/ // _ ||__ __| / | _/__|| |/ /| | / || ___|
// | | | | | | / | |_)|| / | ' / | |/ || |_
/ | | | | | | // | __/| | | < | . || _|
// | | | | | | / ____ | | | __ | . | /| || |___
/_/ /_/ |_| |_|/_/ _|_| ___||_|_|_/ |_||_____|
_ __ ____ _______ _ _,
| |/ / / __ |__ __|| | | | / )
| ' / | | | | | | | |__ | | ( (
| < | | | | | | | '_ | | ) )
| . | |__| | | | | |_) || | //
|_|_ ____/ |_| |_.__/ |_| (_(
_,-"" ""-._
/_ / / _
(/ (/\-~-//)/ )
hjw { " " }
`97 { _ } /
,--.>_ .:Y:. _<,--.
`''' '--^--' `'''
Howard Philip Lovecraft: Journey to the Dark Side of the Moon
Lovecraft (1890-1937) was an only child and
grew up practically without a father (when the boy was three years old, his father
placed in a mental hospital).
Lovecraft never left his hometown for almost his entire life.
Providence, Rhode Island, except for two years, which
he spent (from 1924 to 1926year) in New York after marriage. He
was constantly under the tutelage of his neurasthenic and fearful
mother (in 1921 she died in a home for nervous patients). He
lived in a house inherited from his grandfather with two aunts
an eccentric eccentric, worked, as a rule, at night, and if
and during the day, then with carefully curtained windows; true, sometimes he
took multi-day walks through the virgin forests of New
England, which also delighted Jung and Freud in
during their joint trip to America in 1909.
In many of his stories, Lovecraft expresses
suggestion that the Earth was visited in prehistoric times
representatives of an alien race (grey, slimy spawn of stars),
which makes him the forerunner of the aliens from outer space theory,
the most famous representative of which is the Swiss
writer Erich von Däniken.
Modern literary criticism places him on a par with
the great masters of the American horror story Edgar Allan Poe and
Ambrose Bierce. Giorgio Manganelli calls him no
a visionary, but a chronicler of horror, a chronicler of the depths of the subconscious,
who took pleasure in inventing mythology, or
pseudo-mythologies, describing closed, total worlds.
This other world, hidden from ordinary consciousness, constituted
Lovecraft's inner world, it was the world of his dreams, which he
called the invisible side of the Moon. These worlds threatened and
attracted him at the same time. When, the critic writesManganelli,
Lovecraft, as an unabashed and reliable chronicler describes
those monstrous faces with which his existence is filled, he describes
in fact, that single, ugly monster, in
communication with whom he has considerable experience, namely himself
himself.
Lovecraft wrote to remain in the waking world, on
level of reality of this space and this time, did not sleep
days in order to consciously avoid sleep and thereby their
dreams; constant work on the word gave amazing results
literary result in addition to one’s own stories, in addition to
proofs of countless documents sent to him for review
manuscripts, he wrote more than a hundred thousand letters!
What Lovecraft Discovered with His Inner Eye
into the dark, sleeping, illogical, female half of our brain,
he made again and again a recurring theme of his great
cosmic horror stories: the formless chaos for which
the blind, silent, gloomy, summoned by the genius of Lovecraft, advocate
and the soulless demonic deities of the Cthulu myth.
In his stories, Lovecraft had already expressed in symbolic and
poetic form is currently being actively discussed in scientific
environment thesis about the suppression of the function of our right hemisphere
brain with the rationally-logically oriented left hemisphere.
All my stories, no matter how incoherent they may seem,
are based on an original premise or legend, according to
which thisthe world was inhabited by another race, which, practicing
black magic, lost ground and was pushed out of this world,
but still lives (in the right half of the brain?) and is ready for any
moment to occupy the land.
To organize the chaos within oneself, to give some kind of
structure to everything formless, threateningly sucking,
lying in wait, devouring, Lovecraft brilliantly projects
archetypal components of one's fear-driven self
heroes of their fantasy worlds.
His biographers, for example, the famous author of science fiction and
adventure stories of Sprague de Camp, they believe that the hero
of many Lovecraft stories, Randolph Carter is an idealized
the author's idea of himself is somewhat divorced from
life, a very learned, aristocratic bachelor from Boston,
who possesses ancient and forbidden knowledge. Difference between
Lovecraft and Carter in two very significant
circumstances: the hero has enough money to live
gentleman, and (an interesting detail that speaks of hidden
wishes of the author) at one time he served in the French Legion.
In another hero of Lovecraft's stories, a former artist,
descended to the level of corpse meat eater, Richard Upton
Pickman can easily see the writer's awe-inspiring
animal nature, man-beast.
