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5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the Great H. P.Lovecraft Books, January 19, 2010
A young man in Italy who admires my books of Lovecraftian short stories sent me a copy of this 1943 Arkham House book as a gift. There aren't many of the original Arkham House Lovecraft titles that I yearn for because the text of Lovecraft's prose was so badly edited (and in some cases altered) by the sloppy editorial work of August Derleth; but this rare book collects between its covers so many of my favourites among Lovecraft's Works that I have had, these past strange aeons, a nameless hankering to own it. That it should come as a gift from a Sesqua Valley fan in Italy adds to much of its magick! And how strangely moved I felt as I scanned the opening sentence of the book's introduction: "When the late great Howard Phillips Lovecraft died five years ago..." Five years! Lovecraft's era seems at times such a distant epoch, something that occurred in Antient Time -- but, really, it wasn't that long ago. Whatever may be said about August Derleth, that he loved and honored HPL is beyond doubt, and this book is a fabulous testimonial of that adoration. However, Derleth was a professional and commercial writer in a way that Lovecraft never was, and he could not seem to resist the temptation to edit Lovecraft's text in this edition. Here is the third paragraph of "The Hound" as published in this book:
"May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led us both to so monstrous a fate! Wearied with the commonplaces of a prosaic world, where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St. John and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. The enigmas of the symbolists and the ecstasies of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in time, but each new moon was drained too soon, of its diverting novelty and appeal."
And then a fourth paragraph begins; but as Lovecraft wrote it, this is not the end of the paragraph, and the last line, corrected by S. T. Joshi in his now-standard text, reads: "The enigmas of the Symbolists and the ecstasies of the pre-Raphaelites were all ours in time, but each new mood was drained too soon of its diverting novelty and appeal." Derleth's ending the third paragraph mid-way, breaking apart Lovecraft's original paragraph into two shorter ones, is but one tiny example of Derleth trying to correct or improve Lovecraft's writing; it was one of his annoying blunders as an editor of the Lovecraft texts.
Still, the contents of this book is wonderful, and it will serve as an outstanding desk-side companion for the rest of my life, inspiring new works from my Lovecraftian pen. Here we find the Commonplace Book of H. P. Lovecraft, from which Derleth culled the ideas that formed his pale posthumous collaborations "with" HPL, & which inspir'd me to write one of my most ambitious works, a prose-poem sequence entitled "Uncommon Places." We find also, herein, four of Grandpa's prose poems, including the stunning and influential "Nyarlathotep." Here also we find "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" in its first-ever publication. And -- o eldritch joy! -- within these antient leaves we find my favourite prose work by H. P. Lovecraft, "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward," in its first complete publication (an abridgment of the novel, edited by Derleth, was publish'd in WEIRD TALES). Among the many short stories we have the two wonderful tales "The Hound" and "The Unnamable," as well as some of ye Dunsanian pieces such as "The White Ship" and "The Quest of Iranon."
One superb feature of this volume is the generous selection of Lovecraft's poetry that it contains. How nice to have "The Ancient Track," "Fungi from Yuggoth," "Where Once Poe Walked" and "The Messenger" between the same covers that house so many of my all-time favourite tales by HPL! It is here that we first find Derleth's clumsy misreading of the thirteenth line of "Night-Gaunts," which he prints as:
"But ho! If only they would make some sound",
a mistake that was repeated in Arkham House's 1963 edition of HPL's COLLECTED POEMS and was even repeated audibly in the reading of the "Fungi" recorded for and distributed on cassettes and cd disc by Fedogan & Bremer.
Finally, as Appenda, we have "The Cthulhu Mythos: A Glossary," by Francis T. Laney, and "An Appreciation of H. P. Lovecraft," by W. Paul Cook. The Glossary is gobs of fun:
"Sharing AZATHOTH'S dominion is YOG-SOTHOTH or YOT-SOTHOTH (Smith) and IOG-SOTOT (Smith), the 'all-in-one and one-in-all.' This entity is a force or personality which is co-existent with all time and conterminous with all space. He appears as a congeries of iridescent globes. YOG-SOTHOTH is represented on earth by 'URM-AT-TAWIL (Lovecraft-Price) and the ANCIENT ONES."
I love this book and am so grateful to Carlo for giving me his extra copy as a gift! I shall peruse it many times, sipping from its pages that nameless nourishment which shews itself as mine own tales of ye Cthulhu Mythos. YOG-SOTHOTH!!
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A Spectacular Array of Eldritch Horrors!, January 19, 2010
This is an extremely good price for this rare Arkham House book, published five years after Lovecraft's death. I do not know what is meant by "leather bound" -- if it means that the book's original boards were dismantled and it was re-bound in leather, that may affect its value as an original Arkham House book from this time period. Perhaps the best way to describe the book is to reprint, in whole, the introduction by August Derelth and Donald Wandrei:
BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION
WHEN THE LATE GREAT Howard Phillips Lovecraft died five years ago, he left a singularly fascinating body of work, to the collecting and publishing of which the editors of this volume and its predecessor dedicated themselves. It was almost immediately apparent that, while by no means all of the Lovecraft writings could be preserved, the best of those writings might be published in a trilogy of omnibus volumes. The material, moreover, fell easily into three groupings, of which the first was made up of the best prose fiction and the masterly exposition of SUPERNATURAL HORROR IN LITERATURE. The second must clearly contain the remaining prose, fiction and non-fiction, selected poems, and various miscellaneous pieces, while the third must with equal certainty be a volume of SELECTED LETTERS.
