“Poetry and the Gods”
This story, it seems, is actually not solely a Lovecraft creation. HPL collaborated with another United Amateur author named Anna Crofts, schoolteacher, poet, and classicist. Sadly, the full nature of Lovecraft's relationship with Crofts is unknown, as none of his letters mention her and she left a very scant paper trail herself; some Lovecraft scholars even believed she was a pseudonym until her graduation and obituary documents were found. Our only artifact of her possible friendship with Lovecraft is this one story they wrote together in the summer of 1920.
“A damp, gloomy evening in April it was, just after the close of the Great War, when Marcia found herself alone with strange thoughts and wishes; unheard-of yearnings which floated out of the spacious twentieth-century drawing-room, up the misty deeps of the air, and eastward to far olive-groves in Arcady which she had seen only in her dreams.”
The opening words are oddly similar to 1984's. The rest seems fairly typical Lovecraft, but there are some words that stick out as ones he doesn't normally use. "Wishes." "Yearnings." I'm guessing both he and Crofts went over each other's work and reworded/edited it to make their prose fit together more seamlessly.
“She had entered the room in abstraction, turned off the glaring chandeliers, and now reclined on a soft divan by a solitary lamp which shed over the reading table a green glow as soothing and delicious as moonlight through the foliage about an antique shrine. Attired simply, in a low-cut evening dress of black, she appeared outwardly a typical product of modern civilisation; but tonight she felt the immeasurable gulf that separated her soul from all her prosaic surroundings. Was it because of the strange home in which she lived; that abode of coldness where relations were always strained and the inmates scarcely more than strangers? Was it that, or was it some greater and less explicable misplacement in Time and Space, whereby she had been born too late, too early, or too far away from the haunts of her spirit ever to harmonise with the unbeautiful things of contemporary reality? To dispel the mood which was engulfing her more deeply each moment, she took a magazine from the table and searched for some healing bit of poetry. Poetry had always relieved her troubled mind better than anything else, though many things in the poetry she had seen detracted from the influence. Over parts of even the sublimest verses hung a chill vapour of sterile ugliness and restraint, like dust on a window-pane through which one views a magnificent sunset.”
I'm now convinced that my suspicion is correct. This reads like a perfect blend of Lovecraft and NotLovecraft prose. Every time it starts to feel like a sensitive suburban drama, there's suddenly some household object being compared to an ancient shrine, or depressing poetry emitting a chill vapour. Whenever it starts to feel like a Lovecraft story, we suddenly switch to low-cut evening dresses and an imaginative girl struggling with her ennui.
I also can't help but notice that Marcia is our first female protagonist after ten stories. Apparently, Lovecraft needed a cowriter - and perhaps even a female cowriter specifically - to badger him into writing about anything besides educated and semi-neurotic white guys.
Also, some mood music for a young romantic frustrated with her bland modern life:
“Listlessly turning the magazine’s pages, as if searching for an elusive treasure, she suddenly came upon something which dispelled her languor. An observer could have read her thoughts and told that she had discovered some image or dream which brought her nearer to her unattained goal than any image or dream she had seen before.”
Well, I think we've discovered why Anna Crofts isn't remembered as a great writer. Lovecraft's prose is bloated and often clumsy, but even he normally knew better than to use "X or Y" in repetition like that. I'm laying the blame for this on Crofts until I see Lovecraft turn that bad a phrase on his own.
“It was only a bit of vers libre, that pitiful compromise of the poet who overleaps prose yet falls short of the divine melody of numbers; but it had in it all the unstudied music of a bard who lives and feels, and who gropes ecstatically for unveiled beauty. Devoid of regularity, it yet had the wild harmony of winged, spontaneous words; a harmony missing from the formal, convention-bound verse she had known. As she read on, her surroundings gradually faded, and soon there lay about her only the mists of dream; the purple, star-strown mists beyond Time, where only gods and dreamers walk.”
Well, we're back in Lovecraft territory now. Let's see this amazing poem of inauspicious origins.
““Moon over Japan,
White butterfly moon!
Where the heavy-lidded Buddhas dream
To the sound of the cuckoo’s call. . . .
The white wings of moon-butterflies
Flicker down the streets of the city,
Blushing into silence the useless wicks of round lanterns in the hands of girls.
Moon over the tropics,
A white-curved bud
Opening its petals slowly in the warmth of heaven. . . .
The air is full of odours
And languorous warm sounds. . . .
A flute drones its insect music to the night
Below the curving moon-petal of the heavens.