King of Dreams Kuran, who is in the land of dreams forever
came up with a piece of Victorian England and in return for itwas forced in the real world to let his earthly body die
after taking a larger dose of drugs, another hypostasis
Lovecraft's desire, after his current mortal existence, to get
to the paradise of pure spirit.
When analyzing Lovecraft's short stories, it is striking that in
in the flow of his narratives the feminine element of the being is almost
is completely absent, and if it appears, it is only in the form
destroying, pushing heroes into the abyss of evil vampires and witches.
A more or less neutral description of the female essence
found only when mentioning the stone sphinx or other
mysterious creatures (half-human, half-animal), or when
the author talks about a cat sleeping at the hero’s feet.
To the extent that Lovecraft purifies his dreamscapes
myths from everything feminine, to the extent that it forces the feminine
principle, of course, only in negatively described situations in
eternal enemy, reflected in the image and soul of his heroes,
confront the transvestic god Niarlathotep.
Niarlathotep personifies formless, disordered chaos,
from which any terrible shapes and figures can be born.
This unaccountable horror, which Poe symbolizes in the form
Maelstrom or the waterfall that swallowed Gordon Pym, according to
Lovecraft nests in the abysses of the Universe, in the bottomless depths,
where in the plague cloud in the center of infinity sits
demonic Azathoth (like his last, absolutely not
structuredformer ego), he wanders in incomprehensibly dark
chambers on the other side of time and always lies in wait for its victim.
In the key story, the Mysterious Kadath and his dreams,
perhaps the most brilliant of the early stories, in which
Lovecraft's dark dream worlds and demonic images of myth
Cthulu happily coexists with bizarre fantasies
Thousand and One Nights of Dunzani, erected by Lovecraft into his
kind of space pornography, everything comes to confrontation
contradictions and their alchemical resolution.
Carter is a knight who went in search of the Grail, which
believes to find in the mysterious city of sunset, where they live
gods of the Earth, descends for a long time into the underground depths of another self
Pickman here too enters into an alliance with the hundred-headed Gul and the night
the monster Gaunt, who looks like a bat. With their help he
defeats the agents and supporters of Niarlathotep and, finally, without
his terrible retinue enters as free and mighty
the ruler of all dreamers in Kadath Castle, carved from
onyx.
Thus, Lovecraft forces his hero Carter
follow the path that Aleister Crowley outlined for everyone
seekers of truth. The path to heaven leads through hell! Or how
as Manganelli put it, hell is the main map by which
you read the scale of the Universe.
This supposed antagonist
Carter Niarlathotep, who is wearing the mask of a young pharaoh, with
with all the magical charm,coming from a dark god, or
fallen archangel, reconciles with a Faustian type seeker
Carter, sending him back to his own world of people, where
the gods have been living well for a long time, well disguised and
tired of the cold eternity of their marble palaces.
Having received such advice, Carter (and perhaps Lovecraft himself?)
had to withstand the most difficult test yet - he had to
will get rid of the temptation to rush into the abyss of madness, where a person
freed from all his duties and from himself and
where he completely surrenders to the devilish Azathoth, and stop
listen to the call of disgusting drums and empty,
to the monotonous howl of flutes!
Typed from the publication "Encyclopedia of Symbols", V. Bauer, I. Dyumots,
S. Golovin, Moscow Kron-Press 1995 specially for Dark Mood
Literature. Fazgir
(c) Russian Gothic Project
Cats of Ulthar
They say that in Ulthar, beyond the River Skye, a man dare not
kill a cat - I am inclined to believe this, especially when I see
like a cat washing itself near the fire. He is mysterious and close to those
strange creatures that people can no longer see. He is the soul
ancient Egypt, the one who keeps the tales of the forgotten cities of Mera and
Ophira. He is the kinsman of the jungle lords, heir to secrets
ancient and sinister Africa. Sphinx is his cousin, he speaks
her language, only he is older than his cousin and remembers what she even talks about
I didn’t know.
In Ulthar, before the ban on killing burgomasterscats, lived
an old poor tenant with his wife, who received
the pleasure of setting traps and killing neighbors' cats. Why
they did this, no one knows, maybe because of extreme
hatred for the voices of cats at night, or they were offended that in
At dusk, cats can sneak around their yard and garden. But what kind
whatever the reason, the old people took pleasure in catching and
killing cats who happened to be near their hut, and from the sounds,
echoing at night, the townspeople guessed that the method
killing is extremely unusual. Only the townspeople did not discuss it
with the old man and his wife, either because of the ingrained expression of their
withered faces, either because their tiny and gloomy
the house was hidden under spreading oak trees in the depths of a neglected
yard In truth, most cat owners hated these cats.
strange people, only he was even more afraid, and instead of
scold the cruel murderers, they only cared that the cherished
the animal did not wander to the remote shack under the dark trees.
