w h pugmire esq
Well-Known Member
It is a remarkable fact that Kadath along with The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, were not polished by Lovecraft, who never attempted to sell them during his lifetime. In a brief interview with Derleth and Wandrei in Weird Tales, Derleth says, "A year ago Donald Wandrei and I learnt that there existed two unpublished Howard Phillips Lovecraft novels, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. We found the first fifty-one pages of Kadath, and all of Ward last summer. To the best of our knowledge the remainder of Kadath has been lost..." According to Lin Carter, in Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos, "...The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath was eventually discovered and rescued from oblivion--and Weird Tales rejected it!" Carter does not consider Kadath a work "belonging" to the Cthulhu Mythos, and I disagree with him on this.
Coming to the short novel afresh, and really studying it for the first time, I find it a fascinating work, full of wonder. Whether or not we should consider such an unpolished work canonical I cannot say, although we certainly consider Ward as such. There has been some debate, for example, as to whether the cities of which Lovecraft wrote in stories such as "Polaris" and "Celephais" actuallly exist or are dream cities; but the same may be said of "The Nameless City," when we examine that enigmatic tale. Writes S. T. Joshi in his notes to Kadath in The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories (Penguin 2004), "The novel seeks to unite most of HPL's previous 'Dunsanian' tale, but in so doing it appears to create some confusion, suggesting that these stories were set in the dreamworld when clear internal evidence points to their setting in the distant past of the real world. HPL, however, does not seem to have been concerned with rigid consistency of this sort." Thank Yuggoth he was not. This aspect of his work is evident elsewhere, in works such as "The Music of Erich Zann," which Lovecraft, somewhere, hinted was a dream narrative. The situation with Kadath is further confused with Lovecraft's story, "The Other Gods" (1921), which begins "Atop the tallest of earth's peaks dwell the gods of earth," gods (plural) who, in the next paragraph, "...have betaken themselves to unknown Kadath in the cold wastes..."
The idea of gods in the novel is fascinating if perplex. On page 76 of Beyond the Wall of Sleep (Arkham House 1943) we read of "...the bondage of dream's tyrannous gods..." and of "...the hidden gods of dream that brood capricious above the clouds on Unknown Kadath..." Carter prays to these gods in dream and makes sacrifices unto them. That the gods seem not indifferent but hostile toward mortals of the waking world seems clear.
What is the dreamworld? I have always considered it a product of the dreams of humankind, manifest and attainable in slumber. Yet it must be more than a product of our dreams, a land that has always existed but that we can visit only during slumber. But this cannot be true either, because Richard Upton Pickman journeyed to the land of dream after he vanished from the waking world, thus he must have found that place where the dreamworld "...wood at two places touches the lands of men, though it would be disastrous to say where." I have said where, and in my story "Into the Depths of Dreams and Madness," I have Pickman visit Sesqua Valley, which I now name one of those "two places." And there are other dreamworlds, that are not the dreamworlds of men, but to which foolhardy mortals may wander, although they usually return mad. Who--or what--compose the dreams that form these dreamworlds not of men?
There is much to say about this novel -- perhaps too much for one single thread. I am anxious to know your thoughts concerning this fabulous work of dreamy fiction.
Coming to the short novel afresh, and really studying it for the first time, I find it a fascinating work, full of wonder. Whether or not we should consider such an unpolished work canonical I cannot say, although we certainly consider Ward as such. There has been some debate, for example, as to whether the cities of which Lovecraft wrote in stories such as "Polaris" and "Celephais" actuallly exist or are dream cities; but the same may be said of "The Nameless City," when we examine that enigmatic tale. Writes S. T. Joshi in his notes to Kadath in The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories (Penguin 2004), "The novel seeks to unite most of HPL's previous 'Dunsanian' tale, but in so doing it appears to create some confusion, suggesting that these stories were set in the dreamworld when clear internal evidence points to their setting in the distant past of the real world. HPL, however, does not seem to have been concerned with rigid consistency of this sort." Thank Yuggoth he was not. This aspect of his work is evident elsewhere, in works such as "The Music of Erich Zann," which Lovecraft, somewhere, hinted was a dream narrative. The situation with Kadath is further confused with Lovecraft's story, "The Other Gods" (1921), which begins "Atop the tallest of earth's peaks dwell the gods of earth," gods (plural) who, in the next paragraph, "...have betaken themselves to unknown Kadath in the cold wastes..."
The idea of gods in the novel is fascinating if perplex. On page 76 of Beyond the Wall of Sleep (Arkham House 1943) we read of "...the bondage of dream's tyrannous gods..." and of "...the hidden gods of dream that brood capricious above the clouds on Unknown Kadath..." Carter prays to these gods in dream and makes sacrifices unto them. That the gods seem not indifferent but hostile toward mortals of the waking world seems clear.
What is the dreamworld? I have always considered it a product of the dreams of humankind, manifest and attainable in slumber. Yet it must be more than a product of our dreams, a land that has always existed but that we can visit only during slumber. But this cannot be true either, because Richard Upton Pickman journeyed to the land of dream after he vanished from the waking world, thus he must have found that place where the dreamworld "...wood at two places touches the lands of men, though it would be disastrous to say where." I have said where, and in my story "Into the Depths of Dreams and Madness," I have Pickman visit Sesqua Valley, which I now name one of those "two places." And there are other dreamworlds, that are not the dreamworlds of men, but to which foolhardy mortals may wander, although they usually return mad. Who--or what--compose the dreams that form these dreamworlds not of men?
There is much to say about this novel -- perhaps too much for one single thread. I am anxious to know your thoughts concerning this fabulous work of dreamy fiction.
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