сочащейся какой-то злокачественной сукровицей подземных глубин

Из которого вырвалось скопище настолько тошнотворных миазмов

Но тысячелетиями лежат в своих могилах, неподвластные тлену

И меня ни на минуту не покидала мысль, что мы с Уорреном - первые живые существа, нарушившие многовековое могильное безмолвие.

Но та гробовдохновенная книга, что привела нас к чудовищной развязке, - та книга, которую он унес с собой в кармане, - была написана иероглифами, подобных которым я нигде и никогда не встречал

Повторяю, я не только знал, какого рода изысканиям посвящает себя Харли Уоррен

Отдельные подробности которой глубоко врезались мне в память, как бы ни была она слаба и ненадежна.

Прекрасный язык и поэтика. Однозначно рекомендую, лучшего перевода нет, и едва ли будет.

 

Другой перевод, что я смог разыскать принадледит О. Колесникову. Качество его явно ниже, дословнее, зачастую слова используются в сомнительном смысле. Упущен стиль несколькими вульгарными словами Картера.

когда мы пребывали исключительно друг с другом, вдали от прочих людей

исписанными абсолютно непонятными мне значками(wut?)

Уоррену всегда удавалось помыкать мною

делал в уме какие-то прикидки

в нем стала слышна горечь безнадеги

Совместными усилиями мы расшатали каменный блок, приподняли его и поставить(sic!) на торец

такой сгусток нервов

etc

Некоторые куски(особенно вольно переведенные) точно совпадают с переводом Мичковского(совпадение? Не думаю).

Именно тогда прозвучали первые сохранившиеся в моей памяти слова – их произнес Уоррен, обращаясь ко мне, и голос его, несмотря на кошмарную обстановку, был таким же спокойным, как всегда.

То, что мой спутник опустился до просторечных выражений, свидетельствовало о крайней степени его потрясения, и это оказалось последней каплей. Приняв вдруг решение, я прокричал:

 

Встречаются и собственные неплохие куски, но их совершенно недостаточно, чтобы вытнуть работу на хоть какой-то приемлимый уровень.

изоляция которой зеленовато отсвечивала в слабых лучах лунного серпа

Потом опять прозвучал голос Уоррена – похоже, на высшей ступени уже не сдерживаемого ужаса

 

 

И так далее. Как это ни странно это вполне могло пойти в печать, учитывая, что мне доводилось читать Лавыча в переводе столь отвратном, что натурально сводило зубы.

Касатально остальных: отсыкать мне их не удалось, вполне вероятно, что они прекрасны, но об этом судить уже не мне. Для желающих отыскать своими силами:

Переводы на русский:

О. Мичковский (Показания Рэндольфа Картера) С. Алукард, В. Терещенко (Заявление Рэндольфа Картера) Д. Смушкевич (Показания Рэндольфа Картера) А. Танасейчук (Показания Рэндольфа Картера) О. Колесников (Показания Рэндольфа Картера)

 

Отдельной рубрикой выступит машинный перевод. Как известно программы уже весьма неплохо переводят простые тексты, привет поэтам!(если с синонимами повезет), но вычурный стиль Лавыча оказывается трудной задачей, что интересно ии не смущает совершенно невозможные в литературе сочетания, откуда рождаются подобные жемчужины смысла:

Акт приостановки, психические вычисления и так далее. Своего рода это может быть прекрасным источником небывалых сочетаний, которые вполне способны найти свое место в литературе(при соответсвующем редактировании). А вот как отучить ИИ проялять подобную «творческую» активность –вопрос интересный. Предположу, что трансляторы будут учить играть в го- создадут солидную базу данных литературных произведений, где условные слова и их синонимы будут использоваться в том сочетании, в котором наиболее представлено их использование. Писать тексты по образу и подобию компьютер уже научили, он даже вышел в финал какого-то литературного конкурса, хотя это уже устарелая информация. Так что через n лет машинный перевод будет упомянут не только в виде курьеза, но в качестве полновесной работы, едва ли уступающей профессиональной.

 

 

Приложение 1.

Комментарии из русской и английской википедий.

