Hallucinated Mountains

the hallucinated Mountains ( At the Mountains off Madness ) is a Nouvelle written by the author of terror and fantastic Littérature American H.P. Lovecraft in February /mars 1931 and published in the origin in the March, February issues of and April 1936 of the magazine Astounding Stories . This new knew many republications since the death of Lovecraft.

This history is considered by the specialist in Lovecraft S.T. Joshi like a major turning in demythification Myth of Cthulhu.

Inspiration

During all its life, Lovecraft showed an unquestionable interest for the exploration of the the Antarctic. According to its biographer S.T. Joshi, “Lovecraft was fascinated by the Antarctic continent at least since the 12 years age, when he wrote several small treaties on the first explorers of the Antarctic. ” At approximately 9 years, inspired by the book of W. Clark Russell The Frozen Pirates , Lovecraft had written “several stories” located in the Antarctic.

In the years 1920, notices Joshi, the Antarctic was “one of the last unexplored areas on Earth, comprising the immense wide ones that the foot of the Man had never pressed. The charts of time of the continent showed a great number of provocative white, and Lovecraft could make work its imagination by filling them… without too much worrying to be contradicted in the immediate future. ”

The first forwarding of Richard Evelyn Byrd took place in 1928 - 1930, right before the writing of the news, and Lovecraft mentioned several times the explorer in his letters, noticing in particular that “the geologists of Byrd forwarding found many fossils indicating a tropical past”. Flax Casing, author American of Science fiction, suggested that one of the inspirations of the hallucinated Montagnes was the proper over-sensitiveness of cold Lovecraft, as an incident proved it during which the writer “lost consciousness in the street and was transported unconscious in a pharmacy” because the temperature had fallen brutally of 15˚C with -1˚C (of 60 degrees Fahrenheit with 30 degrees Fahrenheit). “The loathing and the horror which evoked for him the cold were retranscribed in what he wrote”, written Carter, “and the pages of the Hallucinated Montagnes transmit the suffocating feeling of destruction and destruction caused by the temperatures under zero in a way so evocative that even Poe does not succeed with the égaler."

The source of the most obvious inspiration of Lovecraft for the hallucinated Mountains is the single novel of Edgar Allan Poe, the Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym , whose end is in the Antarctic. Lovecraft twice refers to the history “disturbing and enigmatic” of Poe in its text, and directly borrows the mysterious sentence “Tekeli-Li” from the work of Poe. In a letter addressed to August Derleth, Lovecraft writes that it tries to seek at the end of its news an effect similar to that reached by Poe in Arthur Gordon Pym .

Another source of inspiration supposed for the hallucinated Mountains is the novel of Edgar Rice Burroughs: In the middle of the Earth ( At the Earth' S Core ) (1914), built on the postulate that the Ground is hollow and that its center is inhabited by a race of extremely intelligent reptiles, Mahars. “If one examines the resemblances between Mahars from Burroughs and the Old ones of Lovecraft, one realizes that the two races are presented in a rather favorable way, in spite of the sufferings which they inflict with Human”, the literary critic William Fulwiler writes. “Both are winged, have the webbed feet, and are dominant races; both are scientific races érudites with the knowledge advanced as regards Génétique, of Ingénierie and Architecture; finally both use the Human ones like cattle. ” The two stories, notes Fulwiler, describe novel methods of point as regards Forage; in the two stories of the not-human scientists practice the Vivisection on the Human ones. Mahars from Burroughs employ even a species of servants known under the name of Sagoths, who were probably used as model in Lovecraft for his Shoggoths.

Other possible sources of inspiration include/understand the Beings of the abyss ( The People off the Pit ) of Abraham Merritt of which the description of an underground city in the Yukon division some resemblances to that of the Very Old Things of Lovecraft, and a Million years after ( has Million Years After ) of Katharine Metcalf Roof, a history of old egg dinosaurs éclosant of a million years, published in the November issue of 1930 of the magazine Weird Tales . In a letter with Frank Belknap Long, Lovecraft described this history like a version “rotted”, “little of value” and “puerile” of an idea that it had had years before, and Joshi suggests that could have encouraged it to write its own history of “alarm clock of entities emerged from the borders of the History of the Earth”.

Perhaps the long historical passage of new was inspired by the Decline of the Occident ( The Decline off the West ) of Oswald Spengler. Some details of the history could be drawn from the novel of the exploration of the Arctic of M.P. Shiel written in 1901 and republished in 1930, the Cloud Crimson ( The Purple Cloud ).

Another of the news of Lovecraft, the City without name ( The Nameless City ) (1921), which puts in scene the exploration of an old underground city apparently given up by its not-human manufacturers, is an unquestionable precursor of the hallucinated Montagnes . In the two stories, explorers rebuild the history of the not-human species starting from their works of Article.

First publication

This history was refused by Farnsworth Wright, editor of Weird Tales , because its length. The news was finally published 4 years later in the magazine Astounding Stories .

