GREATEST SHORT STORIES H.P LOVECRAFT E-Book

H. P. Lovecraft

• Herausgeber: Lebooks Editora
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

H.P. Lovecraft has established himself as the foremost figure in the literary genre classified as Fantastic Horror, having written hundreds of tales in this genre. In this ebook, as in other editions of the Best Short Stories Collection, you will discover a representative part of his vast body of work: There are 20 of his best tales, some already well-known among genre readers such as "The Call of Cthulhu," "The Thing on the Doorstep," "The Statement of Randolph Carter," "Dagon," "The History of the Necronomicon"... among others that will leave you breathless. If you enjoy the Fantastic Horror genre, unquestionably, H.P. Lovecraft is the author to be read.

Leseprobe

H.P. Lovecraft

GREASTEST SHORT STORIES

OF

 H.P LOVECRAFT

Contents

INTRODUCTION

The Cats of Ulthar

Celephaïs

The Tomb

Dagon

The Music of Erich Zann

The Colour out of Space

Polaris

The Terrible Old Man

The Statement of Randolph Carter

Cool Air

The Doom That Came to Sarnath

The Thing on the Doorstep

The Festival

INTRODUCTION

H.P Lovecraft

1890 - 1937

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on August 20, 1890, and died in the same city on March 15, 1937. Better known as H. P. Lovecraft, he was an American writer who revolutionized the horror genre by incorporating fantastical elements typical of fantasy and science fiction genres.

Lovecraft created the cycle of stories later grouped into the Cthulhu Mythos and the fictional grimoire known as the Necronomicon, supposedly linked to John Dee, a 16th-century British astronomer and occultist through which humans in his stories communicate with the pantheon of entities created by the author.

Lovecraft was openly conservative and anglophile, which can be observed in his poem "An American To Mother England," published in January 1916. His literary style employs archaisms, vocabulary, and markedly British spelling, contributing to the atmosphere of his stories, such as in the tale "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward," which contains references to characters who lived before the independence of the Thirteen Colonies, as well as to commercial establishments existing between the 17th and 18th centuries.

Lovecraft called his literary principle "cosmicism" or "cosmic horror," in which life is incomprehensible to the human being, and the universe is infinitely hostile to their interests. His works express a profound indifference to human beliefs and activities, as well as a deeply pessimistic and cynical attitude, often challenging the values of Enlightenment, Romanticism, Christianity, and Humanism. Lovecraft's protagonists were the opposite of traditional heroes, as they momentarily glimpsed the horror of ultimate reality and the abyss.

During his lifetime, Lovecraft had a relatively small number of readers. However, over the decades, his reputation grew, and today he is considered one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th century. Joyce Carol Oates stated that Lovecraft, like Edgar Allan Poe in the 19th century, has had "an incalculable influence on successive generations of fiction writers," and Stephen King classified the writer as "the greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale of the 20th century."

On Lovecraft's work:

H.P. Lovecraft's work was directly inspired largely by his constant nightmares, contributing to the creation of a body of work marked by the subconscious and symbolism. His main influences were Edgar Allan Poe, whom Lovecraft deeply admired, and Lord Dunsany, whose fantasy narratives inspired his stories in the Dreamlands.

Lovecraft is one of the few authors whose literary work focuses exclusively on horror, with the purpose of disturbing the reader after drawing them into the atmosphere, environment, and climate of what they are reading. Often, he starts from an apparently banal situation to gradually reveal the horror behind it. This occurs, for example, in the novel "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward," where the atmosphere of normality fades as the author reveals the results of the investigation that the aforementioned Charles carried out to find an ancestor who had been deliberately concealed.

In addition to the mundane atmosphere, another ingredient in Lovecraft's formula to seduce the reader is the use of the first person. Most of his tales, such as "The Call of Cthulhu," "The Whisperer in Darkness," "The Colour Out of Space," "The Shadow over Innsmouth," and "At the Mountains of Madness," are narrated in the first person. In some stories, the narrator experiences all events, as in "The Shadow over Innsmouth," while in others, the narrator interacts with other characters and participates in the events, usually the most terrifying ones.

