Weird Fiction discussion

We are finally getting into the heart of Lovecraft. For May we read and discuss his epic short story, the one he is arguably most famous for, "The Call of Cthulu." Written in the summer of 1926, it was first published in the February 1928 issue of Weird Tales. After which Weird Fiction would never be just ghost stories any more.

One of the inspirations for Lovecraft's short story, identified by Cthulhu Mythos scholar Robert M. Price, is Lord Alfred Tennyson's sonnet "The Kraken" (1830). (A sonnet is a formal poem with a fixed structure. Standard ones are 14 lines long, each line containing 10 syllables. Sonnet lines are written in iambic pentameter, meaning the line's syllables are in 5 pairs. Each of these pairs has the emphasis on the second syllable, like a heartbeat.) Both Tennyson and Lovecraft's work references a huge aquatic creature sleeping for an eternity at the bottom of the ocean destined to emerge from its slumber in an apocalyptic age. I reproduce it here as a warm-up for us:

Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

I love this one.

You already know that.

Ha

This was my first Lovecraft--but not my last!

Thom wrote: "I love this one.

You already know that.

Ha"

For those new to the group, we read author Thom Brannan's The Horror in Clay about this time last year, discussion thread here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/.... The title of Thom's book is the same as the title of the first chapter of "The Call of Cthulhu."

Having read Thom's book but not Lovecraft's story before, I guess I'll finally be understanding the connection.

Identified literary inspirations (in Wikipedia) Lovecraft is thought to have used in the crafting of this story:

1) "The Kraken" (1830) Alfred Tennyson - Robert M. Price claims this irregular sonnet was a major inspiration.

2) "The Horla" (1887) Guy de Maupassant - S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz cite this. Lovecraft described the story in Supernatural Horror in Literature as concerning "an invisible being who...sways the minds of others, and seems to be the vanguard of a horde of extraterrestrial organisms arrived on Earth to subjugate and overwhelm mankind".

3) "The Novel of the Black Seal" (1895) Arthur Machen - Uses the same method of piecing together of disassociated knowledge (including a random newspaper clipping) to reveal the survival of a horrific ancient being.

4) The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria (1896) and (1904) respectively by William Scott-Elliot - Read by Lovecraft in 1926 shortly before he started to work on the story.

5) The Gods of Pegana (1905) by Lord Dunsany - Identified by Price; depicts a god constantly lulled to sleep to avoid the consequences of its reawakening.

6) A Shop in Go-By Street (1919) Lord Dunsany - Identified by Price; states "the heaven of the gods who sleep", and "unhappy are they that hear some old god speak while he sleeps being still deep in slumber".

7) S.T. Joshi has also cited A. Merritt's novella The Moon Pool (1918) by A. Merritt - Cited by S. T. Joshi; mentions a "moon-door" that, when tilted, leads the characters into a lower region of wonder and horror, which seems similar to the huge door whose inadvertent opening by the sailors causes Cthulhu to emerge from R'lyeh'.

8) The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells - Edward Guimont argues that the thematic similarities of ancient, powerful, but indifferent aliens associated with deities, the physical similarities between Cthulhu and the Martians, and the plot detail of a ship ramming an alien in a temporarily successful but ultimately futile gesture all influenced Lovecraft.

My comments: #4 was combined into one volume for the first time in 1925, the year before Lovecraft wrote his story. I have read some of Merritt's work (not #7 though) and really like his slow, descriptive style. I have read #8 a couple times. Wells' emphasis is on the societal reaction to the aliens, not the aliens themselves. Tripods are very different than tentacles. I don't buy #8 as an influence.

My favorite part of "The Call of Cthulhu" is how three separate stories are all, at the end, connected when you read them in the right context.

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."

If you take away the small clay sculpture, the engraved statuette, and any other depiction of Cthulhu, the first parts of the story read like any other conspiracy theory. Substitute the number 23 or some other popular boogeyman and the links are tenuous at best. It isn't until the report of the "miles high" creature from the depths that the earlier likenesses take on real import.

That's not to make light of the eyewitness account of Inspector Legrasse from his Louisiana swamp raid. There were real horrors happening there, but the shadowy black winged shapes could have been a trick of the light or anything else, especially when surrounded by the trappings of sacrifice and blood.

But the account at the end, that's the clincher. Even if there isn't any further from the narrator, who is looking forward to a ghastly demise of his own, the story is complete there.

I count more than three stories in "The Call of Cthulhu." It seems to me like a pieced-together narrative by the narrator (whom I assume is Francis Wayland Thurston) from many sources, the main one being a manuscript left by his grand uncle, George Gammell Angell. I think what captures my imagination the most is what still remains even after Thurston's soon-to-be, calmly accepted demise, namely this secret world-wide cabal of Cthulhu worshippers.

I really appreciate the character of Wilcox, who makes a bas-relief statue of Cthulhu so that we the readers have a picture of what he looks like, at least the part of Cthulhu that manifests itself in our physical domain. Without Wilcox, we the reader would have no visual anchor for our imaginations.

We get other scraps of knowledge about Cthulhu from reports of Inspector John Raymond Legrasse of New Orleans as a result of one of his raids, another from William Channing Webb's 1860 expedition to Greenland and his report of an eskimo tribe's worship. But these are all background, it struck me. The heart of the story is what takes place out at sea during Thurston's time when the Emma gets attacked by the Alert. What the Emma's crew discovers on the island is the climax of the story. It's the closest we come to Cthulhu. "...what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years, Great Cthulhu was loose again and ravening for delight."

All this is to say that upon reaching the "end" of this "story" is that I feel like what I have read is the forward of a novel and that now the real story is finally about to begin. Yet the forward I have just read is the entire story! Who's going to confront this cult of Cthulhu? Surely not Thurston. He seems too much the bookish academic to lead humanity in its upcoming confrontation. Thanks for setting everything up so beautifully, H. P., But now, let's get on to the meat of the story!

I say three stories because, even though there are actually four, we get the expedition story through him as part of the Legrasse narrative.

As to your closing statement there, that's part of where I was going with the thing I did. I really should pick that back up.

I may have to give that The Horror in Clay a reread now that I have "The Call of Cthulhu" under my belt. I might be able to better appreciate what you were trying to do with it. Except I have a copy of Lords of Night sitting on my shelf now for about a year waiting for me to get the time to read it. That looks to be no time soon though since this July and August we are slated to read the two longest Lovecraft works written. And that's in addition to our regular group reads!

Crazy times! I still have to re-edit the novella the old-school way, with a red pen and a highlighter, because doing it in Word just isn't cutting it.

Edit (condensation) of earlier post:
Would it help you any for me to edit Lords of Night, in Word, with 'track changes' on of course?

I've just finished a reread of this story. It was the first Lovecraft story I read some years ago and since then I've read his complete works. I've come to appreciate it much more on second reading since it is the basis of a considerable number of his future works.

And I think I've finally getting closer to figuring out the wacky geometry.

Rosemarie wrote: "...I think I've finally getting closer to figuring out the wacky geometry."

Someone claims to have done so: http://titaniumphysicists.brachiolope...