Fungi from Yuggoth :: Sonnette XIII-XVIII

XIII. Hesperia

The winter sunset, flaming beyond spires
And chimneys half-detached from this dull sphere,
Opens great gates to some forgotten year
Of elder splendours and divine desires.
Expectant wonders burn in those rich fires,
Adventure-fraught, and not untinged with fear;
A row of sphinxes where the way leads clear
Toward walls and turrets quivering to far lyres.

It is the land where beauty's meaning flowers;
Where every unplaced memory has a source;
Where the great river Time begins its course
Down the vast void in starlit streams of hours.
Dreams bring us close - but ancient lore repeats
That human tread has never soiled these streets.

XIV. Star-Winds

It is a certain hour of twilight glooms,
Mostly in autumn, when the star-wind pours
Down hilltop streets, deserted out-of-doors,
But shewing early lamplight from snug rooms.
The dead leaves rush in strange, fantastic twists,
And chimney-smoke whirls round with alien grace,
Heeding geometries of outer space,
While Fomalhaut peers in through southward mists.

This is the hour when moonstruck poets know
What fungi sprout in Yuggoth, and what scents
And tints of flowers fill Nithon's continents,
Such as in no poor earthly garden blow.
Yet for each dream these winds to us convey,
A dozen more of ours they sweep away!

XV. Antarktos

Deep in my dream the great bird whispered queerly
Of the black cone amid the polar waste;
Pushing above the ice-sheet lone and drearly,
By storm-crazed aeons battered and defaced.
Hither no living earth-shapes take their courses,
And only pale auroras and faint suns
Glow on that pitted rock, whose primal sources
Are guessed at dimly by the Elder Ones.

If men should glimpse it, they would merely wonder
What tricky mound of Nature's build they spied;
But the bird told of vaster parts, that under
The mile-deep ice-shroud crouch and brood and bide.
God help the dreamer whose mad visions shew
Those dead eyes set in crystal gulfs below!

XVI. The Window

The house was old, with tangled wings outthrown,
Of which no one could ever half keep track,
And in a small room somewhat near the back
Was an odd window sealed with ancient stone.
There, in a dream-plagued childhood, quite alone
I used to go, where night reigned vague and black;
Parting the cobwebs with a curious lack
Of fear, and with a wonder each time grown.

One later day I brought the masons there
To find what view my dim forbears had shunned,
But as they pierced the stone, a rush of air
Burst from the alien voids that yawned beyond.
They fled - but I peered through and found unrolled
All the wild worlds of which my dreams had told.

XVII. A Memory

There were great steppes, and rocky table-lands
Stretching half-limitless in starlit night,
With alien campfires shedding feeble light
On beasts with tinkling bells, in shaggy bands.
Far to the south the plain sloped low and wide
To a dark zigzag line of wall that lay
Like a huge python of some primal day
Which endless time had chilled and petrified.

I shivered oddly in the cold, thin air,
And wondered where I was and how I came,
When a cloaked form against a campfire's glare
Rose and approached, and called me by my name.
Staring at that dead face beneath the hood,
I ceased to hope - because I understood.

XVIII. The Gardens of Yin

Beyond that wall, whose ancient masonry
Reached almost to the sky in moss-thick towers,
There would be terraced gardens, rich with flowers,
And flutter of bird and butterfly and bee.
There would be walks, and bridges arching over
Warm lotos-pools reflecting temple eaves,
And cherry-trees with delicate boughs and leaves
Against a pink sky where the herons hover.

All would be there, for had not old dreams flung
Open the gate to that stone-lanterned maze
Where drowsy streams spin out their winding ways,
Trailed by green vines from bending branches hung?
I hurried - but when the wall rose, grim and great,
I found there was no longer any gate.

Fungi from Yuggoth by H. P. Lovecraft, geschrieben in den Jahren 1929-30

Lovecraft :: R.I.P.

In memoriam Howard Phillips Lovecraft
(* 20. August 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island; † 15. März 1937 ebenda)

Stark verkleinerte Wiedergabe eines Plakates, das ich vor einiger Zeit für eine Lovecraft-Gedenkveranstaltung in Ungarn (!) entworfen habe, die am heutigen Tage stattfindet. Zu dem Designelement im unteren Drittel siehe einen nachfolgenden Beitrag. (Anklicken für eine größere Version...)

