1945 Lovecraft Story

This is an odd one. Said to have been issued by Bill Crawford in Los Angeles in 1945 under his FPCI imprint. VG condition with light cover wear from handling. Features the title story by Howard, as well as H.P. Lovecraft`s "Celephais". and fiction by David H. Keller, Lloyd Eshbach and others. Undoubtedly, this had to have Mr. Derleth's blessings. Very odd interior article shown !

A moment in time: Nov & Dec 1920

Late 1920. Lovecraft was spontaneously combusting with new visions, and burst to put them down on paper. Nyarlathotep and Celephais have very different dream-plots, but don't let that fool you. The writer was struggling to say things.

I've placed elements of both below so that you can see that Lovecraft is trying to blend his nightmares with scientific cosmology.

Nyarlathotep:
... out of the abysses between the stars swept chill currents that made men shiver in dark and lonely places. I believe we felt something coming down from the greenish moon, for when we began to depend on its light we drifted into curious involuntary marching formations and seemed to know our destinations though we dared not think of them. ... a sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low.


Celephais:
... 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. ... As before, he dreamed first of the village that was asleep or dead, and of the abyss down which one must float silently ... the lane that ends in the abyss of dreams ... The abyss was a seething chaos of roseate and cerulean splendour ...

***
And witht hat being said, can we make another connection?

Is King Kynaratholis somewhat akin to Nyarlathotep, only by a different name? The letters and semiotic parsing are very, very similar.

Kyn // ar // ath // olis
Ny // ar // lat // hotep

Glossolalia in Lovecraft

{It's been a while since Chrispy wrote an original mini-essay. I had plenty of time to think as I reread Lovecraft on several hours of my plane trip.}

In November and December of 1920, Lovecraft wrote Celephais and Nyarlathotep.

In both of these prose-poems he coined a number of new proper names of individuals and places. These form a disctinct pattern. It's likely he chose these names for their difficulty of pronunciation, and their strangeness.

Here is a list of those names*: Celephais, Kuranes, Nyarlathotep, Ooth-Nargai, Tanarian Hills, Serannian, Leng, Athib, Cerenerian, Naroxa, and Mt. Aran. We can ignore Trevor Towers, as it is a very ordinary name. We can also omit "hotep" which is clearly derived from Egyptian pharoahs. Hills and Mountain are also common enough.

What we have left is a series of consonantal sounds intermixed with an arrangement of vowels. We will make a leap of faith that consonants are more telling since there are but 5 vowels (or 6 if one counts y). There are 20 consonants left. Lovecraft is not random in his selection. Lovecraft is playing with sounds here, and is picky in what he chooses.

I playfully call this "Lovecraft's glossolalia". While he would not be amused in comparison to Jimmy Swaggert and lesser known Pentacostals, this is what he's doing. He's using ecstatic language to describe his alien terrain and eclectic saints and gods.

There are, in that mix of Lovecraftian 1920 words, clear consonant choices. Of the majority are: 13 n's and 9 r's. These are the roots of Lovecraft's glossalalia. N/R roots. 8 of the 11 new words are based on the N/R system.

To this he begins to play with aspirations (1 ph, 2 th) and sibbilants/near sibbilants (3 s's, 2 t's, 1 b). He also adds to the minor key some gutterals (2 g's, 1 k, 1 x) and also the L sound (3). I don't know whether he intends leading c's to be pronounced hard like Colour and Cthuhlu, or soft like Celene Dion or Cere (the flesh above a bird's beak).

The analysis shows that we have words that are often N/R/Gk or N/R/L. There are enough aspirations and sibillant and near-sibilant sounds (s, b, t, th, ph) mixed that we begin to see that Lovecraft is drawing from a very limited pool of sounds. About 9 of the 20 consonants are chosen, and they are selected for a dramatic, phonetic reason.

A year later, in Outsider (1921) he creates and uses Nephren-Ka, Neb, Nitokris. The N/R root is still dominant, as well as his use of the collateral sounds of aspiration and sibillants. In this case, the N/R/Gk is strongest.

This approach would dominate his future methodology as he continued to create weird sounding names and places. While he became less dogmatic about using the N/R/Gk and N/R/L, there are still plenty of other examples. Nig, Shub-Niggurath, R'Lyeh, Cthulhu, and Shoggoth come to mind. He also liked names others suggested or inspired. As the years moved forward, aspirathion and gutterals overcame the initial N/R root system: Yig, Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth.

Later, I'd like tolist a chronology of Lovecraftian names and how he made the transition to different phonetic sounds in his creative nouns.

__________

*As a chemist, I know that selection criteria and methodology can affect conclusions. I tend to define Lovecraft in periods. I won't take time to set them all down, but he was productive for some reason around Thanksgiving of 1920. Some new thought entered his mind, and I attribute that NOT to Dunsany but to his correspondence with Samuel Loveman. The Statement of Randoph Carter (Dec 1919) is nearly a love letter to the man. :) He was so excited, he write the story out THREE times, at least, and sent it as a dream in letters to Kliener and Galpin. (If memory serves).

*I selected Celepahais and Nyarlathotep becuase they have nearly the same mythological theme. OK, the PLOT is different, but plot means little in early Lovecraft. It's all about the mood, the setting, and the madness. In these two stories, he just explodes with new names and sounds. As Mr. Joshi says, he's enamored by Dunsany, but there's still plenty of Poe to balance that out.

