Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Thing in the Moonlight
“Presently I heard a swishing in the sparse grass toward the left, and saw the dark forms of two men looming up in the moonlight.”
Welcome back to a very strange blind read!
This wasn’t really a story and in fact when I researched Lovecraft’s bibliography it isn’t represented at anywhere. As it turns out, this is actually a letter that Lovecraft once sent about a dream he had to a colleague. The letter was then taken and a beginning and end was tacked onto it. It’s curious why someone would do this, because the text doesn’t make sense and doesn’t sound ANYTHING like Lovecraft. Let’s break it down a little. Here’s the opening, obviously not written by Lovecraft:
“Morgan is not a literary man; in fact he cannot speak English with any degree of coherency. That is what makes me wonder about the words he wrote, though others have laughed.
“He was alone the evening it happened. Suddenly an unconquerable urge to write came over him, and taking pen in hand he wrote the following:”
So, so many things wrong here. First of all why name him Morgan? Without any characterization this is just a failed attempt to change something that doesn’t need to be changed. The very next line starts “My name is Howard Phillips.” so there is no reason to adjust it, other than either an attempt to make it their own (which I don’t believe because it’s published in a Lovecraft book), or they wanted it to seem more like a story rather than a letter. It’s an uninspired and useless tactic.
Next “he cannot speak English with any degree of coherency.” What? If you read the following letter, the man writing it obviously has an expert’s grasp of the language; as it’s written far better than this opening salvo. I mean, the writer (I refuse to say author here for this anonymous hack job) tacks on a fragment to end the sentence that makes zero sense in the context!
Then we get into Lovecraft’s actual (letter) writing. This letter is brilliant and terrifying (it might be some of the scariest he’s written), and packs so much into just two pages that I would consider it a must read for any fan (just ignore the two opening paragraphs and the closing paragraph).
The narrator describes finding a strange aged trolley car on a plateau. The narrator goes inside and sees two figures approaching. One screeches and the other goes to all fours and runs around wolf-like. The description of the screamer is terrifying, and now I understand why people say “Silent Hill” is Lovecraftian: “…but because the face of the motorman was a mere white cone tapered to one blood-red-tentacle…”
The scene repeats itself with a feeling of foreboding and anxiety that the dreamer will eventually be caught by this mysterious motorman. The story ends with the ominous, “God! When will I awaken?”
This letter was written in the last few years of Lovecraft’s life, and I wonder if this was almost a cry for help. He created this verdant field of wonder and fear, and one has to wonder if drugs (laudinam or opium) caused some of this nightmare fuel to seep into his head.
Then again what if this was a metaphor? The bestial nature had left him (the conductor was the one who went wolf-like and ran around; ostensibly away. Cone-head was the real nemesis) as the conductor ran off, and he was left being haunted by the strange and otherworldly motorman. I find it interesting that the conductor, the one who was meant to drive the vehicle (or in this case drive the consciousness?) went feral and directionless, whereas the motorman – the one who powers and builds the craft – became the staying force. The motorman whom changed and became something otherworldly. It almost feels like this is Lovecraft’s ID and this letter is the realization that maybe there is something off about him internally. Something otherworldly?
Much like many of his narrators he sees this truism and is terrified by it, and we as readers have to wonder… How much time did Lovecraft spend dreaming, and in the end did he succumb and transcend into his own dreamlands?
Join me and read along next week where we’ll cover the first chapter of “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward!”
Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, conclusion
“If you say int he first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off…” – Anton Chekhov
“But oh God, under the weight of life, things seem brighter on the other side. No way out of here…” – Dave Matthews Band “Big Eyed Fish”
“Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted.” – Joseph Campbell “The Hero’s Journey”
In literature when we go on a journey with a character, there is always a mental journey as well as a physical journey. Why is our hero, our hero? Why is it he/she that has been chosen to do this task? If they chose it, then why? These are the questions asked from any good protagonist on a hero’s journey, so what did Randolph Carter learn?
Welcome back to another Blind Read! We’ll be talking about the epic conclusion of The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, and some theories that i have from reading it. Again these are all my own theories, but feel free to give me some of your own!
The last time we saw Carter her was at the gates of Sarkomand and the great abyss. He finds some Ghouls who are trapped by the same evil merchants and helps them escape. Then calls upon the remainder of the ghouls to fight against these horrible minions. With the help of Nodens he gains the help of the night-gaunts. With these night-gaunts (whom “even the Great Ones fear”) and the Ghouls, they have an epic battle against the Shantak birds and moon-beasts and the fish like creatures (of which one can only assume are off shoots of Dagon). Once they win the fight, mainly because of the vastly superior night-gaunts, they all go back to Sarkomand and the ghouls go back down to the abyss and Carter, again with the help of the night-gaunts, flies to Kadath.
Upon reaching Kadath he finds that the castle is empty, all except for a Pharaoh like man, who gives him directions to the sunset city, and tells Carter that he must get the Great Ones (Earth’s Gods) back to their homes on Kadath. He tells Carter that they got the glimpse of the Sunset City from him, for it is a recreation of New England, Boston and Providence specifically, and the earth gods loved it so much that they went there.
