A cycle of sonnets detailing weird dreams of a strange alien world of the Cthulhu Mythos, written by Duane W. Rimel, with guidance from both H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.
Showing posts with label cthulhu mythos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cthulhu mythos. Show all posts
Sunday, 17 August 2025
FROM THE GREAT LIBRARY OF DREAMS 147 - Dreams of Yith by Duane W. Rimel
Sunday, 31 July 2022
HYPNOGORIA SUMMER SPECIAL 05 - The Legend of the Berkeley Toad
In this show we go hunting for a most sinister cryptid, and uncover monstrous secrets in the writings of Ramsey Campbell, the cosmic horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos, and a dark British legend lurking in an ancient castle!
You can find all the podcasts in my series on toads and witchcraft here
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Monday, 7 October 2019
AZATHOTH by HP Lovecraft
Very honoured to have contributed vocals to this brilliant little Lovecraftian film from The Lone Animator - bringing the sonnet Azathoth from HP Lovecraft's Fungi From Yuggoth to glorious eldritch life!
Sunday, 18 August 2019
HYPNOGORIA 124 - The Gods of the Mound
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Sunday, 4 August 2019
HYPNOGORIA 123 - The Mound and the Mythos
In this episode we continue our exploration of The Mound by HP Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop. Firstly we uncover the history and evolution of what is now called the Cthulhu Mythos - how it emerged in Lovecraft's writings and how it was developed by other authors. And then we explore the links The Mound has to other works in his canon, investigating the strange lost lands mentioned, the secret history of the earth, and cataloguing the eldritch races encountered in the tale.
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Sunday, 7 October 2018
HYPNOGORIA 99 - Innsmouth Reflections
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Sunday, 25 September 2016
FROM THE GREAT LIBRARY OF DREAMS 23 - Ubbo Sathla
In this broadcast from the Great Library of Dreams, we are once again delving into the works of Mr Clark Ashton Smith, for a strange tale of the Cthulhu Mythos and ancient Hyperborea...
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Sunday, 21 August 2016
FROM THE GREAT LIBRARY OF DREAMS 22 - The Hounds of Tindalos
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Friday, 15 May 2015
FOLKLORE ON FRIDAY - The Berkeley Toad
Byatis by Luis Nessi
One of the more entertaining aspects of writing this little series of articles on folklore is the fact that my researches often throw up a huge number of surprises. Often these are the unexpected connections between different things, surprisingly ancient origins for common customs, or simply discovering that the received wisdom on a particular topic is complete hogwash. But every now and then, you unearth something that will give you a little chill...
Over the last week or so, I've been researching the folklore that has grown up around toads; and a very fascinating area of study it is too, as you will discover in the coming weeks. Now then, I was just doing a bit of digging, hoping to discover more about a secretive group of yesteryear called the Toadmen, when I chance upon an article discussing a creature that I was fairly sure was the invention of a favourite author of mine. Now as regular readers of my Great Ghosts of the Shelves articles will know, I have long been a devotee of the fiction of Mr Ramsey Campbell. So then it was something of a strange surprise to find an article by a cryptozoologist on a being that I had always assumed to be one of his creations.
Mr Campbell began his writing career at an early age, having his first weird short stories published while still a teenager. And in these early years he had fallen under the spell of HP Lovecraft, as many of us do at that age, and hence his first tales were stories in a Lovecraftian vein, expanding the canon of the Cthulhu Mythos. Following his hero's lead, Campbell constructed a milieu of fictional towns, located in the Severn Valley, where his own pantheon of evil Elder Gods and beings from Outside brought the gifts of madness and death to all those disturbing their ancient slumbers. One such early tale was entitled The Box in the Priory, which under the mentoring of Lovecraft's friend and publisher August Derleth, would become The Room in the Castle. And this tale would appear in Campbell's first book, published in 1964 by Arkham House, The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants (and can also be found in the Campbell anthologies Cold Print 1985, Dark Feasts 1987, and Alone With the Horrors 1993) which collected together these Lovecraftian pastiches from our young author.
Now Cthulhu Mythos tales are very much exercises in myth making with writers inventing monsters, alien races and demon gods that haunt accursed places and are referenced in blasphemous grimoires and ancient legends. The approach was pioneered by Lovecraft, who being rather disappointed by conventional occult lore and feeling the likes of ghosts and vampires were a bit too familiar to be frightening, decided to create his own horrors and constructed their own histories and myths to give them life. Other authors - at first friends of Lovecraft such as August Derleth, Robert E Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert Bloch, but later new generations of writers - joined in the game, dropping names and references picked up from each others stories, weaving together a new dark mythos.
Therefore The Room in the Castle, like many Cthulhu Mythos tales, takes an obscure name found in an earlier story and spins a new yarn with it. In this case, Campbell had picked up on a reference in a Robert Bloch story entitled The Shambler from the Stars (first published in Weird Tales, September 1935). In this tale Bloch (the man who would later write classics such as Psycho) has his narrator say "I recall allusions to such gods of divination as Father Yig, dark Han, and serpent-bearded Byatis". And as no one else had written anything about the last in that roll call of ancient evil, Campbell decided to pen a story about the snake-fringed Byatis. Hence in the tale we learn the monster god was accidentally freed from its in a primordial tomb by the Romans in ancient Britain, and had haunted the Severn Valley for centuries ever since. Byatis's manifestations was the dark truth behind a local legend of a monster known as the Berkeley Toad, and the alien horror would later be captured by a wicked nobleman who practiced the dark arts, who trapped the horror in a dungeon in the ruins of a crumbling Norman castle. It is a fun little story, and given that it has been reprinted in two best of collections, it's fair to say it's one of the better Lovecraftian pastiches the young Campbell wrote. And indeed it is a favourite of mine too, and not just because its hero is a researcher into folklore!
So then, imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon a site relating the tales of the Berkeley Toad as actual fact. At first, I simply assumed that this was merely the product of the kind of sloppy journalism for which the interwebs are notorious. And the paucity of the results yielded by an initial causal Googling seemed to confirm this, with the Berkeley Toad only appearing on pages relating to Byatis, the Cthulhu Mythos and of course Mr Ramsey Campbell. However one should never give up after the first attempt, and with some more extensive and careful searching, I discovered to my surprise that actually the reverse was true - that what I had assumed to be a fictional entity was in fact real. Or rather, a real life legend I should say...
Now it is fair to say that this is a rather obscure local tale, and I had trouble in finding sources for some of the claims in the original article, and its recounting of Romans discovering a curious tomb sound suspiciously like a garbled version of Campbell's backstory for Byatis. However I have established the following facts...
Berkeley is a small market town in Gloucestershire, and indeed just like in Campbell's story there is a Norman castle there. However rather than being the isolated ruin of the tale, Berkeley Castle is still in relatively good order and is the home of the Berkeley family - indeed it is the one of oldest continuously inhabited castles in England. However in the Morning Room of the castle there is a curious carving which depicts a monstrous toad-like thing squatting upon two human heads. More curious still, a very similar carving of a toad and two heads is found carved on a corbel in a local church, St. Marys. And significantly this carving adorns the chapel of the Berkeley family tombs.
