H.P. Lovecraft

Oh Hello! Is this a Lovecraft bookclub sort of thing? If so I'd love to participate but I couldn't find any rules or guidelines on the about page

The Strange High House in the Mist seems to me like a second, more mature stab at The Other Gods which we saw in a previous week. Indeed, The Other Gods gets a nod in this tale as Hatheg-Kla is namedropped and the return of the gods from Unknown Kadath is speculated upon. We're in for a real treat with this week's reading, where we see a pay off to these mentions of earthly gods and Unknown Kadath.

There is a particularly tall crag over the fictional Lovecraftian city of Kingsport, which bears a stout grey cottage at its peak. The citizens of Kingsport share rumours about this cottage, for they believe that inhabitant of the cottage engages in strange communications when the morning mists of the sea bathe the peak.

One day a philosopher comes to town. He is weary of the same old sights, and wishes to experience something novel. Thus he attempts the dangerous climb to the cottage. He eventually makes the climb, helped over the threshold by the inhabitant of the cottage, and sits in wait of the mists. The philosopher August Orley and the man in the cottage speak of ancient times, of Atlantis and the reign of the Titans. The man grows timid when talking of the first age of chaos, when only the other gods came to dance on Hatheg-Kla.

Immediately after this topic of conversation, there comes a knocking at the door, and Orley and the cottager sit still and in silence as a dark figure inspects around the cottage and then leaves. Shortly thereafter, there is another knocking at the door and the man in the cottage changes in his disposition. He immediately opens the door, revealing pagan gods of old. Up from the abyss has come the Greek god Poseidon and the Celtic god Nodens to bear the two men on a journey.

The next morning Orley returns to Kingsport, ostensibly now content with his boring life. The Terrible Old Man (the namesake of another tale not in the Dream Cycle) hints that Orley left a portion of his spirit on the crag, that part which seeks adventure. The people of Kingsport note that on the next night, the light of the cottage seems just a little brighter.

Before long, many of the youths of Kingsport make the dangerous journey to the peaks. They inevitably return to the town the next morning, changed in the same fashion as Orley. At night, the light in the cottage grows ever brighter, the sounds of revelry grow louder, and the mists bear the sounds of bells not solely attributable to the buoys. Learned folk worry that the increased jollity on the crag may tempt the gods from Unknown Kadath.

It's easy to see plenty of parallels between this tale and The Other Gods. A learned man, in search of new thrills, climbs a perilous peak into deep mists. There he meets with the images of gods, and forever loses a part of himself on top of the peak.

As I said at the start, I see this as a more mature go at the story of The Other Gods. Personally, I prefer the idea of the philosopher returning from the peak forever changed in some fundamental way. It's a more intriguing form of horror than forever disappearing into the mists.

I'm interested in the identity of the dark entity that tries the door before the gods of Earth. I think it's uncontroversial to guess that it's one of these "other gods" which seem to protect the gods of Earth from unwanted visitors. Having read the cycle before, I believe the most likely culprit is Nyarlathotep, who seems to take a more active role in the affairs of humans and earthly gods throughout the Dream Cycle.

The Outsider is a bit of a mind bender, though we should come to expect that in our dream stories. A common occurrence in Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle are the seamless transitions between dreaming and waking worlds, which leave the reader pondering on what part is dream and what part is reality.

Our narrator is seemingly the sole denizen of an ancient castle, surrounded by a dense tall forest which blocks most natural light. Indeed, our narrator takes to watching candles for comfort. He is undersocialised as he does not recall ever interacting with anyone, though he remarks that there must be servants who have cared for him. He can read and believes that he can speak, though he never had a teacher and has never had a reason to speak.

One day he commits to climbing the treacherous tallest tower in his castle. Though he may fall in the process, it would be worth it for him to have caught a single glimpse at the moon. Reaching the top of the tower, the narrator climbs through a trapdoor and finds that he is not at some precipitous height on the tower of a castle, but stood in a churchyard. Off in the distance, he sees an uncannily familiar castle.

In the castle he sees people reveling. He wishes to join them and so climbs through a window. The guests flee in panic and the narrator looks around for the monster from which they escape. Stood within a frame is some terrible unspeakable monstrosity. The narrator nearly swoons and reaches out, accidentally touching the monster. He then flees in fear and finds the way back to the comfort of his “castle” is forever closed. He finds a new life roaming with the ghouls of this land, forever haunted by the memory of touching the cold glass of a mirror when he reached out to the monster.

Of course this story is up for interpretation as to what is dream or if in fact all of it is a dream. Having read the Dream Cycle before, I believe that the monster may in fact be a ghoul who once lived in this castle. We will see in this week’s story that ghouls have some way of accessing the dreamworld, which for some reason encompasses the land of the dead. My interpretation of the tale is that the ghoul retreated into the dreamlands, where he was comforted by a dream simulacrum of the castle in which he lived before his ghoulification.

The Silver Key is our introduction to Randolph Carter, a Rhode Island based amateur novelist and expert dreamer (do we need any more evidence that this is a Lovecraft self-insert?).

Carter is an avid dreamer who finds that, as he reaches his "middle age" (I feel very called out that 30 is middle-aged), he finds it harder and eventually impossible to dream. He finds that he has fallen under the influence of the values of the waking world, who undervalue dreams and overvalue the "real world".

Looking to make the most out of his loss of dreams, Carter invests himself in the philosophies of the modern time, from empiricism employed in the scientific method, to spiritualism and occultism. While he finds scientists to simply be obsessed with a fantasy of their own - speculating on the void between atoms and the dimensions of outer space - he is even less impressed by the spiritualists and occultists whose fantasies he disregards as not even being based upon fact and evidence.

He reads ancient manuscripts and seeks adventure with other thrill-seekers. Here we see mention to another short story, The Statement of Randolph Carter. Eventually he recalls a family heirloom, mentioned by his grandfather. In the attic of the Carter family manor, secreted away in some fearsomely carved dark wooden box, is an ornate silver key, featuring arabesques which our narrator speculates may contain answers to deeper secrets. In a confusing flash of memory, Carter finds himself falling back through time until he finds himself in his ten year old body. He is being called in for it is past his curfew. Reaching for his spyglass to read the nearby clocktower, he finds the silver key in his pocket.

The silver key is an artifact that has belonged to the Carters for centuries. It was last used over 2 centuries ago by a Carter sorcerer who was a master of dream.

The tale ends with a shift in narrative, revealing that another person in the fiction who is dictating to the reader the story of Randolph Carter. This person eagerly awaits Randolph using the key and their eventual meeting.

This is some of my favourite Lovecraft fiction. Time travel is seen in some of his other stories, such as being employed by the Yithians. I love the idea that the Dreamlands, via use of the silver key, can hold the secret to passing between periods in time in the waking world. It hints at an even greater influence and connectivity between the Dreamlands and the Waking World. Are the two spaces in fact merely subspaces of some larger superspace? Through my mathematical eye I view it as some smooth manifold representing all of existence. Within this manifold we have two open subsets, which in fact intersect at many points. These intersections could be physical intersections allowing for travel, or they could be intersections in some time-like dimension that somehow link two times together.