Carter leaves, flying out on a Shantak, but realizes that he has been tricked. The Pharaoh like man was actually Nyarlathotep and he is having the Shantak take Carter to the center of the universe and the seat of Azathoth to be devoured (I think this means both physical and mental). Carter realizes the ploy, and leaps from the Shantak, and creates a kick, to bring him out of the dream. He finds himself back in Boston, and revels in his sunset city.
In a brief epilogue, Nyarlathotep is bitter that Carter escaped, but he has been able to bring the Great Ones back to Kadath and mocks them as they brood.
This is without a doubt the most uplifting story that I’ve read by Lovecraft, and that has me wondering. I understand that this story was published posthumously by August Derleth, and where I’ve not seen information to state that Lovecraft didn’t finish this story, it does seem, from the battle scene on, like a different type of story. I wonder if Derleth took over this story and finished it, to have the dreamlands be a thing. But I digress.
I have three main points for the end of this story and they all revolve around the quote’s up at the top of the page. The first is Chekhov.
There are many call backs throughout this story. We have Pickman coming back at the end. We have the slant-eyed merchant continuing to re-emerge as a sinister being (no doubt spurned on by Nyarlathotep). Finally, we have the duplication of New England as the sunset city, in the same way that King Kuranes created Cornwall to be the place of his dreamland life. This was the foreshadowing of where Lovecraft was going to take the story. Kuranes goes to great lengths to describe how he created the land that he wanted, and that he had been chasing for all these years, while he’s speaking with Carter. Then when we go back to the beginning of the story:
“…and as Carter stood breathless and expectant on that balustraded parapet there swept up to him the poignancy and suspense of almost-vanished memory…”
Lovecraft is saying right here that what he is chasing after is a memory. it wasn’t until the end that I remembered that line, and the whole story was brought full circle. That cyclical journey.
If we continue in that line it brings me to my next point.
“…the pain of lost things and the maddening need to place again what once had been an awesome and momentous place.”
He is both trying to remember what the sunset city was in his dreams, but he is also trying to reconcile the memory of New England with what it is now. His memories were what built the sunset city, and it’s wonderful and glorious vision.
The way that Carter views his current situation is that New England is run down, and the city of his dreams is so beautiful that he wants to go there. “Oh god, under the weight of life, things seem so much brighter on the other side.” He thinks that by going to the sunset city he will find heaven, or at least some version of it that he can live in, in the dreamlands. This is merely a projection however, because the reality is that the sunset city is his own creation, just like King Kuranes created Cornwall. He is searching for an idyllic memory, when what he is truly looking for is right outside of his bedroom when he wakes up.
That’s the major irony of the story, because things aren’t better on the other side. They are only better once you come to realize that the world is what you make of it, and when Carter wakes, he realizes that he is in his Sunset City finally, and the journey to Kadath, while spectacular, was unnecessary.
The last point is one that is very interesting to me, particularly when it comes to the cannon of Gods. The Great Old ones are the “Earth Gods” as Nyarlathotep calls them. Carter has nearly transcended the gods, and has completed his mythological journey (quest), by creating something that the Great Ones want to experience. At the end of the story, the Great Ones actually go to the Sunset City in the dreamlands. They see all the glory that it beholds.
The dreamlands are of neither time, nor of space. We see that because of the things that the dreamers can do, create cities and such. Stay with me now, because I’m going to get a little crazy.
So back to Carters journey for a second. The Great Ones are the Gods of Earth and everything on Earth has to do with them, not directly, but in the Lovecraftian world, we developed from these moon creatures. So when Carter created the Sunset City based upon New England, there was a link between the Great Ones and the vision of the city. They saw something in it that called back to the time that they were here, and that was the point of his journey. To bring solace to the Great Ones, to lure them back into complacency and slumber, because they could experience the world, without having to come to our world.
The tragedy of the journey is that he ultimately fails. That is where the menace and horror of the story come in. Nyarlathotep tricks Carter, and instead of making sure that the Great Ones know about the city, he is taken elsewhere, and Nyarlathotep can collect the Great Ones and take them back to Kadath, where they don’t want to be. Nyarlathotep wants the Great Ones to long for Earth, he wants them to come to earth a sew destruction (just because of their nature, not because of malice). So he brings them away from their reverie in experiencing what the Earth is like, just having a small taste, and then brings them back to the cold wastes of Kadath, and taunting them, on their loss…until they get frustrated enough to escape and head back to New England.
What do you think?
Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, Pt. 3
Dark tales told in a circle, with the only illumination coming from the campfire. The master storyteller, eliciting the terror from their subjects as they tell their story. Cadence and timing is paramount to the proper telling, and this story teller has it down to a science.
Welcome back to another Blind read! This time we delve deeper into the Dream Quest of Randolph Carter, and we get some new illumination on the cannon of gods prevalent in the world. But first, a recap…
We last left off when Carter got to Celephais, and we pick up this week with the introduction of King Kuranes. He is the king of Celephais and has died in real life, thus becoming a permanent denizen of the Dreamlands. King Kuranes has made Celephais look like Cornwall, because he had a longing for being in a land of his childhood. They speak for a while about the dreamlands in general, and Kuranes tries to talk Carter out of going on his trek to Kadath, but Carter is set in his path and he joins another ship, to head out to the plateau of Leng to find Kadath.
On this ship they find their way to Inquanok, a city made out of Onyx. The sailors tell Carter that the city was made from a number of quarries, where they mined the Onyx, but there is one Quarry farther on, that no one goes to any more, that quarry has larger and unknown quantities of Onyx. It is here that Carter wants to go because he has heard that the great city of Kadath is built of Onyx, much like Inquanok. There is temple to the Elder Ones here in Inquanok, and it is overseen by a “High Priest, with inner secrets”.
Carter continues on and goes to an old sea tavern, where he finds, again, the slant-eyed merchant. Who seems to have followed him on his journey.
The next day Carter purchases a yak to travel to the unknown quarry to find answers and hopefully get closer to Kadath. He is sure that he is very close, because of the Onyx connection.
He travels through the quarries, and eventually the yak gets spooked and runs away, and finally the Slant Eyed Merchant finds him and captures him with aid of the horrible Shantaks.
I have to say, I love getting a little more knowledge about the gods of Lovecraft. I know that this one was published after Lovecraft died and I wonder how much of the influence of this story comes from August Derleth. But I digress.
The most interesting thing I have come to realize about Lovecraft is his style of writing. I have always had a bit of trouble getting into his verbose style, but what i have come to realize is that Lovecraft is best read as though he were storyteller around a campfire. The tone and inflection are the same, and if you read anything, especially “The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath”, in this way, the story comes through so much more vividly and beautifully. Every author has their own voice, and once you have come to realize that voice the experience of reading that author becomes that much greater, and though I have thoroughly enjoyed reading all the Lovecraft I have, up to now, I know that with this understanding, I will absolutely love everything else! I just wish I hadn’t gotten through more than half of his works before coming to this realization!
Ok, back to the story…The first notable mention is the delving in to dream. King Kuranes is the ruler of Celephais, and he is dead in the waking world. It is not made clear in the story as to whether he died in the dream world or in the waking world, but he still has the power to change the landscape and make it that of the Cornwall of his childhood. There are a few interesting ti bits in this that we can examine. The first is that King Kuranes is a friend of Carters, even back in the waking world. Carter is an experienced dreamer, that we know from the description at the beginning of this story, and he has known Kuranes mainly through dream, but Carter has known him in the waking world. In fact “who in Carter’s latter dreams had reigned alternatively in the rose-crystal Palace of Seventy Delights at Celephais and in the turreted cloud-castle of sky-floating Serannian.” So the question is, how can Kuranes still be a living monarch in the dreamlands when his body is dead in the waking world. Did he die while dreaming? Is this why he can stay here? Are the dreamlands some sort of afterlife that we come to when we die? Or are only experienced dreamers able to come to the dreamlands after they die, their dreams tying them to the dreamlands?
I tend to cater more towards the latter, because the image of the “rose-crystal Palace of Seventy-Delights”, elicits an image of the 72 virgins from the Quran. We as humans tend to think of the afterlife as a reward for a life well lived here on earth. If the dreamlands are a vision of this afterlife, where you have alternative versions of heaven, hell and purgatory, then this could be an example. Kuranes is able to actually change the landscape and create the Cornish fields of his childhood after all. This seems as though this is his afterlife, based upon the life he lived in Cornwall as a child. I hope to have a better sense of what the dreamlands actually are once we get a little farther into the story.
Next set of business is the clarification to the cannon of gods. This is what I’ve been waiting for, for so long! While Carter is speaking to Kuranes, they discuss the danger of his quest, and Kuranes tells him what little he knows, as a way of warning Carter away from the quest. We find out that there are three different types of gods…Other Gods, Elder Ones and Great Ones. The whole point of this quest is to find the Great Ones, to find more information about that sun kissed city, but Kuranes warns him because, he says, the Other Gods had ways of protecting the Great Ones from “impertinent curiosity”. He made it sound as though the Other Gods would gather the Elder Ones, The truly malignant forces in the universe, to avert this curiosity. These Elder Ones were such as Azathoth and Nyarlathotep. We are as of yet unclear as to who the Great Ones are, and we know that the Other Gods (from both this story and the short story “The Other Gods) guard the outer Hells and barren space, “…especially where form does not exist…”. In fact when reading the short story “The Other Gods”, when Barzai the (not so) wise climbs Hatheg-Kla to do the same thing that Carter is trying to do here, (seek out the Great Ones), the Other Gods, do something horrible and Barzai is seen no more. The Other Gods guarded the Great Ones from “impertinent curiosity”.
The question is why is it so important for the Other Gods to protect the Great Ones, that they would pull in the malignant Elder Ones?
Hopefully we will gain an answer at the conclusion of this story!
Ok, one last little anecdotal note, which shows how pervasive Lovecraft is in our culture. The slant-eyed merchant is known to deal with a “High-priest, not to be described, which wears a yellow silken mask over it’s face and dwells all alone in a prehistoric stone monastery.” This seems to me to be the basis for the “King In Yellow”. which is a play in a book by Robert Chambers. The play is said to induce madness and despair for all who read it. Could it be that there is a correlation between worlds? Is the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, connected to the slant-eyed merchant in some way? Could that be where he got his information to write the Necronomicon?
What do you think?
Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, pt 2
Worlds converge and lands that were once thought to be unique are connected by the dream.