However local legend has a different interpretation - allegedly the carvings show not two women but two children, a pair of unfortunates who were gobbled up by the monstrous toad! Now quite where the horrible creature came from I have been unable to ascertain, but it was claimed that the skin of the beast was exhibited in Berkeley Castle. In his 1837 tome A History of British Quadrupeds including the Cetacea zoologist Thomas Bell quotes an associate, a Mr Broderip who relates the tale in a letter -
Here we also have the origin of the legendary beast - an old well deep in the castle dungeons. However it is interesting to note that as the loyal servant he undoubtedly was Symth somewhat glosses over the fact that the old tales claim that prisoners were fed to the monstrous toad. Nor does he mention the legend that two of the family's children were once upon a time fed to the beast. So far I have not been able to locate any Marquis of Berkeley, or any other worthy of that family for that matter, who had a reputation for dabbling in the black arts as did Sir Gilbert Morley in The Room in the Castle.
Was the beast ever real? Well toads in captivity can live up to fifty years and do indeed grow larger with age. Hence it is possible that a very long lived specimen might have exceeded the usual six inches or so. And so, taking the lower end of the range of sizes mentioned by Symth it is perhaps just feasible that there was such a creature - although a toad around a foot long would hardly be able to chow down on prisoners. Alternatively it may have been a specimen of some larger foreign species acquired as an unusual pet - the largest on record was a cane toad that measured 15 inches, which is certainly in the same ballpark as the smaller estimates of the Berkeley Toad.
But what of the skin that hung in the castle? Well sadly, it was long ago identified as something rather different. In his 1836 book Berkeley Castle: An Historical Romance, Volume 1, Grantley Fitzhardinge Berkeley writes -
But perhaps I had read of these tales before, and merely forgotten... For after all, did not Ludwig Von Prinn write in the horrible De Vermis Mysteriis that Byatis had the power to cloud the minds of men?
Now Cthulhu Mythos tales are very much exercises in myth making with writers inventing monsters, alien races and demon gods that haunt accursed places and are referenced in blasphemous grimoires and ancient legends. The approach was pioneered by Lovecraft, who being rather disappointed by conventional occult lore and feeling the likes of ghosts and vampires were a bit too familiar to be frightening, decided to create his own horrors and constructed their own histories and myths to give them life. Other authors - at first friends of Lovecraft such as August Derleth, Robert E Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert Bloch, but later new generations of writers - joined in the game, dropping names and references picked up from each others stories, weaving together a new dark mythos.
Therefore The Room in the Castle, like many Cthulhu Mythos tales, takes an obscure name found in an earlier story and spins a new yarn with it. In this case, Campbell had picked up on a reference in a Robert Bloch story entitled The Shambler from the Stars (first published in Weird Tales, September 1935). In this tale Bloch (the man who would later write classics such as Psycho) has his narrator say "I recall allusions to such gods of divination as Father Yig, dark Han, and serpent-bearded Byatis". And as no one else had written anything about the last in that roll call of ancient evil, Campbell decided to pen a story about the snake-fringed Byatis. Hence in the tale we learn the monster god was accidentally freed from its in a primordial tomb by the Romans in ancient Britain, and had haunted the Severn Valley for centuries ever since. Byatis's manifestations was the dark truth behind a local legend of a monster known as the Berkeley Toad, and the alien horror would later be captured by a wicked nobleman who practiced the dark arts, who trapped the horror in a dungeon in the ruins of a crumbling Norman castle. It is a fun little story, and given that it has been reprinted in two best of collections, it's fair to say it's one of the better Lovecraftian pastiches the young Campbell wrote. And indeed it is a favourite of mine too, and not just because its hero is a researcher into folklore!
So then, imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon a site relating the tales of the Berkeley Toad as actual fact. At first, I simply assumed that this was merely the product of the kind of sloppy journalism for which the interwebs are notorious. And the paucity of the results yielded by an initial causal Googling seemed to confirm this, with the Berkeley Toad only appearing on pages relating to Byatis, the Cthulhu Mythos and of course Mr Ramsey Campbell. However one should never give up after the first attempt, and with some more extensive and careful searching, I discovered to my surprise that actually the reverse was true - that what I had assumed to be a fictional entity was in fact real. Or rather, a real life legend I should say...
Now it is fair to say that this is a rather obscure local tale, and I had trouble in finding sources for some of the claims in the original article, and its recounting of Romans discovering a curious tomb sound suspiciously like a garbled version of Campbell's backstory for Byatis. However I have established the following facts...
Berkeley is a small market town in Gloucestershire, and indeed just like in Campbell's story there is a Norman castle there. However rather than being the isolated ruin of the tale, Berkeley Castle is still in relatively good order and is the home of the Berkeley family - indeed it is the one of oldest continuously inhabited castles in England. However in the Morning Room of the castle there is a curious carving which depicts a monstrous toad-like thing squatting upon two human heads. More curious still, a very similar carving of a toad and two heads is found carved on a corbel in a local church, St. Marys. And significantly this carving adorns the chapel of the Berkeley family tombs.
Toad carving in the Morning Room of Berkeley Castle
According to the conventional wisdom, these carving are supposedly what is often called a sermon in stone. The medieval world had a complex system of symbolism, and hence many odd features in old churches that feature seemingly un-Christian things are actually visual lessons using this language of imagery. In the medieval mind toads were associated with poison (for they secrete toxins as a defence) and romantic jealousy (due to their breeding habits where several males will attempt to mount the same female), therefore these two Berkeley carvings are traditionally interpreted as warnings on the sins of gossip and envy, with the toad figure poisoning the minds of two women as they speak.
However local legend has a different interpretation - allegedly the carvings show not two women but two children, a pair of unfortunates who were gobbled up by the monstrous toad! Now quite where the horrible creature came from I have been unable to ascertain, but it was claimed that the skin of the beast was exhibited in Berkeley Castle. In his 1837 tome A History of British Quadrupeds including the Cetacea zoologist Thomas Bell quotes an associate, a Mr Broderip who relates the tale in a letter -
The legend ran, that this was the great toad which inhabited the dungeons of the castle, and victimised the captives. Two of his own children were said to have been sacrificed to this monster by a Marquis of Berkeley of the olden time. I remember hearing the tale from our old nurse, and afterwards venturing to dispute the truth of the story. I can see her now, with her close white cap and shaking head, reproving me for my want of faith, and settling the question, as she thought, by solemnly announcing that the skin of the toad was still seen at the castle.Delving further into the matter, I discovered that in the early 1600s, a faithful servant, John Smyth of Nibley, the steward of the castle, had compiled a history of both the Berkeley family and their home. And in these voluminous writings, which historians have named The Berkeley Mss., Symth writes -
Out of which dungeon in the likenes of a deepe broad well goinge steepely down in the midst of the Dungeon Chamber in the said Keepe, was (as tradition tells,) drawne forth a Toad, in the time of Kinge Henry the seventh, of an incredible bignes, which, in the deepe dry dust in the bottom thereof, had doubtlesse lived there divers hundreds of yeares; whose portraiture in just demension, as it was then to me affirmed by divers aged persons, I sawe, about 48 years agone, drawne in colours upon the doore of the Great Hall and of the utter side of the stone porch leadinge into that hall; since, by pargettors or pointers of that wall washed out or outworne with time; which in bredth was more then a foot, neere 16 inches, and in length more. Of which monstrous and outgrowne beast the inhabitants of this towne, and in the neighbour villages round about, fable many strange and incredible wonders; makinge the greatnes of this toad more than would fill a peck, yea, I have heard some, who looked to have beleife, say from the report of their Fathers and Grandfathers that it would have filled a bushell or strike, and to have beene many yeares fed with flesh and garbage from the butchers; but this is all the trueth I knowe or dare believe.
