The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft: Beyond Arkham by H. P. Lovecraft
Author:H. P. Lovecraft [Lovecraft, H. P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Relato, Terror, Fantástico
Publisher: ePubLibre
Published: 2019-08-31T16:00:00+00:00
“He had painted a monstrous being on that awful canvas.”
Weird Tales (October 1927) (artist: Hugh Rankin)
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath[1]
Written between October 1926 and January 1927 and unpublished during Lovecraft’s lifetime, this novella was apparently meant only as an experiment in long-form fiction, predating The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (written a few months later) and At the Mountains of Madness (1931). It incorporates many Dunsanian elements, with intimations of William Beckford’s Vathek and Lovecraft’s own Cthulhu Mythos, into an adventure that might well have appeared in Boy’s Own Magazine. Randolph Carter, who is said to stand in for HPL in other stories, ultimately finds solace, not in the dreamland through which he travels but in memories of his own home.
Three times Randolph Carter[2] dreamed of the marvellous city, and three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it. All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades, and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens, and wide streets marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and ivory statues in gleaming rows; while on steep northward slopes climbed tiers of red roofs and old peaked gables harbouring little lanes of grassy cobbles. It was a fever of the gods; a fanfare of supernal trumpets and a clash of immortal cymbals. Mystery hung about it as clouds about a fabulous unvisited mountain; and as Carter stood breathless and expectant on that balustraded parapet there swept up to him the poignancy and suspense of almost-vanished memory, the pain of lost things, and the maddening need to place again what once had an awesome and momentous place.
He knew that for him its meaning must once have been supreme; though in what cycle or incarnation he had known it, or whether in dream or in waking, he could not tell. Vaguely it called up glimpses of a far, forgotten first youth, when wonder and pleasure lay in all the mystery of days, and dawn and dusk alike strode forth prophetick to the eager sound of lutes and song; unclosing faery gates toward further and surprising marvels. But each night as he stood on that high marble terrace with the curious urns and carven rail and looked off over that hushed sunset city of beauty and unearthly immanence,[3] he felt the bondage of dream’s tyrannous gods; for in no wise could he leave that lofty spot, or descend the wide marmoreal[4] flights flung endlessly down to where those streets of elder witchery lay outspread and beckoning.
When for the third time he awaked with those flights still undescended and those hushed sunset streets still untraversed, he prayed long and earnestly to the hidden gods of dream that brood capricious above the clouds on unknown Kadath, in the cold waste where no man treads. But the gods made no answer and shewed no relenting, nor did they give any favouring sign when he prayed to them in
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