The constant references in Lovecraft's stories to horrors, monsters, and ancestral deities gave rise to something akin to a mythology, popularly known as the "Cthulhu Mythos," a term coined after the author's death by writer August Derleth, one of the many writers who based their stories on the mythology created by Lovecraft. The Cthulhu Mythos contains various pantheons of extra-dimensional beings that ruled the Earth millions of years ago. These beings were so powerful that they were considered or could be considered gods. Some of them, it is said, were responsible for the creation of the human race and had a direct influence on the history of the universe.

Lovecraft also created one of the most famous and explored artifacts in horror stories: the Necronomicon, a fictional book of demon summoning written by the also fictional Abdul Alhazred. To this day, the myth of the real existence of this book persists, fueled especially by the publication of several fake editions of the Necronomicon and by a text, written by Lovecraft himself, explaining its origin and its fictional history.

In addition to his fiction, Lovecraft wrote the essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature," which is still considered one of the most important on the genre, despite more than seventy years having passed since its publication. The subsequent appearance of authors such as Robert Bloch and Stephen King has not altered this fact.

Legacy

In addition to being an undisputed reference in fantastic horror literature, Lovecraft also has influence in music currently. Many rock and heavy metal bands pay homage to Lovecraft in their songs, such as Metallica, Dylath-Leen, Ossadogva, Spawn of Matriarch, Abgott, Advent, and Innzmouth.

In 2010, the record label Voidhanger Records released a compilation titled "Tribute to H.P. Lovecraft - Gate 1: Yogsothery - Chaosmogonic Rituals of Fear," which contains songs performed by the bands Jääportit, Umbra Nihil, Aarni, and Caput LVIIIM. The lyrics of all compositions address themes related to Cthulhu myths, occultism, literature, and horror.

The Cats of Ulthar

It is said that in Ulthar, which lies beyond the river Skai, no man may kill a cat; and this I can verily believe as I gaze upon him who sitteth purring before the fire. For the cat is cryptic and close to strange things which men cannot see. He is the soul of antique Aegyptus and bearer of tales from forgotten cities in Meroë and Ophir. He is the kin of the jungle’s lords and heir to the secrets of hoary and sinister Africa. The Sphinx is his cousin and he speaks her language; but he is more ancient than the Sphinx and remembers that which she hath forgotten.

In Ulthar, before ever the burgesses forbade the killing of cats, there dwelt an old cotter and his wife who delighted to trap and slay the cats of their neighbors. Why they did this I know not; save that many hate the voice of the cat in the night and take it ill that cats should run stealthily about yards and gardens at twilight. But whatever the reason, this old man and woman took pleasure in trapping and slaying every cat which came near to their hovel; and from some of the sounds heard after dark, many villagers fancied that the manner of slaying was exceedingly peculiar. But the villagers did not discuss such things with the old man and his wife; because of the habitual expression on the withered faces of the two and because their cottage was so small and so darkly hidden under spreading oaks at the back of a neglected yard. In truth, much as the owners of cats hated these odd folk, they feared them more; and instead of berating them as brutal assassins, merely took care that no cherished pet or mouser should stray toward the remote hovel under the dark trees. When through some unavoidable oversight a cat was missed and sounds heard after dark, the loser would lament impotently; or console himself by thanking Fate that it was not one of his children who had thus vanished. For the people of Ulthar were simple and knew not whence it is all cats first came.

One day a caravan of strange wanderers from the South entered the narrow cobbled streets of Ulthar. Dark wanderers they were and unlike the other roving folk who passed through the village twice every year. In the marketplace they told fortunes for silver and bought gay beads from the merchants. What was the land of these wanderers none could tell; but it was seen that they were given to strange prayers and that they had painted on the sides of their wagon’s strange figures with human bodies and the heads of cats, hawks, rams and lions. And the leader of the caravan wore a head-dress with two horns and a curious disc betwixt the horns.

There was in this singular caravan a little boy with no father or mother but only a tiny black kitten to cherish. The plague had not been kind to him yet had left him this small furry thing to mitigate his sorrow; and when one is very young, one can find great relief in the lively antics of a black kitten. So the boy whom the dark people called Menes smiled more often than he wept as he sate playing with his graceful kitten on the steps of an oddly painted wagon.