Now for those of you unfamiliar with archaic measurements, the terms mentioned were weights for dry goods - a peck was two gallons, a bushel was eight gallons (four pecks), and a strike was sixteen gallons (or two bushels). So then we have a beast that was several feet in size - far from Godzilla proportions of course, but all the same a toad, an animal usually only a few inches long, that was the size of a large sack of grain would indeed be a "strange and incredible wonder". And more to the point, big enough to chomp on people...
Corbel in St. Marys
Was the beast ever real? Well toads in captivity can live up to fifty years and do indeed grow larger with age. Hence it is possible that a very long lived specimen might have exceeded the usual six inches or so. And so, taking the lower end of the range of sizes mentioned by Symth it is perhaps just feasible that there was such a creature - although a toad around a foot long would hardly be able to chow down on prisoners. Alternatively it may have been a specimen of some larger foreign species acquired as an unusual pet - the largest on record was a cane toad that measured 15 inches, which is certainly in the same ballpark as the smaller estimates of the Berkeley Toad.
But what of the skin that hung in the castle? Well sadly, it was long ago identified as something rather different. In his 1836 book Berkeley Castle: An Historical Romance, Volume 1, Grantley Fitzhardinge Berkeley writes -
One thing, which I remember well as a child has been removed; on yonder shelf was the stuffed skin of a huge seal, often pointed out to me by my nurse, as the great toad of old, which my ancestry used to keep in the donjon to feed upon their captives; and to which, as an ancient legend run, (doubtless derived from as authentic a source) the Marquis of Berkeley was supposed to have abandoned his two children.
Yes, the hide of the Berkeley Toad was nothing more than a badly stuffed seal it would appear. Whether this was acquired to embroider the legend of the carvings or maybe was their inspiration we cannot say. However it seems likely that some noble of the Berkeley family at some time either had the stuffed seal ,or perhaps a live toad of amazing proportions, as a curiosity. For in the pre-modern age, it was not uncommon for aristocrats to furnish their homes with such wonders and curiosities - such things were the blockbuster movies of their day. For like having ornate gardens and exhibiting works of art, owning an unusual animal would make one very fashionable, and draw many eminent visitors and guests to one's home. And the tales of feeding the creature on human flesh would only spice up the attraction of the curiosity.
However one mystery remains - and that is why as a long time devotee of the folklore of the British Isles, and indeed having a love of mythical monsters, I had not come across legends of the Berkeley Toad before.
Byatis, the serpent-bearded, the god of forgetfulness, came with the Great Old Ones from the stars, called by obeisances made to his image, which was brought by the Deep Ones to Earth. He may be called by the touching of his image by a living being. His gaze brings darkness on the mind; and it is said that those who look upon his eye will be forced to walk to his clutches. He feasts upon those who stray to him, and from those upon whom he feasts he draws a part of their vitality.But surely that cannot be. Indeed, one hopes not, for might not dwelling upon the legend constitute a modern version of making obeisances to its image. No, of course not, that is mere folly born of poring over too many old and dusty tomes. But wait... What is that slithering I hear at the window...
Tuesday, 14 June 2011
'Not altogether crows, nor moles, nor buzzards, nor ants, nor decomposed human beings, but something I cannot and must not recall...'
A curious print discovered in a deserted house...
I believe it is 19th century french work by one Louis Bolanger entitled 'Phantoms'. However those familiar with the Necronomicion or Malleus Monstrorum may suspect that rather than depicting a common or garden spectre, what we have here is in fact a rare depiction of a Byakhee...
Sunday, 23 January 2011
HYPNOBOBS 17 - The Black Stone by Robert E Howard
To celebrate what would have been his 105th birthday on January 22nd, Mr Jim Moon delves into the works of Robert E Howard for a reading of his classic Cthulhu Mythos tale The Black Stone...
DIRECT DOWNLOAD - HYPNOBOBS 17 - The Black Stone by Robert E Howard
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Sunday, 3 October 2010
A TOUR OF YUGGOTH
The question of whether there is actually any form of continuity in HP Lovecraft’s sonnet cycle, Fungi From Yuggoth is a question that has perplexed both scholars and readers for many years. After the opening three sonnets which form a linked narrative, the cycle plunges from location to location, through different worlds and times, and crosses a plethora of genres. And as we saw in the first part of this article, while some have argued that there a thematic thread linking the poems, noted Lovecraft expert ST Joshi firmly believes there is not -
“thematic resonances within the cycle do not establish ‘continuity’ of plot or structure any more than the analogous resonances within Lovecraft’s stories make them one large novel”
If we were intended to interpret Fungi From Yuggoth as a poetic anthology, then this statement is perfectly logical. However Lovecraft had not previously assembled any of his poetry in a grab-bag manner; three poems written in 1918 ‘Oceanus’, ‘Clouds’ and ‘Mother Earth’ were entitled A Cycle of Verse. Similarly the only other collection of verse in his poetic career was Poemata Minora Vol II written in 1902, and was a collection on five poems about Roman times which, as the dedication makes clear, are intended to be read as a series. Therefore there is no reason to assume that Lovecraft was merely anthologising disparate verses with Fungi FromYuggoth; this approach is simply too slapdash for the Old Gentleman. If he united these thirty sonnets under a single banner then he most likely had some design for this arrangement.
And hence Mr Joshi’s assertion is somewhat flawed, for surely the repetition and consistent exploration of the same themes within a single work does constitute a continuity of sorts.
But the question remains – what form does this possible continuity take? A major stumbling block and what perplexes many readers and critics is the way the cycle shifts through different genres; sonnets like XII – The Howler recalls Lovecraft’s New England horror tales such as The Picture in the House and In The Vault, others like XVIII – The Gardens of Yin feel like his Dreamlands tales such as Celephais and The White Ship, while yet others clearly belong to the Cthulhu Mythos.
However, perhaps approaching the cycle in terms of the genres Lovecraft wrote in is the problem. Generally readers generally know Lovecraft through his stories first and then discover his other literary works such as his poetry and his letters, and therefore we come to Fungi From Yuggoth with categories based upon his fiction in mind.
Typically a new reader coming to the Lovecraft canon will be reading his Cthulhu Mythos tales first, and given the tantalising nature of this created mythology the novice will then be scouring all his works for further references and allusions. And as one progresses though his body of work or delves into the work of Lovecraft criticism, you soon begin to pick up the idea that different tales fit into different schools of stories. And once you are well versed in all things HPL, then one can play the time honoured game of ‘Mythos or not’ as there is much debate over which stories count as Cthulhuvian tales. For example, should you ever wanted to stir up a nest of Lovecraft scholars simply ask whether The Colour Out Of Space belongs to the Mythos.