It is with the present volume, the second in the projected trilogy, that we are here concerned. Unlike THE OUTSIDER AND OTHERS, BEYOND THE WALL OF SLEEP contains a great variety of material, which quite possibly demands a modicum of explanation. We have begun this volume with three intimate prose pieces which should be of interest to all Lovecraftians--the only known precisely put together autobiographical fragment, Lovecraft's own notes for stories (it will be observed by alert readers that he utilized many of them), and the chronology of the fabled NECRONOMICON, the Lovecraft creation which has so seized upon the imagination of readers that not a year passes without scores of inquiries for the volume being made of booksellers, publishers, and librarians!
Then there are four prose poems, certain stories of fantasy and horror, and the two novels: THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD, in large part published in WEIRD TALES, and THE DREAM QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH, nowhere before published. These short novels and long stories have been followed by three collaborations and a small selection of stories on which Lovecraft made certain revisions in his characteristic manner to such a degree that the stories properly belong in such a collection as this. They represent some of the best fiction which has appeared in WEIRD TALES, and their various authors--Hazel Heald, Zelia Brown Reed (Bishop), and William Lumley--have repeatedly attested to the value and influence of H. P. Lovecraft's criticism of their work. ("He was a very severe critic and he did actively rewrite portions of my manuscripts. After I had rewritten a tale several times, he would take it in hand--pencil instructions beside each paragraph and make comments."--Hazel Heald to the editors, April 14, 1937. "His guidance was sincere and ruthless...He helped me on nearly everything I've done, by correction and revision whenever necessary."--Zealia Brown Reed Bishop to the editors, April 14, 1937.) These stories are followed by two pieces which reveal Lovecraft as a satirist, IBID and SWEET ERMENGARDE, both of which betray a sense of humor of which there was not much evidence in THE OUTSIDER AND OTHERS, but of which there is ample proof in the forthcoming SELECTED LETTERS.
Finally, there are the SELECTED POEMS, including some of Lovecraft's earliest work, clearly influenced by English eighteenth century poetry, the Poesque poems of THE ANCIENT TRACK, the FUNGI FROM YUGGOTH, which are related to the Cthulhu Mythos, the narrative poem, PSYCHOPOMPOS, and a few last poems. The volume is concluded with Francis T. Laney's CTHULHU GLOSSARY, and the appreciation of Lovecraft by W. Paul Cook, one of his oldest friends. The GLOSSARY, compiled after much research among Lovecraft stories and those by other hands dealing with the Cthulhu Mythos, indicates what readers of the Lovecraft stories have suspected--that the Cthulhu Mythos was not born full-blown, but evolved. Lovecraft began to write prose in fantasy, and only went on to horror tales later; still later he began the Cthulhu Mythos, and as its plan evolved, he began to tie various strands of the Cthulhu web-work up to certain of his earlier work. Despite a few discrepancies, the mythos on the whole was well on the way to precise and conclusive development when Lovecraft's death interrupted his work.
Apart from these introductory notes, BEYOND THE WALL OF SLEEP speaks eloquently for itself.
How fascinating! This may be the first time that the word "Lovecraftians" was used to describe those weird souls who read and are obsess'd with HPL. We see how quickly the editors worked to begin securing items for future Arkham House tomes, with both letters from Heald and Bishop dated one month after HPL's death. And we see here Derleth's working to tie what was basically his invention, the Cthulhu Mythos, to Lovecraft; for Lovecraft had no intention of making something called the "Cthulhu Mythos" (Lovecraft never used the phrase ever) into a "precise and conclusive development" -- that was all Derleth's doing, when he witlessly decided that the Great Old Ones were representations of earth, water, air, &c. (Derleth, thinking that Lovecraft had perished before inventing a fire elemental, created Cthugha.) And the statement that Lovecraft penned tales of fantasy BEFORE he wrote tales of supernatural horror is absurd nonsense! Lovecraft's first tales were a combination of fantasy and horror stories, and included such titles as "Dagon" (July 1917), "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" (1919), "The Statement of Randolph Carter" (December5 1919), "The Terrible Old Man" (28 January 1920), and one of his most horrifying weird tales, "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" (1920) -- all compos'd during the same year5s that HPL penned "The White Ship" (1919), "The Doom That Came to Sarnath" (1919), and "Polaris" (1918). This is just one instance of Derleth getting things wrong, which he often did through ignorance or clumsiness.
Still, for all of that, it was Derleth who spent so much of his life, his time & money, to publishing the Works of Lovecraft. This wonderful book includes so much that is excellent in the domain of the weird. The inclusion of the poetry is fabulous. I shall end by quoting one of my favourite Lovecraft sonnets, found on page 411 of this 1943 edition:
THE MESSENGER
The Thing, he said, would come that night at three
From the old churchyard on the hill below;
But crouching by an oak fire's wholesome glow,
I tried to tell myself it could not be.
Surely, I mused, it was a pleasantry
Devised by one who did not truly know
The Elder Sign, bequeathed from long ago,
That sets the fumbling forms of darkness free.
He had not meant it--no--but still I lit
Another lamp as starry Leo climbed
Out of the Seekonk, and a steeple chimed
Three--and the firelight faded, bit by bit.
Then at the door that cautious rattling came--
And the mad truth devoured me like a flame!
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