“Polaris”
"Polaris" was printed in the first-ever issue of a publication called The Philosopher. I can't find anything else about this magazine, just that it once published a Lovecraft story, so I guess it didn't last very long after that. I know absolutely nothing about this story, except that its apparently racist against Inuit...which means the tribes from my birthplace would probably love it, as the Inuit were their bitter enemies.
“Polaris said:
Into the north window of my chamber glows the Pole Star with uncanny light. All through the long hellish hours of blackness it shines there. And in the autumn of the year, when the winds from the north curse and whine, and the red-leaved trees of the swamp mutter things to one another in the small hours of the morning under the horned waning moon, I sit by the casement and watch that star. Down from the heights reels the glittering Cassiopeia as the hours wear on, while Charles’ Wain lumbers up from behind the vapour-soaked swamp trees that sway in the night-wind. Just before dawn Arcturus winks ruddily from above the cemetery on the low hillock, and Coma Berenices shimmers weirdly afar off in the mysterious east; but still the Pole Star leers down from the same place in the black vault, winking hideously like an insane watching eye which strives to convey some strange message, yet recalls nothing save that it once had a message to convey. Sometimes, when it is cloudy, I can sleep.”
Malevolent stars twinkle fiendishly down through the hellishly clear autumn night. A cool, horrid breeze sweeps across detestable rolling hills and hideous mangrove trees, in which demonaical songbirds sleep with their heads tucked in obscene cuteness beneath their tenebrous wings. Across the cursed hillsides, horrid bunny-rabbits writhe forth from their cthonian burrows to cavort and dance horribly in the hellish starlight.
Every one in a while Lovecraft will describe a forest or mountain as beautiful, but usually when he describes the scenery you get the impression that this guy really hated nature.
“Well do I remember the night of the great Aurora, when over the swamp played the shocking coruscations of the daemon-light. After the beams came clouds, and then I slept.”
Fun fact; in the folklore of the very Alaska Natives who this story is said to treat badly, the aurora borealis is malevolent, and dangerous to humans. Lovecraft at least has some mythological precedent here.
“And it was under a horned waning moon that I saw the city for the first time. Still and somnolent did it lie, on a strange plateau in a hollow betwixt strange peaks. Of ghastly marble were its walls and its towers, its columns, domes, and pavements. In the marble streets were marble pillars, the upper parts of which were carven into the images of grave bearded men. The air was warm and stirred not.”
And then we're right back to the eye-rolling descriptions, with "ghastly marble" being a particular stinker. What does "ghastly" marble look like? Have any of you ever seen marble that wasn't nice to look at? Lovecraft doesn't say what's wrong with the marble this city is made of, just that its bad and we shouldn't like it. Maybe he wanted ghastly to mean "pale white," but still, what a weird word to use. Then, after establishing that the city is made of marble, we're then told that "in the marble streets were marble pillars." THERE'S SO MUCH MARBLE U GAIS.
In terms of prose quality, this story is not off to a good start.
“And overhead, scarce ten degrees from the zenith, glowed that watching Pole Star. Long did I gaze on the city, but the day came not. When the red Aldebaran, which blinked low in the sky but never set, had crawled a quarter of the way around the horizon, I saw light and motion in the houses and the streets. Forms strangely robed, but at once noble and familiar, walked abroad, and under the horned waning moon men talked wisdom in a tongue which I understood, though it was unlike any language I had ever known. And when the red Aldebaran had crawled more than half way around the horizon, there were again darkness and silence.
When I awaked, I was not as I had been. Upon my memory was graven the vision of the city, and within my soul had arisen another and vaguer recollection, of whose nature I was not then certain. Thereafter, on the cloudy nights when I could sleep, I saw the city often; sometimes under that horned waning moon, and sometimes under the hot yellow rays of a sun which did not set, but which wheeled low around the horizon. And on the clear nights the Pole Star leered as never before.”
Okay, getting better.