However it should be noted that Lovecraft himself did not acknowledge any such distinctions. Although in hindsight we may discern evolving trends in his fiction career, for example the series of Dreamlands stories he wrote in the early ‘20s after he discovered the works of Lord Dunsany, reading his fiction chronologically one can track such influences come and go and see his own approach developing. Lovecraft himself was merely trying with each successive work to create the perfect weird tale, and the creation of what we now refer to as the Cthulhu Mythos was just one of the literary devices he employed to evoke the feelings of fear and cosmic awe he was striving for.
Therefore when we read Fungi From Yuggoth and begin slotting the sonnets into different categories, we are in fact creating artificial divisions; build critical walls that obscure whatever continuity may be there in the complete cycle. And if we dispense with these literary classifications and concentrate on the content, tone and atmosphere of the verses, Fungi From Yuggoth begins to appear far more coherent.
To begin, if we survey the placement of the different varieties of verse, although the content and style may seem to be randomly jumping around, there is a distinct flow. It is telling that the more philosophical vignettes cluster around the close of the cycle, seeming to serve as conclusions to the motifs explored. Similarly other themes are found nestling close to each other.
However after taking a fresh look at the cycle, I believe the arrangement goes further than Lovecraft merely orchestrating recurring themes. Examining closely each verse, they appear to pick up on a specific element from their immediate predecessor. While some sonnets echo their predecessors’ dominant concepts or continue a theme, but other transitions are almost cinematic with verses sharing a similar location or geography.
Now if you have not read the cycle yet – now would be the time to do so as I’m going to get up close and personal with the text in order to illustrate my findings. Find it here.
Before we begin, I should point out that the following interpretation is just a tentative theory and make no claims that the continuity I have found is the correct reading Lovecraft intended. And indeed there aren’t perfect links between all the sonnets, however I think the following detailed examination of the verses does show that Fungi From Yuggoth is far from being as utterly random as some believe it is. As stated my first article, I do subscribe to the notion that after the introductory verses, the cycle represents a series of visions and/or occult journeys to other times, places and dimensions.
So then after the first three verses, whose links are explicit, Sonnet IV can be read as continuing the narrative. Sonnet III – The Key refers to visions the narrator has had of “sunset spires and twilight woods that brood/beyond this earth’s precisions”, while Sonnet IV – Recognition is set in a “hollow of old oaks” on the grey world of Yuggoth. Now I don’t think it is too much of stretch to suggest that this first vision from the book is of the afore mentioned “twilight woods”, which The Key implies have been haunting the narrator for years. Also it is worth noting at this point that Sonnet XXXIV – Recapture could well be a sequel to Recognition – featuring as it does a similar strange wilderness and ancient ruins – certainly it would explain the closing lines of Recapture.
Sonnet V – Homecoming has the narrator, having been horrified by the trip to Yuggoth, ‘the daemon’ – a figure that arguably reappears later – whisks him away to another time and place. And the next scene is viewing the panorama of a fantastic city – the “sunset spires” alluded to in The Key. Again we may infer from The Key that Sonnets III and IV are the book and its daemon revealing to the narrator the origin of these twin visions that have been haunting him.
The losing lines of IV come from the daemon “ ‘here was your home’ he mocked ‘when you had sight’ ”. And fittingly the next three entries in the cycle are themed around vision and perplexing sights - VI – The Lamp closes with “vast shapes” seen in “a mad flash”, and these maddening glimpses are echoed by the insane sight the mailman experiences in IV – Zaman’s Hill. Finally this ‘sight’ trilogy concludes with VIII – The Port where the verse’s narrator is troubled by the sight of darkness swallowing the streets of Innsmouth.
And from the sinister gloom of Lovecraft’s infamous seaport, IX – The Courtyard also takes place in an “ancient, leprous” city by the sea, with the narrator wandering through the dark lanes and alleys. If we visualise the poems, you can easily see how from the hill top view of Innsmouth the camera could zoom in or dissolve to the location of The Courtyard. It concludes with him being surrounded by a strange ritual throng. Also is it possible that ‘the man’ the narrator is going to meet is in fact the earlier mentioned daemon?
X – The Pigeon-Flyers again takes place in a strange dark city, opening with the lines ‘They took me slumming’, and again, I don’t think we are stretching a narrative point to interpret this as the narrator being swept away to darker places by “the mad revels of the dragging dead” of the previous verse.
Now there is more of a leap of faith required to connect the next verse. The horrors of The Pigeon-Flyers concludes upon certain things being unearthed from alien crypts, whereas XI – The Well has New England farmers delving deep into the bowels of the earth and discovering madness and death. Yes, this link may be subtle to the point of tenuousness but there is a faint accord here. Incidentally the Thog mentioned in this verse is, one of the twin moons of Yuggoth according Lovecraft.
However the next poem fits more comfortably; XII – The Howler is another micro weird tale set
Moving on, The Howler takes places at sunset, and the next verse XIII – Hesperia follows this with a truly cosmic vision inspired by “the winter sunset, flaming beyond spires/and chimneys”. Again this another visual dissolve with one sunset bleeding into another. And Lovecraft continues with another imagery based link, for after sunset comes twilight and according to Sonnet XIV the star winds blow, breathing strange dreams across the land.
So then XV Antarktos is a verse concerning oneiric visions; it begins “Deep in my dream”. Incidentally Mythos fans might like to know that the vast ice entombed horror is one of the Great Old Ones, Gol-goroth. This particular demon was first created by Robert E Howard and in The Fishers From Outside Lin Carter links Howard’s stories with this sonnet, claiming that Gol-goroth is entombed in the Antarctic beneath
However from horrors buried beneath centuries of glaciers, XVI – The Window brings us more benign visions. While the two poems may seem unconnected, I suspect what Lovecraft is doing here is sticking with the motifs of hidden secrets and revealing dreams but is presenting a contrast – after all not all dreams are nightmares. Antarktos deals with dream visions that blast the sanity, whereas the curious aperture in The Window reveals wonders; it is a portal to “all the wild worlds of which my dreams had told”.
Again perhaps stretching a point but again if we imagine the cycle in visual terms, as a movie if you will, the exotic landscape of Sonnet XVII – A Memory conceivably is one of the “wild worlds” we reach by travelling through the window. On more certain ground however is XVIII – The Gardens of Yin which “old dreams had flung open the gate to that stone lantern maze” and concludes this quartet of dream related verse.
However overlapping into the next sonnet, XIX – The Bells, is the theme of questing for revelations (as seen in XVII and XVIII) – the narrator in this verse scours his “dreams and memories for a clue” to the persistent phantom peals. However The Bells also begins a quartet that explore the Cthulhu Mythos – firstly we have Innsmouth and once again this benighted town leads to alien locations in the nether world, hinting of the undersea horrors Lovecraft would later detail in The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
Next we have XX – Night-Gaunts whose narrator is swept away by the titular beings to encounter other aquatic horrors. The location of the Peaks of Thok (sometimes spelled ‘Throk’) is somewhat obscure; in his early fantasy novel The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath Lovecraft locates these titanic mountains in the Underworld of his Dreamlands, however other sources and writers have identified Thok as one of the moons of Yuggoth.