Рассказ представляет собой повествование (точнее, следственные показания) Рэндольфа Картера. Прошлой ночью он со своим другом Харли Уореном пошёл на кладбище; Харли спустился в один из древних склепов, установив телефонную связь с Рэндольфом. По звукам, издававшимся из трубки, главный герой понимает, что на Харли внизу напали какие-то ужасные твари. А через некоторое время к Рэндольфу по связи обращается пугающий голос, сообщивший о смерти его друга. Рэндольф в беспамятстве убегает с кладбища; наутро его находят полицейские.

• Остается неизвестной цель прибытия Уорена и Картера в склеп.(вполне очевидно же, они хотели проверить теорию Уоррена. Нетбек)
• Согласно рассказу «Серебряный ключ» (1926), Картер и Уорен познакомились после Первой мировой войны и были знакомы 7 лет до инцидента в склепе. Судя по этим данным, действие рассказа происходит в 1925—1926 годах.

· Персонаж впервые появляется в рассказе «Показания Рэндольфа Картера», где он описывается как мрачный, увлечённый оккультизмом мужчина. Увлёкшись некими магическими книгами, Уоррен убеждает своего друга Рэндольфом Картером проникнуть в некий склеп; цель, которую он преследует, в рассказе так и остаётся неясной^[1], однако упоминается, что его занимал вопрос о сверхъестественной сохранности некоторых давно похороненных трупов. Картер остаётся на поверхности и контактирует с Уорреном посредством телефона. По мере продвижения Уоррена вниз, на более глубокие уровни гробниц, его комментарии становятся всё более отрывистыми и полными ужаса, однако он упорно отказывается говорить о том, что именно видит^[2]. В конце концов персонаж внезапно умолкает, и вместо него неизвестное существо обращается к Рэндольфу Картеру со словами: «Глупец, Уоррен мёртв»^[1][2]. Поскольку всю эту историю читателю рассказывает Картер, невозможно выяснить, действительно ли Уоррен погиб в склепе или же был убит своим другом, который и обвиняется в его исчезновении^[3].(детективный сюжет крайне нехарактерен для Лавкрафта, поэтому подозревать Картера в убийстве- это верх подозрительности. Нетбек)

· Из других рассказов Лавкрафта, в которых упоминается Уоррен, становится понятно, что этот персонаж происходил откуда-то из Южной Каролины^[2]. Очевидно, что он в некоторой степени подчинил Рэндольфа Картера своей сильной воле^[2]. В рассказе «Врата серебряного ключа» говорится, что Уоррен изучал «наакаль, древний язык гималайских жрецов», увлечение которым и привело его к гибели.

· Как отмечает литературовед(поганые литературоведы! Нетбек) Дональд Барльсон, образ Уоррена очень размыт и воспринимается исключительно со слов Рэндольфа Картера, на основе его фрагментарных воспоминаний^[4]. Барльсон видит в имени персонажа связь с образом шута, воплощающим иллюзорность, нереальность происходящего — и в начале, и в конце рассказа Уоррен отсутствует, так что можно вообще усомниться в его существовании^[4].(опять таки, такие игры явно не в стиле Лавыча, если что-либо там постулируется это есть. Скорее рассказчик сам хочет убедить и себя и других, что это сон и миф, он никогда не занят созданием небывалых сущностей. Нетбек) По мнению исследователя, поглощённый книжной премудростью Уоррен сам словно бы превращается в текст — мы можем судить о нём лишь по чужим словам, которые могут быть ложью или вымыслом, так что читатель в принципе не способен определить, жил ли вообще этот персонаж на самом деле^[5]. Таким образом, заключает Барльсон, особенность образа Харли Уоррена заключается в его сугубой гипотетичности — он оставляет настолько обширное поле для трактовок, что его историю невозможно восстановить хоть с каким-то подобием точности: можно поверить рассказу Картера; решить, что Картер убил Уоррена и придумал рассказ о склепе, чтобы скрыть преступление; даже предположить, что все «показания» — просто сон или бред рассказчика, а Уоррен вообще никогда не существовал^[5]. С этой точки зрения персонаж превращается в настоящую постмодернистскую загадку.