Moon over China,
Weary moon on the river of the sky,
The stir of light in the willows is like the flashing of a thousand silver minnows
Through dark shoals;
The tiles on graves and rotting temples flash like ripples,
The sky is flecked with clouds like the scales of a dragon.””
Hey, that's really not bad!
I'm not sure how the meter is supposed to work, so I can't read it melodically, but the words themselves are beautifully chosen and the metaphors and symbolism clever. The image of opening, white petals and reference to "insect flute music" should ring true to anyone who's been in a tropical rainforest at night. The Chinese stanza comes across as derisive at first, but in historical perspective it actually works very well: at the time this poem was written China was at a very low point, the proud national spirit beaten down and humiliated by British and American domination, socially stagnated, poor, and demoralized, with communist and nationalist firebrands just starting to wake up and shake off the malaise. The "weary moon" and "rotting temples" speak well to a once mighty empire now rendered poor and ineffectual.
The word "moon" was used a little too often, especially in the Japan stanza, but otherwise this is a pretty nice poem. Wonder who had more of a hand in writing it?
“Amid the mists of dream the reader cried to the rhythmical stars, of her delight at the coming of a new age of song, a rebirth of Pan. Half closing her eyes, she repeated words whose melody lay hid like crystals at the bottom of a stream before the dawn; hidden but to gleam effulgently at the birth of day.”
Eh, don't get your hopes up Marcia. You found one poem that you liked. For all you know, it might be the last one for a long time. You're setting yourself up for disappointment.
She recites bits of the poem to herself again while falling asleep, and then
“Out of the mists gleamed godlike the form of a youth in winged helmet and sandals, caduceus-bearing, and of a beauty like to nothing on earth. Before the face of the sleeper he thrice waved the rod which Apollo had given him in trade for the nine-corded shell of melody, and upon her brow he placed a wreath of myrtle and roses.”
Well, that escalated quickly. Marcia now has Hermes in her room. I guess she should be grateful it wasn't Zeus on one of his magical rape adventures.
Say what you want about Levantine gods like Dagon and their associated sacrificial rites, but from a Watsonian perspective, within the world of the myths themselves, I can't think of a single pantheon I hate more than the Olympians. Even the fucking Sumerian gods weren't quite that randomly dickish.
“Then, adoring, Hermes spoke:
“O Nymph more fair than the golden-haired sisters of Cyane or the sky-inhabiting Atlantides, beloved of Aphrodite and blessed of Pallas, thou hast indeed discovered the secret of the Gods, which lieth in beauty and song. O Prophetess more lovely than the Sybil of Cumae when Apollo first knew her, though hast truly spoken of the new age, for even now on Maenalus, Pan sighs and stretches in his sleep, wishful to awake and behold about him the little rose-crowned Fauns and the antique Satyrs. In thy yearning hast thou divined what no mortal else, saving only a few whom the world rejects, remembereth; that the Gods were never dead, but only sleeping the sleep and dreaming the dreams of Gods in lotos-filled Hesperian gardens beyond the golden sunset. And now draweth nigh the time of their awaking, when coldness and ugliness shall perish, and Zeus sit once more on Olympus. Already the sea about Paphos trembleth into a foam which only ancient skies have looked on before, and at night on Helicon the shepherds hear strange murmurings and half-remembered notes. Woods and fields are tremulous at twilight with the shimmering of white saltant forms, and immemorial Ocean yields up curious sights beneath thin moons. The Gods are patient, and have slept long, but neither man nor giant shall defy the Gods forever. In Tartarus the Titans writhe, and beneath the fiery Aetna groan the children of Uranus and Gaea. The day now dawns when man must answer for centuries of denial, but in sleeping the Gods have grown kind, and will not hurl him to the gulf made for deniers of Gods. Instead will their vengeance smite the darkness, fallacy, and ugliness which have turned the mind of man; and under the sway of bearded Saturnus shall mortals, once more sacrificing unto him, dwell in beauty and delight. This night shalt thou know the favour of the Gods, and behold on Parnassus those dreams which the Gods have through ages sent to earth to shew that they are not dead. For poets are the dreams of the Gods, and in each age someone hath sung unknowing the message and the promise from the lotos-gardens beyond the sunset.””
Marcia is HAWT, at least in Hermes' opinion. I keep getting more and more glad that it wasn't Zeus. Though I suppose Hermes could be talking about her spiritual, rather than physical, qualities; that would make more sense, since it was apparently her appreciation of the poem that got his attention.
The Olympians here seem to represent humanity's sense of fascination, wonder, imagination, and positivity. That's an awfully generous treatment of them, but I can kind of see the connection. The Greek gods and the various spirits and monsters that served them were seen to be one with the natural world, and added a dimension of mystery and magic - even if it often wasn't nice magic - to the material universe. And Hermes even specifies in the story that they're going to try their bests not to be assholes this time.