Incidentally this particular verse was inspired by HPL’s childhood nightmares and previously the Night-Gaunts had appeared in Dream-Quest, one of his tales centring on his recurring hero Randolph Carter who in this work sets out to find a sunset city seen in his dreams…
…And the main adversary in that curious tome is the star of Sonnet XXI – Nyarlathotep. Also like its predecessor this verse is based on a nightmare Lovecraft had, which incidentally Lovecraft had previously attempted to turn this dream into a short story back in 1920. This vision of the apocalypse closes with the line “the idiot Chaos blew earth’s dust away” and the next verse details this entity, the daemon sultan Azathoth, who incidentally also appeared in Dream–Quest and the afore mentioned peaks of Thok are colloquially named ‘Azathoth’s Teeth’. As Mythos scholars will know, Nyarlathotep serves the Other Gods, of whom Azathoth is chief, and hence “the daemon” mentioned in XXII is indubitably the same entity, and I’d argue, is the same daemon we met earlier in V- Homecoming
The sonnet Azathoth states this being, bubbling in the centre of all infinity creates all worlds and dimensions in the cosmos, and appropriately the next two poems concern strange worlds in hidden dimensions. XXIII – Mirage concerns a lost realm “floating dimly on Time’s stream” and XXIV – The Canal features an evil place “somewhere, in dream”. Now this isn’t as much as a stretch as it first seems as in Lovecraft’s fiction dreams are often visits to other dimensions. With its tolling bells and uncertain placement in time and space, Mirage echoes both sonnets XIX and XVII. The world of The Canal appears to be a dark counter part of the realm detailed in XIII, but also recalls the grim dead cities of IX and X.
And in a similar shift between IX and X, the dark deserted streets of The Canal dissolve into “the mad lanes” “south of the river” where the great black spire of St Toad’s lurks in Sonnet XXV. As Lovecraft scholar Robert M. Price points out in his article on the mysterious St Toad, this sonnet possibly inspired one of the scenes in The Shadow Over Innsmouth where the protagonist Robert Olmstead stumbles across a not dissimilar church. Considering we have twice returned to this benighted town in the cycle, it is not difficult to believe that Innsmouth is the home to St Toad’s. Certainly it would appear we are back in our world, somewhere in Lovecraft’s haunted
And both the geographical setting and the theme of blasphemous worship are continued in Sonnet XXVI – The Familiars. Another of the New England horrors, this verse tells the tale of an isolated farmer who becomes obsessed with hidden lore and after “he began those night howls” – presumably some form of ritual or worship – his neighbours who fear for his sanity discover him “talking to two crouching things that at their step flew off on great black wings” (note that possibly these beings could be the Night-Gaunts from XX). And this leads in neatly to XXVIII – The Elder Pharos, where another hermit, this time in Lovecraft’s mythical region Leng, talks “to chaos with the beat of drums”.
Incidentally Leng is frequently mentioned in Lovecraft’s fiction. However where exactly this mountain fastness is located is unclear – in some tales such as The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath it appears to be on the edges of Lovecraft’s dream world, but in others such as The Hound and The Call Of Cthulhu it would appear to be located somewhere in the Himalayas, an evil counterpart to other unmapped realms like Shambhala or Shangri-la. Seemingly like the Peaks of Thok in XX, Leng would appear to exist in both the waking world and the dimension of the Dreamlands.
However as well as communication with eldritch entities, The Elder Pharos also features a mysterious light that shines out from the fantastic vistas of Leng, whose origin many “in man’s first youth” have sought out but have never returned. And the next verse, XXVIII – Expectancy, echoes this theme of questing into mysteries that can never be unravelled. Again this is a contrasting pair – The Elder Pharos contains a sinister mystery that dooms all who seek to unravel it, whereas Expectancy is about rewarding yet never quite grasped transcendent hints some things inspire in us. Like Antarktos and The Window, this pair highlights the fact that awe and terror are two side of the same revelatory coin.
XXXIX – Nostalgia also addresses the questing theme, and in this case we have both a lost legendary location, echoing The Elder Pharos and the mysterious inner hints of Expectancy. Here the birds fly out looking for a city “in some land their inner memories know” but which is now vanished beneath the waves. And aside from continuing a theme, tonally this sonnet has the same air of what I would term ‘magical melancholy’ as the preceding verse.
And this feeling, evoking nostalgia is its truest sense, continues in the next sonnet which explores a similar bonding with landscape and architecture. However in XXX – Background the narrator of this verse has discovered the key to his own transcendent visions – the historic townscape of his youth. However not all such ancient buildings are offer such delightful reveries, as the next sonnet reveals.
XXXI – The Dweller is another micro tale, telling of an expedition to excavate some curious ruins that were “old when
XXXII – Alienation deals with the price of gaining outré knowledge. Like Gulliver in Swift’s famous novel, the narrator here discovered that his mystic voyages have destroyed his connections to his family and his ordinary life - indeed the final two lines of this sonnet are an apt epigraph for the finale of Gulliver’s Travels. Incidentally the Ghooric Zone is a region located on Yuggoth’s moon, Thog which we heard about in X- The Pigeon-Flyers, and later Cthulhu Mythos tales have identified as the location of the “foul lake where the puffed shoggoths splash in doubtful sleep” in XX – Night-Gaunts. The “piping from the voids beyond” is a reference to XXII – evidently the dreamer in this verse unwittingly found his way to the centre of all infinity and beholding the blind nuclear madness of Azathoth “giving each frail cosmos it eternal law” has destroyed all perception of meaning in his life.
And the piping from the Daemon sultan’s court can be heard again in XXXIII – Harbour Whistles. Here combing notes form the ship’s whistles are “fused into one cosmic drone” that “echoes outer voids”. But also this naturally evolving sound recalls the transcendent hints contained in the “half-heard songs” of XXVIII and the occult keys to other realms the book itself contains.
And fittingly (if somewhat tenuously) XXXIV – Recapture appears to be almost a replay to the first vision from the book, IV- Recognition. As I remarked earlier, the imagery and setting is remarkably similar and the final lines would imply that the narrator has found himself once more in “that hollow of old oaks”. And if we interpret this sonnet as a return to that wooded altar on Yuggoth, then we could assume that this visit takes place before IV – note that the narrator claims he realises “what primal star and year” (my italics) has brought him back here. Combined with the title itself, Recapture, the implication appears to be that this is how the narrator ends up a “body spread on that dank stone”, an unclean feast for things that “were not men”.
And the cycle could have ended there, however two more sonnets remain. Throughout this series of verse, as we have seen Lovecraft has been alternately delivering poems that evoke terror and awe; for every dark benighted city where eldritch horrors dwell there is a fantastical place laden with beauty and inspiration. Hence XXXV is a bright reflection of Recapture – instead of the sinister dark woods and ruins, Evening Star has a rural meadow. And instead of some nameless fate in the hands of horrors from outside the stars, we have visions of the sunlit realms and magical landscapes evoked in earlier poems, such as the world beyond The Window, “the land where beauties meaning flowers” or The Gardens of Yin. And similar to its predecessor, this penultimate verse echoes an early vision from the book, V – Homecoming. However here we have the narrator himself experiencing the revelation rather than being informed by the mocking daemon, and reaching this inner knowledge provides an optimistic conclusion to all the other verses that detail well loved lands now lost and out of reach, and all curious vistas that have invoked dim impossible memories of previous visits.
