TSOU -- The Call of Cthulhu
HARMSDM
The Shadow over Usenet
"The Call of Cthulhu"
Sources: _The Dunwich Horror_, Arkham; _The Best of H. P. Lovecraft_,
Ballantine; _Crawling Chaos_, Creation.
Synopsis: After the death of Professor Angell of Brown University, his
nephew discovers clues left behind that, when pieced together, reveal the
existence of a world-spanning cult dedicated to a being named Cthulhu.
A sculptor is driven mad by dreams, madness breaks out across the world,
a police chief breaks up a curious cult ritual, and a steamer in the Pacific
Ocean runs across an uncharted isle.
Comments: Lovecraft does an excellent job here -- though we all knew he
would. He gives just enough information to let us see what's going on, and
the reader doesn't get the full picture until the very end.
Lovecraft wrote the outline for this story during his New York period,
but didn't actually write it until he came back to Providence. He sent the
story to Weird Tales; Wright rejected it, but when Donald Wandrei came to
Chicago and made up a story that Lovecraft was going to submit it elsewhere,
Wright recanted and accepted it. HPL would later describe it as "so-so" (!).
If you'd like some more information on the origins of this story, and
you can't get hold of anything else, I would suggest looking at Chaosium's
_The Cthulhu Cycle_, in which Robert M. Price treats this story in some detail.
Especially noteworthy (because I figured it out independently ;-) ) was his
note of the similarities between "Call" and M. R. James' "Count Magnus",
a horror classic which deals with many of the same ideas and images as we
encounter in "Call" (for example, an octopoid creature that lives in a tomb).
The idea of writing a horror story in which the narrator has no first-person
view of the horror itself, but puts together disparate clues to come up
with a theory, is found in Machen's work, but Lovecraft puts additional power
behind it by making his monster threaten all of humanity. Other sources for
this story may include Tennyson's "The Kraken" and Theosophical literature,
though I'm too tired at this point to delve into those.
For Mythos fans, this is the first appearance of the infamous Cthulhu.
(Note that Lovecraft states that no reference to the Cthulhu cult appears in
any book, a fact which almost all subsequent writers -- if not Lovecraft
himself -- later broke.) Probably the most famous (if not the best) Mythos
fiction on Cthulhu is August Derleth's _The Trail of Cthulhu_, a collection
of five interrelated short stories that deal with Cthulhu, usually peripherally
Also of note is _The Cthulhu Cycle_, even though some of the stories in that
collection frankly left me unimpressed. Perhaps later I'll go back through
Lovecraft and look for more information on Cthulhu as he was originally
presented.
Tired,
Daniel
Christophe Thill
HARMSDM wrote:
> The Shadow over Usenet
> "The Call of Cthulhu"
> this story may include Tennyson's "The Kraken" and Theosophical literature,
> though I'm too tired at this point to delve into those.
Another source is an ancient precolumbian sculpture called the Manabi basrelief,
representing a hybrid figure with the body of a man and a sort of octopus for a
head. There's no definitive proof that Lovecraft knew this sculpture, but it was
quite well known among anthropologists in the 20s and 30s and used as a proof
for several theories. A picture of it was published in "Nature" in 1924. And FB
Long mentions Manabi in his writings.
--
Christophe Thill - Paris, France
c_t...@worldnet.fr
ArKa/D/ia! homepage: http://www.worldnet.fr/~c_thill/
HP Lovecraft page: http://www.worldnet.fr/~c_thill/hpl/
Donovan Loucks
I've long considered "The Call of Cthulhu" to be one of Lovecraft's finest
works, for one primary reason. In his opening sentence (as we all know
well) he writes:
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all its contents.
This is Lovecraft's thesis statement, and he proceeds to demonstrate the
truth of it by narrating three distinctly separate tales which, when
correlated, provide a hideous glimpse into the nature of reality. I've
always appreciated the darker implications of synchronicity, and this
notion is dealt with powerfully in Lovecraft's skilled hands.
Another reason for my appreciation of this tale is due to just _who_ ends
up releasing Great Cthulhu:
Briden pushed at the stone in several places without result. Then
Donovan felt over it delicately around the edge, pressing each point
separately as he went. He climbed interminably along the grotesque
stone moulding--that is, one would call it climbing if the thing was
not after all horizontal--and the men wondered how any door in the
universe could be so vast. Then, very softly and slowly, the
acre-great panel began to give inward at the top; and they saw that it
was balanced. Donovan slid or somehow propelled himself down or along
the jamb and rejoing his fellows, and everyone watched the queer
recession of the monstrously carven portal.
Unfortunately, Donovan is also the first of the three who are scooped up
and done away with first. Sniff... As for in-jokes, there's a reference
to Lovecraft's friend James F. Morton in part three of the tale:
I had largely given over my inquiries into what Professor Angell called
the "Cthulhu Cult", and was visiting a learned friend in Paterson, New
Jersey; the curator of a local museum and a mineralogist of note.
Morton was, indeed, the curator of the Paterson Museum from 1925 to 1941.
He was one of the more accomplished friends of Lovecraft, having earned
both a B.A. and M.A. _simultaneously_ from Harvard University in 1892.
