“The Ho-Ho-Kam Horror” (1937) by Bruce Bryan

Lovecraft had a rare faculty for beginning with something commonplace and building up an overwhelming aura of horror that left his readers hanging onto the ropes. In that sense, I can’t think of anyone who could surpass him. He had a knack of delving into man’s subconscious, untranslated fears—putting them into an appreciable form, giving them appealing names and personifying one’s own, inmost, half-comprehended, even personal nightmares.
—Bruce Bryan in “The Eyrie,” Weird Tales (Jul 1937)

H. P. Lovecraft created Yig for “The Curse of Yig” (WT Nov 1929), ghostwritten for Zealia Bishop. Yig is also mentioned as “Niguratl-Yig” in “The Electric Executioner” (WT Aug 1930), ghostwritten for Adolphe de Castro; and “The Father of Serpents” in “The Whisperer in Darkness” (WT Aug 1931); “Yig the Serpent-God” in “Out of the Æons” (WT Apr 1935), ghostwritten for Hazel Heald, and “Mother of Serpents” (1936) by Robert Bloch. Five appearances over the course of eight years, all in the pages of Weird Tales, and to the casual reader all by different authors.

Perhaps that is why in 1937 professional archaeologist and pulp author Bruce Bryan borrowed Yig—here under the name “Yig-Satuti”—for his archaeological horror yarn, “The Ho-Ho-Kam Horror,” which ran in Weird Tales Sep 1937 issue.

“On the Mountain-That-Is-Heaven,” he hissed fiercely, “the white man is a trespasser. Yig-Satuti does not welcome visitors who come to dig up his secrets. It is bad medicine for those who seek to disturb the ancient dwelling-place of the god.”
—Bruce Bryan, “The Ho-Ho Kam Horror” in Weird Tales (Sep 1937)

G. W. Thomas has described “The Ho-Ho-Kam Horror” as “an unnoticed Cthulhu Mythos sequel” (Snake Gods & Were-Serpents), and he’s largely correct. Dedicated fans recognized the reference to Yig at least as early as the 1950s, when George Wetzel included it in one of the listings in his The Lovecraft Collector’s Library (1955); the story is also listed in Chris Jarocha-Ernst’s mammoth A Cthulhu Mythos Bibliography & Concordance (1999). However, the story has never been reprinted outside of its original appearance, not in a random Mythos anthology or anywhere else, contributing to its overall obscurity and lack of recognition.

Even for dedicated Mythos-hounds, the story is easy to miss. Bruce Bryan was never a member of Lovecraft’s circle of correspondents, and outside of the reference to Yig, the story has no other connections to the Mythos—nor many to its probable inspiration, “The Curse of Yig.” For one, the story is not set in Oklahoma, but in Superstition Mountain in Arizona; the Native American groups involved thus shift in relation to that portion of the Southwest, and the mythology shifts with it, becoming associated with the Hohokam culture. Bizarrely, even though Yig-Satuti is depicted with wings, Bryan makes no effort to connect it with Queztacoatl as Lovecraft had done.

The story takes on a more familiar shape than Lovecraft’s “The Curse of Yig,” echoing “Sunfire” (1923) by Francis Stevens, “The Monster-God of Mamurth” (1926) by Edmond Hamilton, and “The Thing on the Roof” (1932) by Robert E. Howard among others—all stories where in an ancient and deserted city or temple, the monstrous god of the forgotten people remains to be discovered by archaeologists or treasure-hunters. While there’s a certain Lovecraftian touch in the framing of the story, since the last of it is told through a diary the protagonist discovered and the final sentence is an appropriately italicized culminating revelation, it is otherwise a bit crude. The pot that prognosticates the archaeologist’s doom, for example, is never explained in any detail.

By far the most substantial difference between Bryan and Lovecraft, however, might be in their treatment of Native American characters and culture.