Fungi from Yuggoth :: Sonnette VII-XII

VII. Zaman's Hill

The great hill hung close over the old town,
A precipice against the main street's end;
Green, tall, and wooded, looking darkly down
Upon the steeple at the highway bend.
Two hundred years the whispers had been heard
About what happened on the man-shunned slope -
Tales of an oddly mangled deer or bird,
Or of lost boys whose kin had ceased to hope.

One day the mail-man found no village there,
Nor were its folk or houses seen again;
People came out from Aylesbury to stare -
Yet they all told the mail-man it was plain
That he was mad for saying he had spied
The great hill's gluttonous eyes, and jaws stretched wide.

VIII. The Port

Ten miles from Arkham I had struck the trail
That rides the cliff-edge over Boynton Beach,
And hoped that just at sunset I could reach
The crest that looks on Innsmouth in the vale.
Far out at sea was a retreating sail,
White as hard years of ancient winds could bleach,
But evil with some portent beyond speech,
So that I did not wave my hand or hail.

Sails out of lnnsmouth! echoing old renown
Of long-dead times. But now a too-swift night
Is closing in, and I have reached the height
Whence I so often scan the distant town.
The spires and roofs are there - but look! The gloom
Sinks on dark lanes, as lightless as the tomb!

IX. The Courtyard

It was the city I had known before;
The ancient, leprous town where mongrel throngs
Chant to strange gods, and beat unhallowed gongs
In crypts beneath foul alleys near the shore.
The rotting, fish-eyed houses leered at me
From where they leaned, drunk and half-animate,
As edging through the filth I passed the gate
To the black courtyard where the man would be.

The dark walls closed me in, and loud I cursed
That ever I had come to such a den,
When suddenly a score of windows burst
Into wild light, and swarmed with dancing men:
Mad, soundless revels of the dragging dead -
And not a corpse had either hands or head!

X. The Pigeon-Flyers

They took me slumming, where gaunt walls of brick
Bulge outward with a viscous stored-up evil,
And twisted faces, thronging foul and thick,
Wink messages to alien god and devil.
A million fires were blazing in the streets,
And from flat roofs a furtive few would fly
Bedraggled birds into the yawning sky
While hidden drums droned on with measured beats.

I knew those fires were brewing monstrous things,
And that those birds of space had been Outside -
I guessed to what dark planet's crypts they plied,
And what they brought from Thog beneath their wings.
The others laughed - till struck too mute to speak
By what they glimpsed in one bird's evil beak.

XI. The Well

Farmer Seth Atwood was past eighty when
He tried to sink that deep well by his door,
With only Eb to help him bore and bore.
We laughed, and hoped he'd soon be sane again.
And yet, instead, young Eb went crazy, too,
So that they shipped him to the county farm.
Seth bricked the well-mouth up as tight as glue -
Then hacked an artery in his gnarled left arm.

After the funeral we felt bound to get
Out to that well and rip the bricks away,
But all we saw were iron hand-holds set
Down a black hole deeper than we could say.
And yet we put the bricks back - for we found
The hole too deep for any line to sound.

XII. The Howler

They told me not to take the Briggs' Hill path
That used to be the highroad through to Zoar,
For Goody Watkins, hanged in seventeen-four,
Had left a certain monstrous aftermath.
Yet when I disobeyed, and had in view
The vine-hung cottage by the great rock slope,
I could not think of elms or hempen rope,
But wondered why the house still seemed so new.

Stopping a while to watch the fading day,
I heard faint howls, as from a room upstairs,
When through the ivied panes one sunset ray
Struck in, and caught the howler unawares.
I glimpsed - and ran in frenzy from the place,
And from a four-pawed thing with human face.

Fungi from Yuggoth by H. P. Lovecraft, geschrieben in den Jahren 1929-30

Mythos :: Der Arkham-Zyklus

Es ist eine sicherlich ungewollte Ironie der Nomenklatur, dass sich für das kollektive Werk von H.P.Lovecraft und seinen Kollegen Clark Ashton Smith sowie Robert E. Howard und ihren Epigonen der Titel „Mythos“ eingebürgert hat. Lovecraft selbst als treibende Kraft hat den Begriff Mythos nie angewandt, und ihn schon gar nicht mit dem Namen des Grossen Cthulhu verbunden – in Lovecrafts Tradition eine zwar beeindruckende, aber dennoch eher untergeordnete Wesenheit. Er selbst nannte seine Geschichten um die (Grossen) Alten und die anderen kosmischen Horror, die mit ihnen verbunden sind, schlicht „Arkham-Zyklus“, wenn er es denn überhaupt tat. Dies ist auch passend – die typische Lovecraftgeschichte lässt sich in einem einfachen Satz zusammenfassen: „Das koloniale Neuengland wird von Fremden Mächten bedroht.“ Hier kommt nicht nur Lovecrafts tradierte Fremdenfeindlichkeit und sein Konservatismus zum Ausdruck, sondern auch die eher relativistische Natur des Schreckens. Dem Xenophoben ist alles schrecklich, weil es fremd ist. Und Lovecraft war sicherlich Xenophob, seine Vision musste also unweigerlich mit einer Vorstellung des Fremden gekoppelt sein.

