Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 Part 27

Nyarlathotep

H. P. LOVECRAFT

Nyarlathotep ... the crawling chaos ... I am the last ... I will tell the audient void....

I do not recall distinctly when it began, but it was months ago. The general tension was horrible. To a season of political and social upheaval was added a strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a danger widespread and all-embracing, such a danger as may be imagined only in the most terrible phantasms of the night. I recall that the people went about with pale and worried faces, and whispered warnings and prophecies which no one dared consciously repeat or acknowledge to himself that he had heard. A sense of monstrous guilt was upon the land, and out of the abysses between the stars swept chill currents that made men s.h.i.+ver in dark and lonely places. There was a demoniac alteration in the sequence of the seasons--the autumn heat lingered fearsomely, and everyone felt that the world and perhaps the universe had pa.s.sed from the control of known G.o.ds or forces to that of G.o.ds or forces which were unknown.

And it was then that Nyarlathotep came out of Egypt. Who he was, none could tell, but he was of the old native blood and looked like a Pharaoh. The fellahin knelt when they saw him, yet could not say why. He said he had risen up out of the blackness of twenty-seven centuries, and that he had heard messages from places not on this planet. Into the lands of civilisation came Nyarlathotep, swarthy, slender, and sinister, always buying strange instruments of gla.s.s and metal and combining them into instruments yet stranger. He spoke much of the sciences--of electricity and psychology--and gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised one another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered.

And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished; for the small hours were rent with the screams of nightmare. Never before had the screams of nightmare been such a public problem; now the wise men almost wished they could forbid sleep in the small hours, that the shrieks of cities might less horribly disturb the pale, pitying moon as it glimmered on green waters gliding under bridges, and old steeples crumbling against a sickly sky.

I remember when Nyarlathotep came to my city--the great, the old, the terrible city of unnumbered crimes. My friend had told me of him, and of the impelling fascination and allurement of his revelations, and I burned with eagerness to explore his uttermost mysteries. My friend said they were horrible and impressive beyond my most fevered imaginings; that what was thrown on a screen in the darkened room prophesied things none but Nyarlathotep dare prophesy, and that in the sputter of his sparks there was taken from men that which had never been taken before yet which shewed only in the eyes. And I heard it hinted abroad that those who knew Nyarlathotep looked on sights which others saw not.

It was in the hot autumn that I went through the night with the restless crowds to see Nyarlathotep; through the stifling night and up the endless stairs into the choking room. And shadowed on a screen, I saw hooded forms amidst ruins, and yellow evil faces peering from behind fallen monuments. And I saw the world battling against blackness; against the waves of destruction from ultimate s.p.a.ce; whirling, churning; struggling around the dimming, cooling sun. Then the sparks played amazingly around the heads of the spectators, and hair stood up on end whilst shadows more grotesque than I can tell came out and squatted on the heads. And when I, who was colder and more scientific than the rest, mumbled a trembling protest about "imposture" and "static electricity," Nyarlathotep drave us all out, down the dizzy stairs into the damp, hot, deserted midnight streets. I screamed aloud that I was _not_ afraid; that I never could be afraid; and others screamed with me for solace. We sware to one another that the city _was_ exactly the same, and still alive; and when the electric lights began to fade we cursed the company over and over again, and laughed at the queer faces we made.

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. Once we looked at the pavement and found the blocks loose and displaced by gra.s.s, with scarce a line of rusted metal to show where the tramways had run. And again we saw a tram-car, lone, windowless, dilapidated, and almost on its side. When we gazed around the horizon, we could not find the third tower by the river, and noticed that the silhouette of the second tower was ragged at the top. Then we split up into narrow columns, each of which seemed drawn in a different direction. One disappeared in a narrow alley to the left, leaving only the echo of a shocking moan. Another filed down a weed-choked subway entrance, howling with a laughter that was mad. My own column was sucked toward the open country, and presently felt a chill which was not of the hot autumn: for as we stalked out on the dark moor, we beheld around us the h.e.l.lish moon-glitter of evil snows. Trackless, inexplicable snows, swept asunder in one direction only, where lay a gulf all the blacker for its glittering walls. The column seemed very thin indeed as it plodded dreamily into the gulf. I lingered behind, for the black rift in the green-litten snow was frightful, and I thought I had heard the reverberations of a disquieting wail as my companions vanished; but my power to linger was slight. As if beckoned by those who had gone before, I half-floated between the t.i.tanic snowdrifts, quivering and afraid, into the sightless vortex of the unimaginable.

