Great use of the unseen/unspoken to scare the reader. Thematically and stylistically reminded me of Lovely Molly, one of the scariest horror films I've seen in the last few years.

“The figures of Fauns and Satyrs and Ægipans danced before his eyes, the darkness of the thicket, the dance on the mountain-top, the scenes by lonely shores, in green vineyards, by rocks and desert places, passed before him; a world before which the human soul seemed to shrink back and shudder.”

⟶ Right off the bat: this story is good at creating an ambivalent and possibly dangerous figure of the pagan god Pan but bad at actually evoking horror and presenting women in it.
The great God Pan is one of the works of fiction that had arisen during the Victorian and early Edwardian times when there was the reawakening of the general interest in paganism and Pan in particular.
This novella is a mixture of:

➣ Science fiction, presented by the scientist Doctor Raymond whose beliefs are rooted in Neo-Platonism; with his view of reality in which the true object of study is the revelation of the higher, hidden spiritual world. Although, it couldn’t be fully classified as such because Raymond expresses an occultist belief rather than the scientific.

➣ Fantasy fiction, obviously in the figure of Pan, who was an ancient Greek God associated with shepherds, nature, one whose appearance inflicted his enemies with sudden terror or panic. The Phrase The great God Pan can be traced back to Plutarch’s On the defense of Oracles where there is a tale of a sailor, during the reign of Tiberius, hearing a voice crying out: “when you have arrived at Palodes, take care to make it known that the great God Pan is dead.”(this can be tied with the fact that Jesus lived and died during the reign of Tiberius, thus abandoning Pan and turning to a birth of new religion, Christianity). Many writers were inspired by the story, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning who wrote the poem “The dead Pan” alluding to abandonment of the pagan elements in Christian works.


➣ Decadent literature elements such as occultism, the femme fatale, strange deaths, non-mainstream eroticism.

➣ Religious motifs which can be connected to a critic of the atavistic Victorian fascination with paganism in the age of Christianity. Most of these motifs are related to the portrayal of female characters in the novel. Mary, a direct analogy of virgin Mary is presented as helpless and naïve while Helen Vaughan is present as demonic due to her power and sexuality.

“We know what happened to those who chanced to meet the Great God Pan, and those who are wise know that all symbols are symbols of something, not of nothing. It was, indeed, an exquisite symbol beneath which men long ago veiled their 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, cannot be imagined except under a veil and a symbol, a symbol to the most of us appearing a quaint, poetic fancy, to some a foolish, silly tale.”

⟶ The story has a well-crafted structure, an introduction chapter with elements of science fiction, as the doctor conducts a gruesome experiment; the middle segment which follows different men that came in contact with Helen Vaughan, and an equivocal ending.
It is said to inspire the works of H.P.Lovecraft ([b:The Call of Cthulhu|15730101|The Call of Cthulhu|H.P. Lovecraft|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1567470807l/15730101._SX50_.jpg|25692046] [b:H.P. Lovecraft's the Dunwich Horror|13402044|H.P. Lovecraft's the Dunwich Horror|Joe R. Lansdale|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347620921l/13402044._SY75_.jpg|27337732] [b:The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath|722667|The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath|H.P. Lovecraft|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1293312354l/722667._SY75_.jpg|926162]), Bram Stoker’s [b:Dracula|17245|Dracula|Bram Stoker|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387151694l/17245._SY75_.jpg|3165724] and Guillermo del Toro’s [b:Pan's Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun|42117981|Pan's Labyrinth The Labyrinth of the Faun|Guillermo del Toro|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1542345177l/42117981._SX50_.jpg|69856327].

The strongest side of the tale is the structure and the writing, Machen manages to keep the reader entertained and interested in how the story will wrap up rather than actually evoking horror.

⟶ One of the aspects that I couldn’t enjoy in this novella is the masked presentation of a powerful and sexually liberated woman as demonic; the culmination of such in Helen’s post mortem metamorphosis – freeing the evil out of her and morphing her female body into the male. Helen is the character that evokes more terror than the ambivalent Pan.
This definitely wasn’t the best horror story I have ever read but it was an enjoyable read, will be checking out more stories by Machen in the future.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
A solid horror novella! Review to come.

mf scenes

Not scary, nor even mildly creeptastic.

I don't know what to think of this, given its weighty reputation, I was expecting something different. Perhaps the works that followed improved so much on it that it has lost the power it once had. The ideas are powerful, but the pace is plodding and the characterization is typically Victorian, by which I mean, basically non-existent.