Es ist sicherlich sinnvoll, die literarischen und semi-literarischen Werke, in denen die Geschichte der Älteren Erde und der vormenschlichen und aussermenschlichen Bevölkerung des Sonnensystems entworfen wurden, als ein Geflecht von Zyklen zu betrachten, und nicht als monolithischen Mythos. Vielleicht als Mythenzyklen, auch wenn dies ironisch erscheinen mag angesichts der facettenreichen und teilweise pseudowissenschaftlich detailierten Berichte. Immerhin, ein Mythos ist vor allem nur eine mögliche Grundform des Deutens der Wirklichkeit ist, die in konkretem Gegensatz zur wissenschaftlichen Erklärung der gleichen Phänomene steht. Stoff des Mythos ist eine symbolische Erzählung, d.h. eine Geschichte aus der mythischen Wirklichkeit ist vor allem nicht mehr als das, eine Geschichte.

Die pseudorealistischen Berichte von Lovecraft und seinem eigenen kleinen Mythenzirkel können durchaus also gerne Mythen sein, moderne Mythen vielleicht, aber wenn man sie so bezeichnen will, muss man sich rückversichern, dass dies dann auch nur eine Art möglicher Geschichte ist, in der bestimmte Phänomene zu erklären versucht wird. Was bedeutet, dass auch das naturwissenschaftliche Weltbild, mit deren Hilfe diese Phänomene in Kontext gesetzt werden, auch nichts anderes ist als eine mögliche Form von Geschichtenerzählen. Ein weiteres Märchen, ebenso valide wie andere Erklärungsmodelle.

Fungi from Yuggoth :: Sonnette I-VI

I. The Book

The place was dark and dusty and half-lost
In tangles of old alleys near the quays,
Reeking of strange things brought in from the seas,
And with queer curls of fog that west winds tossed.
Small lozenge panes, obscured by smoke and frost,
Just shewed the books, in piles like twisted trees,
Rotting from floor to roof - congeries
Of crumbling elder lore at little cost.

I entered, charmed, and from a cobwebbed heap
Took up the nearest tome and thumbed it through,
Trembling at curious words that seemed to keep
Some secret, monstrous if one only knew.
Then, looking for some seller old in craft,
I could find nothing but a voice that laughed.

II. Pursuit

I held the book beneath my coat, at pains
To hide the thing from sight in such a place;
Hurrying through the ancient harbor lanes
With often-turning head and nervous pace.
Dull, furtive windows in old tottering brick
Peered at me oddly as I hastened by,
And thinking what they sheltered, I grew sick
For a redeeming glimpse of clean blue sky.

No one had seen me take the thing - but still
A blank laugh echoed in my whirling head,
And I could guess what nighted worlds of ill
Lurked in that volume I had coveted.
The way grew strange - the walls alike and madding -
And far behind me, unseen feet were padding.

III. The Key

I do not know what windings in the waste
Of those strange sea-lanes brought me home once more,
But on my porch I trembled, white with haste
To get inside and bolt the heavy door.
I had the book that told the hidden way
Across the void and through the space-hung screens
That hold the undimensioned worlds at bay,
And keep lost aeons to their own demesnes.

At last the key was mine to those vague visions
Of sunset spires and twilight woods that brood
Dim in the gulfs beyond this earth's precisions,
Lurking as memories of infinitude.
The key was mine, but as I sat there mumbling,
The attic window shook with a faint fumbling.

IV. Recognition

The day had come again, when as a child
I saw - just once - that hollow of old oaks,
Grey with a ground-mist that enfolds and chokes
The slinking shapes which madness has defiled.
It was the same - an herbage rank and wild
Clings round an altar whose carved sign invokes
That Nameless One to whom a thousand smokes
Rose, aeons gone, from unclean towers up-piled.