Screamingly sentient, dumbly delirious, only the G.o.ds that were can tell. 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. Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-seen columns of unsanctified temples that rest on nameless rocks beneath s.p.a.ce and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness. And through this revolving graveyard of the universe the m.u.f.fled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate G.o.ds--the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep.

Editorial

Editorial comment upon amateur journalism generally falls within one of two cla.s.ses; complacent self-congratulation upon a mythical perfection, or hectic urging toward impossible achievements. It is our purpose this month to indulge in neither of these rhetorical recreations, but to make one very prosaic and practical appeal which springs solely from realistic observation.

This appeal concerns the official situation in the United. For several years our foes have reproached us for excessive centralisation of authority: a.s.serting that the control of our society is anything from oligarchical to monarchial, and pointing to the large amount of influence wielded by a very few leaders. Denials on our part, prompted by the conspicuous absence of any dictatorial ambitions in the minds of our executives, have been largely nullified by the fact that while power has not been autocratically usurped and arbitrarily exercised, the burden of administrative work has certainly been thrust by common consent on a small number of reluctant though loyal shoulders. A few persons have been forced to retain authority because no others have arisen to relieve them of their burdens, until official nominations have come to mean no more than a campaign by one or two active spirits to persuade certain patient drudges to "carry on" another year. Nor does the formal official situation reflect all of the prevailing condition.

Much of the a.s.sociation's most important activity, such as recruiting, welcoming and criticism, verges into the field of unorganised effort; and here the tendency to leave everything to a narrow group is overwhelming.

Obviously, this condition demands a remedy; and that remedy lies in one direction only--an acceptance of potential official responsibility by all of those members who possess the time and experience to act as leaders. As the fiscal year progresses, the season for candidacies draws near; and amateurs who feel competent to sustain their share of the administrative burden should come forward as nominees, or at least should respond when approached by their friends. That office-holding involves tedious work, all admit, but this tedium is a small enough price to pay for the varied boons of amateurdom. In unofficial labour an equal willingness should be shown. Why is it that all the private revision in the United is performed by about three men at most, despite the presence in our ranks of a full score of scholars abundantly capable of rendering such service? If the _literati_ as a whole will not awaken to the needs of the day, one of two things will occur. The United will stagnate quietly under the perpetual dictators.h.i.+p of a limited group of unwilling but benevolent autocrats, or it will succ.u.mb to the onslaught of some political clique of vigorous barbarians who will destroy in a month what it has taken the United over ten years to build up. Memories of 1919 should prove to us the reality of such a danger of sudden relapse.

Our appeal, then, is for responsible candidates for high office, and for volunteers in the work of maintaining interest and lending literary aid.

We know that executive energy and enthusiasm tend to be more abundant in the Goth than in the Greek; that those best qualified to serve are generally least moved by political ambition. But we are sure that the needs of our society should arouse enough sense of duty among its cultivated members.h.i.+p to draw to the front a new generation of leaders.

We ask for new presidential and editorial candidates who are prepared to serve faithfully and independently if elected; for new critics and recruiters who understand our traditions and are willing to expend energy in upholding and diffusing them. Shall 1921 bring them to light?

--H. P. LOVECRAFT

Official Organ Fund

RECEIPTS

Woodbee Press Club $25.00 From Treasurer, up to October 15 23.00 Susan Nelson Furgerson 6.00 Jonathan E. Hoag 5.00 Verna McGeoch (for each issue) 5.00 Howard R. Conover 3.00 Victor O. Schwab 3.00 Mr. and Mrs. Fritter (for each issue) 2.00 Rev. Eugene B. Kuntz 1.50 Anne Tillery Renshaw 1.50 Anonymous .25 _One dollar each_: Margaret Abraham, Agnes R. Arnold, Elizabeth Barnhart, Grace M. Bromley, Mary Faye Durr, Alice M. Hamlet, Hester Harper.

Total on hand, November 6, 1920 $82.25

REMARKS

The doubling of printing rates makes large contributions imperative if the Organ is to approach its customary standard. Acknowledgments are due the Woodbee Press Club for its exceedingly generous contribution, and ex-Editor Renshaw for the mailing of an appeal which has proved most effective in the campaign for funds. Emulation of the Woodbees'

generosity by other clubs would save a situation which is very threatening.

H. P. LOVECRAFT, Custodian.

THE UNITED AMATEUR JANUARY 1921

OFFICIAL ORGAN FUND

Providence, R. I., April 1, 1921.

RECEIPTS SINCE NOVEMBER 6, 1920

From Treasurer, up to April 1, 1921 $21.50 Verna McGeoch (3 instalments) 15.00 E. Edward Ericson 10.00 Edward F. Daas 6.00 Howard R. Conover 2.00 Anna H. Crofts 1.00 Ernest L. McKeag 1.00 John Milton Samples 1.00 Anonymous .75 ------- Balance on Hand, November 6, 1920 $82.25 Received, November 6, 1920, to April 1, 1921 58.25 ------- Total Receipts $140.50

EXPENDITURES

To E. E. Ericson, for September U. A. $48.00 To E. E. Ericson, for November U. A. 48.00 To E. E. Ericson, for January U. A. 36.00 ------- Total Expenditures $132.00

Balance on Hand, April 1, 1921 $8.50

H. P. LOVECRAFT, Custodian.

THE UNITED AMATEUR MARCH 1921

Winifred Virginia Jackson: A "Different" Poetess

H. P. LOVECRAFT

In these days of unrestrained license in poetry, it would at first sight seem difficult to single out any one bard as the possessor of ideas and modes of expression so unique and original that the overworked adjective "different" is merited. Every poetaster of the modern school claims to be "different," and bases his claim to celebrity upon this "difference"; an effect usually achieved by the adoption of a harsh, amorphous style, and a tone of a.n.a.lytical, introspective subjectivity so individual that all the common and universal elements of beauty and poetry are excluded.

Indeed, eccentricity has come so completely into fas.h.i.+on, that he who follows up the wildest vagaries is actually the least different from the hectic scribbling throng about him.

But notwithstanding this malady of the times, there does remain among us an ample field for genius and artistic distinctiveness. The laws of human thought are unchangeable, and whenever there is born a soul attuned to real harmony, and inspired by that rare sensitiveness which enables it to feel and express the latent beauty and hidden relations.h.i.+ps of Nature, the world receives a new poet. Such an one will of necessity break through the decadent customs of the period; and falling back to the forms of true melody, sing a spontaneous song which can not help being original, because it represents the unforced reaction of a keen and delicate mind to the panorama of life. And when this reaction is enabled to bring out in the simplest and most beautiful style fancies and images which the world has not received or noted before, we are justified in claiming that the bard is "different."

Such a bard is Winifred Virginia Jackson, whose poetry has for six years been the pride of the United Amateur Press a.s.sociation. Born in Maine, and through childhood accustomed to the mystical spell of the ancient New-England countryside, Miss Jackson for a long period quietly and unconsciously absorbed a prodigious store of beauty and phantasy from life. Having no design to become a poet, she accepted these ethereal gifts as a matter of course; until about a decade ago they manifested themselves in a burst of spontaneous melody which can best be described as a sheer overflowing of delightful dreams and pictures from a mind filled to the brim with poetic loveliness. Since that time Miss Jackson has written vast quant.i.ties of verse; always rich and musical, and if one may speak in paradox, always artless with supreme art. None of these poems is in any sense premeditated or consciously composed; they are more like visions of the fancy, instantaneously photographed for the perception of others, and unerringly framed in the most appropriate metrical medium.