· Нужно отметить, что мнение Барльсона относительно «скрытого значения» имени Уоррена не имеет под собой достаточных оснований, поскольку на самом деле Лавкрафт основывал рассказ на собственном сне, в котором под именем Рэндольфа Картера выступал он сам, а «Харли Уорреном» был его друг, поэт Сэмюэль Лавмэн

 

Рэндольф Картер (англ. Randolph Carter) — вымышленный Говардом Лавкрафтом персонаж мифов Ктулху и Цикла Снов. Согласно произведениям писателя, Картер был опытным сновидцем и свободно перемещался по Миру Снов, посетил Неведомый Кадат, а также был опытным оккультистом и писателем-фантастом.Рэндольф Картер родился в 1874 году в Аркхэме, штат Массачусетс. В возрасте 9 лет у него был обнаружен дар провидения. Также он начинает погружаться в странные сны, в которых путешествует по стране снов. Фактически это стало его настоящей жизнью, так как реальность его интересовала гораздо меньше. В 1904 году, после потери «Серебряного ключа», он начинает искать свою духовную нишу в реальной жизни, однако и в религии, и в атеизме и в оккультизме он видит лишь ложь и пустоту. С началом Первой мировой войны он вступает в ряды Французского Иностранного легиона и воюет во Франции. После её окончания он вновь возвращается к литературе, и пишет несколько романов, некоторые из которых, впрочем, были сожжены им самим. Вскоре он знакомится с Харли Уорреном, вместе с которым он вел исследования в сфере загадочного в течение семи лет. Однако после, Уоррен бесследно исчез в старом склепе, а Картер был пойман полицией («Показания Рэндольфа Картера»).

The story contains an early statement of a common theme of Lovecraft's—the terrible price of knowledge:

As to the nature of our studies--must I say again that I no longer retain full comprehension? It seems to me rather merciful that I do not, for they were terrible studies, which I pursued more through reluctant fascination than through actual inclination.

This theme is most famously stated in "The Call of Cthulhu": "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."

Randolph Carter and the events in "The Statement of Randolph Carter" are key elements of Cosa Nosferatu, a fantasy/crime/horror novel featuring Eliot Ness and Al Capone, set in a 1930 era Chicago beset with Lovecraft-style Undead.

Lovecraft has also realized that the horrors we don't see can be just as frightening as the horrors we do see, a far cry from his earlier story "The Beast in the Cave". Here, we (along with Carter) don't see even a hint of the underworld or its inhabitants. All we have to rely on are the cryptic and sporadic messages from Warren and our overactive imaginations. The ending is supposed to be something of a shock moment--think the literary equivalent of the final scene from Quarantine or Paranormal Activity --but it doesn't work quite as well on the printed page.(but it works quite well for me! Netbek)

 

 

 

Приложение 2.

Письмо Лавыча к друзьям с описанием сна и английские комментарии.

"The Statement of Randolph Carter" was written in late December 1919 and first published in W Paul Cook's Vagrant for May 1920 Its first professional magazine appearance was in Weird Tales for February 1925.

It is well known that this story is-or was claimed by Lovecraft to be-an almost literal transcript of a dream Lovecraft had, probably in early December 1919, in which he and Samuel Loveman (1887-1976) make a fateful trip to an ancient cemetery and Loveman suffers some horrible but mysterious fate after he descends alone into a crypt. The story purports to be a kind of affidavit given to the police by Randolph Carter (Lovecraft) concerning the disappearance of Harley Warren (Loveman).

The tale is manifestly based upon a letter to the Gallomo (a correspondence cycle among Alfred Galpin, Lovecraft, and Maurice W. Мое) of December 11, 1919, in which Lovecraft recounts the dream, it is evident that Lovecraft in the letter has already begun to fashion the dream creatively so that it results in an effective and suspenseful narrative.