The final sonnet, XXXVI, in the light of this article the somewhat ironically titled Continuity, is similarly conclusive; although exact nature of the secret hints, tantalising clues and hidden keys remain obscure here we find Lovecraft finding a balance and a purpose in these veiled signs. While other verses have been draped in melancholy and longing, Continuity sees the narrator finding that these mysterious impressions ultimately provide a connection to the cosmos, a sense of being part of “the fix’d mass whose sides the ages are”.
Perhaps very tellingly this verse strongly echoes Lovecraft’s own words on his writing which I shall quote again here –
“I’m simply casting about for better ways to crystallise and capture certain strong impressions (involving the elements of time, the unknown, cause and effect, fear, scenic and architectural beauty and other ill assorted things) which persist in clamouring for expression”
However Continuity gives us reasons why such impressions were so important to capture.
While some have brought madness and horror, others have revealed the wonders of the cosmos. And a handful are somewhat ambiguous - for example although his neighbours are horrified by what they discover John Whateley has summoned out of the nether world, is this rural occultist as terrified as them by his visitors? Similarly in The Window, the masons are horrified by the opening of the portal but the narrator is enraptured. And in The Bells, is the realisation that the phantom tolling is emanating from a sunken city beneath the waves a revelation of horror or wonder? If you are familiar with the goings-on in Innsmouth, then one may assume this is a dread realisation, but it is worth recalling how the end of The Shadow Over Innsmouth plays out…
As I hope I have demonstrated, once you strip away the artificial categories we use to classify his fiction, the arrangement of sonnets in Fungi From Yuggoth actually contains a lot more links and continuity than has been previously noticed. And while Lovecraft uses a variety of different methods to establish a subtle flow throughout the cycle, striving and yearning for revelation have been are the dominant recurrent themes.
And therefore sonnets such as XXIII Mirage and XXXIV Recapture are not as different as at first they may seem – they may be written in different modes, employing dissimilar imagery but both detail a transcendent experience. As a devotee of weird fiction, Lovecraft understood the pleasure one gains from reading a tale that evokes a frisson of fear, and that such states “cut the moment’s thongs” in a similar way that a beautiful landscape may induce reveries - both fear and awe may be keys to transcendence.
When before beginning this epic tour of the Fungi From Yuggoth we alluded to the fact that structurally the placement of the poems is telling. And now having seen how Lovecraft has distributed the various different kinds of verse, wee see that there is a definite progressive pursuit of themes through the cycle. Wonder and terror play off each other as we tumble through his universe; though some of those who seek to unravel the mysteries of the cosmos may well fall foul of the vast horrors that populate the myriad dimensions and worlds, others will discover marvels to behold.
Taken together these twin strands ultimately resolve into the conclusion of Continuity – indeed if one ventures too far one may be confronted with the final truth of all things, which in Lovecraft’s fictional universe is the dread horror that is Azathoth. However what distinguishes Lovecraft from the hordes of imitators and indeed many other horror writers, is the fact that the terror isn’t simply due to discovering there’s a monster behind everything. The real horror is that there is a ‘god’ that created our reality but he is mindless and indifferent, and humanity’s fortunes is left to whims of Nyarlathotep.
Reflecting Lovecraft’s own rational beliefs, his devotion to science leaving no room for a benevolent god, the nuclear chaos that is the daemon sultan Azathoth is a symbol of the horror of realising we are adrift in a godless universe and our lives are not only cosmically insignificant but totally meaningless.
However despite his rationality, Lovecraft also clearly felt the lure of spiritual – although he could not countenance a belief in a god, mythology, legend and arcane still called to him. And in literature, in history and in his dreams he found a spiritual transcendence of his own devising. It may have been more aesthetic than religious in nature but in his reading of Machen, Blackwood, Dunsany and Poe, and in his travels to visit antiquarian buildings and historical trips opened these personal inner doors.
The close of the cycle seems to suggest that Lovecraft is saying that it is the taste of the mysteries and not their resolutions that matter. When speaking of these intimations of infinitude in XXVIII – Expectancy he remarks that “none gains or guesses what it hints at giving”, and as the cycle shows pursuing these strange hints and impressions may bring one to confront the shattering truth of Azathoth. However in the final two sonnets, we have arrived at a balance; one may not ever be able to discover the origin of these mystical impressions that haunt us, the land of lost dreams may remain out of reach, but approached in the right manner that fact that they do move us may provide an anchor in a sea of uncertainty.
The guiding laws that govern our world may the creation of Azathoth’s whims but we still may meaningfully connect with the cosmos – not all realms are wastelands of horror, there is the bright world of dreams and vision where beauty and wonder flower. They may not be any cosmic salvation in Lovecraft’s cosmology but there is personal redemption in that through poetry, fiction, music and beauty we may step outside of ourselves and see a wider world of wonders, if only fleetingly.
Thursday, 23 September 2010
FUNGI FROM YUGGOTH
When considering the question of who was the most influential author of weird fiction in the 20th century, HP Lovecraft is a strong contender for the title. Although during his lifetime he was only appreciated by the readers of pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, however despite this limited exposure HPL was soon forging friendships and corresponding with the likes of Robert Bloch, Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Henry Kuttner, Clark Ashton Smith, Carl Jacobi and Frank Belknap Long – a veritable who’s who of the fantastic fiction of the day.
After his death in 1937, his works were reissued in a series of volumes by Arkham House, a small press set up by his friends August Derleth and Donald Wandrei with the express purpose of publishing Lovecraft in book form. Throughout the ‘40s and ‘50s, Lovecraft began regularly appearing in anthologies of weird fiction, and the ‘60s saw his tales being issued in mass market paperbacks. Much like Tolkien, HPL’s fiction was keenly embraced by the blossoming counter culture; the Cthulhu mythos proving as equally alluring as the legends of Middle Earth, but also his vein of cosmic horror, filled with sanity stretching visions of the infinite struck a chord with the generation who had discovered mind expanding drugs and esoteric practises.
And he has never been out of print since, with many big names; Stephen King, Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, Guillermo Del Toro, HR Giger, Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore to name but a few, citing Lovecraft as major influence and inspiration. And Lovecraft’s creations are everywhere these days, having inspired countless books, comics, films, records and games. Cthulhu and his kin are seemingly manifesting with increased regularity here, there and anywhere – you can even buy cuddly elder gods now. And even if you’ve never heard his name, if you are into genre fiction then you will certainly seen his influence somewhere, usually in the form of tentacled beasts, malign elder gods being reawakened to wreak havoc, or tales of aliens influencing early man.
However although - what is less well known is Lovecraft’s work as a poet. And in fairness this is largely due to the fact that his poetry lacks the individual flair and imagination that has ensured his stories continue to win ever greater numbers of admirers with each passing year. Indeed much of his poetry has little to do with the strange and fantastic; instead we have political satires, seasonal verses, odes to friends and poems written adopting classical styles – only occasionally did he pen verse that falls under shadow of the weird. And as the Old Gentleman himself observed in later life, poetry was not his true metier; like many us he often wrote poetry for his personal reasons rather than to create great art, and in Lovecraft’s case this was to recreate for himself the atmosphere and ethos of the Georgian period – a time in which he felt he would have been more that home than the early decades of the 20th century. As he wrote in 1929 –
“Language, vocabulary, ideas, imagery – everything succumbed to my own intense purpose of thinking & dreaming myself back into the world of periwigs and long s’s which for some odd reason seemed to me the normal world”
(Selected Letters 1925-29 p.314-315)
Although increasingly modern readers do not realise that Lovecraft’s prose was actually somewhat antiquarian in construction for the ‘20s and ‘30s, the bulk of his poetry is clearly archaic, written in forms and styles from the Augustan age, mimicking the verses of Georgian luminaries such as Pope, Goldsmith and Addison.