Few would consider Lovecraft an exemplar when it comes to the accurate or sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans in his fiction. While there are sparingly few references to Native Americans in his corpus, the one Native American character who is named and speaks is Grey Eagle in “The Curse of Yig” and “The Mound,” and he is basically a walking stereotype of the Old Native American Chief, complete with the kind of English patois that Barbra A. Meek in “And the Injun Goes ‘How!’: Representations of American Indian English in white public space” (2006) called “Hollywood Injun English.” Yet for all that, Lovecraft obviously did research for his stories set in Oklahoma, accurately names the Native American peoples that would have been there, and references some of their genuine beliefs, like Tiráwa. The worst negative stereotype Lovecraft indulges in is depicting the Native Americans with a penchant for alcohol.

Bruce Bryan did his research too—albeit, a few folks wrote in to Weird Tales to correct a few points:

I read with much enjoyment Bruce Bryan’s story The Ho-Ho-Kam Horror. I lived near Superstition Mountain for about eight years, and learned to speak the Pima dialect fairly well. Naturally, I took quite an interest in the Indians, their legends and the ruins of the Hohokam. Little is known of the Hohokam, but there were a few errors in the story which I think the author should have corrected. ‘The Hopi and Smoki Indians do not live near Superstition Mountain, nor do they get their snakes for the rain dance there. I doubt if they know of the existence of the place. The story is based on legend, apparently, and legend has it that the Hohokam did not live on Superstition Mountain; the ancestors of the Apache Indians lived in that vicinity, and the Hohokam, who are apparently the ancestors of the Pimas (although this is not certain), lived and farmed the Gila River valley when the valley was not such a desert as it is now. The Casa Grande ruins (a four-story adobe structure) were built by the Hohokam who continually warred with the Apaches of Superstition Mountain. The Pimas and Apaches don’t get along any too well today, as far as that goes. In regard to the Hohokam-built ruins, the age of these ruins is probably more than two thousand years. At that time (when the Hohokam lived there) they irrigated the land with water from the Gila. Some of the ditches are filled with lava. It must have been quite a while ago that the volcanoes in Arizona erupted. […] Little can be said of Superstition Mountain. In the present century no white man has climbed it alone and come back, although a few have tried. Planes can’t fly very low over it, due to strong and gusty updrafts. An exploring party recently made a trip over part of the mountain to try to discover the cause of loud and thunderous noises, like the reports of guns, but found nothing.
—Paul Smith in “The Eyrie,” Weird Tales (Nov 1937)

However, the issue has less to do with Bryan’s anthropology of the deceased Hohokam culture and geography than his depiction of the living Native Americans and their culture. Lovecraft kept the Native Americans almost always off the page, talked about rather than depicted directly interacting with the white viewpoint characters, and while Yig is depicted as part of their belief-system, but is not necessarily evil nor was his worship all-encompassing. Bryan has the Native American characters much more present, and the white viewpoint characters interact with them directly—which means there’s a lot more room for stereotyping, especially within the already hackneyed scenario of one lone white man with a group of Indigenous laborers.

The only one named is Jim Red-Cloud, who becomes the mouthpiece for the Native American viewpoint:

“Don’t be ridiculous, Jim!” I snapped angrily. “You’re not a superstitious child. You went to the white man’s schools. And you’ve been with me a long time. Tell me, just what or who is this Yig-Satuti?”

The Pima winced at my words, as if they expressed some damnable blasphemy. In the smoldering depths of his eyes modern teachings seemed to struggle with the antique lore of his savage forefathers.

“Some things the white man’s schools do not teach,” he whispered almost fearfully. “Some things they do not know. Yig-Satuti is the Indian’s god beyond all other gods. It is not well to speak his name, for he is jealous of his secrecy. Those who know, worship him in hidden places that the white man does not suspect. It is better so. Yig-Satuti is older than the earth itself, and all wisdom is his heritage. Here on his mountain we are trespassers. Much evil will come if we do not go.”
—Bruce Bryan, “The Ho-Ho Kam Horror” in Weird Tales (Sep 1937)

Before long, the “rational” white archaeologist who ignores the warnings to the curious offered by Jim Red-Cloud. The nameless, faceless indigenous laborers are demeaned as superstitious and primitive children, whom the white man tries to coax with money and then threatens with implied violence. It is little surprise when the white man ends up alone and eaten by the ancient horror his excavation has unearthed.