by H. P. Lovecraft
December 11, 1919

Before quitting the subject of Loveman and horror stories, I must relate the frightful dream I had the night after I received S.L.'s latest letter. We have lately been discussing weird tales at length, and he has recommended several hair-raising books to me; so that I was in the mood to connect him with any thought of hideousness or supernatural terror. I do not recall how this dream began, or what it was really all about. There remains in my mind only one damnably blood-curdling fragment whose ending haunts me yet. We were, for some terrible yet unknown reason, in a very strange and very ancient cemetery - which I could not identify. I suppose no Wisconsinite can picture such a thing - but we have them in New England; horrible old places where the slate stones are graven with odd letters and grotesque designs such as a skull and crossbones. In some of these places one can walk a long way without coming upon any grave less than an hundred and fifty years old. Some day, when Cook issues that promised MONADNOCK, you will see my tale "The Tomb", which was inspired by one of these places. Such was the scene of my dream - a hideous hollow whose surface was covered with a coarse, repulsive sort of long grass, above which peeped the shocking stones and markers of decaying slate. In a hillside were several tombs whose facades were in the last stages of decrepitude. I had an odd idea that no living thing had trodden that ground for many centuries till Loveman and I arrived. It was very late in the night - probably in the small hours, since a waning crescent moon had attained considerable height in the east. Loveman carried, slung over his shoulder, a portable telephone outfit; whilst I bore two spades. We proceeded directly to a flat sepulchre near the centre of the horrible place, and began to clear away the moss-grown earth which had been washed down upon it by the rains of innumerable years. Loveman, in the dream, looked exactly like the snapshots of himself which he has sent me - a large, robust young man, not the least Semitic in features (albeit dark), and very handsome save for a pair of protruding ears. We did not speak as he laid down his telephone outfit, took a shovel, and helped me clear away the earth and weeds. We both seemed very much impressed with something - almost awestruck. At last we completed these preliminaries, and Loveman stepped back to survey the sepulchre. He seemed to know exactly what he was about to do, and I also had an idea - though I cannot now remember what it was! All I recall is that we were following up some idea which Loveman had gained as the result of extensive reading in some old rare books, of which he possessed the only existing copies. (Loveman, you may know, has a vast library of rare first editions and other treasures precious to the bibliophile's heart.) After some mental estimates, Loveman took up his shovel again, and using it as a lever, sought to pry up a certain slab which formed the top of the sepulchre. He did not succeed, so I approached and helped him with my own shovel. Finally we loosened the stone, lifted it with our combined strength, and heaved it away. Beneath was a black passageway with a flight of stone steps; but so horrible were the miasmic vapours which poured up from the pit, that we stepped back for a while without making further observations. Then Loveman picked up the telephone output and began to uncoil the wire - speaking for the first time as he did so.

"I'm really sorry", he said in a mellow, pleasant voice; cultivated, and not very deep, "to have to ask you to stay above ground, but I couldn't answer for the consequences if you were to go down with me. Honestly, I doubt if anyone with a nervous system like yours could see it through. You can't imagine what I shall have to see and do - not even from what the book said and from what I have told you - and I don't think anyone without iron-clad nerves could ever go down and come out of that place alive and sane. At any rate, this is no place for anybody who can't pass an army physical examination. I discovered this thing, and I am responsible in a way for anyone who goes with me - so I would not for a thousand dollars let you take the risk. But I'll keep you informed of every move I make by the telephone - you see I've enough wire to reach to the centre of the earth and back!"

I argued with him, but he replied that if I did not agree, he would call the thing off and get another fellow-explorer - he mentioned a "Dr. Burke," a name altogether unfamiliar to me. He added, that it would be of no use for me to descend alone, since he was sole possessor of the real key to the affair. Finally I assented, and seated myself upon a marble bench close by the open grave, telephone in hand. He produced an electric lantern, prepared the telephone wire for unreeling, and disappeared down the damp stone steps, the insulated wire rustling as it uncoiled. For a moment I kept track of the glow of his lantern, but suddenly it faded out, as if there were a turn in the stone staircase. Then all was still. After this came a period of dull fear and anxious waiting. The crescent moon climbed higher, and the mist or fog about the hollow seemed to thicken. Everything was horribly damp and bedewed, and I thought I saw an owl flitting somewhere in the shadows. Then a clicking sounded in the telephone receiver.

"Lovecraft - I think I'm finding it" - the words came in a tense, excited tone. Then a brief pause, followed by more words in atone of ineffable awe and horror.

"God, Lovecraft! If you could see what I am seeing!" I now asked in great excitement what had happened. Loveman answered in a trembling voice: "I can't tell you - I don't dare - I never dreamed of this - I can't tell - It's enough to unseat any mind - wait - what's this?" Then a pause, a clicking in the receiver, and a sort of despairing groan. Speech again - "Lovecraft - for God's sake - it's all up - Beat it! Beat it! Don't lose a second!" I was now thoroughly alarmed, and frantically asked Loveman to tell what the matter was. He replied only "Never mind! Hurry!" Then I felt a sort of offence through my fear - it irked me that anyone should assume that I would be willing to desert a companion in peril. I disregarded his advice and told him I was coming down to his aid. But he cried:

"Don't be a fool - it's too late - there's no use - nothing you or anyone can do now." He seemed calmer - with a terrible, resigned calm, as if he had met and recognised an inevitable, inescapable doom. Yet he was obviously anxious that I should escape some unknown peril.

"For God's sake get out of this, if you can find the way! I'm not joking - So long, Lovecraft, won't see you again - God! Beat it! Beat it!" As he shrieked out the last words, his tone was a frenzied crescendo. I have tried to recall the wording as nearly as possible, but I cannot reproduce the tone. There followed a long - hideously long - period of silence. I tried to move to assist Loveman, but was absolutely paralysed. The slightest motion was an impossibility. I could speak, however, and kept calling excitedly into the telephone - "Loveman! Loveman! What is it? What's the trouble?" But he did not reply. And then came the unbelievably frightful thing - the awful, unexplainable, almost unmentionable thing. I have said that Loveman was now silent, but after a vast interval of terrified waiting another clicking came into the receiver. I called "Loveman - are you there?" And in reply came a voice - a thing which I cannot describe by any words I know. Shall I say that it was hollow - very deep - fluid - gelatinous - indefinitely distant - unearthly - guttural - thick? What shall I say? In that telephone I heard it; heard it as I sat on a marble bench in that very ancient unknown cemetery with the crumbling stones and tombs and long grass and dampness and the owl and the waning crescent moon. Up from the sepulchre it came, and this is what it said:

"YOU FOOL, LOVEMAN IS DEAD!"

Well, that's the whole damn thing! I fainted in the dream, and the next I knew I was awake - and with a prize headache! I don't know yet what it was all about - what on (or under) earth we were looking for, or what that hideous voice at the last was supposed to be. I have read of ghouls - mould shades - but hell - the headache I had was worse than the dream! Loveman will laugh when I tell him about that dream! In due time, I intend to weave this picture into a story, as I wove another dream-picture into "The Doom that Came to Sarnath". I wonder, though, if I have a right to claim authorship of things I dream? I hate to take credit, when I did not really think out the picture with my own conscious wits. Yet if I do not take credit, who'n Heaven wilI I give credit tuh? Coleridge claimed "Kubla Khan", so I guess I'll claim the thing an' let it go at that. But believe muh, that was some dream!

Aside from the obvious change of character names, there appears to be another significant change between the letter and the story - the locale Both the letter and the story are vague as to the actual location of the events of the narrative. In the letter Lovecraft suggests, but does not explicitly declare, that the dream occurred in some old New England cemetery writing to two Midwesterners, Lovecraft states, "I suppose no Wisconsinite can picture such a thing - but we have them in New England, horrible old places where the slate stones are graven with odd letters and grotesque designs such as a skull and crossbones". In the story mention is made of the "Gainsville [sic] pike" and "Big Cypress Swamp", these are the only topographical sites mentioned in the story. It appears that Lovecraft has misspelled the name of the well known city of Gainesville, Florida, moreover, cypress swamps are certainly more common in the South than in New England. If we may draw upon evidence of later stories, we can note that in "The Silver Key" (1926) Harley Warren is referred to as "a man in the South," while in "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" (1932-33) he is mentioned as a "South Carolina mystic". Loveman had for part of the war been stationed at Camp Gordon, Georgia, so perhaps he described certain features of the local terrain to Lovecraft in letters.

1. the illusion you call justice. A reflection of Lovecraft's adoption of Nietzsche's cynical view of abstract ethical precepts "As the savage progresses, he acquires experience and formulates codes of 'right' and 'wrong' from his memories of those courses which have helped or hurt him Then out of the principle of barter comes the illusion of 'justice'..." ("In Defence of Dagon"). The view is derived from Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals (1887).

2. "Personally I should not care for immortality in the least There is nothing better than oblivion, since in oblivion there is no wish unfulfilled" ("In Defence of Dagon") This is the burden of the prose-poem "Ex Oblivione" (1921).

3. The reading in Lovecraft's typescript is "Gainsville", but this is apparently an error, as he is presumably referring to the city in Florida (see introductory note)

4. This is one of the first instances of the "mythical book" topos in Lovecraft The book in question is clearly not the Necronomicon, since that book exists in Arabic, Greek, Latin, and English, and the narrator is clearly familiar with these languages. In the present instance, the conception (in the dream, at any rate) was apparently inspired by Samuel Loveman's extensive collection of rare and obscure volumes "All that I recall is that we were following up some idea which Loveman had gained as the result of extensive reading in some rare old books, of which he possessed the only existing copies (Loveman, you may know, has a vast library of rare first editions and other treasures precious to the bibliophile's heart)".

5. At this point in the dream, Loveman says to Lovecraft "At any rate, this is no place for anybody who can't pass an army physical examination" - a telling reference to Lovecraft's rejection on physical grounds of his attempt to enlist in the Rhode Island National Guard (and, later, the U. S. Army) upon the United States' declaration of war against Germany in May 1917.

6. In the dream Loveman threatened to "call the thing off and get another fellow-explorer-he mentioned a 'Dr Burke,' a name altogether unfa miliar to me".

7. In the dream Loveman utters a prefatory remark "Lovecraft - I think I'm finding it -".

8. In the dream Loveman says "I can't tell you - I don't dare - I never dreamed of this - I can't tell - It's enough to unseat any mind - wait What's this!".

 

 

Приложение 3.

Комментарии от modern writers, весьма жгучие и дельные.

Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s original stories.

Today we’re looking at “The Statement of Randolph Carter,” written in December 1919 and first published in the May 1920 issue of The Vagrant. You can read the story here. Spoilers ahead.

“Over the valley’s rim a wan, waning crescent moon peered through the noisome vapours that seemed to emanate from unheard-of catacombs, and by its feeble, wavering beams I could distinguish a repellent array of antique slabs, urns, cenotaphs, and mausolean facades; all crumbling, moss-grown, and moisture-stained, and partly concealed by the gross luxuriance of the unhealthy vegetation.”

Summary: Randolph Carter is giving a formal statement about the disappearance of his friend Harley Warren. He has told law enforcement officials everything he can remember about the night Warren went missing—in fact, he’s told them everything several times. They can imprison or even execute him if they think that will serve “justice,” but he can do no more than repeat himself and hope that Warren has found “peaceful oblivion,” if there is such a thing.

Warren was a student of the weird, with a vast collection of rare books on forbidden subjects, many in Arabic. Carter took a subordinate’s part in Warren’s studies, the exact nature of which he’s now mercifully forgotten. They were terrible, though, and Warren sometimes scared Carter, most recently on the night before his disappearance, when he went on and on about his theory of why “certain corpses never decay, but rest firm and fat in their tombs for a thousand years.”

A witness has testified to seeing Warren and Carter on the Gainesville Pike, headed for Big Cypress Swamp. Carter doesn’t quite recall this, but doesn’t deny it. He can second the witness about what they were carrying: spades, electric lanterns, and a portable telephonic apparatus. Warren also carried a book he’d received from India a month before, one in a script Carter doesn’t recognize. Just saying. Oh, and another thing Carter’s sure about is their final destination that fatal night: an ancient cemetery in a deep, damp, overgrown hollow. This terrible necropolis is setting to the one scene he can’t forget.

Warren finds a half-obliterated sepulchre, which he and Carter clear of drifted earth and invasive vegetation. They uncover three flat slabs, one of which they pry up. Miasmal gases drive them back. When these clear, they see stone steps leading down into the earth.

Warren will descend alone, for he says that with Carter’s frail nerves, he couldn’t survive what must be seen and done below. Really, Carter couldn’t even imagine what the “thing” is like! However, Warren has made sure the wire connecting their telephone receivers is long enough to reach the center of the earth, and so they can stay in touch during his solo adventure.

Down Warren goes, while Carter gets to fidget alone on the surface, imagining processions of amorphous shadows not cast by the waning crescent moon and such like. A quarter hour later, Carter’s phone clicks, and Warren speaks in quivering accents quite unlike himself. What he’s found is unbelievably monstrous, but he can’t tell the frantic Carter any more than that, for no man could know it and live!

Unfortunately, that seems to include Warren. He begins to exhort Carter to put back the slab and run—“beat it” being the boyish slang to which he’s driven in his extremity. Carter shouts back that he won’t desert Warren, that he’s coming down after him. Warren continues to beg him to flee, voice growing fainter, then rising to a last shriek of “Curse these hellish things—legions—My God! Beat it! Beat it! Beat it!”

Silence follows. Carter does not go down the steps. Instead he sits variously muttering, shouting and screaming into his receiver: Is Warren there?

Eventually he hears the thing that drives him mindless to the edge of the swamp, where he’s found the next morning. It is a voice, hollow, remote, gelatinous, inhuman, perhaps even disembodied. It isn’t Warren’s voice, in other words, but one that intones:

“YOU FOOL, WARREN IS DEAD.”

 

What’s Cyclopean: Sometimes the only way to describe the indescribable is with a lot of adjectives, and “deep; hollow; gelatinous; remote; unearthly; inhuman; disembodied” is quite the list. We also get the delightfully precise “necrophagic shadows.”

The Degenerate Dutch: Pretty limited degeneracy here. There’s the continued suggestion that a large proportion of nasty occult books are written in Arabic—but then, a lot of classic texts on everything are written in Arabic (and we get a lot of Latin too, though not here). Then there’s the suggestion that a book in an unknown alphabet is probably particularly suspicious. While that’s clearly the case here—dude, there are a lot of alphabets, and it isn’t weird that you don’t recognize them all.

Mythos Making: Randolph Carter is a major recurring character in Mythos and Dreamlands stories. Although we don’t see him at his best here, he’s a Miskatonic alumnus and will eventually quest in unknown Kadath.

Libronomicon: The fateful mission is precipitated by a book that Harley Warren has taken to carrying around in his pocket. Kind of like those little bibles with the green covers, but different.

Madness Takes Its Toll: Warren assures Carter that he’s too frail to sanely face the “fiendish work” that will be necessary beneath the earth. Seems a bit rude, frankly. And then, of course, he turns out to be a bit frail himself.

 

Anne’s Commentary

For the third time in four weeks of blog posts, one of Lovecraft’s friends gets fictionally messed up—Harley Warren’s counterpart in the dream that inspired “Statement” was Samuel Loveman. Lovecraft seems to have dreamt about Loveman a lot, because he also played a prominent part in the dream that led to “Nyarlathotep.”

Right up front let me say that I find more strikes in “Statement” than hits. Framing the story as a legal statement negates what could have been another successful retelling or recasting of dream (as “Nyarlathotep” is and “The Outsider” seems to be.) A statement must lay out the facts, no prose-poetics welcome. Here too many facts remain vague, unremembered, while others firmly stated seem incredible.

The setting is apparently Florida’s Big Cypress Swamp, now a national preserve. Located just north of the Everglades, it’s nowhere near Gainesville, don’t know about a Gainesville “pike.” When the officials tell Carter that nothing like the graveyard he describes exists in or near the Swamp, believe them. This “necropolis” sounds too old and too European in its accouterments. What’s more, the water table in Florida (especially in a swamp) is way too close to the surface to allow for those steps leading down and down and down, dampish but not submerged. Plus where are the gators? Got to have gators in South Florida, come on!

To be fair, Lovecraft knows his graveyard is not really part of any Florida swamp-scape. It’s in some kind of parallel Florida? In part of the Dreamlands impinging on Florida? The latter conceit would be more effective in a story that isn’t masquerading as a legal statement, hence prejudicing our expectations toward the factual.

The list of Lovecraft narrators rendered unreliable by possible madness or actual memory loss is a long one. Here the narrator is just too unreliable. Yeah, maybe his statement is based on hallucination or nightmare. For sure, his memory is riddled with odd holes and implausible blank stretches—odd and implausible because when he does remember something (the graveyard episode), he remembers it down to the dialogue, with all the words and all tonal nuances intact. Kind of the way Wilmarth remembers Akeley’s lost letters? But I’m calling Lovecraft on this story, and I’m saying that Carter’s memory is entirely in the service of his creator’s decision to keep the central horror a mystery, as it doubtless was in the inciting dream. Our one clue to what’s under the slab is Warren’s theory about corpses that rest firm and fat in their tombs. This reminds me of “The Festival.” I’ll bet that among Warren’s rare Arabic books is the Necronomicon, and that he’s familiar with Alhazred’s contention that the bodies of sorcerers instruct the very worms that gnaw, causing them to “wax crafty to vex [the earth] and swell monstrous to plague it.” So, is it some of these wizards-turned-grubs (or grubs-turned-wizards) that Warren’s looking for—legions of them, all walking when they should crawl? That could account for the gelatinous nature of the voice that speaks to Carter!

That’s all speculation, though, and the reader would have to know “The Festival” in order for this maybe-connection to make “Statement’s” monsters more particular. Besides which, “The Festival” comes four years after this story, and Alhazred is two years away (first appearing in “The Nameless City”), and the Necronomicon itself is three years off (first appearing in “The Hound.”) Not that Lovecraft couldn’t have known about the vexy worms and mad Arab and dark tome in 1919. Known and mercifully kept them to himself, until driven by the terrible weight of his knowledge to speak.