I saw the body spread on that dank stone,
And knew those things which feasted were not men;
I knew this strange, grey world was not my own,
But Yuggoth, past the starry voids - and then
The body shrieked at me with a dead cry,
And all too late I knew that it was I!

V. Homecoming

The daemon said that he would take me home
To the pale, shadowy land I half recalled
As a high place of stair and terrace, walled
With marble balustrades that sky-winds comb,
While miles below a maze of dome on dome
And tower on tower beside a sea lies sprawled.
Once more, he told me, I would stand enthralled
On those old heights, and hear the far-off foam.

All this he promised, and through sunset's gate
He swept me, past the lapping lakes of flame,
And red-gold thrones of gods without a name
Who shriek in fear at some impending fate.
Then a black gulf with sea-sounds in the night:
"Here was your home," he mocked, "when you had sight!"

VI. The Lamp

We found the lamp inside those hollow cliffs
Whose chiseled sign no priest in Thebes could read,
And from whose caverns frightened hieroglyphs
Warned every living creature of earth's breed.
No more was there - just that one brazen bowl
With traces of a curious oil within;
Fretted with some obscurely patterned scroll,
And symbols hinting vaguely of strange sin.

Little the fears of forty centuries meant
To us as we bore off our slender spoil,
And when we scanned it in our darkened tent
We struck a match to test the ancient oil.
It blazed - great God!... But the vast shapes we saw
In that mad flash have seared our lives with awe.

Fungi from Yuggoth by H. P. Lovecraft, geschrieben in den Jahren 1929-30

Die Lage ist ernst. Jetzt ist die Wahrscheinlichkeit noch groß, dass der Westen nicht eingreift. Wir stehen vor der harten Alternative zu schlagen oder früher oder später mit Sicherheit vernichtet zu werden. Es führt kein Ausweg daran vorbei: Diese Woche ist offiziell der Würdigung des grossen Aufklärers Howard Phillips Lovecraft (* 20. August 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island; † 15. März 1937 ebenda) gewidmet.

März Remix

„Dieser Beitrag soll nicht als Versuch verstanden werden, eine zur allgemein akzeptierten Geschichtsschreibung gegensätzliche Theorie zu verbreiten. Es ist einfach nur ein fiktiver Hintergrund für eine Reihe von Science-Fiction-Geschichten. Aber ich habe natürlich wenig Zeit gehabt, zwischen den morphiuminduzierten Tiefschläfen und den Visionen des Engels des Todes, ähh, der Nachtschwester...“

Die Stimme, die über Funk kam, war die von Hiram Kobalt.

„Man sieht, es ist ziemlich einfach, den atemlosen Stil des Verschwörungstheoretikers zu emulieren…“

„JC?“

„Ich werde in Zukunft also mir einiges an Kommentaren ersparen und anstelle dessen immer hierauf verweisen: Der treffende Kommentar eines Mannes, der begreift, dass er seiner Zeit weit voraus ist und seine Pläne von ungewaschenen Halbaffen vereitelt werden...“

Der Spott des Wissenschaftlers über die esoterischen Dogmen einer verkommenen Zeit: „Sieh mal“, zischt es aus den Lautsprechern, „Leonardo! Ja, Leonardo, der grosse Leonardo, ihr habt ihn alle nicht verstanden – der hat uns geheime Botschaften hinterlassen! Escht! hahaha… und nur ich weiss, wasse bedeuten…“

Missbehagen gegen die erdrückende Ordnung seiner kleinstädtischen Herkunft, sein Elternhaus, die sogenannte Lebensplanung, die von ihm empfundene Unfreiheit des Berufsleben, das glitzernde feuchte rote Fleisch inmitten der Finsternis pulsierte und schien immer neue seltsame Blüten hervorzubringen. Es gab riesige unerforschte Gebiete. Die zivilisierten Königreiche, für sich genommen bereits von gewaltiger Ausdehnung, nahmen dennoch nur einen vergleichsweise kleinen Bereich des Planeten ein.

Die Leistung dieser Station war jedoch ausgesprochen schwach.

"Und?", knisterte es in den Lautsprechern. Hiram Kobalt, am Rande des Wahnsinns.

"Was und?"

"Wie wäre es, wenn Sie mal schauen?"

"Ich kenn aber das Passwort nicht..."

Diese beiden Charakterzüge sind reine Action, historische Erzählungen aus einer unhistorischen Zeit. Wiederum nur ein fiktiver Hintergrund für eine Reihe von Science-Fiction-Geschichten. Aber sind sie das nicht alle?