Ulua is Istarelle

I've been pondering Clark Ashton Smith's "Istarelle" (1932ish), what it might have looked like if he'd ever finished it. Its outline involved temptation and gaslighting, against unprepared pious Frenchmen. I was envisioning the hellscape in CL Moore's "The Black God's Kiss" (October 1934). But, much as I've suggested that Smith was a "prophet" in... prior posts, no longer active; I doubt Smith had any premonition of what Moore would write in 1934. Nor am I aware of Smith-Moore correspondence to this effect.

Now that I've had cause to reread Smith's later works, I've run (back) across "The Witchcraft of Ulua" (1933). This also involves a sorceress, gaslighting some pious ascetic. Smith set this thing in Zothique, not Averoigne. As a result, it ends up necrotic and apocalyptic. But "Ulua"'s core remains Catholic and erotic.

Smith had a tendency, in his later fiction, to set stories in Zothique that he'd designed for his other settings. He'd done just that for "Euvoran". Zothique, in the middle 1930s, sold. And Smith needed the cash.

I'll posit here that, where Smith burgled his own "Istarelle" for several spinoff stories in Averoigne; the heart of that tale ended up in "Ulua".

BACKDATING 12/6. Just to keep this closer to the other Zothique posts.