When we peruse the poetry of Miss Jackson we are impressed first by its amazing variety, and almost as quickly by a certain distinctive quality which gives all the varied specimens a kind of h.o.m.ogeneity. As we a.n.a.lyse our impressions, we find that both of these qualities have a common source--the complete objectivity and almost magical imagination of supreme genius. Objectivity and imagination, the gifts of the epic bards of cla.s.sical antiquity, are today the rarest of blessings. We live in an age of morbid emotion and introspectiveness; wherein the poets, such as they are, have sunk to the level of mere pathologists engaged in the dissection of their own ultra-sophisticated spirits. The fresh touch of Nature is lost to the majority, and rhymesters rant endlessly and realistically about the relation of man to his fellows and to himself; overlooking the real foundations of art and beauty--wonder, and man's relation to the unknown cosmos. But Miss Jackson is not of the majority, and has not overlooked these things. In her the ancient and unspoiled bard is refulgently reincarnated; and with an amazing universality and freedom from self-consciousness she suppresses the ego completely, delineating Nature's diverse moods and aspects with an impersonal fidelity and delicacy which form the delight of the discriminating reader, and the despair of the stupid critic who works by rule and formula rather than by brain. There is no medium which the spirit of Miss Jackson can not inhabit. The same mind which reflects the daintiest and most gorgeous phantasies of the faery world, or furnishes the most finely wrought pictures or refined pathos and sentiment, can abruptly take up its abode in some remote Maine timber region and pour out such a wild, virile chantey of the woods and the river that we seem to glimpse the singer as the huskiest of a tangle-bearded, fight-scarred, loud-shouting logging crew sprawling about a pine campfire.

A critic has grouped the poetical work of Miss Jackson into six cla.s.ses: Lyrics of ideal beauty, including delightful Nature-poems replete with local colour; delicate amatory lyrics; rural dialect lyrics and vigorous colloquial pieces; poems of sparkling optimism; child verse; and poems of potent terror and dark suggestion. "With her," he adds, "sordid realism has no place; and her poems glow with a subtle touch of the fanciful and the supernatural which is well sustained by tasteful and unusual word-combinations, images, and onomatopoetic effects." This estimate is confirmed by the latest productions of the poetess, as we shall endeavour to show by certain specimens lately published or about to be published, selected almost at random:

"The Bonnet" is a characteristic bit of Jacksonian delicacy and originality. We here behold a sustained metaphor of that striking type which the author so frequently creates; a metaphor which draws on all Nature and the unseen world for its basis, and whose a.n.a.logies are just the ones which please us most, yet which our own minds are never finely attuned enough to conceive unaided. The swain in the poem tells of his intention to make a bonnet for his chosen nymph to wear. He will fas.h.i.+on it with "golden thimble, scissors, needle, thread"; taking velvet from the April sky as a groundwork, stars for tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, moonlight for banding, and a web of dreams for lining. He will scent it with the perfume of "the reddest rose that the singing wind finds sweetest where it farthest blows," and "will take it at the twilight for his love to wear." Here we have nothing of the bizarre or the conspicuous, yet in the six little stanzas of quaintly regular metre there is suggested all of that world of faery beauty which the eye can glimpse beyond the leaden clouds of reality; a world which exists because it can be dreamed of. The poem is "different" in the truest way; it is original because it conveys beauty originally in an inconspicuous and harmonious vehicle.

But turn now to "Ellsworth to Great Pond" and marvel! True, we still find the vivid delineation of human feelings, but what a distance we have travelled! Gone is the young dreamer with his world of moons.h.i.+ne, for here roars the Maine lumberjack with all the uncouth vigour and rude natural expressiveness of the living satyr. It is life; primal, uncovered, and unpolished--the ebullient, shouting vitality of healthy animalism.

"Drink hard cider, swig hard cider, Swill hard cider, Boys!