“I have frequently wondered if the majority of mankind ever pause to reflect upon the
occasionally titanic significance of dreams, and of the obscure world to which they belong.”
(Beyond the Wall of Sleep, pg.36)
Welcome back to Our Daily Lovecraft. There’s still time to escape you know.
If you’re just joining us, you can start your Lovecraftian journey here!
“This story was very cool, to put it bluntly. Lovecraft toys with the concept of astral projection (I’m not sure if the term had been coined yet or not), during which we leave our bodies as we dream and travel to any number of universes and the like. In this story, a young man working at a mental asylum and who has a particular interest in dreams is told of a man who talks of strange things after waking. Eventually the young man is able to mentally connect with what is actually some sort of cosmic being who had been trapped in that body and, once out, will seek revenge on the other cosmic being that stuck it in there.
It’s a very neat concept and I wonder what Lovecraft knew of astral projection or similar subjects. It’s made clear in the introductions of other stories he does research for various elements depending upon what he’s writing about, so it stands to reason he may have. But if there was no literature on such subjects, in a way this almost makes him a kind of pioneer of the idea. Other similar Lovecraftian themes such as cosmic entities and strange places appear yet again, and I always love going to these places with his characters. They’re always so strange and new, and the fact that he can paint them so well without as much description as one might think makes it even more impressive. It’s a longer story, but very well worth it.
“Memory”
Short enough to be on a single page, it’s a look into the far-flung future after man has left this world. A single place is described as being overgrown, the river Than winding through it, with little apes in the trees. We only know man used to be here because two being converse on the subject of who once dwelt there, and one of them remembers because it rhymes with the name of the river. It is a unique little tidbit that, according to Joshi’s introduction, may have been inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion,” though I can’t speak to that myself.
Featured image © Nicole Taft
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