*My methodology is semiotic. The sound is the thing. Lovecraft is going for weird and alien names to strengthen the eeriness of the pieces. He succeeds.

Lovecraft's Legacy: 1945

Howard, Robert E. THE GARDEN OF FEAR. Crawford, 1945. First Edition. 80 page digest booklet with “The Garden of Fear” by Robert E. Howard, "Celephais" by H. P. Lovecraft, "The Golden Bough" by David H. Keller, “The Man With The Hour Glass” by L. A. Eshbach and “Mars Colonizes” by Miles J. Breuer. This copy is the blue cover variety: A Very Good copy with slight wear along spine, several pulls on back cover. A rather fragile item.

Marvel Tales: Mythos Writers Well Represented

The seller states:

All 5 issues – a complete set - of the rare pro-zine MARVEL TALES from 1934-1935, including:

MAY 1934, Volume 1 Number 1 The Man with the Hour Glass (L.A. ESHBACH), Antares (poem, Natalie H. WOOLEY), The Cossacks Ride Hard (August W. DERLETH), Celephais (H.P. LOVECRAFT), Binding Deluxe (David H. KELLER, M.D.), Tales Ahead. * NEAR FINE, minor wear/small chips to overhang, pages clean and bright. 40 pages. Cover price: 10 cents.

JULY-AUGUST 1934, Volume 1 Number 2 Editorial Scribblings, The Dark Beasts (Frank B. LONG, JR.), The Garden of Fear (Robert E. HOWARD), Synthetic (Harl VINCENT), From the Log of the Space-Ship Flammarian (poem, Manly Wade WELLMAN), Antidote (Robert M. HYATT), Conquest (poem, H. Donald SPATZ), The Torch of Life (Joe W. SKIDMORE), A Horror in Profile (Wilfred Blanch TALMAN). * NEAR FINE, light tanning to pages (publishing error: pp.13-16 from The Garden of Fear were printed as pp.33-36 from Synthetic, so pages from former story are missing). 60 pages. Cover price: 15 cents.

WINTER 1934, Volume 1 Number 3 Editorial Scribblings, The Second Step (Orris M. KELLAR), The Ferryman (poem, Timothy H. LOFT), Lilies (Robert BLOCH, his 1st published story), The Ship (poem, Duane W. RIMEL), On Board the Space Ship Terra (L.A. ESHBACH), The Golden Bough (David H. KELLER), The Titan (part 1 of 4, P. Schuyler MILLER). * NF-FINE. 68 pages. Cover price: 15 cents.

MARCH-APRIL 1935, Volume 1 Number 4 The Creator (complete novelet, Clifford D. SIMAK), Serial: The Titan (part 2, P. Schuyler MILLER), Serial Reprint: The Nebulae of Death (part 1, George Allen ENGLAND), The Doom that Came to Sarnath (short story, H.P. LOVECRAFT), The Cathedral Crypt (short story, John Beynon HARRIS, pseudo. John WYNDHAM), Masters of Matter (short story, Amelia Reynolds LONG). * VG+, very shallow chipping to bottom corners of first and last few pages and back, light tanning to pages. 108 pages. Cover price: 15 cents.

SUMMER 1935, Volume 1 Number 5 Mars Colonies (Miles J. BREUER), Man from Makassar (Carl JACOBI), The Titan (part 3, P. Schuyler MILLER), Annabel Reeves (Ralph Milne FARLEY), The Elfin Lights (Anders W. DRAKE), The Nebula of Death (part 2, George Allen ENGLAND), Witch’s Bereuse (poem, Emil PETAJA), Editorial Scribblings. * G+/VG-, covers held together by yellow tape (splitting at spine), light wear to overhang, chipping to bottom corners of early pages. 58 pages. Cover price: 15 cents.

Editor, William L. CRAWFORD Consulting Editors, Raymond A. PALMER (credited in #1), Walter L. DENNIS (credited in #1, as Assoc. Ed. in #3, 4 & 5) Associate Editor and Art Director, L.A. ESHBACH (credited in #1, 2 & 3) Art Editor, Clay FERGUSON (credited in #4 & 5) Southern Representative (advertising & circulation), Alvin M. GAINES (credited in #1)
Published by Fantasy Publications (Everett, PA.)

Lovecraft's Legacy: 1945

This rare item illustrates, once again, the post- WWII popularity of Lovecraft in the small press arena. David Keller (later to be a doctor) was a young student whom Lovecraft befriended in his last days.

The Garden of Fear (by Robert E Howard): Strange, Fantastic, Adventures In Other Times And Other Worlds. (1945)

This book contains ...

The Garden of Fear ... BY Robert E Howard. From the knoll, Humwolf could see the towns where his mate, Gundar the Beautiful, was held captive. But between them lay the Garden of Fear, where no man dared walk.

The Man with the Hour Glass ... by L. A. Esbach. The people loved Marley Day, when a chosen actor impersonated their national hero by pretending to travel out of the past. But on the eighty-fifth Marley Day, the real Nathan Marley appeared!

Celephais ... by H P Lovecraft. All through life Kuranes searched for the wondrous city of Celephais. Only in death could he find it.

Mars Colonizes ... by Miles J Breuer, MD. A billion Earth people had been eliminated from existence in the high-strung Marianized world. Would the remainder be able to shake off the Martian influences and regain the Earth?

The Golden Bough ... by David H Keller, MD. The castle in the Dark Forest held a strange fascination for the bride of Paul Holland. But it was not until he had read the ancient book and heard the laughing man that Paul understood.