A very old-fashioned story, one where none of the characters come out looking good.

In terms of Native American representation, the Yig Cycle stories—whether written by Lovecraft or anyone else—often suffer from difficulties in their portrayal and presentation of indigenous peoples and their culture. Part of this is due to ignorance, part of this is due to stereotypes, and part of this is just the lens of the storytelling. The default perspective is of voyeuristic outsiders to an indigenous culture poking around where they are not invited and don’t belong. It is a Colonialist narrative, told from the standpoint of the colonizer, and even when bad things happen to said colonizer, it does so by representing the indigenous culture as exotic, secretive, and dangerous. Reiterating and reinforcing stereotypes.

Not all Yig Cycle fiction is like that; “The Head of T’la-yub” (2015) by Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas for example provides a very different viewpoint, and the approach is much more respectful with regards to depicting Native American characters as possessing agency, and of how and why they integrate indigenous beliefs with the Cthulhu Mythos. If there’s a lesson to be learned from “The Ho-Ho-Kam Horror” by Bruce Bryan, it might be to listen more, keep an open mind, and try to see things from someone else’s perspective.

If nothing else, it would make a more interesting story if it had been written from Jim Red-Cloud’s point of view.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

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“Hyborian Africa” (1980) & “To Kush and Beyond: The Black Kingdoms of the Hyborian Age” (1980) by Charles R. Saunders

South of Stygia are the vast black kingdoms of the Amazons, the Kushites, the Atlaians and the hybrid empire of Zembabwe.
—Robert E. Howard, “The Hyborian Age”

The Hyborian Age of Conan the Cimmerian was no mythical white space, occupied only by pale Caucasians. In formulating the adventures of the Cimmerian, Robert E. Howard drew on everything he knew: Conan’s travels encompass not just a fantasy geography, but chronologies and genres. The barbarian might find himself leading a battle of European-style medieval knights; on the deck of a ship whose pirates could have stepped out of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island; in a frontier wilderness fort reminiscent of pioneer Texas; in a stone temple that might have stood in some fantastic vision of ancient Egypt—and in a fantasy equivalent of Africa, populated by Black people, who were to Conan’s friends, allies, enemies, and lovers.

The Conan stories, while fantasy and aimed at Weird Tales, grew out of Howard’s love for history and adventure fiction, and writing historical adventure stories for magazines like Oriental Stories. The conceit of the Hyborian Age is that by setting it before any known period, Howard had a free hand to invent details that would otherwise trip him up if trying to write a realistic historical yarn.

For pulps like Adventure, accuracy was paramount; the magazine prided itself on publishing stories from people who knew their subject, who had gone out and lived in exotic lands, and returned to tell the tale. To that end, Adventure invited readers to write in with their questions, for Adventure’s stable of writers to answer. In September 2024, scholar Patrice Louinet came across a letter printed in a copy of Adventure (30 December 1923):

White Man and Native of West Africa

HAUSAS—trading-factory terms—marriage ceremonies and customs:

Question:—”I am writing to get some information in regard to the customs, habits, etc., of the natives of that part of Africa which is included in your section in ‘Ask Adventure.’

Are the natives of a war-like stock? That is, did they come from a fighting race?

How much authority does the superintendent of a trading-post possess?

Do the whites interfere with the natives in dealing with native criminals?

What are some of the punishments of native wrong-doers by the whites? By the natives themselves?

What are some marriage customs among the natives? Am I right in supposing a native has full power to punish his wife in any way he pleases?