Synopsis

The news is written with the first nobody, by Professor William Dyer, a Géologue of the University of Miskatonic. He reports this history in order to reveal firmly hitherto kept and unknown secrecies of the public, in the hope that will dissuade the nearest organization from an scientific exhibition in the Antarctic strongly mediatized. Dyer tells how, during a preceding forwarding which it directed itself, a group of scientists of the Miskatonic university discovered fantastic horrifying ruins and a dangerous secrecy beyond of an assembly line much higher than those of the the Himalayas.

All started when part of the forwarding, which had gone in recognition, discovered and crossed high mountains. After having dug in the depths of an underground cave, the group found the remainders of 14 semi-vegetable creatures, semi-animal, completely unknown of science. Six of the specimens seemed in very bad condition, the eight others being surprisingly preserved. The great seniority of the geological Strate in which these “Fossiles” had been found posed problem, because of their particularly advanced stage of evolution. Because of their resemblance to the mythical creatures of the Necronomicon , the scientists of the group named them “Very Old Things”.

When principal forwarding lost contact with the group which had made the discovery, Dyer and its colleagues undertook to go to their camp to know what had arrived at the remainder of forwarding. They found the camp devastated and the men and the huskies massacred except for a man and a dog which had mysteriously disappeared. Close to the camp, they found six monticules of snow in the star shape, each one containing one of the damaged specimens.

Professor Dyer and a student named Danforth then decided to go to explore the mountains on board a plane, and discovered that those sheltered an immense given up stone city, composed of cubes and cones according to an architecture which did not have anything human. While exploring one of these cones, Dyer managed to recall the history of the Very Old Things by interpreting their fantastic hieroglyphic mural engravings.

The Very Old Things came on Earth for the first time shortly after separation from the the Moon and the Ground, and introduced the life on planet. They built their cities with the assistance of the “shoggoths”, of the beings created to achieve any task, to take any form and to reflect any thought. Danforth and Dyer realized that the eight Very Old Things found in the cave were still alive when they found a sledge of the camp given up in the city; with their great horror, they realized that it contained the bodies of the man and the dog reported missing, and kept obviously like specimens for scientific experiments.

The two men ended up finding traces of dead of Very Old Things, right before having to flee towards their plane, pursued by a horror hululante which they identified like Shoggoth. Whereas they flew away, Danforth threw an eye behind and saw something which made him lose the spirit instantaneously and which he refused thereafter to describe. Professor Dyer concludes from it that the Very Old Things and their civilization had been destroyed by the shoggoths that they had created, and finishes by begging the organizers of the future forwarding in the Antarctic to give up their project and not to approach these things which should not be slackened on this Earth.

Characters

William Dyer

(1875 approx. -? ) Narrator of the account, Dyer is professor of geology at the university Miskatonic d' Arkham and one of the leaders of disastrous Pabodie forwarding in the Antarctic in 1930 - 1931. He reappears in the news In the abyss of time ( The Shadow Out off Time ), where he accompanies a forwarding towards the Large Desert by Sand by Australia. During this forwarding, it will be “amazed at the age without number of the fragments” discovered, witnesses of the presence on the spot of an antique civilization. In the hallucinated Mountains , it is never mentioned its first name and it is not called “William Dyer” that in the abyss of Time .

Danforth

Graduate student of the university Miskatonic d' Arkham. Member of forwarding Pabodie, it accompanies Dyer during a reconnaissance flight above the “plate Leng” and becomes insane after having seen something of horrible. He is described like “a large reader of writings strange” and made frequent allusions to Edgar Allan Poe and the Necronomicon .

According to the account of Fritz Leiber, Towards Arkham and the Stars ( To Arkham and the Stars ), it recovers the reason after an experimental treatment containing drugs developed by professor Morgan, but does not have any memory of the horror which it saw on the plate. After which, he becomes professor of psychology at the university.

Frank H. Pabodie

Member of the department of engineering of the university Miskatonic, professor Pabodie invents for forwarding an experimental drilling machine “single in his kind: light, portable and able to adapt quickly to layers of different hardness”. He adds also mechanisms of heating of the gasoline and fast starting to the four planes of forwarding. Lovecraft wrote, in connection with the name “Pabodie”: “I chose it because of his typical of the England News, but not sufficiently common character to have banal or worn down consonances. ” It is an alternative of “Peabody”, a familiar name with Lovecraft because of the museum Peabody de Salem.

Professor Lake

Lake is professor of Biologie at the Miskatonic university. It is him which discovers in first the hallucinated Montagnes because of its “strange and odd insistence to want to venture in the West - or more exactly in the North-West”, based on its discoveries of strange fossils. He also discovers the old extraterrestrial specimens that he names “Very Old Things” because of their resemblance to “certain monsters of an old myth” described in the Necronomicon . He notes that its discoveries in the Antarctic confirm its theories according to which “the Earth saw hatching of the whole cycles of organic life before knowing that which started with the cells of the Archézoïque era” and predicted that this discovery “will have the same repercussion on biology as the discoveries of Einstein had some on the Mathématiques and the Physique. ” The Very Old Things finally proved to be alive creatures and not fossils, and massacred Lake and the remainder of its group.