Welcome back to another blind read! It’s been a little while, and I apologize for the silence, but it’s been a really busy month! And that’s a good busy, because it’s been all surrounding writing.
Like I mentioned in the last edition of the Blind read, I’m taking a different tact for this story. There is a bit of fluidity in the story, however there is far more to analyze than there has been in previous stories. That being said lets get back into a little bit of a recap. I’ve read nearly half of the story of Randolph Carter journeying through the Dreamlands in his search for Kadath.
The last we saw Carter, he was just escaping the turbaned men, who were trying to take him in the Abyss to Nyarlathotep. The Cats of Ulthar helped him escape, and he boards another ship and sails away to Oriab. He travels across the land and finds a carving of the gods he is trying to find, and is surprised that they look much like the sailors in Celephais. He vows to head to Celephais, when he is captured by winged horrors called Night-Gaunts. The Night-Gaunts take him to the underworld, supposedly to die. There, in the underworld, he finds a former friend, Richard Pickman, who has become a Ghoul. Pickman and his Ghoul friends help Carter avoid the Ghasts (horrible creatures of the underworld), and ascend the staircase to get back to the Enchanted Wood, a higher level of the dreamlands. He then heads off to find Celephais.
There are a few concepts that I’d like to cover here that I find particularly prescient.
The first is completely meta, and touched upon a little in the last Blind Read ( https://seanmmcbride.com/2018/05/11/blind-read-through-h-p-lovecraft-the-dream-quest-of-unknown-kadath-pt-1/ ), but this is a story (which was published posthumously, so it may have never been intended for publication) where Lovecraft brings together many different stories he previously created. This is the story which establishes the dreamlands as we now know them. Despite what I’ve heard that Lovecraft wasn’t looking for cohesion or a “mythos” (forgive me, I forget where I read this, but I’ll do a little research and edit in the link if I find it), this book seems to disavow that concept. It seems as though Carter was to become his hero of dreams. The interesting part of this is that the dreamlands and the mythos are considered to be two separate collections, but it seems as though they are irrevocably intertwined. We have Nyarlathotep as a central being of insidiousness, and Azathoth as the ruler of all creation and destruction. These Outer Gods have a direct link through the dreamlands, where despite Nyarlathotep heading to earth in the story of his own name, it seems like the easiest way to contact these gods is through the dreamlands. On top of that We have the concept of the story itself. Carter is striving to find the gods, specifically by travelling through the dreamlands. This is a blind read, and I’m only about half way through the story, but that seems almost like incontrovertible evidence to me.
Speaking of gods, there is a mention of a new one, I had never heard from before, which I’m pretty sure comes from Celtic mythology. Carter is taken by Night-Gaunts to the underworld to be left to die. The way the text is written it seems as though the underworld is a deeper level of the dreamlands, but more on that presently.
This new god’s name is Nodens, who in Celtic mythology is known as a Pan (the Roman god of mischief, amongst other things), and Nodens controls the Night-Gaunts. So here we have another god who is trying to stop Carter, or at least delay him from reaching Kadath to ask the gods about the golden city. If Pan is truly the inspiration for Nodens, then we know that he has more fun in playing with emotions, than with dealing in absolutes, like death. So Nodens has his servants the Night-Gaunts kidnap Carter and try to deliver him to the despair of the underworld and revel in his misery.
This now brings us to the final point. This portion of the story is a metaphor for depression.
The Night-Gaunts are a black winged, slightly humanoid creature, who does no harm, but delivers Carter to the underworld. Much like the demons and devils from medieval art are portrayed. These devils that speak half-truths into the subjects ears and put them on a downward spiral. In the dreamlands, the Night-Gaunts are much the same, but have a more active role in actually taking Carter to the underworld. He is not hurt, in fact he is gently placed and left alone to wallow in his despair. He is left to die, but he is in no way injured. He is just in the underworld.
Carter just never let go of his hope and his drive to find the golden city of his dreams. He then soon sees what happens when one does give up hope. He meets Richard Pickman, a former friend from Boston, who was a very talented painter. Pickman has become a Ghoul. A horrible former joke of the person he once was. Luckily Pickman retains enough of his former self to understand that Carter was once a friend and rallies the other Ghouls to help him escape the underworld. To escape the depression of what the underworld represents. It is already too late for Pickman, he cannot leave the underworld, and returns to his life of horrors once Carter is safely out.
This section is the first truly horrifying section of the story, because previously Carter is merely travelling. Now he had made a descent. He is taken deeper into the dreamlands, where he has trouble seeing the light, he has trouble seeing the point of his quest. So the deeper into the dreamlands you get, the depression takes over your mind, and derails you. Much like the afterlife dreams in Richard Matheson’s “What Dreams May Come”. Were these Ghouls sent here because of what they did in their lives? Is this their hell?
What do you think?
Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, Pt. 1
At which point the inception was implanted in his mind. What was the truth? What was reality and what was dream? Was there any truth to what he had experienced, or was the implantation of the concept there to set the pace? Curiosity killed the cat (with the exception of the cats of Ulthar).
Welcome back to another Blind Read! This time we’re diving into the Dreamlands, a place where I’ve been interested in for quite some time, and dying to dive into. But low and behold! We’ve already read many stories that take place in the Dreamlands and were just unaware that that’s what they were!
