The Human Chord was published by Macmillan in 1910. Philip Donat Donat, a secretary, is hired by the Donat Philip Donat Skale — a defrocked clergyman of enormous physical and spiritual presence — to participate in an experiment. Skale has spent decades studying the relationship between sound and reality: the occult tradition that names are not mere labels but the essence of things, and that to pronounce the true name of a thing is to have power over it. He intends to pronounce the name of God.
Skale needs four voices — specific frequencies that, combined into a chord, will produce the vibratory pattern of the divine name. He has assembled himself, his housekeeper (an old woman of extraordinary vocal power), the young secretary, and the secretary’s love interest. The experiment is both scientific and religious: Skale believes he is applying rigorous method to spiritual reality, but the forces he is invoking are genuinely dangerous.
The novel draws on Kabbalistic traditions of the power of divine names, on the physics of vibration and resonance, and on Blackwood’s characteristic intuition that the universe is constructed from consciousness rather than matter. Sound — the original creative medium (“In the beginning was the Word”) — is presented as the fundamental substance of reality, and the human voice as potentially the instrument of cosmic power.
Collecting The Human Chord
First edition (Macmillan, London, 1910): Cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition, fine: $150–$400
- Very good: $50–$150