What about Carter himself? This is his first appearance and not a super-auspicious debut, given his funky memory, and frail nerves, and fear-frozen immobility at the climax. Carter in “The Unnamable” is still fairly useless in an emergency, but his nerves are up to investigating haunted attics and toting around monstrous bones. And the Carter of the Dreamlands is positively bold—rash, even, though his knowledge of the mystic realms and his alliances with its inhabitants preserve him through his trials. The development of the character often considered Lovecraft’s alter-ego makes an interesting study, one to look forward to in our readings of Dream-Quest and the Silver Key stories.

Pluses: The whole phone conversation thing, which must have seemed tech-to-the-minute in 1919, and it is shivery-cool to think of something besides Warren finally figuring out how to pick up the fallen receiver and tell Carter to shut the hell up already. And a waning crescent moon instead of a gibbous one! And this lovely bit about the graveyard’s smell: “….a vague stench which my idle fancy associated absurdly with rotting stone.” Rotting stone! Love it.

 

Ruthanna’s Commentary

The guy who tells you how much sturdier and stronger and saner he is than you? The guy who drags you out in the middle of the night and then tells you that you can’t handle anything beyond watching him be brave? That’s the guy who needs someone to look down on in order to feel good about himself. It takes a certain sort of guy to pick a guy like Carter as his closest friend, and drag him around searching for nameless horrors. And Carter, of course, thinks the world of him, and moons about his mellow tenor.

So my first thought is that it wouldn’t actually be a terrible thing to drop a slab over him and head back into town, giving the police a song and dance about inexplicable voices. Probably not the interpretation Lovecraft had in mind, though.

But this set-up actually gets more interesting when you look at Carter’s whole timeline. One of Lovecraft’s major recurring characters, he goes from being deeply ineffective here—failing utterly to undertake a daring rescue—to the seasoned adventurer of “Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath.” And here, at the start of his appearances, he’s already in his 40s. In fact, according to his full timeline he’s a World War I veteran who was part of the French Foreign Legion. So his “nerves” are probably PTSD (which makes Warren even more of an asshole).

On this reading, the rest of Carter’s stories follow him as he recovers his pre-war courage and ability to take action. (One wonders what friends lost in foxholes were going through his mind during the events of “Statement.”) Perhaps the seemingly very different Carter in “Unnamable” is deliberately playing with his own fears, and starting to come to terms with them. One notes that there, he’s the dominant partner in a slightly more equal friendship—the one dragging someone else, with a degree of guilty pleasure, into the world of indescribable horrors. Only this time they’re survivable. Later, in “Dream-Quest,” he’s become a full-blown adventurer, well-versed in the lore needed for survival—though his quests will eventually lead him through many strange transformations.

Moving away from Carter himself, in “Statement” we also get Lovecraft’s repeated motif of weirdly telescoping time. The cemetery makes Carter tremble with “manifold signs of immemorial years.” (Reminder: Carter’s memory is faulty, so lots of things might be immemorial.) The wait for Warren’s non-existent response takes “aeons.”

I have a love-hate relationship with this trope. When it works, we get the intimations of deep time and genuinely vast cosmic gulfs that (almost) eclipse horror with wonder. When it fails, we get the horrifying ancient oldness of houses built a couple of hundred years ago. The former marks some of my favorite passages in Lovecraft—which makes the latter all the more frustrating. If you can make me feel the rise and fall of civilizations over billions of years, the awe-inspiring abundance and terrifying loss implied by the succession of solar races, then why would you try and get me to flip out over a colonial-era cemetery?

But at the same time, things really do feel like they take longer when you’re terrified. Maybe that’s the key with the cemeteries and houses—or at least a way to read them that’s more effective than exasperating—not that their age is inherently ancient and immemorial, but that the stress of the situation makes them feel that way.

Finally, I’m deeply intrigued by the owner of that voice. Because that is a cosmic horror that 1) speaks English, 2) finds it worthwhile to razz Carter but not to attack him, and 3) is kind of snide. Is it Warren’s shade? Is it whatever killed him? Is it something else entirely? Inquiring minds want to know, even though finding out is probably a really bad idea.