This story, much like “At the Mountains of Madness”, seem to be a world building exercise for Lovecraft. This is a bit of a departure from the weird stories that I’ve been devouring. This one is more of an adventure, that incorporated elements of some of the other stories. Because of this correlation, it shines some new light on those other stories and what their meanings might have really been. I’ll get more into that in other posts, however, because that would be a post in and of itself. Here I’d like to talk a little about the story and the concept of Inception.
So we start the story with Randolph Carter, after just hearing his statement in the previous Blind Read. Here we find that Carter is a experienced “dreamer”, and through this lucid dreaming, has the ability to travel throughout the Dreamlands.
The story starts with our intrepid traveler dreaming about a beautiful sunset city:
“Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvelous city, and three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it. All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens, and wide streets marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and ivory statues in gleaming rows…and as Carter stood breathless and expectant on that balustraded parapet there swept up to him the poignancy and suspense of almost-vanished memory, the pain of lost things and the maddening need to place again what once had been an awesome and momentous place.”
OK, lets start with how many times Carter was able to see the fabled city. Three is an interesting choice, not only for the religious implications, but also in western Occultism (though I wonder how much of Western Occultism actually stems from Lovecraft). Knowing a little bit of Lovecraft’s religious views, however I proscribe that there are a few different things going on here. The first is that 3 is a prime number, whose only factors are one and itself. Once Carter viewed the city three times, he was unable to view it any more. Could this have something to do with the exclusivity of the city and that there are 3 levels of the Dreamlands? Could he have only viewed the city once (the first factor), but because there are three different layers of the Dreamlands, he was able to view it three times? One for each layer?
While you chew on that, thee is also an Odd number, truly the first Odd number. Where number 1 can be mixed into other equations, the number 3 throws a wrench into things. So this could be that Lovecraft is trying to make us feel on edge, through a subsumed psychosomatic response? Just like we talked about in the Blind Read of “At the Mountains of Madness” ( https://seanmmcbride.com/2018/03/23/blind-read-through-h-p-lovecraft-at-the-mountains-of-madness-conclusion/ ) Lovecraft uses Trypophobia (or the fear of small holes, as in a honeycomb) through his description of architecture. Something that nature made, that was not quite natural. Also his use of odd angles in “The Dreams in the Witch House”. He uses these slightly off themes to set the pace for the story.
Then we see some of the grand architecture through his description of the city. This hearkens back to stories like “The Tree”( Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Tree ), where we get some grand beauty, with a yearning to be where it is so pristine and wonderful. Doubtless this is what Carter feels. He has a desire to reach this city, but there is something ominous about it. Just like there was in “The Tree”. It is off limits, unattainable, and in fact the visions were stripped from him, and every person he asks tells him to drop it. That the pursuit of the city is not one he should continue. Could this all be a ruse set about by Nyarlathotep to enslave Carter?
This brings me to my final point in the inception (see what I did there?) of the “Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” Blind Read. The last time we saw Carter he passed out as his friend was killed by some horrible monstrosity in a tomb. Could this have been the Inception of the Dream for Carter? Could whatever creature that was down in that tomb, have imprinted the idea of the Golden City into Carter’s mind? Could they have knowledge that Carter is an experienced Dreamer that is capable of actually getting to Kadath? We are told that only three travelers had gone to the outer reaches, and only one came back sane. Could this be a implanted call from the messenger god Nyarlathotep? Is that why the call is so strong that Carter can’t stop his search, even though he is told to stop at every turn, and nearly dies in his dreams many times?
What do YOU think?
Join me next week as we talk about world building and how other short stories are in connection through the Dreamlands
Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Dreams in the Witch House
“To die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; aye, there’s the rub,
for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
when we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
must give us pause.” – Hamlet Act III Scene 1
Aye, there’s the rub. What dreams come from death, but who’s death are we talking about? What brings about these dreams? and do the dreams have a steak in reality?
Welcome back to another Blind Read! This time we’re diving into a new level of Lovecraftian fiction. Welcome to the Dreamlands. I’ve been excited to look into this a little more (in fact I even mentioned it in a previous Blind Read), because we have already begun to tackle some of the Cannon of the Mythos, so beyond Lovecraft’s weird fiction, he has the Cthulhu mythos and the Dreamland stories.
The story follows along our protagonist, Walter Gilman, who is a student of Miskatonic University in Arkham, Mass. Gilman is interested in weird science, so much so that he studies the Necronomicon in the library of Miskatonic U and familiarizes himself with the lore behind it.
But that isn’t quite enough for him. He finds a local house that was known as a residence of a Witch by the name of Old Keziah and her pet Brown Jenkin (a strange animal like furball, with a humanistic face that looks strangely like Old Keziah, and also has anthropomorphic features).
He finds that he has strange dreams in this house. He goes into strange realities and sees Old Keziah and brown Jenkin nearly every time, but he also sees strange things like spheres and polyhedrons of light, which lead him around.
He eventually comes to the realization that there are odd angles in the house. Walls tilted at incomprehensible angles that twist the mind, and whenever something strange happens it comes from those angles.
The dreams continue to get stranger, and things follow him back into the real life. He wakes and finds his feet are muddy after dreaming about walking in a muddy field. He wakes and finds his ankle has dried blood on it, after he is bitten by Brown Jenkin in the dream. He assumes that a rat bit him, but can find no blood in the room at all.