When, due to some inevitable oversight, the cat
disappeared, and screams were heard in the darkness, those who had lost powerlessly
moaned, or consoled themselves, thanking fate that it was
it was not their child that was missing. After all, the people in Utara were simple and not
knew where the cats came from.
One day, a caravan of unusual wanderers from the south entered the narrow,
The cobblestone streets of Ulthar. The wanderers were dark and not
were like the otherstravelers who have passed through Ultara twice
per year. In the market for silver, they predicted fate and bought
bright beads from traders. No one knew where the wanderers came from,
but they saw that they were performing strange prayers, and painted
vans with strange figures with human bodies and heads
cats, hawks, rams and lions. And the leader of the caravan
wore a headdress with two horns and a curious disc between
horns
A little boy without father or mother walked with the caravan,
which was only a small black kitten. There was no plague
kind to the boy and left him to soften his grief, only
it's a small creature, but when you're so small you can find
great consolation in the living pranks of a black kitten. So
a boy whom the dark people called Menes, playing with the graceful
a kitten on the step of a painted van, laughed a lot
more often than crying.
On the third morning the wanderers stopped at Ulthar Menes
could not find the kitten, and since he was crying loudly in the market,
the townspeople told him about the old man and his wife, and the sounds that
were heard this night. And when he heard this, sobs
gave in to meditation and then to prayer. Menes extended his hands to
the sun and began to pray in a language that not one of the townspeople
was able to understand, although, in truth, the townspeople did not try very hard
understand - their attention was focused on the sky and strange
the shapes that the clouds took. Extremelyunusual, but only
the little boy said his prayer, the clouds seemed
took on the outline of a ghostly, obscure figure at the top
exotic creature, hybrid creature, crowned
disk adjacent to the horns. Nature is full of such illusions,
to capture our imagination.
At night, the wanderers left Ulthar and were never seen again. And
homeowners were puzzled when they noticed that everything
they can't find a single cat in the city. Disappeared from the outbreaks
regular cats, cats big and small, black, gray, tabby,
yellow and white. Old Cranon, the burgomaster, swore that
the dark people took the cats, taking revenge for the murder of the kitten Menes, and
cursed the caravan and the little boy. But Nis, skinny
notary, stated that the old tenant and his wife, more
probable persons for suspicion, because their hatred of cats
infamous. However, no one dared
express dissatisfaction with the sinister couple, even little Atal, son
hotel owner, who swore that he saw everyone at dusk
cats of Ulthar in the cursed courtyard under the trees, walking
slowly and gloomily in a circle around the hut, two in a row, as if
performing an unheard of ritual. The townspeople did not know how much
you can trust such a small boy, and although they were afraid,
that the sinister couple cursed the cats, they chose not to scold
old tenant until they meet him outside the dark and
repulsive yard.
So Ultharwent to bed in a futile rage, and when people
woke up at dawn - the cats were sitting by their fireplaces - big
and small, black, gray, striped, yellow and white. It seemed
the cats became fatter and more shiny. Townspeople, quite a few
They were surprised and discussed this event. Old Krag insisted that
the dark people took them because the cats did not return alive
from the house of an old man and his wife. But everyone agreed on one thing -
that the cats refused to eat the usual portion of meat or drink
a saucer of milk - extremely curious. And two shiny days,
the lazy cats of Ulthar did not touch food and only dozed by the fire
or in the sun.
A whole week passed before the townspeople noticed that
At dusk, no light comes on in the windows of the house under the trees. Then,
skinny Nis noted that no one had seen the old man and his wife since that
nights when the cats disappeared. Next week the burgomaster
overcame his fear and decided, out of duty, to pay a visit to the strange
silent abode, however, taking with him as
witnesses, blacksmith Shang and stone carver Tula. And when they
broke the fragile door, they found only two cleanly gnawed
a skeleton on the earthen floor and beetles swarming in the dark corners.
Later there was a lot of talk about this in the Ulthar City Council.
Zat, the investigator, interrogated Nis, a skinny notary, in detail, and
Kranon, Shang and Thul were overwhelmed with questions. Even small
Atal, the son of the hotel owner, wasthoroughly questioned and
received a lollipop as a reward. They talked about old things
the tenant, his wife, a caravan of dark travelers, oh
little Menes, his black kitten, and about the prayer of Menes, the sky
during that prayer, about what the cats did on the night when
the caravan departed and what was later found in the house under the dark
trees in a gloomy yard.
And in the end, the city council passed an amazing
the law that the merchants in Khateg talked about and discussed
travelers in Nir, namely, that in Ulthar no man
can't kill a cat.
Translation: Thrary
(c) Russian Gothic Project
Share your thoughts about the article