The Lovecraft Annual No.1 by S. T. Joshi

Author:S. T. Joshi [ed] [Joshi, S. T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Anthologies (Multiple Authors), Horror
Published: 2014-03-24T11:00:00+00:00

Unity in Diversity:

Fungi from Yuggoth as a Unified Setting

* * *

Philip A. Ellis

Enough words have been spent on looking at Fungi from Yuggoth as a coherent and linked narrative, both pro and contra, and not enough have been spent looking at the wider issues of unity within a more general sense. To what degree, we may ask, are the sonnets unified, and how does this unity create a sense of a singular narrative to the sonnets? By looking at how the sonnets are unified, and, in a sense, why, we can begin to understand the basis behind seeing the sonnets as a narrative. We can begin to see why the unity displayed in the sonnets stimulates this reaction. Further, we can begin to ask further questions of both the sonnets, and the other poems of H. P. Lovecraft.

S. T. Joshi, in his essay “Lovecraft’s Fantastic Poetry” (203), points out that the sonnets display an “utter randomness of tone, mood and import.” He goes on, in the same place, to state that they “have miniature horror stories . . . cheek by jowl with autobiographical vignettes . . ., pensive philosophy . . ., apocalyptic cosmicism . . ., and versified nightmares,” and that he “cannot see any ‘continuity’ or ‘story’ in this cycle as R. Boerem and Ralph E. Vaughan purport to do.” This question of continuity, story, within the sonnets is, though ultimately unimportant, integral to a better understanding of them. Is it possible that they are unified, while lacking such a continuity? Quite clearly, in no sense is there a unified “I” behind the poems. The “I” of the first three sonnets, who writes “I entered, charmed, and from a cobwebbed heap / Took up the nearest tome” (“The Book,” AT 64, ll. 9–10), is not the same who writes, in “The Gardens of Yin” (AT 71, ll. 13–14): “I hurried—but when the wall rose, grim and great, / I found there was no longer any gate.” Even if it were the case that each “I” of the sonnets was the same, not all the sonnets are in the first person: some sonnets, such as “Zaman’s Hill,” “Nyarlathotep,” and “The Elder Pharos,” dispense with the narrative “I,” being in the third person, for example. The overall impression is, surely, a collection of disparate poems, unified by factors other than a simple or complex narrative. There is no unity among them that can account for an overarching narrative structure beyond the initial three sonnets, which are an aborted, failed narrative.1

To look more closely at the initial sonnets, we can see clearly the point at which a supposed narrative breaks down. It is true that the first three sonnets are coherent, and a clear narrative is present. All three have a unified “I,” and all three give us the start of a first-person narrative: the narrator enters a bookshop, steals a book, and returns home, followed by a mysterious being. Then, immediately, the scene switches, in “Recognition.” The setting is not the same as that of the earlier sonnets, but Yuggoth.

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