He begins to wonder about his somnambulism, and borrows flour from his landlord and places it around his room and outside of it, to try and see his footsteps and figure out what he gets up to in his sleep walking fits, but when he wakes nothing is disturbed.
The dreams continue to darken as they get closer to May Eve.
“May Eve was Walpurgis night, when hell’s blackest evil roamed the earth and all the slaves of Satan gathered for nameless rites and deeds.”
Around this time and around Hallows eve children from the poorer neighborhoods seemed to disappear. They are well known in Arkham as dark days, and as the day nears the dreams get even stranger.
Gilman sees a “black man” in his dreams, who holds out a book to him and Old Keziah wants him to sign it and gain a new name (hers was Nahab). The story centers around this strange ritual of Walpurgis night and this strange “black man”.
A local child goes missing, which happens nearly every Walpurgis night, and in his dreams, Gilman sees Old Keziah holding a knife up, with the “black man” watching in the distance. She is obviously making a sacrifice of the child and attempting to drain it’s blood into a strange metal bowl with bunch of unrecognizable symbols.
There is much confusion, and Gilman finds himself struggling with Keziah. He for some reason wonders if he actually signed the book that the “black man” held. The book of Azathoth.
Gilman succeeds in stopping Keziah and strangles her with the cross that a fellow tenant gave him.
But Gilman never wakes. The same tenant hears him screaming and goes to him. Under the blanket there is a bunch of blood coming up, and eventually a creature looking like Brown Jenkin pops out from underneath the covers, but it has a strange resemblance to Gilman in the face, and it has hands instead of claws. The creature runs to the corner, where the inverted angles appear and disappears into the wall.
The landlord evacuates the house, and there is a fire. In the wreckage they find bones from across the ages. Old Keziah had been up to her terribleness for years.
This is without a doubt my favorite of anything I’ve read by Lovecraft thus far. Terrifying and, just perfectly Lovecraft.
Lovecraft immediately puts you on edge with his mention of odd angles. What he does so well is bring the supernatural into our world so succinctly. There are alternate dimensions, but the fact that thee is a scientific way to get to those alternate dimensions…or to bring those dimensions to us, is utterly, and fantastically terrifying. In addition to that, the fact that one can indeed think of those angles and gain access to those dimensions is spectacular.
Which brings me (surreptitiously I know, but bear with me) to my next point. Walpurgis night is a brilliant temporal setting. The names of the people involved in the story are mainly Polish and Czech names, and Saint Walpurga is a Catholic saint who is known to have driven witches out of many Germanic provinces. So by making this about Walpurgis night, Lovecraft is basically retelling the story of Walpurga through his own lens. Gilman, ostensibly drives the witchcraft out of Arkham by destroying Old Keziah, and limiting the connection with our world to that of the Elder Gods.
There are a few gods mentioned in the story. There is much mention of Azathoth, who “rules from the bed of chaos”. There is Nyarlathotep, who we know has been to our plane, and lead people out of Egypt to supplicate themselves to his will (could there be an actual connection? Nyarlathotep is just a mention in this story, but does he have a reason why he can come to our world? is he a master of the angles?). Then there is Shub-Niggurath “The goat with a thousand young”.
We know that the book is Azathoth’s who is the master of chaos. Could Shub-Niggurath be Azathoth’s concubine? Is that where the thousand young came from? Then if we correlate to Christianity with the connection with Walpurgis night, we see the connection with Satan being sometimes correlated to a goat. Thus we have hell being another dimension led by Azathoth and Shub-Niggurath, with Nyarlathotep potentially being the “black man” trying to get Gilman to sign Azathoth’s book and “getting a new name”.
So Gilman actually did sign the book, and that’s why he had his transformation into a creature somewhat like Brown Jenkin, but, because he killed the only other human (old Keziah), and the Witch House was destroyed, there is a loss of connection with that hellish world.
Which brings us back to angles. In our culture good is the default. We have a thought that to be bad, or to do evil things means that you are off, that your brain does something different that other people’s brains. Lovecraft gives a reason here.
Angles.
If you have the ability to see in different angles then you have access to hell. This is how you can have someone, who is structurally the same as every other human being, but their ability to see a way into another dimension, without the need of a loadstone (like the Witch House and it’s odd angles), is what leads them to evil deeds.
What do you think?
Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Shunned House
Welcome back to another Blind Read! This time we’re delving into a wonderfully classic haunted house story, with a Lovecraftian twist.
This is the story of the Shunned House, and Lovecraft finds yet another way to tell a story in a unique way. We know of the narrator’s experience there. Lovecraft tells that up front. A young man who is scared terribly by something that he cannot explain.
Then we delve into the history of the house, to try to garner a better explanation of what actually happened there. The reasoning jumps around from spirits, to demons, to vampires, to werewolves. Each person who had some kind of supernatural experience in the Shunned House have experienced something different.
The story gives some wonderfully Gothic imagery. I had a vivid image of Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher” in both visceral description, as well as tonality. We find a house with a history and delve into something altogether different than we possibly expected. Poe’s story is a Gothic tragedy, but Lovecraft’s is wonderfully cosmic.