On the third morning of the wanderers’ stay in Ulthar, Menes could not find his kitten; and as he sobbed aloud in the market-place certain villagers told him of the old man and his wife and of sounds heard in the night. And when he heard these things, his sobbing gave place to meditation and finally to prayer. He stretched out his arms toward the sun and prayed in a tongue no villager could understand; though indeed the villagers did not try very hard to understand, since their attention was mostly taken up by the sky and the odd shapes the clouds were assuming. It was very peculiar but as the little boy uttered his petition there seemed to form overhead the shadowy, nebulous figures of exotic things; of hybrid creatures crowned with horn-flanked discs. Nature is full of such illusions to impress the imaginative.

That night the wanderers left Ulthar and were never seen again. And the householders were troubled when they noticed that in all the village there was not a cat to be found. From each hearth the familiar cat had vanished; cats large and small, black, grey, striped, yellow and white. Old Kranon, the burgomaster, swore that the dark folk had taken the cats away in revenge for the killing of Menes’ kitten; and cursed the caravan and the little boy. But Nith, the lean notary, declared that the old cotter and his wife were more likely persons to suspect; for their hatred of cats was notorious and increasingly bold. Still, no one durst complain to the sinister couple; even when little Atal, the innkeeper’s son, vowed that he had at twilight seen all the cats of Ulthar in that accursed yard under the trees, pacing very slowly and solemnly in a circle around the cottage, two abreast, as if in performance of some unheard-of rite of beasts. The villagers did not know how much to believe from so small a boy; and though they feared that the evil pair had charmed the cats to their death, they preferred not to chide the old cotter till they met him outside his dark and repellent yard.

So Ulthar went to sleep in vain anger; and when the people awaked at dawn — behold! every cat was back at his accustomed hearth! Large and small, black, grey, striped, yellow and white, none was missing. Very sleek and fat did the cats appear and sonorous with purring content. The citizens talked with one another of the affair and marveled not a little. Old Kranon again insisted that it was the dark folk who had taken them, since cats did not return alive from the cottage of the ancient man and his wife. But all agreed on one thing: that the refusal of all the cats to eat their portions of meat or drink their saucers of milk was exceedingly curious. And for two whole days the sleek, lazy cats of Ulthar would touch no food but only doze by the fire or in the sun.

It was fully a week before the villagers noticed that no lights were appearing at dusk in the windows of the cottage under the trees. Then the lean Nith remarked that no one had seen the old man or his wife since the night the cats were away. In another week the burgomaster decided to overcome his fears and call at the strangely silent dwelling as a matter of duty, though in so doing he was careful to take with him Shang the blacksmith and Thul the cutter of stone as witnesses. And when they had broken down the frail door, they found only this: two cleanly picked human skeletons on the earthen floor and a number of singular beetles crawling in the shadowy corners.

There was subsequently much talk among the burgesses of Ulthar. Zath, the coroner, disputed at length with Nith, the lean notary; and Kranon and Shang and Thul were overwhelmed with questions. Even little Atal, the innkeeper’s son, was closely questioned and given a sweetmeat as reward. They talked of the old cotter and his wife, of the caravan of dark wanderers, of small Menes and his black kitten, of the prayer of Menes and of the sky during that prayer, of the doings of the cats on the night the caravan left and of what was later found in the cottage under the dark trees in the repellent yard.

And in the end the burgesses passed that remarkable law which is told of by traders in Hatheg and discussed by travelers in Nir; namely, that in Ulthar no man may kill a cat.

THE END

Celephaïs

In a dream Kuranes saw the city in the valley and the seacoast beyond and the snowy peak overlooking the sea and the gaily painted galleys that sail out of the harbor toward the distant regions where the sea meets the sky. In a dream it was also that he came by his name of Kuranes, for when awake he was called by another name. Perhaps it was natural for him to dream a new name; for he was the last of his family and alone among the indifferent millions of London, so there were not many to speak to him and remind him who he had been. His money and lands were gone and he did not care for the ways of people about him but preferred to dream and write of his dreams. What he wrote was laughed at by those to whom he shewed it, so that after a time he kept his writings to himself and finally ceased to write. The more he withdrew from the world about him, the more wonderful became his dreams; and it would have been quite futile to try to describe them on paper. Kuranes was not modern and did not think like others who wrote. Whilst they strove to strip from life its embroidered robes of myth and to shew in naked ugliness the foul thing that is reality, Kuranes sought for beauty alone. When truth and experience failed to reveal it, he sought it in fancy and illusion and found it on his very doorstep, amid the nebulous memories of childhood tales and dreams.

