Thirty-one days of Lovecraft: Day 3

In Day Three, Lovecraft takes a common motif in his writing and makes it much more intimate. Plus, what lies beyond out comprehension? Spoiler alert: it is terrifying!


One of the common motifs of Lovecraft's writing is what happens when people come into forbidden knowledge. In his mythos, there are simply things that mortal man should not understand, and ultimately cannot. They go mad and often die. It's the only way to "cope" with things that should be left unknown.

We've seen this already in the anthology with "The Statement of Randolph Carter" in which the narrator refuses to speak of what he saw in the tomb. In today's reading, a German submariner encounters a forbidden temple and is driven mad by....something. It's not clear what, but he finds a sunken city and after his entire crew is killed (by him, because they're going mad) he dons diving gear, explores, and presumably dies. We never see what it is that he's drawn too (it's too dark) but, it's apparently bad.

This is another motif of his writing. That something is so horrible, so horrid, that it cannot be described. With a lesser writer, this may seem lazy, but Lovecaft seems to pull it off.

At any rate, one of my favorite pieces from today featured forbidden knowledge on a more intimate scale. That story is "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" which begins with the titular character setting himself on fire and various people denying the he ever existed. We learn that poor Arthur has some sort of deformity, and that's common in his family. Arthur is an academic with an interest in the Congo, and you might say that's a family thing. He's heard rumors of white apes that worship a white god. Another explorer finds the mummy of said god and sends it to Arthur. Turns out, the mummy has the family crest of the Jermyn's and Arthur realizes that this chimpanzee is his ancestor. He sets himself on fire as a result.

Clearly, this was information that he wasn't supposed to have. Somewhere down the line, his ancestor got it on with a chimpanzee, and that's the Jermyn's. No one in the family owned up to that, until the character finds out about the family's dirty secret. Now possessed with forbidden knowledge, Arthur sets himself on fire. I think that it's very interesting that people deny that they knew him or had heard of him. Arthur, in a sense, is erased from existence. Not in a cosmic sense, but in a much more intimate manner.

Other musings: One of my favorite stories in this section was "The Picture in the House". I actually read this story to a class last Halloween. It's delightfully creepy. A middle of nowhere house, a forbidden book, a creepy old dude, and cannibalism. It's a fun one and a highly recommend.

My other favorite was "From Beyond" in which a scientist figures out a way to heighten the senses. This allows people to beyond the visual spectrum, and what beings lurk there. There are these harmless jelly things, but then also a thing that can't be mentioned and eats people. You know, standard stuff.

Madness Meter: Oh yes. Everyone goes mad in The Temple. Arthur Jermyn goes mad and sets himself on fire. Celephais features a narrator who goes mad, commits suicide and reigns over a fictional land, the scientist in "From Beyond" is mad from the get-go, the narrator in "The Picture in the House" is only saved from madness by lightning that destroys the house.

Is that racist? Not really, today. I didn't really read "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" as racist. as much as it was a tale about reverse evolution. There are some connotations about maybe the horror coming from the fact that the character (and all of us) are descended from Africa, but given, you know, The Street from yesterday...this registered fairly low.

The creepy old man in "The Picture in the House" says some pretty racist things, and that story can be kind of uncomfortable, but overall, today's reading didn't seem so bad.

Up next: The Namesless City, The Quest for Iranon, The Moon-Bog, The Outsider, The Other Gods, The Music of Erich Zann