Then the story evolves. It becomes much more like Richard Matheson’s “Hell House”, where we have a scientific study, instead of a supernatural study (Hell House is one of the singularly most terrifying stories I’ve ever read, just so you know).
“We were not, as I have said, in any sense childishly superstitious, but scientific study and reflection had taught us that the known universe of three dimensions embraces the merest fraction of the whole cosmos of substance and energy.” pp 128 “At The Mountains of Madness” Dey Rey 1982.
There is so much going on in this sentence. First, we know that the narrator and his uncle are not walking into anything with a superstitious bend. They intend on using facts to find the truth of the mystery of the Shunned House. However, they recognize that science has it’s limitations and the answer that they are looking for could potentially be beyond the walls of our known dimensional world.
Then we get down into the house and discover that the story has evolved again. Now we come to the realization that we are in a Lovecraftian cosmic horror. The narrator talks about the “fungus ridden earth” and how there is a green and yellow phosphorescent glow. Thus far in my blind reads I have found that this is the most consistently mentioned precursor to a cosmic horror. This green and yellow light shows that a cosmic creature is around. Immediately it becomes less about a ghost story, and into a completely different area.
Then we come upon the most horrible section (or should I say beautifully horrible?) of any Lovecraft story I have read thus far. The phosphorescent pile is actually part of a creature that is sucking the life force out of the humans it comes into contact with. This is the reasoning for the vampire and werewolf descriptions. The creature is taking on horrible visages of other creatures to both feed and to incapacitate its victims. It was suddenly at this point that I realized this could very well be Stephen King’s inspiration for “IT”. A cosmic alien who shows people what they fear and eats their life force.
This is without a doubt one of my favorite stories I’ve read thus far. I think only “In the Walls of Eryx” comes close to this one. It’s a bit longer than most of the stories, but it’s succinct, and it changes what you think it’ll be multiple times throughout the exposition. I think if I were to recommend any one story to someone looking to get into Lovecraft I would tell them to start on this story.
What do you think?
Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Outsider
What a beautiful, haunting story. This innocuous story, may very well be the most important of all the stories I have read thus far. It is the story of a person (probably a man) who has lived thier entire life in a castle. There are trees outside that cover all light, and he is too terrified to go far away. There is one tower in the castle that goes beyond the canopy of the trees, so one day he climbs the tower, and finds that he is in yet another building, yet this one is at ground level.
The ground level is the first shock of this story, but the more I dig into it, the narrator does not tell of thier childhood. It seems as though they just attained consciousness in the lower castle. Around them were bones and corpses of other humans, but this fact does not bother the narrator. In addition, the narrator understands (English?) language, but cannot speak it. The reason is given that there is no one to speak to.
Once the narrator gets above ground they wander for a while and see a church and another castle which looks much like the one he’s been living in underground. He smiles, because there is a party going on in the castle. He goes to join them, and when he gets there the entire party is terrified at his appearance (it is fairly obvious at the time, but it is solidified at the end of the story…the last shock), and they run away. The narrator thinks there is a presence in the room and looks around, eventually seeing a horrid creature. He tries to scream out in English, but all that comes out is “a ghastly ululation”, instead of any kind of human scream. The narrator also says this is the first and last thing he ever uttered. The narrator is looking in a mirror. He then leaves the castle and goes wandering through the night, calmed by the fact that he’s a monster, a creature of the night, so he will prowl like one.
First off. He has no childhood. He comes to memory as a being that can think and read. He also thinks that he’s a human, or that he once was. This means that he has undergone a transformation, and when he is woken, he is a creature. The fact that he’s interred underground could mean that his transformation was an affect of the Great Old Ones. maybe he was one of the previous narrators of one of the other stories, and he and his fellows were trapped in this tomb (they are the other corpses and skeletons), and for some reason he was transformed.
He has to go through great strides to get out of the underground castle, which could mean it was a castle build to honor the cthonians. There were efforts put into place to keep him in, inferring that he could be dangerous.
There seems to be a correlation between this story and “Arthur Jermyn” and “The Lurking Fear”. Arthur Jermyn has a man procreating with an ape like creature, and the Lurking Fear has an ape like creature (actually multiple ape like creatures), and in fact the narrator of the Outsider is described as ape like at one point. Could the White Ape from Arthur Jermyn actually be a woman who was transformed by the Great Old Ones? Are the Ape like creatures in all of Lovecraft, actually people who have been transformed and submit to their new proclivities? Because of how this story is framed, I think that’s the case, it is not creatures from another plane (at least these ape like creatures), or the moon, but in fact humans who have been influences by the madness of the Elder Gods, or the Great Old Ones and have been transformed into beasts.
What do you think?
Join me next week for a blind read through of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”. Because of the length of the story, i will be doing it one section at a time, so this story will consist of five blind reads, and possibly a sixth to sum the experience.
Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Quest of Iranon
Quite an interesting and lore building story. From the preface to the story it seems as though Lovecraft was very proud of the language of this story, but what goes far beyond the language is the depth of character and world building.
The story follows a young man named Iranon who is looking for the city of his youth. He tells everyone he meets that he is a Prince of Aira, and he is trying to find that city once more. He travels around and sees all of the world, and even though he is young, he experiences much, that is until the twist at the end.
