ATTN: JMS - Clark Ashton Smith?

[Joseph O'Neil]

"Genius Loci" is the name of a very well known story by C.A.
Smith. Any chance you are a fan of his as well as Lovecraft?
joe

http://www.multiboard.com/~joneil/store.html
London, Ont, Canada

[Jms at B5]

>"Genius Loci" is the name of a very well known story by C.A.
>Smith. Any chance you are a fan of his as well as Lovecraft?

Yes, I'm a fan of Smith's work, but no, the title is not a nod to him, since
the phrase precedes his book by several hundred years....

jms

(jms...@aol.com)
B5 Official Fan Club at:
http://www.thestation.com

[Pat Kight]

Jms at B5 wrote:
>
> >"Genius Loci" is the name of a very well known story by C.A.
> >Smith. Any chance you are a fan of his as well as Lovecraft?
>
> Yes, I'm a fan of Smith's work, but no, the title is not a nod to him, since
> the phrase precedes his book by several hundred years....

I'm not sure it's the earliest usage (anybody have an OED handy?), but
English landscape architect Lancelot "Capability" Brown used the term
"the genius of the place" to describe his then-revolutionary approach to
landscape design in the late 1700s. Brown led the movement away from
formal, stylized gardens with sculpted mazes and fake Greek temples, and
toward a contrived "naturalism" that drew its elements from the
underlying natural landscape, i.e., allowing the "genius of the place"
to express itself.

Tom Stoppard's fascinating play, "Arcadia," deals with this concept in
some detail (along with chaos theory, Lord Byron and lust, among other
subjects).

--Pat Kight
kig...@peak.org