“Stars that soothe and stars that bless
With a sweet forgetfulness”
(Polaris, pg.35)
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!
“A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson”
Lovecraft didn’t always write horror, something that shouldn’t really be a surprise given that, and perhaps this is a bit presumptuous on my part, most writers do occasionally dabble in a different genre now and then. In this case, Lovecraft is channeling a different author, Samuel Johnson, even as he writes of a narrator who is friends with the very same Dr. Johnson. It’s not weird, it’s not scary, it’s simply an old man telling about his friendship with Samuel Johnson and the club they had in which multiple intellectuals would gather and discuss any number of things.
The style is older, so readers must contend with various spellings, italics, capitalizations, and other things not typically encountered unless reading much older poetry and prose. I’m talking 1700s old. It’s an interesting departure from the horror and shows Lovecraft’s skill in writing.
Which is all fine and dandy – but let’s be honest, we’re here for the horror.
“Polaris”
Now this is more up my alley when it comes to weird and unique. Once again in first person (I’m not certain if this style is Lovecraft’s preference, but thus far it seems to be), the narrator encounters visions of a strange city and figures before essentially experiencing the life of one of the inhabitants.
Here Lovecraft pulls no punches with the bizarre names, encroaching creatures, and strange times. It’s indicated this place and people are set sometime in the far, far past, which made me briefly wonder of Lovecraft’s religion, if indeed he subscribed to any. The place and things he describes sound much more like they should be on another planet or alternate dimension rather than in the far-flung past of humans.
Each story I read is prefaced by a brief introduction by S.T. Joshi. In this case it states, “The story is not in fact a ‘dream fantasy’ but an account of a man of the present day who is possessed by the spirit of an ancestor from the distant past.” Entirely possible, yet I can’t fully denounce the idea that the narrator is the same man who has indeed been trapped for 26,000 years in forgetfulness and is only just now beginning to remember his past. Yes, leave it to me to disregard the world’s leading authority on Lovecraft. But why not? In a previous story we’ve seen a man remain alive for 600 years due to his creation of the elixir of life. We’ve encountered strange beings that apparently live on the bottom of the ocean. And in this universe that features a marble city named Olathoë in the land of Lomar, who says such a thing couldn’t happen?
Again, it’s very impressive that this story generates more questions and discussion than others despite being so incredibly short. I love the mental imagery I get from here as well. I dig the weird worlds Lovecraft sets before his readers, and while I don’t read a lot of horror, gathering together what I have experienced, I’m beginning to believe that my personal horror of choice is indeed the Lovecraftian kind.
Featured image © Nicole Taft
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