Have the morals of the African natives been raised by the rule of the white men or have they decreased in standard?

Is the ceremony of Mumbo-Jumbo—or something of some name like that—for the correcting of disobedient women used in that part of Africa? If so, how is it carried out?

What is the customary costume of the natives?

I apologize for asking so many questions, but I am very much interested in Africa. If by any chance this letter should be published in Adventure, please do not print my name.”
—R.E.H., Cross Plains, Texas.
Text from REH.world.

This would be Robert E. Howard of Cross Plains, Texas—and if the questions of a 17-year-old boy seem somewhat ignorant, it must be remembered that knowledge of Africa was by no means widespread in the rural United States during the 1920s and 30s. For many years and even decades to come, Africa would be the metaphorical “dark continent,” whose peoples, geography, and history were intermixed with fantasy, racism, and plain ignorance. Howard’s questions were honest ones, and it is to his credit that he sought out answers instead of immediately falling back to stereotypes and fantasy when he wrote his first few African stories.

The Conan boom in the 1960s and 70s brought with it not just an increased admiration for Robert E. Howard as a writer and Conan the Cimmerian as a character, but new criticism and new sensibilities. As Marvel Comics adapted Howard’s character and stories to a new medium, they had to face the reality that this was a new world: the Civil Rights movement had won victories with the decision in Brown vs. the Board of Education (1954) and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Black Pride and other movements raised awareness of the roots of the African diaspora in the United States and surrounding countries.

Adaption to this new reality was, at first, slow. “The Vale of Lost Women”(1967) by Robert E. Howard is one example of how 1930s stereotypes and prejudice found an unwelcome audience in the 1960s and 70s, and how later writers and artists worked to make this work acceptable to a contemporary audience of all races. Not every creator was so conscientious; in 1975, Black fan Charles R. Saunders wrote “Die Black Dog! A Look At Racism in Fantasy Literature.” While it was one thing for something Robert E. Howard, who died in 1936 and never lived to see the changes in US society, to rely on racial stereotypes the essay specifically called out latter-day creators of Conan pastiche for continuing to use such lazy and biased storytelling nearly four decades later.

Just because Charles R. Saunders called out writers of heroic fantasy doesn’t mean he stepped away from the genre; quite the opposite. In 1980, Saunders published two related essays: “Hyborian Africa” was published in the fanzine Paragon #1 (May 1980), and “To Kush and Beyond: The Black Kingdoms of the Hyborian Age” was published in Savage Sword of Conan #56 (Sep 1980). Both essays deal with similar subject matter: an exploration of the “Black Kingdoms” mentioned in Howard’s essay “The Hyborian Age,” references to which are sprinkled throughout Conan’s adventures. However, the purpose and approach of each essay is different.

The historical derivation of the lands south of Stygia, the Black Kingdoms, are less obvious. Nonetheless, a look at any reference work on African history quickly exposes Howard’s inspirations for the names of some of his Black Kingdoms, if not their cultural backgrounds [.] Kush, Punt, Darfar, Zembabwei and Amazon are names as familiar to African scholars as those of Poland, France, Spain and Italy are to students of the European past.
—Charles R. Saunders, “Hyborian Africa,” Paragon #1 (1980), 27

“Hyborian Africa” looks at the historical sources and inspiration behind Howard’s stories. Given that this was a fanzine and that Howard studies was in its infancy, the usual apparatus of scholarly writing is neither present nor expected: no footnotes, no bibliography. However, Saunders’ care in the article is evident. He addresses only the stories written by Robert E. Howard, not later pastiches or derivative material from the Marvel comic books. It is brief, at only a little over two pages, but the history offered is largely accurate…and if Saunders criticizes some of Howard’s depictions of these fantasy versions of African kingdoms, he also offers a parting observation:

Although Howard’s depictions of Hyborian Age blacks consisted primarily of stock racist stereotypes, he did do more research into African history than such contemporaries as Edgar Rice Burroughs. Even today, the mention of the wor[d] “Kush’ would draw only blank stares from most people. With the exception of Darfar, Howard’s historical foundations for his Black Kingdoms were as solid as those of the rest of Conan’s world. And this is to his credit.
—Charles R. Saunders, “Hyborian Africa,” Paragon #1 (1980), 29

“To Kush and Beyond: The Black Kingdoms of the Hyborian Age” was published as a literary exploration of the Black Kingdoms as they appear in the broader Conan mythology, which includes not just Howard’s stories but also stories that were completed or re-written by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter like “Hawks over Shem,” “The Snout in the Dark,” and “The City of Skulls.” In adapting Conan stories to comics, Marvel had included some of de Camp and Carter’s creations, including Conan’s ally Juma the Kushite, and so Saunders incorporates that lore into his survey of the Black Kingdoms of the Hyborian Age. Saunders’ work provided an explanation and codification of lore on the world of Conan that both readers and writers could reference.

Being published in a comics magazine, Saunders’ essay was illustrated by Conan artists John Buscema and Gene Day, and being of a scholarly character includes a page of endnote citations, for a total of 7 pages. Saunders’ interest in African history is still present, though less explicit. In the closing paragraph, for example, he writes:

The cataclysm that formed the outlinees of the modern world separated the land south of the River Styx from the rest of the world, and raised up from the sea the entire west coast of what is now Africa. Much of the history and lore of the Black Kingdoms perished in the disaster—yet the Black Kingdoms did not truly die. Kush, Darfar and Punt rose again in historical times, and the West African Kingdom of Dahomey boasted a formidable corps of Amazon warriors. Like so many other nations and races, the African can trace their history “back into the mists of the forgotten Hyborian Age….”
—Charles R. Saunders, Savage Sword of Conan #56 (1980), 54

While the two essays have very different purposes, considered together gives the sense that Charles R. Saunders wasn’t just chronicling the lore of the Hyborian world and glossing it to make it fit. Saunders was studying the work of Howard and other writers to see how they used Black characters and African history in their stories, for good or for ill—and he used those lessons when he wrote his own fiction, the kind of heroic fantasy series that he wanted to read.

Saunders combined his interests in African history and heroic fantasy in his own fiction, including the Dossouye stories about fantasy warrior-women that were first published in the anthology Amazons! (1979), and the Nyumbani setting stories that feature his hero Imaro—who would star in Saunder’s first novel, Imaro (1981). These are the critical early stories of Sword & Soul (see Milton J. Davis’ A Sword and Soul Primer), and they represent a desire to look beyond what other people have written to what stories have not been written, that need to be written, and to write them.

“Hyborian Africa” has not been reprinted. “To Kush and Beyond” has been reprinted in the Savage Sword of Conan Omnibus vol. 4.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Reanimator (2020) by Juscelino Neco & H. P. Lovecraft

Eldritch Fappenings
This review deals with a work that contains excessive cartoon violence and sexuality. Selected images with cartoon depictions of body horror, violence, genitalia and/or sexually explicit contact will be displayed.
As such, please be advised before reading further.

Lovecraft não era sequer um grande astesão, mas is so também não importa, como o rock e, mais que ele, o punk rock, provou inúmeras vezes. Um artista menos dotado é perfeitamente capaz de Fazer uma obra mais oportuna, historicamente falando, do que um virtuose incapaz de pensar sua própria profissão em termos amplos. Mas isso também não era o caso de Lovecraft, um artesão obviamente limitado e um artista incapaz de seguir as veredas que ele mesmo abria a golpes desajeitados de marreta. Sua dificuldade técnica fica ainda mais evidente em Reanimator, uma de suas obras menos felizes, mas capaz de gerar tantas pérolas pelas mãos de artists mais dotados que o próprio, como o quadrinista Juscelino Neco.