There are not many persons who know what wonders are opened to them in the stories and visions of their youth; for when as children we listen and dream, we think but half-formed thoughts and when as men we try to remember, we are dulled and prosaic with the poison of life. But some of us awake in the night with strange phantasms of enchanted hills and gardens, of fountains that sing in the sun, of golden cliffs overhanging murmuring seas, of plains that stretch down to sleeping cities of bronze and stone and of shadowy companies of heroes that ride caparisoned white horses along the edges of thick forests; and then we know that we have looked back through the ivory gates into that world of wonder which was ours before we were wise and unhappy.

Kuranes came very suddenly upon his old world of childhood. He had been dreaming of the house where he was born; the great stone house covered with ivy, where thirteen generations of his ancestors had lived and where he had hoped to die. It was moonlight and he had stolen out into the fragrant summer night, through the gardens, down the terraces, past the great oaks of the park and along the long white road to the village. The village seemed very old, eaten away at the edge like the moon which had commenced to wane and Kuranes wondered whether the peaked roofs of the small houses hid sleep or death. In the streets were spears of long grass and the windowpanes on either side were either broken or filmily staring. Kuranes had not lingered but had plodded on as though summoned toward some goal. He dared not disobey the summons for fear it might prove an illusion like the urges and aspirations of waking life, which do not lead to any goal. Then he had been drawn down a lane that led off from the village street toward the channel cliffs and had come to the end of things — to the precipice and the abyss where all the village and all the world fell abruptly into the unechoing emptiness of infinity and where even the sky ahead was empty and unlit by the crumbling moon and the peering stars. Faith had urged him on, over the precipice and into the gulf, where he had floated down, down, down; past dark, shapeless, undreamed dreams, faintly glowing spheres that may have been partly dreamed dreams and laughing winged things that seemed to mock the dreamers of all the worlds. Then a rift seemed to open in the darkness before him and he saw the city of the valley, glistening radiantly far, far below, with a background of sea and sky and a snow-capped mountain near the shore.

Kuranes had awaked the very moment he beheld the city, yet he knew from his brief glance that it was none other than Celephaïs, in the Valley of Ooth-Nargai beyond the Tanarian Hills, where his spirit had dwelt all the eternity of an hour one summer afternoon very long ago, when he had slipt away from his nurse and let the warm sea-breeze lull him to sleep as he watched the clouds from the cliff near the village. He had protested then, when they had found him, waked him and carried him home, for just as he was aroused he had been about to sail in a golden galley for those alluring regions where the sea meets the sky. And now he was equally resentful of awaking, for he had found his fabulous city after forty weary years.

But three nights afterward Kuranes came again to Celephaïs. As before, he dreamed first of the village that was asleep or dead and of the abyss down which one must float silently; then the rift appeared again and he beheld the glittering minarets of the city and saw the graceful galleys riding at anchor in the blue harbor and watched the gingko trees of Mount Aran swaying in the sea-breeze. But this time he was not snatched away and like a winged being settled gradually over a grassy hillside till finally his feet rested gently on the turf. He had indeed come back to the Valley of Ooth-Nargai and the splendid city of Celephaïs.

Down the hill amid scented grasses and brilliant flowers walked Kuranes, over the bubbling Naraxa on the small wooden bridge where he had carved his name so many years ago and through the whispering grove to the great stone bridge by the city gate. All was as of old, nor were the marble walls discolored, nor the polished bronze statues upon them tarnished. And Kuranes saw that he need not tremble lest the things he knew be vanished; for even the sentries on the ramparts were the same and still as young as he remembered them. When he entered the city, past the bronze gates and over the onyx pavements, the merchants and camel-drivers greeted him as if he had never been away; and it was the same at the turquoise temple of Nath-Horthath, where the orchid-wreathed priests told him that there is no time in Ooth-Nargai but only perpetual youth. Then Kuranes walked through the Street of Pillars to the seaward wall, where gathered the traders and sailors and strange men from the regions where the sea meets the sky. There he stayed long, gazing out over the bright harbor where the ripples sparkled beneath an unknown sun and where rode lightly the galleys from far places over the water. And he gazed also upon Mount Aran rising regally from the shore, its lower slopes green with swaying trees and its white summit touching the sky.

