Pg. 115 of David Markson’s copy of Ushant by Conrad Aiken:
On which Markson places a check next to a mention of “Hambo,” as he does at every other mention of the name “Hambo” anywhere in Ushant.
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The reason why he’s checked every mention of “Hambo” in his copy of Ushant is because, as he writes on pg. 226 of Malcolm Lowry’s Volcano: Myth Symbol Meaning:
“Lowry appears as ‘Hambo’ in the work; only in an edition republished after Lowry’s death did Aiken append an identification.”
And, as we know, Lowry was to Markson, what Aiken was to Lowry.
Markson in conversation with Joseph Tabbi:
“[Under the Volcano] quite simply knocked me out of my chair. Within a couple of years, I’d read it probably half a dozen times. And then I finally sent [Lowry] a letter saying God knows what—be my father, or something as asinine. But evidently it did strike the right chord, since one of the first letters I got back ran on for twenty or more pages[…]Of course something I didn’t know at the time was that Lowry had written the same sort of letter himself, as an even younger man, to Conrad Aiken. So he was ready to be sympathetic with that “identification” that someone can feel for a given book.”
Pg. 229 of David Markson’s copy of Ushant by Conrad Aiken:
On which Markson underlined the following phrase about Hambo (aka Malcolm Lowry):
“That sixth-sense mysticism of his, and his eternal, and so often verifiable, adduction of cabalistic correspondences—the evidences, to him, of a mystic pattern.”
And also placed a rather awkwardly large and squiggly check mark next to that mention of Hambo/Lowry.
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Aiken’s mention of Hambo’s(/Lowry’s) “sixth-sense mysticism” and “adduction of cabalistic correspondences” reminds me of Markson’s discussion of similar things in his study of Lowry’s(/Hambo’s) Under the Volcano.
For example:
“But since this Cabbalistic abyss will also again recall Dante’s, there are simply too many of Lowry’s key symbolisms thrown into simultaneous juxtaposition here to be separated this early; discussion of his occult apparatus will occur elsewhere.”
Elsewhere:
“And here the novel’s configurations of light and dark can be put into occult perspective also—connected, as Lowry points out, with the summit of the Cabbalistic Tree of Life.” (Pgs. 64-65).
And:
“In the preface Lowry states that ‘the deeper layer of the novel’ and the Cabbala are ‘linked’ through this usage.” (Pg. 68).
One more:
“What Laurelle dismisses as a ‘trick of the gods’—his unplanned Mexican reunion with the Consul—in the latter’s eyes is a specifically Baudelairean or Swedenborgian ‘correspondence,’ an interaction between the comprehensible and the unknowable of Hermetic proportions.” (Pg. 68).
Special bonus:
Here is a handdrawn version of the diagram of the Cabbalistic Tree of Life with Correspondences that Lowry sent to Markson:
