Yog Sothothery - The Definitive H.P. Lovecraft Anthology

by H. P. Lovecraft

  The History of the Necronomicon

  Written: 1927

  First Published: A History of the Necronomicon.

  Oakman, AL: The Rebel Press (1938), Pages 2-4

  (There has been some difficulty over the date of this essay. Most give the date as 1936, following the Laney-Evans (1943) bibliography entry for the pamphlet version produced by the Rebel Press. This date, as can easily be ascertained from the fact that this was a “Limited Memorial Edition”, is spurious (Lovecraft died in 1937); in fact, it dates to 1938. The correct date of 1927 comes from the final draft of the essay, which appears on a letter addressed to Clark Ashton Smith (“To the Curator of the Vaults of Yoh-Vombis, with the Concoctor's [?] Comments”). The letter is dated April 27, 1927 and was apparently kept by Lovecraft to circulate as needed.)

  Original title Al Azif—azif being the word used by Arabs to designate that nocturnal sound (made by insects) suppos’d to be the howling of daemons.

  Composed by Abdul Alhazred, a mad poet of Sanaá, in Yemen, who is said to have flourished during the period of the Ommiade caliphs, circa 700 A.D. He visited the ruins of Babylon and the subterranean secrets of Memphis and spent ten years alone in the great southern desert of Arabia—the Roba el Khaliyeh or “Empty Space” of the ancients—and “Dahna” or “Crimson” desert of the modern Arabs, which is held to be inhabited by protective evil spirits and monsters of death. Of this desert many strange and unbelievable marvels are told by those who pretend to have penetrated it. In his last years Alhazred dwelt in Damascus, where the Necronomicon (Al Azif) was written, and of his final death or disappearance (738 A.D.) many terrible and conflicting things are told. He is said by Ebn Khallikan (12th cent. biographer) to have been seized by an invisible monster in broad daylight and devoured horribly before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses. Of his madness many things are told. He claimed to have seen fabulous Irem, or City of Pillars, and to have found beneath the ruins of a certain nameless desert town the shocking annals and secrets of a race older than mankind. He was only an indifferent Moslem, worshipping unknown entities whom he called Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu.

  In A.D. 950 the Azif, which had gained a considerable tho’ surreptitious circulation amongst the philosophers of the age, was secretly translated into Greek by Theodorus Philetas of Constantinople under the title Necronomicon. For a century it impelled certain experimenters to terrible attempts, when it was suppressed and burnt by the patriarch Michael. After this it is only heard of furtively, but (1228) Olaus Wormius made a Latin translation later in the Middle Ages, and the Latin text was printed twice—once in the fifteenth century in black-letter (evidently in Germany) and once in the seventeenth (prob. Spanish)—both editions being without identifying marks, and located as to time and place by internal typographical evidence only. The work both Latin and Greek was banned by Pope Gregory IX in 1232, shortly after its Latin translation, which called attention to it. The Arabic original was lost as early as Wormius’ time, as indicated by his prefatory note; and no sight of the Greek copy—which was printed in Italy between 1500 and 1550—has been reported since the burning of a certain Salem man’s library in 1692. An English translation made by Dr. Dee was never printed, and exists only in fragments recovered from the original manuscript. Of the Latin texts now existing one (15th cent.) is known to be in the British Museum under lock and key, while another (17th cent.) is in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris. A seventeenth-century edition is in the Widener Library at Harvard, and in the library of Miskatonic University at Arkham. Also in the library of the University of Buenos Ayres. Numerous other copies probably exist in secret, and a fifteenth-century one is persistently rumoured to form part of the collection of a celebrated American millionaire. A still vaguer rumour credits the preservation of a sixteenth-century Greek text in the Salem family of Pickman; but if it was so preserved, it vanished with the artist R.U. Pickman, who disappeared early in 1926. The book is rigidly suppressed by the authorities of most countries, and by all branches of organised ecclesiasticism. Reading leads to terrible consequences. It was from rumours of this book (of which relatively few of the general public know) that R.W. Chambers is said to have derived the idea of his early novel The King in Yellow.

  Chronology

  Al Azif written circa 730 A.D. at Damascus by Abdul Alhazred

  Tr. to Greek 950 A.D. as Necronomicon by Theodorus Philetas

  Burnt by Patriarch Michael 1050 (i.e., Greek text). Arabic text now lost.

  Olaus translates Gr. to Latin 1228

  1232 Latin ed. (and Gr.) suppr. by Pope Gregory IX

  14… Black-letter printed edition (Germany)

  15… Gr. text printed in Italy

  16… Spanish reprint of Latin text

  This should be supplemented with a letter written to Clark Ashton Smith for November 27, 1927:

  I have had no chance to produce new material this autumn, but have been classifying notes & synopses in preparation for some monstrous tales later on. In particular I have drawn up some data on the celebrated & unmentionable Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred! It seems that this shocking blasphemy was produced by a native of Sanaá, in Yemen, who flourished about 700 A.D. & made many mysterious pilgrimages to Babylon's ruins, Memphis’s catacombs, & the devil-haunted & untrodden wastes of the great southern deserts of Arabia—the Roba el Khaliyeh, where he claimed to have found records of things older than mankind, & to have learnt the worship of Yog-Sothoth & Cthulhu. The book was a product of Abdul’s old age, which was spent in Damascus, & the original title was Al Azif—azif (cf. Henley’s notes to Vathek) being the name applied to those strange night noises (of insects) which the Arabs attribute to the howling of daemons. Alhazred died—or disappeared—under terrible circumstances in the year 738. In 950 Al Azif was translated into Greek by the Byzantine Theodorus Philetas under the title Necronomicon, & a century later it was burnt at the order of Michael, Patriarch of Constantinople. It was translated into Latin by Olaus in 1228, but placed on the Index Expurgatorius by Pope Gregory IX in 1232.

  [Note that this does not appear in the final version of the essay. The explanation is that the Index did not exist at this time, as further research must have revealed to Lovecraft.] The original Arabic was lost before Olaus’ time, & the last known Greek copy perished in Salem in 1692. The work was printed in the 15th, 16th, & 17th centuries, but few copies are extant. Wherever existing, it is carefully guarded for the sake of the world’s welfare & sanity. Once a man read through the copy in the library of Miskatonic University at Arkham—read it through & fled wild-eyed into the hills… but that is another story!

  In yet another letter (to James Blish and William Miller, 1936), Lovecraft says:

  You are fortunate in securing copies of the hellish and abhorred Necronomicon. Are they the Latin texts printed in Germany in the fifteenth century, or the Greek version printed in Italy in 1567, or the Spanish translation of 1623? Or do these copies represent different texts?

  Note that this is not entirely consistent with the accounts given earlier.

  “Ode to Selene or Diana” (as “To Selene”)

  Written: 1902

  First Published:

  The Tryout, Vol. 5, No. 4 (April 1919), Page 18“To the Old Pagan Religion” (as “The Last Pagan Speaks”)

  The Tryout, Vol. 5, No. 4 (April 1919), Page 17“On the Ruin of Rome”

  A Winter Wish. Chapel Hill, NC: Whispers Press, 1977, Page 150“To Pan” (as “Pan”)

  The Tryout, Vol. 5, No. 4 (April 1919), Page 16“On the Vanity of Human Ambition”

  A Winter Wish. Chapel Hill, NC: Whispers Press, 1977, Page 143

  Ode to Selene or Diana

  Immortal Moon, in maiden splendour shine.

  Dispense thy beams, divine Latona’s child.

  Thy silver rays all grosser things define,

  And hide harsh truth in sweet illusion mild.

  In thy soft light, the city of unrest

  That stands so squalid in
thy brother’s glare

  Throws off its habit, and in silence blest

  Becomes a vision, sparkling bright and fair.

  The modern world, with all it’s care & pain,

  The smoky streets, the hideous clanging mills,

  Face ’neath thy beams, Selene, and again

  We dream like shepherds on Chaldæa’s hills.

  Take heed, Diana, of my humble plea.

  Convey me where my happiness may last.

  Draw me against the tide of time’s rough sea

  And let my sprirt rest amid the past.

  To the Old Pagan Religion

  Olympian gods! How can I let ye go

  And pin my faith to this new Christian creed?

  Can I resign the deities I know

  For him who on a cross for man did bleed?

  How in my weakness can my hopes depend

  On one lone God, though mighty be his pow’r?

  Why can Jove’s host no more assistance lend,

  To soothe my pain, and cheer my troubled hour?

  Are there no Dryads on these wooded mounts

  O’er which I oft in desolation roam?

  Are there no Naiads in these crystal founts?

  Nor Nereids upon the Ocean foam?

  Fast spreads the new; the older faith declines.

  The name of Christ resounds upon the air.

  But my wrack’d soul in solitude repines

  And gives the Gods their last-receivèd pray’r.

  On the Ruin of Rome

  Low dost thou lie, O Rome, neath the foot of the Teuton

  Slaves are thy men, and bent to the will of thy conqueror:

  Wither hath gone, great city, the race that gave law to all nations,

  Subdu’d the east and the west, and made them bow down to thy consuls.

  Knew not defeat, but gave it to all who attack’d thee?

  Dead! and replac’d by these wretches who cower in confusion

  Dead! They who gave us this empire to guard and to live in

  Rome, thou didst fall from thy pow’r with the proud race that made thee,

  And we, base Italians, enjoy’d what we could not have builded.

  To Pan

  Seated in a woodland glen

  By a shallow reedy stream

  Once I fell a-musing, when

  I was lull’d into a dream.

  From the brook a shape arose

  Half a man and half a goat.

  Hoofs it had instead of toes

  And a beard adorn’d its throat

  On a set of rustic reeds

  Sweetly play’d this hybrid man

  Naught car’d I for earthly needs,

  For I knew that this was Pan

  Nymphs & Satyrs gather’d ’round

  To enjoy the lively sound.

  All to soon I woke in pain

  And return’d to haunts of men.

  But in rural vales I’d fain

  Live and hear Pan’s pipes again.

  On the Vanity of Human Ambition

  Apollo, chasing Daphne, gain’d his prize

  But lo! she turn’d to wood before his eyes.

  More modern swains at golden prizes aim,

  And ever strive some worldly thing to claim.

  Yet ’tis the same as in Apollo’s case,

  For, once attain’d, the purest gold seems base.

  All that men seek ’s unworthy of the quest,

  Yet seek they will, and never pause for rest.

  True bliss, methinks, a man can only find

  In virtuous life, & cultivated mind.

  Nemesis

  Written: 1st November 1917

  First Published: The Vagrant,

  No. 7 (June 1918), Pages 41-43

  Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,

  Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,

  I have liv’d o’er my lives without number,

  I have sounded all things with my sight;

  And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.

  I have whirl’d with the earth at the dawning,

  When the sky was a vaporous flame;

  I have seen the dark universe yawning,

  Where the black planets roll without aim;

  Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name.

  I had drifted o’er seas without ending,

  Under sinister grey-clouded skies

  That the many-fork’d lightning is rending,

  That resound with hysterical cries;

  With the moans of invisible daemons that out of the green waters rise.

  I have plung’d like a deer thro’ the arches

  Of the hoary primoridal grove,

  Where the oaks feel the presence that marches

  And stalks on where no spirit dares rove;

  And I flee from a thing that surrounds me, and leers thro’ dead branches above.

  I have stumbled by cave-ridden mountains

  That rise barren and bleak from the plain,

  I have drunk of the fog-foetid fountains

  That ooze down to the marsh and the main;

  And in hot cursed tarns I have seen things I care not to gaze on again.

  I have scann’d the vast ivy-clad palace,

  I have trod its untenanted hall,

  Where the moon writhing up from the valleys

  Shews the tapestried things on the wall;

  Strange figures discordantly woven, which I cannot endure to recall.

  I have peer’d from the casement in wonder

  At the mouldering meadows around,

  At the many-roof’d village laid under

  The curse of a grave-girdled ground;

  And from rows of white urn-carven marble I listen intently for sound.

  I have haunted the tombs of the ages,

  I have flown on the pinions of fear

  Where the smoke-belching Erebus rages,

  Where the jokulls loom snow-clad and drear:

  And in realms where the sun of the desert consumes what it never can cheer.

  I was old when the Pharaohs first mounted

  The jewel-deck’d throne by the Nile;

  I was old in those epochs uncounted

  When I, and I only, was vile;

  And Man, yet untainted and happy, dwelt in bliss on the far Arctic isle.

  Oh, great was the sin of my spirit,

  And great is the reach of its doom;

  Not the pity of Heaven can cheer it,

  Nor can respite be found in the tomb:

  Down the infinite aeons come beating the wings of unmerciful gloom.

  Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,

  Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,

  I have liv’d o’er my lives without number,

  I have sounded all things with my sight;

  And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.

  Astrophobos

  Written: 25th November 1917

  First Published: The United Amateur,

  Vol. 17, No. 3 (January 1918), Page 38

  In the midnight heavens burning

  Thro’ ethereal deeps afar,

  Once I watch’d with restless yearning

  An alluring, aureate star;

  Ev’ry eye aloft returning,

  Gleaming nigh the Arctic car.

  Mystic waves of beauty blended

  With the gorgeous golden rays;

  Phantasies of bliss descended

  In a myrrh’d Elysian haze;

  And in lyre-born chords extended

  Harmonies of Lydian lays.

  There (thought I) lies scenes of pleasure,

  Where the free and blessed dwell,

  And each moment bears a treasure

  Freighted with a lotus-spell,

  And there floats a liquid measure

  From the lute of Israfel.

  There (I told myself) were
shining

  Worlds of happiness unknown,

  Peace and Innocence entwining

  By the Crowned Virtue’s throne;

  Men of light, their thoughts refining

  Purer, fairer, than our own.

  Thus I mus’d, when o’er the vision

  Crept a red delirious change;

  Hope dissolving to derision,

  Beauty to distortion strange;

  Hymnic chords in weird collision,

  Spectral sights in endless range.

  Crimson burn’d the star of sadness

  As behind the beams I peer’d;

  All was woe that seem’d but gladness

  Ere my gaze with truth was sear’d;

  Cacodaemons, mir’d with madness,

  Thro’ the fever’d flick’ring leer’d.

  Now I know the fiendish fable

  That the golden glitter bore;

  Now I shun the spangled sable

  That I watch’d and lov’d before;

  But the horror, set and stable,

  Haunts my soul for evermore

  The Poe-et’s Nightmare

  Written: 1916

  First Published: The Vagrant,

  No. 8 (July 1918), Pages 13-23

  A Fable

  Luxus tumultus semper causa est.

  Lucullus Languish, student of the skies,

  And connoisseur of rarebits and mince pies,

  A bard by choice, a grocer’s clerk by trade,

  (Grown pessimist thro’ honours long delay’d),