As you might have guessed, I have photographs of some of the few locations
mentioned in the story. First, the Fleur-de-Lys Building at 7 Thomas
Street in Providence is used as the home of artist Henry Anthony Wilcox.
This half-timbered house, covered in stucco designs, was erected by artist
Sidney Richmond Burleigh in 1885/6. One of these designs, beneath a
window at the front of the house, is of some sort of toothed sea serpent,
and could have been inspirational in Lovecraft's Wilcox creating a bas-
relief of Cthulhu. Photographs of the house itself and of a close-up of
this design can be seen on The H. P. Lovecraft Archive.
The Providence Art Club at 11 Thomas Street, which Lovecraft and his aunts
visited for art shows, is mentioned briefly in the story. It is housed in
the Seril Dodge house, just a few doors up the street. Lovecraft's aunt
Lillian even displayed some of her own works there. I'll eventually make
a photograph of this building available on The H. P. Lovecraft Archive.
Another location from this tale is described by Henry L. P. Beckwith in
his book, _Lovecraft's Providence & Adjacent Parts_:
Go west down the hill on Williams Street to its intersection with Well
Street. This is almost certainly the scene of the death of George
Gammell Angell, Professor Emeritus of Semitic Languages at Brown
University and granduncle of the narrator in "The Call of Cthulhu."
I think Beckwith is reading too much into Lovecraft's statement that
Angell is killed by "a nautical-looking negro who had come from one of the
queer dark courts on the precipitous hillside which formed a short cut
from the waterfront to the deceased's home in Williams Street." Lovecraft
doesn't say that Angell was killed on Williams Street, but was taking a
shortcut to it.
Finally, I'd like to say a couple of things about Derleth's misconception
of Cthulhu being a water elemental. Derleth assumed that, since Cthulhu
dwelled in the ocean and had "an octopus-like head whose face was a mass
of feelers", that his natural realm was the water. Yet, the fact that he
is imprisoned beneath the waters in R'lyeh and cannot send his dreams
through that water is proof otherwise:
The great stone city R'lyeh, with its monoliths and sepulchres, had
sunk beneath the waves; and the deep waters, full of the one primal
mystery through which not even thought can pass, had cut off the
spectral intercourse.
The fact that Cthulhu has a passing similarity to a squid or octopus is
purely coincidental. Derleth's attempt to force his own philosophy onto
the scene merely points out his misunderstanding of Lovecraft's.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Donovan K. Loucks Phoenix, Arizona dlo...@primenet.com |
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| The H. P. Lovecraft Archive: http://www.primenet.com/~dloucks/hpl |
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| alt.horror.cthulhu FAQ: |
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Christophe Thill
I just came across a comic strip version of "The call of Cthulhu". A rather
rare book now, and a bit expensive too but it was worn out and I didn't buy
it. It was the collection of Lovecraf tales drawn by Alberto Breccia. He
uses sometimes pecil, sometimes indian ink, and in a very Lovecraftian way,
ie more impressionnist than accurate. His rendering of Great Cthulhu is
exaclty like it should be: a confused mass of tentaclesand things, whose
huge size is indicated by the tiny men below. Even the statuette is not
shown too preciesly, but only as a silhouette.
Now two more points to the discussion:
. Professor Angell's name comes from Angell street; this is so obvious that
nobody cared to point it out, but...
. The sscene in the beginning, in which the young sulptor brings the
professor a clay basrelief he has carved the night before, comes directly
from a dream that Lovecraft tells in one of his letters.
--
Christophe Thill - Paris, France
c_t...@worldnet.fr
ArKa/D/ia! Homepage: http://www.worldnet.fr/~c_thill/
HARMSDM
From: Donovan Loucks <dlo...@primenet.com>
>Finally, I'd like to say a couple of things about Derleth's misconception
>of Cthulhu being a water elemental. Derleth assumed that, since Cthulhu
>dwelled in the ocean and had "an octopus-like head whose face was a mass
>of feelers", that his natural realm was the water. Yet, the fact that he
>is imprisoned beneath the waters in R'lyeh and cannot send his dreams
>through that water is proof otherwise:
> The great stone city R'lyeh, with its monoliths and sepulchres, had
> sunk beneath the waves; and the deep waters, full of the one primal
> mystery through which not even thought can pass, had cut off the
> spectral intercourse.
>The fact that Cthulhu has a passing similarity to a squid or octopus is
>purely coincidental. Derleth's attempt to force his own philosophy onto
>the scene merely points out his misunderstanding of Lovecraft's.
I agree with this. Robert M. Price has tried to say that
the Deep Ones' association with the water and Cthulhu argues otherwise,
but it would seem more likely to me that the Deep Ones can be reached
with Cthulhu's "mind-transmissions" because they're underwater.
I wouldn't call Derleth's elemental theory a "misunderstanding,"
though. I believe it was Francis Laney who came up with this idea. When
Derleth saw it, he became excited with it. There was a catch, though --
he couldn't find any fire or air elementals in Lovecraft's fiction.
Undaunted, Derleth created some so they'd fit his model! This goes far
beyond a "misunderstanding", in my opinion.
[long rant showing how disgusted with Derleth I've become
deleted]
Quibbling,
Daniel