Lovecraft wasn’t even a great artist, but that doesn’t matter either, as rock and, more than that, punk rock, have proven time and time again. A less gifted artist is perfectly capable of making a more timely work, historically speaking, than a virtuoso incapable of thinking about his own profession in broad terms. But that wasn’t the case with Lovecraft either, an obviously limited craftsman and an artist incapable of following the paths he himself opened up with clumsy sledgehammer blows. His technical difficulty is even more evident in Reanimator, one of his less successful works, but capable of generating so many pearls in the hands of artists more gifted than himself, such as the comic artist Juscelino Neco.

Rafael Campos Rocha, foreword to Reanimator (2020)

English translation

Rocha’s introduction to Juscelino Neco’s Reanimator (2020) is irreverent toward Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Yet irreverence has ironically been the cornerstone to the posthumous success of “Herbert West—Reanimator.” This minor tale of Lovecraft’s, his first commercial effort at horror fiction, has been adapted, expanded upon, reimagined, and incorporated into other works innumerable times since its first publication—something that has only been possible because artists have been free to do what they like with this story and its setting and characters, to freely distort and play with tone, characterization, and events as they see fit. To turn the grue-filled six episodes into dark comedies, zombie gorefests, introspective reflections on sexuality, and the mechanistic nature of life…all to entertain, explore, and reexamine what Lovecraft did and did not do.

What Brazilian comic creator Juscelino Neco did was to approach “Herbert West—Reanimator” through the lens of 1960s underground comix. Herbert West and the other characters are cast as anthropomorphic animals, the grungy cousins of Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, and their adventures are sexually explicit, violent, and drug-fueled. Neco put on the page everything that Lovecraft left off the page—and added a few other details of his own along the way.

The beginning is relatively restrained, Herbert West is in medical school. The broad outline of the first portion of Neco’s graphic novel follows the opening episode of Lovecraft’s story, although Neco takes many liberties with the framing of characters and events. As well as making the most of the opportunity to add a little gross-out imagery, such as a full-page pin-up of an autopsy in progress.

A vida não e um filme de terror barato.	Life is not a cheap horror movie.
Reanimator p23	English translation

It is difficult to express how emotive the combination of art and text can be. The instinctive comparison is something like Art Spiegelman’s Maus, but the over-the-top black humor characteristic of the film Re-Animator (1985) is still there. There will be a page of dark panels where West laments the unimaginative bureaucracy that refuses to entertain his ideas about reanimation—and then you turn the page and its West talking to himself while being the bottom in a graphically-portrayed homosexual BDSM scene.

Then West gets an assistant. Someone to help him out.

In Neco’s Reanimator, the porcine assistant is no passive observer of events, but an active partner in West’s operations. They enable West’s experiments, but also his worst impulses. Together the two secure their first victim/experimental subject—and this is where things start to get a little more punk rock. The presence of drugs and the necessity of violence start to ramp up swiftly.

Until, while with a prostitute, the assistant cooks up some reanimation agent like its crack cocaine and injects himself. It does provide new life for spent flesh, but is also suggests a new sideline for West and his friend as drug dealers.

At this point, Neco’s Reanimator has completely abandoned Lovecraft’s narrative for a literal orgy of sex and violence. One that continues to try and outdo itself with almost every turn of the page. There is one scene at a reanimation drug-fueled party that is reminiscent of something like the end of Brian Yuzna’s Society (1989), where the individual ceases to exist.

From there, Neco goes full eldritch, bringing in some of Lovecraft’s other ideas while retaining the same ’60s underground comix shock mentality.

It is never clear, at the end, whether this is something Herbert West and his friend have caused by defying the laws of nature, or just a coincidental apocalypse. In a way, it doesn’t matter. Something fundamental has changed, the scientific genie has been let loose from the bottle and they can’t put it back. The world ends…and Neco doesn’t stop there. The world is fucked. Quite literally.

