The Last Feast of Harlequin

Nemonymous

Nemonymous

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GRIMSCRIBE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS

THE VOICE OF THE DAMNED
miro.jpg


THE LAST FEAST OF HARLEQUIN
I have only just started re-reading this celebrated story in the Penguin Classics collection and my review of it will follow below in due course.
Meanwhile, I confirm that over the years, at the back of my mind, I have thought that the paintings of Joan Miro are highly fitting as backdrop to Ligotti's fiction. But I can't see anywhere that a connection with this story has previously been mentioned, including its location of Mirocaw. For example, with the help of today's internet, I have found a Joan Miro orientated website HERE that is headed 'Tears of the Clown: Harlequin Carnival'. Potentially fascinating, I'd say.
 
Following on from above....

"To me the title of Clown has always carried connotations of a noble sort. I was an adroit jester, strangely enough, and had always taken pride in the skills I worked so diligently to develop."

A page-turning novelette that - in contrast to the last read story, the amorphous Vastarien - has a compelling linear plot and a strong dose of that Lovecraftian touch which imbues all Ligotti fiction. But Ligotti is, for me, this plot's "festival within a festival", the Ligotti within the Lovecraft (not the other way about), the Conqueror Worm bubbling at the centre of Azathoth - and note the 'thoth' there, echoing the namesake of the earlier Dr. Thoss as a new character here.

The protagonist narrator builds up a picture of Mirocaw as a "distortion of perspective" brilliantly echoing earlier Ligottian towns, this one with its just-before-but-muddled-with-Christmas festival or feast that turns out to have its stronger if, paradoxically, more pallid or effete-with-the-lethargy-of-a-festival within it. It is mooted at one point that the outer festival was started to mitigate the inner festival.

The description of the various natures of clowns and jesters is unforgettable. And there is much else to which I can't do justice here. Indeed, it is a wonderfully atmospheric plot, one that evokes the concept of "holiday suicides", and it is also one complete with a Kubrickian 'Eyes Wide Shut' element of the narrator as intruder in a larger group, an ingredient of many nightmares. Here, he is disguised but acting the part with - but separate from - the other effete or shuffling clowns in the inner but somehow stronger festival. I feel I am a similar intruder when entering the covers of a Ligotti book or partaking in the TLO discussion forum, except the end of this novelette tells me that it is useless for me to worry about that...

(An extract from my on-going review of the Penguin Classics collection.)
 
Nemonymous said:
GRIMSCRIBE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS

THE VOICE OF THE DAMNED
miro.jpg


THE LAST FEAST OF HARLEQUIN
I have only just started re-reading this celebrated story in the Penguin Classics collection and my review of it will follow below in due course.
Meanwhile, I confirm that over the years, at the back of my mind, I have thought that the paintings of Joan Miro are highly fitting as backdrop to Ligotti's fiction. But I can't see anywhere that a connection with this story has previously been mentioned, including its location of Mirocaw. For example, with the help of today's internet, I have found a Joan Miro orientated website HERE that is headed 'Tears of the Clown: Harlequin Carnival'. Potentially fascinating, I'd say.
Click to expand...



Nemonymous said:
Following on from above....

"To me the title of Clown has always carried connotations of a noble sort. I was an adroit jester, strangely enough, and had always taken pride in the skills I worked so diligently to develop."

A page-turning novelette that - in contrast to the last read story, the amorphous Vastarien - has a compelling linear plot and a strong dose of that Lovecraftian touch which imbues all Ligotti fiction. But Ligotti is, for me, this plot's "festival within a festival", the Ligotti within the Lovecraft (not the other way about), the Conqueror Worm bubbling at the centre of Azathoth - and note the 'thoth' there, echoing the namesake of the earlier Dr. Thoss as a new character here.

The protagonist narrator builds up a picture of Mirocaw as a "distortion of perspective" brilliantly echoing earlier Ligottian towns, this one with its just-before-but-muddled-with-Christmas festival or feast that turns out to have its stronger if, paradoxically, more pallid or effete-with-the-lethargy-of-a-festival within it. It is mooted at one point that the outer festival was started to mitigate the inner festival.

The description of the various natures of clowns and jesters is unforgettable. And there is much else to which I can't do justice here. Indeed, it is a wonderfully atmospheric plot, one that evokes the concept of "holiday suicides", and it is also one complete with a Kubrickian 'Eyes Wide Shut' element of the narrator as intruder in a larger group, an ingredient of many nightmares. Here, he is disguised but acting the part with - but separate from - the other effete or shuffling clowns in the inner but somehow stronger festival. I feel I am a similar intruder when entering the covers of a Ligotti book or partaking in the TLO discussion forum, except the end of this novelette tells me that it is useless for me to worry about that...

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

Rationale: Le NŒUD de Ligotti - THE NIGHTMARE NETWORK
 
"The illumination of these laterns revealed an opening in the earth. Eventually the awareness of everyone was focused on this roundish pit and as if by prearranged signal we all began huddling around it. The only sounds were those of wind and our own movements as we crushed frozen leaves and sticks underfoot.