I would portend that Iranon is actually the narrator of most of Lovecraft’s stories. He tells of Sarnath, he tells of ancient cities in Egypt (the nameless city), and other strange locals. He strangely doesn’t remember when these visits happened or much about them, just that he has been there.
Then at the end of the story we find out that he is much, much older than we initially thought (in fact much older than he himself thinks), and that there is a certain amount of madness in his personality.
Then we couple that with the fact that we very nearly never hear a narrators name, they just tell the story. The narrators of the stories we see all are unreliable, which partners with the madness of Iranon.
The world of Lovecraft just keeps getting better and better.
Join me next Tuesday for “The Crawling Chaos” blind read through.
Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; From Beyond
This one was fun. Obviously, it was very heavily influenced by Poe (Tell Tale Heart comes to mind), but wonderfully unique and unutterably Lovecraftian. This was, thus far int he blind read through’s, the least literary. What the story has going for it is it’s horror, because it is by far the most horrific and terror filled story I’ve read by him.
Our narrator tells us of a friend of his, Crawford Tillinghast, who has gone a little off the reservation. Tillinghast invites our narrator to his house one evening and relates the story of what he has been working on.
He has recognized that the pineal gland can be altered to view the world for what it really is. To see beyond what we perceive. He creates a device he calls a resonance wave machine and turns it on. The whine creates a wave that gives the pineal gland an altered sense and the narrator begins to see jellyfish like creatures that surround him. We find out that Tillinghast had servants and the narrator thought they were dismissed, but we find out here that in fact one of the servants turned the light on when the Resonance Wave was turned on and creatures from beyond dissolved them. That is the plot of Tillinghast. He invited our narrator because he thinks the narrator held him back from his potential.
We find out that one of the horrible creatures that has the ability to dissolve is right behind the narrator and he shoots the Resonance Wave. The machine explodes, the creatures disappear and Tillinghast dies of apoplexy.
Not a whole lot to read into in this one. The interesting thing is that Tillinghast somehow tied the machine to his brain, and that’s why he suffered the stroke, because his pineal gland burst, this leads me to believe that if the narrator had shot Tillinghast instead of the machine the same outcome would have come about.
There seems to be a theme in Lovecraft where the Old and Elder Gods (and all their children) don’t really care about humans. They are so much greater and bigger than we can imagine that it is only when some human summons them that the havoc is wreaked. Even when they do this damage however, it is not of their malevolence (with the exception of Nyarlahotep), they are just going about their own business, but their norm is so far beyond and bizarre to our human sensibilities, that it destroys us.
Join me again tomorrow for another blind read through of The Festival. If you want to read along I’m reading “The Doom that came to Sarnath” by Del Rey.
Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Other Gods
Sorry for the radio silence the past few months, but I’ve been head-down, grinding away at my Chapter Book Series “Elsie Jones Adventures”. To break up the monotony and stave off burn out, I’ve decided to take on a new project. Once a week (or so) I’m going to read through a H.P. Lovecraft story and give some insight and critical analysis. This is purely meant to be a fun project and I’d love for feedback or discussion surrounding it.
I’ve read very little Lovecraft, but I love the idea behind his stories and have even incorporated some into my own fiction. So, each story I will read and discuss will be brand new to me, which is why I’d love some discussion surrounding my thoughts. THERE WILL BE SPOILERS! Anyway, here it goes…
The Other Gods
This story seems to be told by an observer who goes to a village named Ulthar. This observer is obviously interested in the religions of this village, which is said to be based upon Earth’s Gods (which probably pertain to the Elder Gods, which were the benevolent Gods who have since left earth to return to the cosmos). Earth’s Gods had lived high upon a mountain peak called Hatheg-Kla, but as humans expanded thier knowledge of the world, Earth’s Gods recede to Kadath (which I believe is the Dreamworlds, but I’m sure we’ll get more information through future reading). This gives way to the Other Gods (Probably intending to mean the Ancient ones, or the malevolent gods) to take position on the peak of Hatheg-Kla.
The story holds two of the supposed staples of Lovecraftian stories. The lust for knowledge to understand the world and the fact that the cosmos are much larger and stranger than any human mind can possibly understand.
We follow the story of Barzai the Wise (Lovecraft’s choice of nomenclature calls back, purposefully, to ancient times. Babylonian and Arabian where all religions started. Whereas he himself was atheist, he somehow tapped into the idea that there was a reason that these locations were where religion started, but it seems that his idea was that the genesis of religion was based in Cosmic Deities, instead of the more terrestrial tied that we as a species associate with), and his apprentice Atal, as they climb to the peak of Hatheg-Kla. The climb becomes impossibly difficult, but the desire for knowledge is too strong in Barzai, and he reaches the strange peak to gaze upon the Earth Gods, only to be fooled and absconded by the Other Gods. To be tormented and become mad in the Presence of the Ancient Ones. Atal, could not make the journey, so he makes it back to Ulthar to tell the story, which is then related to the narrator, through the filter of the villagers.
It’s a great beginning to the mythos of Lovecraft I think, because it introduces all the themes we’d expect, and gives a glimpse into the burgeoning cannon that would become the Cthulhu Mythos.
There’s a ton in just a few pages, and it even introduces one of Lovecraft’s famous documents that many people for years (some still do) thought were real; the Pnakotic Mnuscripts. “…which were too ancient to be read.”
Sean McBride 
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