“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”
“In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”
Here we are, on the night of the Hunter’s Moon with the one and only “The Call of Cthulhu.” One would think I’d have more to say about this story than any other given it’s popularity and the mythos it has since created. But when it all boils down, this is simply another solid story from Lovecraft. Granted, it is longer than most, and I’d even argue that more happens in it than many of the other stories. While the concepts behind it with Eldritch Gods and sunken cities and so forth are indeed a lot of imaginative fun, I wasn’t wowed in the way that readers “should” be. Cthulhu itself is an interesting creature, and I like the visuals Lovecraft offers when it comes to learning what he looks like.
Yet, one has to wonder – how powerful is Cthulhu if, after emerging from his sunken city because the stars were just right and the city popped out of the ocean just enough for him to slither on out, why did he not have enough power to finish raising the city and take over the world with his fellow Great Old Ones? Were the stars not aligned enough? Did he decide mankind just wasn’t quite where he wanted them to be before bringing forth whatever it is he and his fellow gods are planning? I suppose I’ll never know. Unless it’s addressed elsewhere in these stories, but I have a large chunk of the book to go yet.
There are some callbacks to other things from previous stories, such as the Necronomicon and its author. I do find it kind of amusing that in the opening paragraphs, our narrator Francis Wayland Thurston, writes, “I hope that no one else will accomplish this piecing out; certainly, if I live, I shall never knowingly supply a link in so hideous a chain.” Narrator then proceeds to dish out the entire story complete with where all notes and interviews and such came from. Sounds like the opposite of what you wanted to do, but okay.
I did wonder a bit at some past stories – primarily “The Temple” where the German U-boat soldier became the last man on board and eventually left to visit a temple underneath the waters where his sub had become trapped. He called it Atlantis at one point – did he actually find the city of R’lyeh? Given that the story was written well before this one, probably not. I doubt they’re actually intertwined in any way. It’s already been made rather clear that Lovecraft has a firm interest in cities submerged beneath the waves as well as strange creatures that live there and something that might be called sea-monster worship (does Cthulhu know Bokrug, who was once worshiped by fishpeople in the city of Ib?) They’re fun to match up, especially since Lovecraft does also bring elements from past stories into the ones he was writing at the present so it’s hard not to. But one can only guess at the intent (or at least, I can only guess at the intent since I’m only here for the stories, not the overall lore or history of Lovecraft).
I am, however, interested to see how this story influences the others of the future. And I suppose Lovecraft fans should thank one Donald Wandrei, who encouraged Lovecraft to submit this story a third time after two previous rejections. Otherwise, we’d be without a lot of the fun horror we have today.
Saturn Devouring His Son by Francisco Goya
The voice in this story is interesting, as our narrator is telling it not to us readers, but to a friend he is at a bar with. He is explaining why he’s cut off all ties with a man named Pickman. And, naturally, now Pickman is missing.
Apparently Pickman was a very skilled artist, although his subject choices were the unsettling kind. The sort that really niggle at you because they’re extremely bizarre, grotesque, or give you that downright wrong feeling. For me, artists that have such power include Stephen Gammell, H.R. Giger, and Zdzislaw Beksinski, though there are plenty more out there when you start to look (I found some gems just while trying to find Beksinski’s name, and let me tell you, damn). But it seems as though our narrator has found that in Pickman. While initially he was okay with what Pickman was delivering – even having a kind of fascination with it – once Pickman showed him his personal studio, it became too much. One description of a particular painting reminded me of an artist who is mentioned in this story: Franscisco Goya. Saturn Devouring His Son has always been a freaky looking painting, and the creature in Pickman’s work is in a similar concept, although it sounds more like a werewolf-like creature gnawing on a human head.
As it turns out, there probably are freakish werewolf-like creatures running around in the tunnels that exist beneath the old houses and such where Pickman has made his studio. He even has to fight one off while our narrator is stuck in a room with the painting. Pickman claims it’s just rats, but when the narrator returns home, he finds a piece of paper he accidentally grabbed in his panic. Except it’s not a piece of paper, it’s a photo. And that photo is of a freaky dog-like person. Turns out Pickman wasn’t just pulling from his imagination.
It’s a good tale, and I really appreciate Lovecraft’s descriptions of the art as well as his ability to expound upon various great artists and just where they might get some of their inspirations, despite being rather horrific. It does make one wonder – what do they see in their mind’s eye in order to pull images and put them on canvas?
Or do some of them have a model, too?
According to Joshi, an editor for Weird Tales told Lovecraft that readers ‘violently disliked'” this story. Honestly, I’m not surprised. I found my attention wandering at several places within the story. Mostly because it’s not really a story? Or, I suppose that it is, but it takes ages for it to truly get anywhere and even then I didn’t fully understand what Lovecraft was getting at. There is an overabundance of purple prose to be found and after just a page it sounds more like a rambling essay that doesn’t fully know what its doing. A lot of this could easily have been cut, and given the sort of stories Lovecraft provided Weird Tales in the past, I wonder that the editor didn’t edit any of it out—or outright reject it.
The gist is this: Randolph Carter (whose name I believe has been reused since there is a previous story of “The Statement of Randolph Carter” but it doesn’t sound like the same individual. I guess Lovecraft just forgot?) misses being able to fall into dream worlds the way he could when he was a boy. So I guess as an adult he just doesn’t dream. And it sounds like no one else does, either. Or daydreams, for that matter. Everyone is too busy being busy, mundane, and focused on Earth-based materials. Carter gets more despondent as the years go by until, in a dream, his grandfather tells him about a silver key, which he finds, returns to the home of his youth, and uses it somehow. Carter is never heard from again.
It’s kind of confusing once you get to the key-using part. It sounds like Carter somehow became a child again at one point. Or goes back in time? Or goes back in time and inhabits his child body? I’m not sure. Because he encounters people he knows who were once dead (or very old and oddly enough, still living) and everything acts normal. Maybe he stepped into a parallel dimension? I have no idea.
The story switches from a general telling of Carter’s blues to a first person point of view from what sounds like a friend of Carter’s who believes he knows what happened to him. This person also plans on meeting Carter somewhere in dreams because I guess this guy still can dream and does so on the regular. Guess he should have told his secrets of dreaming to Carter?
There are plenty of references here as well, such as Arkham, Ulthar, and the Miskatonic, which is a river here rather than reference to a university.
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Featured image © Nicole Taft
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