Diario La Nación
- The materialization of a monster
In a Conan Doyle story, an artist corrects a visitor who mistakes a painted unicorn for a horse; a later passage describes an eerie light above a séance table.
Partial reading: the title, author credit, one passage about the painting and unicorn, and one later paragraph describing light above the séance table. […] marks omitted narrative between these passages. The remainder of the page and the continuation on page 3 are not translated.
Translation
The materialization of a monster
A story by A. Conan Doyle.
It was, as I have said, on April 14, 1905, that the very strange event I am about to record here took place. I was the first of the men to arrive at the studio that day; but Mrs. Delamere was already there, having taken tea that afternoon with Mrs. Harvey Deacon. I found the two ladies, and Deacon too, standing before an unfinished painting of his on the easel. I am no expert on art, and I have never pretended to understand what Harvey Deacon means to express in his paintings; but in this case I could readily see that the picture was ingenious and fantastical, with fairies and animals and allegorical figures of every kind. The ladies praised it warmly, and its coloring was certainly remarkable.
“What do you think of it, Mackahm?” Deacon asked me.
“Well... I do not consider myself qualified to judge,” I replied. “These animals... what are they?”
“Fabulous monsters, imaginary creatures, heraldic emblems... A sort of extravagant magical procession of them all.”
“With a white horse at the front.”
“It is not a horse,” he remarked rather dryly, which surprised me, because Deacon was generally a joker who hardly ever spoke seriously.
“What is it, then?”
“Don’t you see the horn on its forehead? It is a unicorn. As I told you, these are heraldic animals. Do you recognize it now?”
“No, and I am very sorry, Deacon,” I said, for the man seemed really annoyed.
But Deacon burst out laughing at his own irritation.
[…]
At first I had thought it was an illusion of my own; but by then everyone could see it. A phosphorescent, greenish-yellow light spread over the surface of the table, looking more like luminous vapor than light. It curled and uncurled, turning and swirling like clouds of smoke. I could see the French medium’s white, square hands in the glow of that sinister light.
Context
Conan Doyle beyond Sherlock Holmes
The séance belongs to fiction, but its subject was a longstanding interest of its author. In the 1880s Conan Doyle attended séances and investigated hypnosis and telepathy in Southsea. His commitment to spiritualism later became a public campaign, and in 1926 he published The History of Spiritualism. This background helps explain the story’s attention to a medium, shared observation and an apparently visible manifestation. The narrator’s date of April 14, 1905 is part of the tale, not the date of a news event reported in this 1926 issue.
Why the painted animal is a unicorn
Deacon describes his creatures as heraldic and imaginary, so the visitor’s ordinary white horse misses the picture’s symbolic vocabulary. Unicorns had long belonged to European religious and secular art. Medieval bestiaries associated the animal with Christ, while unicorn imagery could also carry meanings of love and marriage. The horn therefore distinguishes more than a zoological species: it identifies a creature rich in inherited associations. That artistic background makes Deacon’s irritation intelligible without requiring his painting to have any one particular allegorical meaning.
An illustrated literary page in Santiago
The sweeping color illustration and Conan Doyle byline place international fiction at the center of this page. La Nación also gave space to debates about the arts: Juan Emar promoted new artistic movements in its pages between 1923 and 1927, and its Paris agency, established in 1925, supported cultural exchanges. His Paris columns continued in 1926. This broader setting helps explain a newspaper readership encountering foreign literature alongside visual art. A newspaper could serve as a venue for artistic discovery as well as daily reporting.
Original
LA MATERIALIZACION DE UN MONSTRUO
cuento por A. CONAN DOYLE.
Fué, como he dicho, el 14 de Abril de 1905 cuando ocurrió el muy extraño suceso que voy a consignar aquí. Yo fuí el primero de los hombres que llegó ese día al taller; pero la señora Delamere, estaba ya allí, pues había tomado el té esa tarde con la señora Harvey Deacon. Encontré a las dos damas, y a Deacon también, delante de un cuadro de éste, inconcluso, puesto sobre el caballete. Yo no soy perito en arte, y nunca he pretendido entender qué es lo que quiere expresar Harvey Deacon con sus cuadros; pero en ese caso podía ver bien que la pintura aquella era muy ingeniosa y fantástica, con hadas y animales y figuras alegóricas de toda especie. Las damas la elogiaban calurosamente, y, a la verdad, su colorido era notable.
—¿Qué le parece a usted, Mackahm? me preguntó Deacon.
—Le diré... Yo no me considero competente, respondí. Estos animales... ¿qué son?
—Monstruos fabulosos, seres imaginarios, emblemas heráldicos... Una especie de procesión mágica, extravagante, de todos ellos.
—Con un caballo blanco al frente.
—No es un caballo, observó él un tanto secamente, lo que me sorprendió, porque, por regla general, Deacon era un chacotón que casi nunca hablaba seriamente.
—¿Qué es, entonces?
—¿No ve el cuerno que tiene en la frente? Es un unicornio. Como le dije, éstos son animales heráldicos. ¿Lo reconoce ahora?
—No, y lo siento mucho, Deacon, dije, porque el hombre parecía realmente contrariado.
Pero Deacon soltó la carcajada, riéndose de su propia irritación.
[…]
En el primer momento, yo había pensado que se trataba de una ilusión mía; pero entonces todos podían ya verlo. Sobre la superficie de la mesa se extendía una luz fosforescente, amarillo verdusca, que más que luz parecía vapor luminoso. Se enrollaba y se desarrollaba, girando y remolineando como nubes de humo. Podía ver las manos blancas, cuadradas, del médium francés a la claridad de esa luz siniestra.
Source: Source: Internet Archive