Finally, when we had all surrounded this gaping hole, the first one jumped in, leaving our sight for a moment but then reappearing to take hold of a latern which another handed him from above. The miniature abyss filled with light, and I could see it was no more than six feet deep. One of its walls opened into the mouth of a tunnel. The figure holding a latern stooped a little and disappeared into the passage."

When I read "The Last Feast of Harlequin" for the first time last month, the entrance of clown cult's cave reminded me of old mine in my neighbourhood, so I took its picture on the walk yesterday. Here it is - the Three Bears Caves, which used to be limestone and iron one mine, in Fforest Fawr between Cardiff and Caerphilly, in South Wales, UK.
 

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I ask this question because I seem to have missed this detail of The Last Feast of Harlequin and if some one could help me I would be grateful. The part that bothers me is the word LAST in the title. I can see that the word "last" has two common meanings; the first being a synonym for the word "final" as in an event that will not be repeated in the future; the second is when you want to imply the most recent as in "last year" referring to the most recent year. Applying either meaning to the story doesn't seem to make much sense to me. Do the events of the story imply that this is the last feast to ever happen? I didn't feel that way about it. And then saying it was the most recent feast doesn't seem to be particularly important for the title to include it.

So why do you feel the word "last" is included in the title of this rather excellent story?
 
Souphead said:
I ask this question because I seem to have missed this detail of The Last Feast of Harlequin and if some one could help me I would be grateful. The part that bothers me is the word LAST in the title. I can see that the word "last" has two common meanings; the first being a synonym for the word "final" as in an event that will not be repeated in the future; the second is when you want to imply the most recent as in "last year" referring to the most recent year. Applying either meaning to the story doesn't seem to make much sense to me. Do the events of the story imply that this is the last feast to ever happen? I didn't feel that way about it. And then saying it was the most recent feast doesn't seem to be particularly important for the title to include it.

So why do you feel the word "last" is included in the title of this rather excellent story?
Click to expand...

This is what ChatGPT says:

What “last” means in the ending​

Ligotti uses “last” in a deliberately double‑edged way. It simultaneously suggests:

1.​

The ritual in Mirocaw is over. The professor’s transformation is complete. The narrator has witnessed the truth behind the festival. In this sense, “last” means the final occurrence — the end of the feast as an event.

2.​

Ligotti often uses “last” in the philosophical sense of ultimate, fundamental, or underlying. As in: the “last” truth, the “last” revelation, the “last” layer beneath the mask.

In this reading, the ending points to the narrator’s realization that beneath human identity lies something wormlike, puppet like, or hollow — the “last” truth about existence.

3.​

There’s also a psychological dimension. The narrator has undergone his own symbolic initiation. "Last” can imply the last step before becoming something else, or the last moment before he recognizes his kinship with the inhuman.


🧩 So which meaning is correct?​

Ligotti’s trick is that all of them are correct at once. He loves words that collapse multiple meanings into a single hinge — especially at the end of a story. “Last” becomes a pivot between:

  • the end of the ritual
  • the ultimate truth revealed
  • the narrator’s own final threshold
It’s a perfect Ligotti move: a single, quiet word that opens into cosmic dread.
 
Souphead said:
So why do you feel the word "last" is included in the title of this rather excellent story?
Click to expand...

There may or may not be double (or triple) meanings at play, but the most obvious reading to me is that the celebration at the center of the story progresses through different stages, with its final stage—i.e., the “Last Feast” of the title—being the one that forms the climax of the story.
 
Some of my loose thoughts about it. "The Last Feast of Harlequin" is also the title of Thoss' article in the story, what made me thinking that "Last Feast" might be actually a proper name of that holiday used by the cult. And I also see some finality associated with that celebration. As the narrator mentioned near the end of the story, wearing Sceam-like cliwn costume gave him a feeling of being "liberated from the weight of life." I see the transformation of cult members into worms as a further stage of that process, as an ultimate rejection of divine spark of life given to humans by Supreme Unknown (to use term mentioned in reference to mythology of Saturnians). BTW this story inspired me to read the chapter about Saturninus from Irenaeus' "Against Heresies", which may be treated as a fascinating footnote to it:

CHURCH FATHERS: Against Heresies, I.24 (St. Irenaeus)

Featuring the Church Fathers, Catholic Encyclopedia, Summa Theologica and more.
www.newadvent.org www.newadvent.org
It isn’t said if the transformation is permanent or just temporary for the time of ritual, I've got impression that it's rather the latter case, but it make me wonder, how many Winter suicide victims in that area were actually earlier participants in the Feast. During one walk couple days ago, it came to my mind that there is strange similarity between Ligotti's story and werse 6 of Psalm 22: "
“But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.”
which stuck in my memory from the times of my Catholic youth, as it is part of liturgy during the Holt Week, and led me to thought that the Last Feast might be seen as a blasphemous parody of the Last Supper of Jesus, but in this case we see members of congregation really devouring flesh and blood of Winter Queen, which is local vitality and fertility symbol. And there's of course the last sentence: "Soon I will celebrate, alone, that last feast which will kill your words, only to prove how well I have learned theit truth.", which I treat as a suggestion of intention to commit a suicide.
 
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