More than ever Kuranes wished to sail in a galley to the far places of which he had heard so many strange tales and he sought again the captain who had agreed to carry him so long ago. He found the man, Athib, sitting on the same chest of spices he had sat upon before and Athib seemed not to realize that any time had passed. Then the two rowed to a galley in the harbor and giving orders to the oarsmen, commenced to sail out into the billowy Cerenerian Sea that leads to the sky. For several days they glided undulatingly over the water, till finally they came to the horizon, where the sea meets the sky. Here the galley paused not at all but floated easily in the blue of the sky among fleecy clouds tinted with rose. And far beneath the keel Kuranes could see strange lands and rivers and cities of surpassing beauty, spread indolently in the sunshine which seemed never to lessen or disappear. At length Athib told him that their journey was near its end and that they would soon enter the harbor of Serannian, the pink marble city of the clouds, which is built on that ethereal coast where the west wind flows into the sky; but as the highest of the city’s carven towers came into sight there was a sound somewhere in space and Kuranes awaked in his London garret.

For many months after that Kuranes sought the marvelous city of Celephaïs and its sky-bound galleys in vain; and though his dreams carried him to many gorgeous and unheard-of places, no one whom he met could tell him how to find Ooth-Nargai, beyond the Tanarian Hills. One night he went flying over dark mountains where there were faint, lone campfires at great distances apart and strange, shaggy herds with tinkling bells on the leaders; and in the wildest part of this hilly country, so remote that few men could ever have seen it, he found a hideously ancient wall or causeway of stone zigzagging along the ridges and valleys; too gigantic ever to have risen by human hands and of such a length that neither end of it could be seen. Beyond that wall in the grey dawn he came to a land of quaint gardens and cherry trees and when the sun rose he beheld such beauty of red and white flowers, green foliage and lawns, white paths, diamond brooks, blue lakelets, carven bridges and red-roofed pagodas, that he for a moment forgot Celephaïs in sheer delight. But he remembered it again when he walked down a white path toward a red-roofed pagoda and would have questioned the people of that land about it, had he not found that there were no people there but only birds and bees and butterflies. On another night Kuranes walked up a damp stone spiral stairway endlessly and came to a tower window overlooking a mighty plain and river lit by the full moon; and in the silent city that spread away from the riverbank he thought he beheld some feature or arrangement which he had known before. He would have descended and asked the way to Ooth-Nargai had not a fearsome aurora sputtered up from some remote place beyond the horizon, shewing the ruin and antiquity of the city and the stagnation of the reedy river and the death lying upon that land, as it had lain since King Kynaratholis came home from his conquests to find the vengeance of the gods.

So Kuranes sought fruitlessly for the marvelous city of Celephaïs and its galleys that sail to Serannian in the sky, meanwhile seeing many wonders and once barely escaping from the high priest not to be described, which wears a yellow silken mask over its face and dwells all alone in a prehistoric stone monastery on the cold desert plateau of Leng. In time he grew so impatient of the bleak intervals of day that he began buying drugs in order to increase his periods of sleep. Hasheesh helped a great deal and once sent him to a part of space where form does not exist but where glowing gases study the secrets of existence. And a violet-colored gas told him that this part of space was outside what he had called infinity. The gas had not heard of planets and organisms before but identified Kuranes merely as one from the infinity where matter, energy and gravitation exist. Kuranes was now very anxious to return to minaret-studded Celephaïs and increased his doses of drugs; but eventually he had no more money left and could buy no drugs. Then one summer day he was turned out of his garret and wandered aimlessly through the streets, drifting over a bridge to a place where the houses grew thinner and thinner. And it was there that fulfilment came and he met the cortege of knights come from Celephaïs to bear him thither forever.

