"The Venus of Azombeii" by Clark Ashton Smith

So this story deals with an American of either late 19th or early 20th century adventuring in Africa. The language and attitudes will reflect the time period. Please don't complain to me about it, this is Smith's work, not mine.Show more

Given the length of the story, and for some reason my throat was already failing me before I even started recording this, I ended up have to record it across multiple days. So if there comes a point or two where there seems to be a noticeable change in voice quality or acoustics or what not, that's probably the cutover from one day's recording to the next.

The Benuwe River (now spelled as Benue) runs through Cameroon (where it originates in the Adamawa Plateau) and Nigeria, being a tributary of the Niger River. It means 'Mother of Waters’ in the Batta language.

The Adamawa Region is in Cameroon. This is consistent with German administration, as the Germans controlled Cameroon from 1884 until 1919. There is no acknowledgement of a war going on, so we can further narrow the time frame of this story down to some time between 1884 through 1913. German administration of the colony was considered harsh even by other European colonial powers of the day.

Russian Hill is a neighborhood in San Francisco named after one of the original Seven Hills of the city. Given the time frame of the story, it is probable that the large house on Russian Hill occupied by Marsden would be one of the three notable mansions built in the 1850s on Vallejo Street Crest.

sallow: (of a person's face or complexion) of an unhealthy yellow or pale brown color

hoary: grayish white

pharmacopoeia: either a book containing a list of medicinal drugs with their effects and directions for their use, or a stock of medicinal drugs. Both definitions make sense here.

rictus: a fixed grimace or grin

tetanic: relating to or characteristic of tetanus, especially in connection with tonic muscle spasm

antipodean: relating to Australia or New Zealand. The pronunciation of this really caught me off-guard. It's obviously derived from antipode, but doesn't get pronounced like antipode!

9000 feet = 2743 meters

durra: a variety of sorghum grown in Africa and India

baobab: it appears there are two accepted pronunciations for the name of this tree. If you don't like mine, oh well, it's valid even so.

Azombeii: as best I can tell, this is a fictional place name

intaglio: a design incised or engraved into a material

Foulah (now spelled Fula) is a widespread ethnic group in many countries, and they are fairly numerous in Cameroon (only Guinea, Senegal, and Nigeria have larger Fula populations).

fecundation: to make fecund (i.e. fruitful in offspring)

"Sudan" in this case is not referring to the countries south of Egypt, but to the Romans would have meant a geographic region south of the Sahara, stretching from Western Africa to Central and Eastern Africa (much of which is peopled by the Fula), which they would have said to be full of "Ethiopians", by which they would have meant black-skinned people, not people from the country of Ethiopia. It is confusing that the ancients used many words relating to Africa which we today use the same words but to mean very different things. (Another one would be 'Libya'.)

vocable: a word, especially with reference to form rather than meaning.

papaya is native to the Americas, but it was brought to the Old World in the 16th century and spread to pretty much everywhere shortly after that, so it should be ok for them to serve it here.

turgid: in this context: tediously pompous or bombastic

Elephantis: A 1st century BC Greek poet, author of a notorious sex manual. Why the author then uses the reflexive pronoun "itself" to describe him is odd, unless he is referring to the sex manual?

inenarrable: incapable of being narrated; indescribable

propitious: favorable

invultuation: the use of or the act of making images of people, animals, etc., for witchcraft

sedulous: showing dedication and diligence

calabash: bottle gourd, so called because of its bottle shape, and when hollowed out and dried was frequently used to store liquids or other things.

vituperation: bitter and abusive language

lethiferous: lethal

The picture used is a photograph of a village in Cameroon taken in 1904

To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/232/the-venus-of-azombeii

Some of the names I did not pronounce with great consistency. If you've followed by channel for any amount of time, by this point you know very well my feelings about authors using names with no obvious pronunciations and then provide no pronunciation guides in the text...

Oh, and my voice has gotten better. This recording ending up being stretched over three days, when originally, realizing how bad my voice was and that a single session wasn't going to be possible, I had hoped to do it in two, but taking the extra day on it I think really helped the voice quite a bit.