The inhabitants of the city are described in positive terms, and the language that the narrator understands despite not knowing it is similar to the one the sailors speak in "The White Ship." Since the narrator is seeing this city in his dreams, I think its possible - perhaps even intended - that this is the same language, and that the city he saw is in Sona-Nyl or one of the other dream countries from that story.
He still describes the stars and landscape around the city, and to same extent the city itself, in dissonantly negative terms. I'm reminded a little of "Nyarlathotep" with the city turning against its inhabitants along with the natural world. Maybe he's getting at something similar here.
“Gradually I came to wonder what might be my place in that city on the strange plateau betwixt strange peaks. At first content to view the scene as an all-observant uncorporeal presence, I now desired to define my relation to it, and to speak my mind amongst the grave men who conversed each day in the public squares. I said to myself, “This is no dream, for by what means can I prove the greater reality of that other life in the house of stone and brick south of the sinister swamp and the cemetery on the low hillock, where the Pole Star peers into my north window each night?””
...and then a totally redundant soliloquy. So much for the writing getting better.
“One night as I listened to the discourse in the large square containing many statues, I felt a change; and perceived that I had at last a bodily form. Nor was I a stranger in the streets of Olathoë, which lies on the plateau of Sarkis, betwixt the peaks Noton and Kadiphonek. It was my friend Alos who spoke, and his speech was one that pleased my soul, for it was the speech of a true man and patriot. That night had the news come of Daikos’ fall, and of the advance of the Inutos; squat, hellish, yellow fiends who five years ago had appeared out of the unknown west to ravage the confines of our kingdom, and finally to besiege our towns. Having taken the fortified places at the foot of the mountains, their way now lay open to the plateau, unless every citizen could resist with the strength of ten men. For the squat creatures were mighty in the arts of war, and knew not the scruples of honour which held back our tall, grey-eyed men of Lomar from ruthless conquest.”
So a bit like "Beyond the Wall of Sleep," the protagonist is living two lives, a (presumably American?) man on Earth, and a citizen of a kingdom called Lomar, which I guess is in a part of the Dreamlands we haven't been to yet. The Lomarese are being slowly conquered by invaders called Inutos, who's description as "squat" and "yellow skinned" does unfortunately bring to mind the similarly-named Inuit. If Lomar is in the Dreamlands though, I'm not sure if they could really be Inuit. Maybe they're descended from Inuit immigrants to the Dreamlands, or are the manifestations of Inuit dreamers just as the narrator is manifesting as a Lomarese man.
Well, I guess if I really wanted to give Lovecraft the benefit of the doubt, the description of the Inutos as savage fiends and "creatures" would be fitting for someone from a society at war with them that's probably been circulating propaganda against the enemy for years. On the other...the Inuit were, as far as history can tell, never numerous enough or warlike enough to raise a conquering army. Their raids against the Athabascan and Tongass tribes to the south could be quite brutal, but these were small smash-and-grab operations that usually consisted of no more than a few dozen warriors, and the southern tribes did exactly the same thing to them (Alaska was a fairly violent place all around). They probably never even had the population required for a Ghengis Khan style horde like the one the narrator is describing.
What bothers me even more than the description of the Inutos, though, is that of the Lomarese. Noble, honorbound warriors, doomed because they're too chivalrous to fight the savages on their own level? That's a textbook ur-fascist narrative. "Our great society of the past was brought down by disgusting foreigners, who beat us even though we're totally superior to them because of some dirty trick that we in our purity and uprightness couldn't possibly think to defend against." It makes the Inuto description much, much worse in context.
I'm holding out hope that the Inutos aren't supposed to literally be Inuit, but I'm not optimistic.