What stands out about Reanimator (2020) is how fully Neco embraces the remit. Critics have read a homosexual subtext in Lovecraft’s original story, some works like “Herbert West in Love” (2012) by Molly Tanzer and “(UN)Bury Your Gays: A Queering of Herbert West – Reanimator by H.P. Lovecraft” by Clinton W. Waters have made that more explicit, but here West’s sexuality is embraced and depicted as an open part of his character. The sex and violence are over-the-top and cartoonish, but that stands in stark contrast to efforts at more realistic portrayal like Reanimator (2008) by Florent Calvez and Herbert West: Carne Fresca (2021) by Luciano Saracino & Rodrigo López.

Reanimator (2020) by Juscelino Neco works on its own terms. It’s fun, disgusting, ribald, edgy, slightly ridiculous, and in the end cosmic in its scope. Readers are left without all the answers, but there’s the impression that one man’s obsession, with the aid and assistance of a friend, has led to the destruction of an entire world. That isn’t how Lovecraft ended the story, but that is the point. To do what Lovecraft would not have done, to use his fiction as a springboard, not to limit creators to only aping what he wrote forever.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“The Mask it Wears” (2024) by Sarah Musnicky

There’s a routine to the art of a scare. First, get into position.
—Sarah Musnicky, “The Mask It Wears” in Spectrum: An Autistic Horror Anthology (2024) 147

Horror follows the syntax of its age. Bela Lugosi’s opera cape set the standard for vampire dress for generations. The talking boards used by séances were commercialized as parlor games, and decades later there are books and films where ouija boards are considered genuine hotlines to the afterlife. H. P. Lovecraft lived during a time when many of the trappings of horror we know today were first being standardized and commercialized.

Lovecraft never visited a haunted house attraction or saw a slasher film. Those are the product of a later period. We, Lovecraft’s heirs, live in a different world, one awash with horror stories in every medium. Tastes have not necessarily refined, but they have agglutinated. Old familiar horrors carry a nostalgic twang, not a breathless shiver—but that’s a problem that Lovecraft himself faced.

The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “Supernatual Horror in Literature”

Generally speaking, Lovecraft did not set his horrors in far away exotic places and distant times. His horrors might have been ancient, but they were set in the now, an age with motorcars, submarines, airplanes, radio, telephones, and electric lights. If they had cellphones and the internet in the 1920s and 30s, Lovecraft would have had to factor them into the plots of his weird tales.

Lovecraft did not concern himself overmuch with the methods of the Society for Psychical Research or the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn; heterodox occultism of any stripe was something he largely lacked interest in. Likewise, he never let a vampire in an opera cape stride onto one of his pages. The pages of Weird Tales were filled with old familiar horrors. Lovecraft strove to provide something different; something new and unexpected.

Second, wait for the first round of screams heading in your direction.
—Sarah Musnicky, “The Mask It Wears” in Spectrum: An Autistic Horror Anthology (2024) 147

There is nothing wrong with playing with old familiar horrors, or of trying to marry old tropes to new ones. A number of writers have played with combining Lovecraftian horrors with the slasher genre that gained prominence with Hollywood slasher films like Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980). Robert M. Price’s “A Mate for the Mutilator” (2004) comes to mind, and Chaosium’s Blood Brothers (1990). How well it works depends on the skill of the creator involved; the personal, psychological horror of the slasher stalking their prey, or the gore-filled climax of an elaborate or particularly bloody kill are rather more visceral than the kind of cerebral horror to which Lovecraft aspired. Yet they are not incompatible.

“The Mask It Wears” by Sarah Musnicky plays very specifically with horror tropes, in the syntax of the now. It was published in Spectrum: An Autistic Horror Anthology, and there is something evocative of that theme throughout this story, without actually giving a label to it. The narrator has a routine as part of their job. When something happens that throws them off-script, they’re thrown off their game. The mask they put on for dealing with their coworkers and the outside world slips—and that is the double meaning in the title. Not just the mask that the killer wears on their spree, or the mask that the protagonist wears on their job, but the mask of normal behavior that the protagonist projects, all the time, to deal with a world that seems, if not innately hostile, then somewhat incomprehensible.