“Then in his arms Hermes bore the dreaming maiden through the skies. Gentle breezes from the tower of Aiolos wafted them high above warm, scented seas, till suddenly they came upon Zeus holding court on the double-headed Parnassus; his golden throne flanked by Apollo and the Muses on the right hand, and by ivy-wreathed Dionysus and pleasure-flushed Bacchae on the left hand. So much of splendour Marcia had never seen before, either awake or in dreams, but its radiance did her no injury, as would have the radiance of lofty Olympus; for in this lesser court the Father of Gods had tempered his glories for the sight of mortals. Before the laurel-draped mouth of the Corycian cave sat in a row six noble forms with the aspect of mortals, but the countenances of Gods. These the dreamer recognised from images of them which she had beheld, and she knew that they were none else than the divine Maeonides, the Avernian Dante, the more than mortal Shakespeare, the chaos-exploring Milton, the cosmic Goethe, and the Musaean Keats. These were those messengers whom the Gods had sent to tell men that Pan had passed not away, but only slept; for it is in poetry that Gods speak to men.”
So, Hermes is interacting with Marcia's dream-self, then? When he gave that speech was he talking to her unconscious body, or was he appearing in her dream so that she could hear him? The text could have been more clear about that.
The description of Zeus' true throne on Olympus being deadly to mortals because of its divine radiance is strongly reminiscent of the Abrahamic god, who's radiance and voice are supposed to vaporize humans who see/hear it at full strength. According to some Christian (and I believe Muslim?) schools of thought, the fires of hell are not a separate place, but rather what happens to you if your soul is impure and sinful when god's light touches it, while the virtuous are unharmed by it. I don't know if the Greeks had a similar concept that the authors are drawing from, or if they're just projecting Judeo-Christian ideas onto Zeus.
It seems that the gods have recruited some of the greatest writers in the last three thousand years of western history into their ranks, though its skewed heavily toward post-renaissance Europe. Looks like Dan Simmons was only the second scifi author to turn John Keats into an immortal semi-divine Gary Stue.
“Then spake the Thunderer:
“O Daughter—for, being one of my endless line, thou art indeed my daughter—behold upon ivory thrones of honour the august messengers that Gods have sent down, that in the words and writings of men there may be still some trace of divine beauty. Other bards have men justly crowned with enduring laurels, but these hath Apollo crowned, and these have I set in places apart, as mortals who have spoken the language of the Gods. Long have we dreamed in lotos-gardens beyond the West, and spoken only through our dreams; but the time approaches when our voices shall not be silent. It is a time of awaking and of change. Once more hath Phaeton ridden low, searing the fields and drying the streams. In Gaul lone nymphs with disordered hair weep beside fountains that are no more, and pine over rivers turned red with the blood of mortals. Ares and his train have gone forth with the madness of Gods, and have returned, Deimos and Phobos glutted with unnatural delight. Tellus moans with grief, and the faces of men are as the faces of the Erinyes, even as when Astraea fled to the skies, and the waves of our bidding encompassed all the land saving this high peak alone. Amidst this chaos, prepared to herald his coming yet to conceal his arrival, even now toileth our latest-born messenger, in whose dreams are all the images which other messengers have dreamed before him. He it is that we have chosen to blend into one glorious whole all the beauty that the world hath known before, and to write words wherein shall echo all the wisdom and the loveliness of the past. He it is who shall proclaim our return, and sing of the days to come when Fauns and Dryads shall haunt their accustomed groves in beauty. Guided was our choice by those who now sit before the Corycian grotto on thrones of ivory, and in whose songs thou shalt hear notes of sublimity by which years hence thou shalt know the greater messenger when he cometh. Attend their voices as one by one they sing to thee here. Each note shalt thou hear again in the poetry which is to come; the poetry which shall bring peace and pleasure to thy soul, though search for it through bleak years thou must. Attend with diligence, for each chord that vibrates away into hiding shall appear again to thee after thou hast returned to earth, as Alpheus, sinking his waters into the soul of Hellas, appears as the crystal Arethusa in remote Sicilia.””
Never shutting up seems to be an Olympian trait.
What I was able to decipher through that endless wall of pompous mythological references is that the gods are planning to return amid a resurgence in human art, poetry, and appreciation for beauty, and Marcia has been chosen to lead this cultural revolution.
“Then arose Homeros, the ancient among bards, who took his lyre and chaunted his hymn to Aphrodite. No word of Greek did Marcia know, yet did the message not fall vainly upon her ears; for in the cryptic rhythm was that which spake to all mortals and Gods, and needed no interpreter.