(Quick aside – it must be noted that this particular era isn’t exactly highly popular among readers of poetry these days; not that the Augustans don’t still have their aficionados or fail to make it into popular anthologies, but they don’t command the same public recognition and affection as the later Romantic Poets. And hence Lovecraft’s adoption of the Georgian styles hasn’t exactly endeared him to poetry readers – many find the original Augustan poets too structured and overly mannered, never mind Lovecraft’s imitations of them.)
Of the poems he produced that don’t hark back to the 18th century, much of the remainder reflect Lovecraft’s other great passion – Edgar Allen Poe. Much of his poetry that may be considered weird verse, echoes of the gothic poetry Poe produced.
However rather tellingly, as his career in prose progresses the less poetry he writes – over three quarters of his poetic output dates from before 1919. Looking at chronoliogies of his writing, it is very clear that as he embraces the short story as a mode of creative expression his poetic output declines sharply. Seemingly as Lovecraft found his own distinctive voice in prose fiction, the need to conjure up in verse the atmosphere of England in the reign of Queen Anne diminishes. And in his stories he was to find a command of imagery and language that his forays into verse rarely achieved. Although his early works clearly show the influence of Poe and another of his favourites Lord Dunsany, he soon develops his own distinctive voice and iconic creations.
But he never entirely gave up on poetry, and was still producing occasional verse and poems for friends up until his final years. And while I generally concur with Stephen King’s remark in Danse Macabre that “the best we can say about his poetry is that he was a competent enough versifier” – damning with faint praise indeed – it must be said that Lovecraft did produce one epic work of verse that deserves to be remembered and more widely appreciated.
Between December 27th 1929 and January 4th 1930, Lovecraft penned a staggering thirty six sonnets, which he arranged into a cycle which he entitled Fungi From Yuggoth - which can be read here. And this was to be his last major poetical work; the handful of poems he produced in the remaining years of his life are largely brief verses and odes for friends. It would appear that Lovecraft hit something of poetic peak with this great torrent of sonnets. And unlike much of his other poetry, he throws away the Augustan rulebooks and sees him adopt a variety of differing styles and voices. Unusually for a man somewhat obsessed with classical forms, his sonnets don’t follow either of the usual sonnet structures, the Shakesperian and the Petrachian. Equally unusually, unlike a lot of his other weird verse, Fungi From Yuggoth doesn’t read like echoes of Poe; these sonnets are pure Lovecraft in tone and theme.
To begin with I should to clear up some confusions about the title. Firstly it has nothing to do with the trans-Plutonian entities, the Mi-go, detailed in his classic tale The Whisperer in the Darkness written later in 1930. Although the Mi-go are also referred to as ‘fungi from Yuggoth’, the title of this cycle comes lines in Sonnet XIV Star Winds -
“this is the hour when moon struck poets know
what fungi sprout in Yuggoth, and what scents
And tints of flowers fill Nithon’s continents”
Several commentators – Wikipedia included – have alleged that these lines appear to be referring to a place or region, rather than as the Cthulhu Mythos name for Pluto which is how Yuggoth is employed in The Whisperer in Darkness. And this has been held up as evidence in the way that Lovecraft would use the same or similar terms in differing contexts and seemingly to refer to different things in several stories – deliberately building in confusions in his own mythology that mirror the contradictions in real world myth and legend.
And undoubtedly, Lovecraft did play these games with the reader – for example the different references and contexts he attaches to the term ‘Old Ones’ in several of his tales. However in this case, scholars making the case for the reference in Star Winds to be a Yuggoth that is a place rather than a planet, are forgetting that an earlier entry in the poem cycle, Sonnet IV - Recognition, clearly states that “I knew this strange grey world was not my own,/But Yuggoth, past the starry void”, which would suggest that Lovecraft was clearly and consistently thinking of Yuggoth as a world in it’s own right while writing these poems. So having addressed the issues of the title, what of the actual cycle itself?
The first three sonnets form a distinct narrative which tells of a man who discovers a curious tome in an old bookstore, a volume of forgotten lore that details how to open “the hidden way” to experience visions and/or travel to through the interstellar void to other worlds and into other dimensions and times. However after this opening trilogy in verse, the narrative stops and the remaining thirty three poems all stand alone.
We get a variety of styles and tones; many are miniature stories. Some like Sonnets XI - The Well and XXVI - The Familiars, are told in a poetic approximation of colloquial speech, spinning tales redolent of New England folk lore, others employ the same vivid poetic phrasing as his Dreamlands tales (XIII - Hesperia and XVIII -The Gardens of Yin), and of course some invoke the creeping horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos canon (XV - Antarktos and XX - Night-Gaunts).
But also among this exercises in micro weird fiction, we have verses detailing strange visions; some revisit lost dreams (XXIII Mirage) and others melancholy whimsy (XXIX - Nostalgia). And also thrown into the mix are verses of a more philosophical bent; for example sonnets like XXVIII - Expectancy and XXX - Background illustrate Lovecraft’s own reasons for writing.
In the introductions and forewords of many collections and anthologies, the following quote appears –
“All my stories, unconnected as they may be, are based on the fundamental lore of legend that this world was at one time inhabited by another ace who, in practicing black magic, lost their foothold and were expelled, yet live on outside ever ready to take possession of this earth”
However scholars have been unable to find a source for this alleged quote, and currently it is believed that this sound bite was actually created by August Derleth, who incidentally also coined the term ‘Cthulhu Mythos’ to describe the shared background lore of places, books and entities that populate many of Lovecraft’s fictions.
Indeed the above quote is hardly accurate of Lovecraft’s canon, and not even apt for his Mythos stories alone . It’s very applicable for The Dunwich Horror but not so much At The Mountains of Madness where the eldritch threats come from beyond the stars. And although best known for his Cthulhu Mythos tales, not all of his canon fits under this umbrella, for example his Dreamlands tales, are concerned with a fantastical world inspired by the work of Lord Dunsany and although some are horror tales, few feature the usual elder gods arising from an aeons long sleep.
As Ramsey Campbell points out in his introduction to his own collection of Lovecraft-inspired tales Cold Print, a better description comes from one of Lovecraft’s own letters. In 1935, HPL remarked –
“Nothing is really typical of my efforts… I’m simply casting about for better ways to crystallise and capture certain strong impressions (involving the elements of time, the unknown, cause and effect, fear, scenic and architectural beauty and other ill assorted things) which persist in clamouring for expression”
Not only is this a more helpful and indeed more accurate overview of the premises that underlie all his works, Cthulhu Mythos or not, but it is also a good summary of the themes and motifs presented in Fungi From Yuggoth.