Handsome knights they were, astride roan horses and clad in shining armor with tabards of cloth-of-gold curiously emblazoned. So numerous were they, that Kuranes almost mistook them for an army but their leader told him they were sent in his honor; since it was, he who had created Ooth-Nargai in his dreams, on which account he was now to be appointed its chief god for evermore. Then they gave Kuranes a horse and placed him at the head of the cavalcade and all rode majestically through the downs of Surrey and onward toward the region where Kuranes and his ancestors were born. It was very strange but as the riders went on, they seemed to gallop back through Time; for whenever they passed through a village in the twilight, they saw only such houses and villages as Chaucer or men before him might have seen and sometimes they saw knights on horseback with small companies of retainers. When it grew dark, they travelled more swiftly, till soon they were flying uncannily as if in the air. In the dim dawn they came upon the village which Kuranes had seen alive in his childhood and asleep or dead in his dreams. It was alive now and early villagers’ courtesies as the horsemen clattered down the street and turned off into the lane that ends in the abyss of dream. Kuranes had previously entered that abyss only at night and wondered what it would look like by day; so he watched anxiously as the column approached its brink. Just as they galloped up the rising ground to the precipice a golden glare came somewhere out of the east and hid all the landscape in its effulgent draperies. The abyss was now a seething chaos of roseate and cerulean splendor and invisible voices sang exultantly as the knightly entourage plunged over the edge and floated gracefully down past glittering clouds and silvery coruscations. Endlessly down the horsemen floated, their chargers pawing the aether as if galloping over golden sands; and then the luminous vapors spread apart to reveal a greater brightness, the brightness of the city Celephaïs and the seacoast beyond and the snowy peak overlooking the sea and the gaily painted galleys that sail out of the harbor toward distant regions where the sea meets the sky.

And Kuranes reigned thereafter over Ooth-Nargai and all the neighboring regions of dream and held his court alternately in Celephaïs and in the cloud-fashioned Serannian. He reigns there still and will reign happily forever, though below the cliffs at Innsmouth the channel tides played mockingly with the body of a tramp who had stumbled through the half-deserted village at dawn; played mockingly and cast it upon the rocks by ivy-covered Trevor Towers, where a notably fat and especially offensive millionaire brewer enjoys the purchased atmosphere of extinct nobility.

THE END

The Tomb

In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative. It is an unfortunate fact that the bulk of humanity is too limited in its mental vision to weigh with patience and intelligence those isolated phenomena, seen and felt only by a psychologically sensitive few, which lie outside its common experience. Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal; that all things appear as they do only by virtue of the delicate individual physical and mental media through which we are made conscious of them; but the prosaic materialism of the majority condemns as madness the flashes of super-sight which penetrate the common veil of obvious empiricism.

My name is Jervas Dudley and from earliest childhood I have been a dreamer and a visionary. Wealthy beyond the necessity of a commercial life and temperamentally unfitted for the formal studies and social recreations of my acquaintances, I have dwelt ever in realms apart from the visible world; spending my youth and adolescence in ancient and little-known books and in roaming the fields and groves of the region near my ancestral home. I do not think that what I read in these books or saw in these fields and groves was exactly what other boys read and saw there; but of this I must say little, since detailed speech would but confirm those cruel slanders upon my intellect which I sometimes overhear from the whispers of the stealthy attendants around me. It is sufficient for me to relate events without analyzing causes.

I have said that I dwelt apart from the visible world but I have not said that I dwelt alone. This no human creature may do; for lacking the fellowship of the living, he inevitably draws upon the companionship of things that are not, or are no longer, living. Close by my home there lies a singular wooded hollow, in whose twilight deeps I spent most of my time; reading, thinking and dreaming. Down its moss-covered slopes my first steps of infancy were taken and around its grotesquely gnarled oak trees my first fancies of boyhood were woven. Well did I come to know the presiding dryads of those trees and often have I watched their wild dances in the struggling beams of a waning moon — but of these things I must not now speak. I will tell only of the lone tomb in the darkest of the hillside thickets; the deserted tomb of the Hydes, an old and exalted family whose last direct descendant had been laid within its black recesses many decades before my birth.