Created by Ashley Menssa on Sat, 12/07/2024 - 01:33
Description:
Sidney Sime’s Hish illustrates the Lord of Silence introduced in Lord Dunsany’s The Gods of Pegana. The natural surroundings, the trees and the bushes, in the illustration are where one can see Beardsley’s Japanese style influencing Sime. The figure, Hish, is hunched over in a way that diminishes his presence, and is adorned in layered cloth that covers his mouth and hands. These details add incredible depth to the description given by Lord Dunsany in his book which is as follows: “Hish creepeth from the forest, the Lord of Silence, whose children are the bats, that have broken the command of their father, but in a voice that is ever so low. Hish husheth the mouse and all the whispers in the night: all noises still” (Dunsany 32). Sime’s work first appeared in Dunsany’s The Gods of Pegana, which was originally available for print by commission in 1905, the second edition was printed widely in 1911 (Anderssen 71).
Work Cited
Anderssen, Martin. “Lord Dunsany (1878-1957).” The Green Book: Writings on Irish Gothic, Supernatural and Fantastic Literature, no. 12, 2018, pp. 70–79. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/48536200. Accessed 6 Dec. 2024.
Dunsany, Lord Edward. The Gods of Pegana, illustrated by Sidney Sime, The Pegana Press, 1911, pp.32
Sime, Sidney. Hish, 1905. The Gods of Pegana, by Lord Dunsany, ed.2, The Pegana Press, 1911, pp. 33.