So too the songs of Dante and Goethe, whose unknown words clave the ether with melodies easy to read and to adore. But at last remembered accents resounded before the listener. It was the Swan of Avon, once a God among men, and still a God among Gods:
“Write, write, that from the bloody course of war,
My dearest master, your dear son, may hie;
Bless him at home in peace, whilst I from far,
His name with zealous fervour sanctify.”Accents still more familiar arose as Milton, blind no more, declaimed immortal harmony:
“Or let thy lamp at midnight hour
Be seen in some high lonely tower,
Where I might oft outwatch the Bear
With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere
The spirit of Plato, to unfold
What worlds or what vast regions hold
Th’ immortal mind, that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook.
****
Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy
In sceptred pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops’ line,
Or the tale of Troy divine.”Last of all came the young voice of Keats, closest of all the messengers to the beauteous faun-folk:
“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on. . . .
****
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
‘Beauty is truth—truth beauty’—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.””
I'm going to assume these are all quoted from the authors named, though I was only able to source the Keates one via google. They're either giving Marcia their own words of encouragement, or endowing her with their own powers or talents.
“As the singer ceased, there came a sound in the wind blowing from far Egypt, where at night Aurora mourns by the Nile for her slain son Memnon. To the feet of the Thunderer flew the rosy-fingered Goddess, and kneeling, cried, “Master, it is time I unlocked the gates of the East.” And Phoebus, handing his lyre to Calliope, his bride among the Muses, prepared to depart for the jewelled and column-raised Palace of the Sun, where fretted the steeds already harnessed to the golden car of day. So Zeus descended from his carven throne and placed his hand upon the head of Marcia, saying:
“Daughter, the dawn is nigh, and it is well that thou shouldst return before the awaking of mortals to thy home. Weep not at the bleakness of thy life, for the shadow of false faiths will soon be gone, and the Gods shall once more walk among men. Search thou unceasingly for our messenger, for in him wilt thou find peace and comfort. By his word shall thy steps be guided to happiness, and in his dreams of beauty shall thy spirit find all that it craveth.” As Zeus ceased, the young Hermes gently seized the maiden and bore her up toward the fading stars; up, and westward over unseen seas.”
"False faiths" I'm pretty sure is referring to materialism, modernism, capitalism, etc. Not Christianity and Buddhism and so forth.
“Many years have passed since Marcia dreamt of the Gods and of their Parnassian conclave. Tonight she sits in the same spacious drawing-room, but she is not alone. Gone is the old spirit of unrest, for beside her is one whose name is luminous with celebrity; the young poet of poets at whose feet sits all the world. He is reading from a manuscript words which none has ever heard before, but which when heard will bring to men the dreams and fancies they lost so many centuries ago, when Pan lay down to doze in Arcady, and the greater Gods withdrew to sleep in lotos-gardens beyond the lands of the Hesperides. In the subtle cadences and hidden melodies of the bard the spirit of the maiden has found rest at last, for there echo the divinest notes of Thracian Orpheus; notes that moved the very rocks and trees by Hebrus’ banks. The singer ceases, and with eagerness asks a verdict, yet what can Marcia say but that the strain is “fit for the Gods”?
And as she speaks there comes again a vision of Parnassus and the far-off sound of a mighty voice saying, “By his word shall thy steps be guided to happiness, and in his dreams of beauty shall thy spirit find all that it craveth.””
And, finally, its over. That felt like much longer than it was.
I think this story captures an interesting piece of the zeitgeist, leading into the twentieth century Romantic resurgence and eventually postmodernism, and illustrating the backlash against rationalism and materialism in the wake of World War One.
Unfortunately, its also the most pretentious, self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing, overstated, pseudo-sophisticated gust of hot air I've ever had to sit through outside of that one time I was forced to listen to high schoolers' poetry. The message is good, and the writing is strong in some places, but the realization of the concept has all the dignity of an eighteen year old hipster lecturing you about whatever smart-sounding arcana he looked up on wikipedia most recently, smug shit-eating grin splitting his face from ear to ear.
The story isn't bad enough to laugh at, like "Dagon" or "The Statement of Randolph Carter." Its just tiring, and headache-inducing, and I'm glad that its over. I went into this one intrigued by Anna Crofts and the effect she might have had on Lovecraft's writing, but if this slog was the result I'm just glad they didn't collaborate again after this.
At least the poem was nice.
Fortunately, our next story should be a much better reading experience: November 1920's "The Cats of Ulthar." :3
