Weird Realism: by Graham Harman

Author:Graham Harman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zero Books

44. The Drone of Some Loathsome, Gigantic Insect

“But though that voice is always in my ears, I have not even yet been able to analyse it well enough for a graphic description. It was like the drone of some loathsome, gigantic insect ponderously shaped into the articulate speech of an alien species, and I am perfectly certain that the organs producing it can have no resemblance to the vocal organs of man, or indeed to those of any of the mammalia.” (WD 434)

There is more to be said about this voice. It does not lie entirely beyond all description, since we have already heard that it approximated the sound of buzzing. But now Lovecraft becomes even more exact. A loathsome, gigantic insect is already a terrible image, but even worse is to imagine the “drone” of this insect “ponderously shaped” into an alien’s articulate speech. The word “ponderously” lets us know that such shaping is not easy, and hence the translation from drone into alien speech seems not to be exact, and we can almost feel the tension between the two as we read. There is a drone-like residue lingering in that speech–which furthermore is described as alien rather than human speech, creating yet another layer of imperfect translatability between the buzzing creature and ostensible humanity. Despite its correct English grammar and scholarly accent, its voice contains droning overtones and separate hints of an alien intelligent species. Its ability to mimic our grammar and scholarly intonations is apparently not matched by an equal ability to copy the basic sound of the earthly human vocal tones.

This is precisely what terrifies Wilmarth. He continues the passage above by saying that the buzzing voice contained “singularities of timbre, range, and overtones which placed this phenomenon wholly outside the sphere of humanity and earth-life.” (WD 434) Whereas the “ghastly, infra-bass timbre” heard at the end of “The Dunwich Horror” yielded a sound that was not really a sound, much like the color that was not really a color, here we have a more earthly distortion. The buzzing voice most definitely falls within the range of sounds; Wilmarth never questions this. But while undeniably a sound, it remains terrifying through its “singularities of timbre, range, and overtones.” It is one of the classic Lovecraftian gestures, breaking up the usual relation between a voice and its features by invoking bizarre variations on those features that cannot possibly belong to man, or indeed to those of any of the mammalia. This initially cautious limited claim (“No mammal could have made such a sound! Of that I am sure!”) quickly expands to the assertion that the buzzing voice lies “wholly outside the sphere of humanity and earth-life.” When the second long snippet of the buzzing voice is heard, Wilmarth feels “a sharp intensification of that feeling of blasphemous infinity which had struck me during the shorter and earlier passage.” (WD 435) Wilmarth then sits in a stupor and stares, as the recording comically ends “during an unusually clear

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