“Alos, my friend, was commander of all the forces on the plateau, and in him lay the last hope of our country. On this occasion he spoke of the perils to be faced, and exhorted the men of Olathoë, bravest of the Lomarians, to sustain the traditions of their ancestors, who when forced to move southward from Zobna before the advance of the great ice-sheet (even as our descendants must some day flee from the land of Lomar), valiantly and victoriously swept aside the hairy, long-armed, cannibal Gnophkehs that stood in their way. To me Alos denied a warrior’s part, for I was feeble and given to strange faintings when subjected to stress and hardships. But my eyes were the keenest in the city, despite the long hours I gave each day to the study of the Pnakotic manuscripts and the wisdom of the Zobnarian Fathers; so my friend, desiring not to doom me to inaction, rewarded me with that duty which was second to nothing in importance. To the watch-tower of Thapnen he sent me, there to serve as the eyes of our army. Should the Inutos attempt to gain the citadel by the narrow pass behind the peak Noton, and thereby surprise the garrison, I was to give the signal of fire which would warn the waiting soldiers and save the town from immediate disaster.”
Dream-narrator's friend is a high ranking Lomarese general, and he's about to fight the final battle to defend Olathoe, which is implied to be their capital city. Dream-narrator's poor health precludes him from being a soldier (autobiographical? Lovecraft was sickly as a youth, and may have avoided conscription for that reason. Also like the character, he was passionate about obscure ancient writings) so they put him on a watch tower where he can use his keen vision.
There's a detail here that might be redemptive for the story. The dream-narrator nonchalantly mentions how in the past, to escape the advancing ice sheets, his ancestors slaughtered a society of humans or other sophonts called "gnophkehs" that got in their way. I'm reminded of "The Doom that Came to Sarnath," in which Lovecraft clearly meant for the reader to condemn their Sarnathi for having done something similar to this. So, maybe the character's dehumanization of the Inutos is meant, from a Doylistic standpoint, to be nothing but the jingoistic bluster of yet another hypocritical imperial society? If it hadn't been for "Sarnath" I'd take the narrator's words at face value when he describes the gnophkehs as cannibalistic monsters, but after reading that earlier story...I dunno, its much more ambiguous because of that.
Also, the Pnakotic Manuscripts get what I think is their first mention in Lovecraft's fiction. While they won't turn up as often as the Necronomicon, they'll still recur throughout the mythos.
“Alone I mounted the tower, for every man of stout body was needed in the passes below. My brain was sore dazed with excitement and fatigue, for I had not slept in many days; yet was my purpose firm, for I loved my native land of Lomar, and the marble city of Olathoë that lies betwixt the peaks of Noton and Kadiphonek.
But as I stood in the tower’s topmost chamber, I beheld the horned waning moon, red and sinister, quivering through the vapours that hovered over the distant valley of Banof. And through an opening in the roof glittered the pale Pole Star, fluttering as if alive, and leering like a fiend and tempter. Methought its spirit whispered evil counsel, soothing me to traitorous somnolence with a damnable rhythmical promise which it repeated over and over:
“Slumber, watcher, till the spheres
Six and twenty thousand years
Have revolv’d, and I return
To the spot where now I burn.
Other stars anon shall rise
To the axis of the skies;
Stars that soothe and stars that bless
With a sweet forgetfulness:
Only when my round is o’er
Shall the past disturb thy door.”Vainly did I struggle with my drowsiness, seeking to connect these strange words with some lore of the skies which I had learnt from the Pnakotic manuscripts. My head, heavy and reeling, drooped to my breast, and when next I looked up it was in a dream; with the Pole Star grinning at me through a window from over the horrible swaying trees of a dream-swamp. And I am still dreaming.”
Master Choung's butterfly again, but this time instead of star monsters fighting over some unspoken grudge the dreamer wants to get back to a conflict between other humans or humanlike creatures.
Now. As for that poem.
"Six and twenty-thousand years" has to be a reference to the Milankovitch cycles. Earth's orbit is stable, but it goes through predictable cycles of wobbling, tilting, and orbital fluctuation. 26,000 years is the amount of time it takes for a complete precessionary cycle, which refers to the earth's polar orientation relative to the sun. As this cycle moves along, the stars appear to change their positions in the sky before moving back to where they were; Polaris, the North Star, wouldn't have been in the north thirteen millennia ago.