In many ways, this sonnet cycle is like a tour through the different aspects of Lovecraft’s fiction, visiting the varied aesthetics and concepts underpinning his stories. As a whole the cycle is like condensed Lovecraft, and although some of his most famous creations, Cthulhu and Yog Sothoth don’t get a name check, the verses do reflect the core ideas and atmosphere of the stories that do feature them.
Structurally the cycle as a whole is often interpreted as a series of visions or encounters the unnamed narrator of the first three sonnets unleashes from the stolen tome. And this approach does make a certain sense; as Fungi From Yuggoth begins as a narrative, it is only natural that readers expect there is some scheme stretching through the rest of the cycle. Others however see the opening linked verses merely as an introduction or framing device for a random selection of poems lumped together as they were written in the same burst of creativity, or alternatively that Lovecraft had begun the cycle with an idea of a narrative thread that he quickly abandoned.
Indeed in A Subtle Magick – The Writings and Philosophy of HP Lovecraft (Wildside Press, 1996) the high priest of Lovecraft scholarship, ST Joshi claims that “it seems difficult to deny that the dominant feature of this sonnet cycle is utter randomness of tone, mood and import” (p.234). He considers the series of visions approach as “very implausible interpretation” and furthermore discounts any claims to a thematic continuity, arguing that there is no real system to the cycle as just because they share common tropes, as the presence of the same shared elements in his stories do not connect all the stories and novels in his canon into one uber-work. Joshi’s concluding assessment is that Fungi From Yuggoth was an attempt to crystallised a plethora of story seeds and fragments in poetic form as “an imaginative house cleaning” and “a versified commonplace book”.
However I have several problems with this conclusion. Firstly, many writers keep a commonplace book - a tome where stray ideas, quotes and other inspirations are noted down – as indeed Lovecraft did. Furthermore HPL’s commonplace books have the origins of many of the sonnets in them. So quite why he would feel the need to note them again in verse form seems a little perplexing. While it may be argued the cycle was an attempt to give these unused ideas some form of creative expression, I find it difficult to believe that Lovecraft would have no other artistic purpose in mind other than releasing some imaginative pressure.
Secondly Lovecraft paid very close attention to the form and structure of his works. He was a master stylist; choice of spelling, length of phrasing and even the placement of every punctuation mark mattered a great deal to him. He was often greatly annoyed by the edits imposed by the pulp magazine editors; seeing the glosses to his texts as ruining his carefully crafted prose. And somewhat unfortunately until ST Joshi began examining the original manuscripts, no one had realised that the texts printed by Arkham House and subsequent publishers were in fact quite corrupt.
Lovecraft has always had something of a reputation for being difficult reading, partly due to his archaic style and dense verbiage, but when corrected texts were published it was apparent that his prose style that some find somewhat torturous to read, was to a degree due to the editorial amendments by the magazines which resulted in clumsy phrasing where the original punctuation had been changed and often where several sentences were compacted into one.
Sadly many of the editions in book shops are still using the old corrupt texts (see here for details) with only the Arkham House editions and the Penguin Books collections featuring the complete corrected versions compiled by Joshi.
However to get back to Fungi From Yuggoth, the point is I find it difficult to credit that such a meticulous literary craftsman as Lovecraft would just collect together thirty six sonnets without any thought to structural arrangement. Personally I have always favoured the interpretation that after the opening trilogy the rest of the cycle is a kaleidoscope of visions from beyond conjured by the cobwebbed tome. Furthermore I believe there is a definite scheme of links in the arrangement of the verses. If one looks closely at the order of the poems and carefully examine their content – the tone, imagery, and themes featured, it would appear that this trip through Lovecraft’s universe is not quite as random as many have thought it is.
And I shall be looking in depth at this seemingly so far unnoticed continuity in the cycle in a second article. So in the mean time, do read the poems yourself and see what conclusions you can come up with. Is there links betweens the sonnets or it just a wild random ride through Mr Lovecraft’s imagination?
But while the scholars of weird fiction have much debated the orchestration of Fungi From Yuggoth, it would appear that there is something to this arrangement of sonnets that appeals to musicians. As early as 1932, Harold E Farnese, dean of the Los Angeles Institute of Musical Art, wrote to Lovecraft proposing they collaborate on a one act Cthulhoid operetta to be named Fen River and set on Yuggoth. Fungi From Yuggoth had apparently inspired this proposed project, and Farnese have already set two of the sonnets, Mirage (XXIII) and The Elder Pharos (XXVII) to music. Unfortunately this collaboration never happened, and sadly the two compositions Farnese’s wrote appear to have vanished into the ether too.
With the boom of interest in Lovecraft in the ‘60s and ‘70s, unsurprisingly Lovecraft inspired songs and titles began to regular appear, with even folk/psychedelic outfit naming themselves HP Lovecraft. However it wasn’t until the late ‘80s that any of the sonnets from Fungi From Yuggoth appeared in musical form. In 1989, small press publishers Fedogan & Bremer issued a cassette of the complete cycle set to music, and this version of the cycle is easily my favourite of all the many readings of this work available. The narrator John Arthur gives a fantastic performance, adopting different voices and intonations for the readings and the music by Mike Olsen is atmospheric, eerie and beautiful. Although reissued on CD some years later, sadly this work is now out of print, and as Fedogan and Bremer seem to be lost in some administrative limbo it seem unlikely we’ll see it released again any time soon. However you can hear the complete cycle in several parts on Youtube here, and although the sound quality isn’t as high as you’d hope (but it’s better than my oft played and now wobbly sounding cassette*), at least you can hear it. Perhaps we could all write to Arkham House, F&B’s partners and ask for digital download to be made available as it is a real shame this masterful production is languishing in the OOP void.
More recently Jim Clark has recorded another reading of the cycle set to music. Again this can be found on Youtube (here) with some quite strange animations of Lovecraft ‘performing’ the vocals. Also Colin Timothy Gagnon has done a reading set to his own compositions which is available for download here. Plus Greek composer Dionysis Boukouvalas has an ongoing project to set the cycle to music.
More recently though Rhea Tucanae (one of the aliases of electronic artist Dan Söderqvist) has teamed up with Pixyblink to adapt eleven of the sonnets into musical pieces. And the results are quite stunning – after many years the Arthur/Olsen version finally has a rival for my affections. Dark and very evocative, this is a superb LP which had me reaching for the credit card as soon as I heard it - you can hear samples for yourself here. The only downside is that it only comprises of a small portion of the cycle and naturally some favourites aren’t included. But nevertheless this is a fine piece of work and I can only hope a second volume will appear at some point.
I think one of the reasons Fungi from Yuggoth has proved to be so popular with musicians and readers is that there is great variety in the sonnets themselves; they other a diversity of voices and language which inspires performances. Of course there is also the fact that the cycle is a marvellous piece of writing.
And while it’s unlikely anyone is going rank Fungi From Yuggoth above classic works by Keats or T.S. Eliot, it is a very pleasurably read. The simplicity of many of the verse echo in the mind and its gentler verses show a lighter, less doom-laden side to Lovecraft. He may have never had the talent to be regarded a great poet but with Fungi From Yuggoth he did produce a remarkable work of verse. Poetically speaking, the sonnets may be simply, even naively, constructed but that does not detract from the beauty, imagination and atmosphere they conjure.
* If anyone out there can point me in the direction of the CD or a decent rip of it I’d be profoundly grateful!
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