling dream: ‘he stood face to face with a presence, that was neither man nor beast, neither the living nor dead, but all things mingled, the form of all things but devoid of all form’ [8]. The juxtaposition expresses a paradoxical quality to Clarke’s vision that transcends attempts to categorize and define through sensory observation. This is also unsettling structurally because it compromises the omniscience and authority of the third-person narration. Through language that is both ineffective and insufficient, Machen envisions limitations on human understanding that the narrator is unable to surmount. Contemporaneous reviews criticised this ambiguity as in the case of the Westminster Gazette:

having failed in the courage to make plain the mysterious horrors which are supposed to be in the background of this story… the result is to leave an inchoate and confused series of impressions [9].

What is historically viewed as a weakness in Machen’s authorial style is, in fact, a strength when reading the text as proto-cosmic horror. The ambiguity generated is terrifying precisely because it reveals the presence of preternatural forces that cannot be understood through empiricist modes. This is compounded in an exchange between Villiers and Austin:

knowledge of the most awful, most secret forces which lie at the heart of all things; forces before which the souls of men must wither and die and blacken, as their bodies blacken under the electric current. Such forces cannot be named, cannot be spoken [10].

Alongside the grotesque imagery of electrically charred flesh, the repetition of the verb ‘blacken’ conveys a horrific parallelism between the spiritual and physical death associated with an understanding of these unknown forces. By presenting spiritually damaging knowledge, Machen parallels Victorian anxieties surrounding evolution and the suggestion that human development is governed by the uncaring randomness of natural selection rather than divine ordinance [11]. In presenting forces that are incomprehensible and malign, Machen actively heightens existing Victorian fears to explore the potential horrors of human existence free from divine supervision and protection.

Furthermore, the theme of unknowable knowledge amplifies Victorian anxieties associated with degeneration. This is demonstrated during the fragmented account of Helen’s destruction:

Then I saw the body descend to the beasts whence it ascended, and that which was on the heights go down to the depths, even to the abyss of all being [12].

The linear progression from heights to depths reflects fears of humanity reverting to a more primitive, bestial state. However, these fears are intensified through allusions to the unknown with the ‘abyss of all being’. By again referencing the depths of unknown knowledge symbolised by abysses, Machen indicates the presence of horror which transcends fears of atavistic regression entirely. The suggestion is of Helen’s metamorphosis culminating in something entirely incomprehensible. This unknowability is compounded through the insufficient descriptions within Dr Matheson’s manuscript:

I saw the form waver from sex to sex, dividing itself from itself, and then again reunited… Then the ladder was ascended again… [here the MS is illegible] [13].

Initially, the language attempts to define this phenomenon in terms of gendered categorisation, although empiricist approaches are again proven ineffective. In addition, the text’s form appears to reject the content through the manuscript’s partial illegibility. Through Machen’s omission of language, ambiguity is created with the allusion to detail either too heinous to be published or too peculiar to be accurately translated from the original Latin. In either case, Machen’s horror is not limited to portrayals of a more bestial vision of humanity. Instead, the portrayal of the unfathomable is far more terrifying in alluding to horrors that language is unable to adequately represent. Fear is not manifested solely from the content of specific scientific developments relating to evolution and deep time, but by the extensive human ignorance these discoveries revealed for Victorian society.

However, the front cover of the original 1894 publication contradicts the existential dread evoked within the text by featuring an explicit portrayal of Pan by Aubrey Beardsley (Figure 1).

Figure 1

While this illustration is unsettling through the depiction of Pan’s grimacing countenance alongside overtly preternatural features of curved horns and writhing roots beneath their torso. The portrayal of body horror does not manifest the existential dread associated with cosmic horror. This is because the concept of explicit cosmic horror is inherently paradoxical. Vivian Ralickas convincingly notes how within the tales of H.P. Lovecraft, the genre’s founder, ‘the subject who experiences cosmic horror always succumbs to one of three comparably dreadful fates… insanity, death or the embracing of the… no-longer human condition’ [14]. The first two bleak consequences Ralickas notes are directly applicable to The Great God Pan. This is paralleled by the fate of Helen’s unfortunate suitors who either self-destruct through suicide or become haunted by the memory of unspeakable horrors. Because the reader is, fortunately, not driven to insanity or suicide by Beardsley’s illustration, Pan’s nature is expressed as comprehensible rather than unknowable. Through an illustration bound to be insufficient, the antagonistic force of Pan loses its mystique and with it the fear of the unknown that drives the horror within the text.

Moreover, explicit portrayals of Pan contradict the ambiguity Machen ascribes to their portrayal within the text. Images of mythical hybrid creatures permeate throughout the narrative, although their inclusion can be metaphorically viewed as representations of knowledge beyond Christian orthodoxy. This can be seen through the description of Meyrick’s drawings:

the frightful Walpurgis Night of evil, strange monstrous evil… The figures of Fauns and Satyrs and Aegipans danced before his eyes… a world before which the soul seemed to shrink back and shudder [15].

An inclusion of sibilance ascribes a foreboding unease to the Walpurgis Night by accelerating the line’s pace such that the breathlessness experienced from reading mirrors Villiers’ anxiety. John Michael Cooper provides an overview of how ‘Walpurgis Night’ has historically been associated with ‘a wide variety of folk tales populated by witches, werewolves, and other supernatural beings’ [16]. Given the expansive range of mythic figures associated with this celebration, it serves as an archetypal symbol for occult knowledge. This suggests the potential for a more etymological reading of ‘Pan’ as derived from the Ancient Greek ‘πᾶς’ meaning ‘all’ [17]. Pan within the text can, therefore, be interpreted as an abstract representation of transgressive, dangerous knowledge. Given the destabilising influence this knowledge has within the novella, Machen parallels the chaotic influence of evolution and deep time in subverting Creationism’s timeline with evidence that the Earth is millions rather than thousands of years old [18]. However, the explicit portrayal of a Satyr and naturalistic imagery on the cover emphasises the latter interpretation of Pan within the novella as the Ancient Greek God of nature and fertility [19]. This impedes Machen’s authorial efforts by limiting the ambiguity of incomprehensible forces alluded to through their alignment with a specific, identifiable mythological entity.

Ultimately, in presenting phenomena that cannot be defined or comprehended through empirical modes. Machen capitalises on the developments of evolution and deep time to evoke existential dread through allusions to vast quantities of knowledge existing beyond Victorian understanding. While these efforts are impeded by the novel’s cover, ambiguous presentations of preternatural forces within the text effectively convey the limitations of knowledge derived through scientific development. It is these limitations that evoke existential dread characteristic of cosmic horror by revealing the vulnerable position of humanity in a world governed by mysterious, chaotic forces.