What the poem seems to be saying is that the war for Lomar will be forgotten until a complete precessionary cycle has passed and Polaris is back at the same spot in the sky that it was in at the time, at which point the narrator - in his modern reincarnation/dreamself/wakingself/whatever - will recall his other life.
That means that this story isn't set in the Dreamlands at all. Its set on Earth, during a prehistoric civilized epoch, and the reference to advancing ice sheets and the aurora borealis places it somewhere near the arctic.
That means that...
Oh.
God fucking damnit, Howie.
“In my shame and despair I sometimes scream frantically, begging the dream-creatures around me to waken me ere the Inutos steal up the pass behind the peak Noton and take the citadel by surprise; but these creatures are daemons, for they laugh at me and tell me I am not dreaming. They mock me whilst I sleep, and whilst the squat yellow foe may be creeping silently upon us. I have failed in my duty and betrayed the marble city of Olathoë; I have proven false to Alos, my friend and commander. But still these shadows of my dream deride me. They say there is no land of Lomar, save in my nocturnal imaginings; that in those realms where the Pole Star shines high and red Aldebaran crawls low around the horizon, there has been naught save ice and snow for thousands of years, and never a man save squat yellow creatures, blighted by the cold, whom they call “Esquimaux”.”
“...squat yellow creatures...Esquimaux.”
Oh fuck you.
“And as I writhe in my guilty agony, frantic to save the city whose peril every moment grows, and vainly striving to shake off this unnatural dream of a house of stone and brick south of a sinister swamp and a cemetery on a low hillock; the Pole Star, evil and monstrous, leers down from the black vault, winking hideously like an insane watching eye which strives to convey some strange message, yet recalls nothing save that it once had a message to convey.”
And, thank god, its ends with that.
I've had an unwritten story idea in mind for many years, inspired by Hindu fairy tales and perhaps subconsciously by some of Lovecraft's other stories, about a child who dreams that he's the brilliant commander of an alien army, defending his homeworld from an invading swarm of mindless space locusts. The story ends with him being so disturbed by his dreams that he starts taking drugs and therapy to prevent them, and thousands of years later the ruined homeworld of that species is discovered by human explorers, stripped of all life by the locusts after the natives' brilliant tactician leader died in his sleep.
Right now, I don't just feel lame that such a similar story has already been done. I feel insulted.
Its virtually impossible to read this story any way besides "the Inuit are the descendants of a marauding orc horde who destroyed the sophisticated, civilized (and implicitly white) natives of northern Alaska before disbanding into little hunter gatherer tribes who aren't putting the land they conquered to any worthy use." Historical context makes this much worse than garden-variety racism. This story is a justification for why the Native Americans deserved to be slaughtered and driven off their land to make room for white settlers. Its a usurpation myth. Of course, Lovecraft completely ignores the factors that made Inuit society so threadbare and primitive; the harsh climate that minmized leisure time, the lack of quality materials with which to invent better tools, and the hostile tribes to the south that prevented the Inuit from using the rich forests there to supplement their resources. No, in this story, the Inuit are innately barbaric subhumans who destroyed the true and vastly superior natives (somehow) and then reduced themselves to tribal hunter-gatherers for want of any more white people to unite against.
How hard would it have been to say that the Inuit are the descendants of Lomar? That after the catastrophe for which the narrator may or may not bear partial responsibility, their cities were destroyed, their once-fertile farmlands covered in ice, and the few survivors turned to hunting and gathering to survive in the new and harsh conditions and eventually regressed into an illiterate tribal society? That still could be a bit of a dick move, making up a fictional prehistory for a group of people historically disadvantaged by your own that might not want it, but it would be worlds better than this pseudo-fantastical love letter to General Custer. This story reads like Lovecraft's apology for "The Doom that Came to Sarnath." Why couldn't he have apologized for "Dagon" instead?
The next story on the list, and the last one published in 1920, is "The Street." I'm not feeling very optimistic right now.