Professor Atwood

Member of the department of physics of the Miskatonic university and Meteorologist. He belongs to the group of recognition of professor Lake and is made also massacre him by the Very Old Things.

Interpretation of the news

According to S.T. Joshi, which made this news the central history of its first volume of the series Annotated Lovecraft , the hallucinated Montagnes reveals the true vision of Lovecraft on its work and démythifie the major part of its preceding work. Consequently, one could qualify unsuitable expression Mythe of Cthulhu - which is not Lovecraft and was employed after its death to indicate the major part of its work. Many stories of Lovecraft include elements which belong to the supernatural one, like the monsters and the Occultisme. However, the hallucinated Mountains seems to explain the origins of such elements, since the occult symbols to the “gods” such as Cthulhu, in rational terms. the hallucinated Mountains brings many explanations to the “Mythe of Cthulhu” in terms of old extraterrestrial civilizations which were established on Earth a long time before the appearance of the Human ones. The history also popularized the concept of former astronauts come on Earth to bring the life there, like that of the place of the Antarctic in this mythology.

Relationships of work with the other stories of Lovecraft

hallucinated Mountains division of many bonds with other stories of Lovecraft. One can quote:

Shoggoths with the form unceasingly changing reappear in the Nightmare of In ( The Shadow over In ) (1931), the Thing on the threshold ( The Thing one the Doorstep ) (1933) and That which haunted darkness ( The Haunter off the Dark ) (1935).
the Very Old Things with the head in the star shape also appear in the House of the witch ( The Dreams in the Witch House ) (1933) when the main character, Walter Gilman, visit one their cities in one of its dreams, and In the abyss of time ( The Shadow Out off Time ), news in which it is vaguely referred to them like adversaries of the Great Race of Yith.
forwarding is sponsored by the Foundation Nathaniel Derby Pickman, which combines two major names in the universe of Lovecraft: Derby and Pickman. Richard Upton Pickman is the main character of the news of Lovecraft the Model of Pickman ( Pickman' S Model ), and Edward Pickman Derby is the protagonist of the Thing on the Threshold , and also one of his literary alter-egos.
the Very Old Things bring back the arrival of Cthulhu on Earth and engloutissement of R' Lyeh, of the events brought back in the Call of Cthulhu ( The Call off Cthulhu ) (1928).
the city of the Very Old Things is identified with the Plate of Leng, mentioned for the first time in Celephais (1920).
Certains members of forwarding read the specimen of the Necronomicon which has the Miskatonic university.

Adaptations

The film of homage to Lovecraft of the realizer John Carpenter was entitled In the Mouth off Madness (1995) in reference to this history, although the film does not have any relationship with the news.

The realizer Guillermo Del Toro wrote a script based on the news of Lovecraft, but the draft amendment out of film runs up against the reserve of the Warner to finance the project. According to Del Toro, “the studio is very reticent as for the cost of the project and with the absence of history of love or happy end; but it is impossible to have one or the other in the universe of Lovecraft. ”

The editor of plays Chaosium published off a campaign for the Roleplay the Call of Cthulhu , entitled Beyond the Mountains Madness ( Beyond the hallucinated Mountains , ever translated into French), fascinating for framework the adventures of a new forwarding left on the traces the first. This supplement is one of the largest campaigns ever published for this play, and after having been in stock shortage during several years, Chaosium published a new edition in hard-bound cover in 2006.

A radiophonic adaptation of the hallucinated Montagnes was carried out by Atlanta Radio Theater Company.

The “HP Lovecraft Historical Society” produced an adaptation of the history in the radiophonic style of the years 1930, with professional actors, a special original soundtrack and effects. The box is sold with photographs of forwarding, articles of newspapers and other no-claims bonus various.

Others

the book of Long John, hallucinated Mountains: a scientific odyssey in the Antarctic ( Mountains off Madness: In Scientist' S Odyssey in Antarctica ) (2001) is the report/ratio of a true scientific exhibition in the Antarctic left to research fossils near the place where the history is. Extremely fortunately, forwarding did not know the disastrous fate of the scientists of Lovecraft.

Towards the end of the history, one of the characters by heart recites the name of a series of subway stations to try to calm itself. All these stations still exist on the line “Red Line” of the subway of Boston (although some of them changed name since).

Some think that Lovecraft refers to the “cursed” family of Gedney through the character éponyme. This family was implied in the famous judgment of the Sorcières of Salem.

the giant penguins which are in the ruins of the city of the Very Old Things were inspired by the species Préhistorique Anthropornis nordenskjoeldi.

References

Books

Lovecraft, Howard P. (2005). “At the Mountains off Madness”, At the Mountains off Madness: Final The Edition. New York, NY: The Modern Library. ISBN 0-8129-7441-7 (paperback).

Pearsall, Anthony B. (2005). The Lovecraft Lexicon, 1st ED., Temple, AZ: New Falcon. ISBN 1-56184-129-3.

Internet sites

Colavito, Jason. The Cthulhu Comparison. Retrieved one April 8,2006.

Long, John. Mountains off Madness: In Scientist' S Odyssey in Antarctica. Retrieved one April 8,2006.

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