Musings From Oblivion's Vault

I began the following tribute to Tanith Lee a few days after I had heard of her sad passing in May 2015. It grew out of a re-reading of one of her most re-printed tales, 'Bite-Me-Not or, Fleur De Fur' [1984] and the beautiful stained glass imagery of the opening paragraph. Serenity: A Song in Stained Glass Through stained glass of leaf-green peridot of pallid blue jacinth through silk-fine glass of storm-dark amethyst of an ancient dusk of charcoal through stained glass of a woodland of green crystal of a soft descent of blue perfumed twilight through stained glass she looks serenely… the silver snows of sleep have fallen of velvet petals hued with fluid moon pearl of the salving argent of slumber of the caressing wings of white birds… the sharp, the sable shades of a sepulchre have been salved away have been cast down into oblivion have had the fragrant balm of lily-white birds of snows of silver of slumber of ...

Whilst Tanith Lee is rightly celebrated for her many fine novels, I personally think that when she was composing in the short form she excelled . Over the last few years many fine collections of Tanith Lee's short stories have been issued, but this new gathering is particularly poignant because it appears to possibly be the final one that she personally assembled. The theme here is the sea and it weaves through these tales in all its various guises, temperaments and hues.   The earliest story is Paper Boat (1978) based on the final days of Shelley. The opening lines are gloriously feverish: The summer heat had come. It burned the hills to blocks of standing smoke. It filled the bowl of the shore and the spoon of the bay with its opium, it painted the terracotta of the house in progressively darkening washes of red and umber. The sea, a throbbing indigo, pulled itself to the beach and tumbled there as if drugged. The latest work in Legenda Maris are tw...

Tanith Lee 19th September 1947 - 24th May 2015 Portrait by Dallas C. Goffin (From a photograph by Jerry Bauer) Something momentous and devastating happened on Sunday 24th May - the Mistress of Delirium, Tanith Lee, passed away. I find it almost impossible to express how much her work has affected me over the 30 or so years I have been reading and absorbing it's richness. I won't attempt to do that at the moment, but I will share the following piece which was written in June 1987 and published in Aklo (edited by Mark Valentine & Roger Dobson) Autumn 1992 . At the time the dedication to Tanith didn't appear, so I'd like to correct that now.   Dreamer's Soliloquy   (Dedication: Tanith Lee 1947-2015)   I shall draw the night from out the west, And wrap it about like a cloak; I will coax dim shadows from haunted woods, And plume my hair with their smoke. I shall take the moon from the curving sky, And hammer it into searin...