Aikman, Robert

Robert Fordyce Aikman was born in London in the family of the architect William Arthur Aikman. His maternal grandfather, Bernard Heldmann, was a prolific writer, known by his pseudonym Richard Marsh, the author of the sensational mystery novel The Beetle ( 1897 ).

Eikman’s worldview and character were influenced by the complex and conflicting relationships of his parents, as well as the general decline in society and the upper middle class between the two world wars. Already in his youth, Aikman adhered to strictly conservative views and until the end of his life remained convinced that civilized human society ceased to exist in 1914 .

Aikman's aesthetic views were markedly influenced by his early fascination with theater, which lasted a lifetime, and with music, especially opera. In addition, Aikman was a staunch admirer and follower of Freud , which also manifested in his work. Eikman himself spoke of his father like this: the strangest of the people I have ever met ^[1] .

Aikman graduated from a not-so-prestigious private school and abandoned his intention to go to Oxford so as not to strain his father's meager financial resources. His youth passed in an environment of poverty, often bordering on poverty. . In 1941, he received a small annual income from his father. During the war, Aikman married Edith Ray Gregorson, also a writer and author of several children's books. Together with his wife, they opened a small literary agency. In 1946, Robert and Edith Aikman, as well as Tom and Angela Rolt, formed the charity Inland Waterways Association . The objective of the association was to help preserve and restore the English rivers and canals. The Association has achieved significant success in this field, and Aikman has gained some fame as a public figure. In the same years, Aikman's mother died in London during the German bombing. . In 1957, the marriage with Edith broke up. It is known about her that she became a nun of the Anglican monastery in Oxford . There is practically no information about the subsequent personal life of Aikman himself.

Robert Aikman passed away on February 26, 1981 from cancer .

In the 40s, Aikman collaborated a lot with a number of publications as a film and theater critic. Aikman's first book was the massive tract The Panacea, which remained unpublished; in it, Aikman proposed his solution to all the basic problems of the 20th century . The manuscript of the book is stored in the Aikman archive at Ohio State University , USA .

In 1951 , Aikman, together with Elizabeth Jane Howard, released the collection “The Dusk Calls Us” ( We Are for the Dark ; title - quote from “Anthony and Cleopatra”). The book consisted of six stories, the authorship of which was not indicated; only many years later it became known that three belonged to Aikman and three to his co-author. The collection is considered ^{[by whom? ]} now an important milestone in the development of the genre, which marked the transition from restrained, classic examples of Victorian and Edwardian mysticism to a modern literary horror with its pronounced irrational and surreal elements . The book opened with Aikman's The Trains , one of the most famous and, in a sense, software for the author.

In 1966, Aikman published an autobiographical book, The Attempted Rescue , which talks more about nurturing feelings and character formation than personal life events, and describes events right up to the outbreak of World War II .

Aikman’s second short story collection, Dark Entries, was released in 1964 . It was followed by the collections “The Power of Darkness” ( Powers of Darkness , 1966 ), “The Sacrament” ( Sub Rosa , 1968 ), “The Cold Hand in My Hand” ( Cold Hand in Mine , 1975 ), “Stories of Love and Death” ( Tales of Love and Death , 1977 ), Intrusions ( 1980 ), and Night Voices ( 1985 ).

The compilation of Devils on Canvas ( Painted Devils , 1979 ), released in the USA , contained revised versions of some earlier stories.

In addition to the stories, Aikman also has two published novels - Late Breakfasts ( The Late Breakfasters , 1964 ) and Layout ( The Model , 1987 ). After the death of Aikman, a large number of unpublished works remained, including plays for the theater. From 1964 to 1972 , Aikman published eight volumes of The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories at Fontana , which together form the most complete and representative anthology of the ghost story genre. To all volumes except the sixth, Eikman wrote forewords that can serve as a kind of author’s commentary on his own work.

Aikman’s stories, with few exceptions, were never based on the mythology traditional for the genre (vampires, monsters, ghosts of the dead, etc.) Instead, he drew inspiration from those properties of the world that he considered fundamental: unsteadiness, unknowability, hostility to to man. Some of his stories are built around some aspect of being (such as beauty, sleep, childhood, old age, travel, etc.) in such a way that the minimal, allusive plot reveals the unfamiliar, abnormal and frightening sides of the affected phenomenon. Moreover, the author never offers the reader a complete picture and a logical rounding of plot lines. Aikman easily omits any elements of the narrative, whether it is the plot, climax or denouement, without losing at all - and even winning - in the effect and emotional impact. He brilliantly uses the typically English understatement technique to cast doubt on the rational organization of the universe. Instead of playing on specific and familiar fears, Aikman masterfully leads the reader to a sudden sense of unfamiliarity with the world and its everyday objects, a sense of what he calls the fundamental wrongness of things around us . And although some critics accused Aikman of excessive blur and mystery of the finals, his texts were never arbitrarily vague: behind all the ambiguities, all the broken lines are the author's will and conviction, which do not allow the narrative to slide into pale abstractions.

Aikman's stories are so peculiar that any attempts to imitate him, as a rule, were unsuccessful. Partly, perhaps this is due to the fact that his bold rejection of a rational picture of the world is combined with an extremely elegant, even, classical literary style, characteristic of a bygone literary era. Due to the impossibility of classifying his stories, and also because of the specifics of the short genre, Aikman achieved fame during his lifetime only in a relatively narrow circle of readers. Most of his texts remain relatively inaccessible today, and his reputation is rather a cult. But for all its originality, Aikman is not isolated from the development of literature: his work fits into a kind of transcendental literary tradition in which his predecessors are Walter de la Mar and Oliver Anyons , and authors (to one degree or another) followers such as M. John Harrison , Michael Marshall Smith , Jonathan Carroll .

• Robert Aikman at the Internet Movie Database
• Full bibliography of the writer on the Fantasy Lab website