Musnicky never tries to assign a label to her protagonist, why they do what they do, why they react the way they do to the unexpectedly. Yet the behavior and mindset are there, for those who recognize such things. It sets them apart from the rest of the would-be victims. Unable to move with the herd, the killer in the haunted house walks right into their room.

Lovecraft was fond of a terminal revelation, something that the whole story had been building up to, but only revealed in its fullness in the end. It was a style of fiction that owed something to mystery and detective fiction, where the last twist was revealed to explain away the final puzzle—though in Lovecraft’s case, he was willing to reveal just enough for the reader’s imagination to fill in the blanks. Musnicky’s story ends much the same way. We never get all the answers. Just enough.

“The Mask It Wears” by Sarah Musnicky was published Spectrum: An Autistic Horror Anthology (2024) by Third State Books.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1898) trans. Edward FitzGerald

The Persian word رباعی (rendered rubāʿī in English) refers to a poem of four lines or parts; in English terms, a quatrain. Following the traditional conventions of Persian poetry these were composed using one of two thirteen-syllable meters. رباعيّات (rubāʿiyyāt) is the plural form; so the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám could be literally rendered as The Quatrains of Omar Khayyám—but where’s the style in that?

In the 1850s, English poet and writer Edward FitzGerald was involved in translations of Spanish and Persian poetry and plays into English. In 1856-7, Edward Byles Cowell, a former professor under whom FitzGerald had studied the Persian language, sent him transcripts of two Persian manuscript with a series of quatrains by Omar Khayyám (1048-1131), a Persian polymath who lived in the Seljuk Empire. How much of the poetry which is attributed to Khayyám that he actually wrote is a matter of conjecture and debate. There are no known original manuscripts from Khayyám containing poetry, only verses that were quoted by others, decades or centuries after his death. So the poems that FitzGerald translated were from much-later collations of extant verse, some or all of which may never have been written by Khayyám itself.

FitzGerald took a free hand to translation; he rendered each rubāʿī into a four-line quatrain, often rhyming in an AABA form. The result was published as the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in 1859, to little notice. However, subsequent editions were published over the years and decades, with FitzGerald taking advantage of the reprints to expand subsequent editions with more poems, and to tweak the translations. By the end of the 19th century, the work had achieved monumental popularity, reflecting in part the expansion of the British Empire and the pervasive Orientalism that occasionally peaked into popular phases, like the Egyptomania that swept the English-speaking world after the discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb.

In addition to the authorized editions by FitzGerald, which could differ substantially from each other, there were innumerable other translations and pirated editions. The language and even numbering of the quatrains differ between editions. As a result, like the Christian Bible, it is difficult to talk about the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám as a single text, but rather as a corpus of related works within which are distinct traditions. For our purposes, the text of FitzGerald’s 5th (1898) edition appears most influential.

Given the immense popularity of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it shouldn’t be surprising that several Weird Tales writers during the 1930s read and enjoyed some version of this book, and that it influenced them to greater or lesser degree, including the three most-remembered today: H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith.

H. P. Lovecraft

The w. k. Khayyam-Fitzgerald reference to philosophy seems to shew an under-appreciation of the pure joy of argument. However—the genial maker of tents was none one to appreciate anything truly intellectual in a detached way.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Rheinhart Kleiner, 23 Feb 1918, LRKO 105-106

The first reference to the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in Lovecraft’s letters shows a familiarity with FitzGerald’s translation; the last name Khayyám had been literally translated as “Tentmaker”, hence Lovecraft’s reference to the “genial maker of tents.” The quatrain in question is probably:

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same door where in I went.
—XXVII. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (5th ed, 1898)

It is not exactly clear when Lovecraft read Khayyám/FitzGerald, although it seems to have been several years before 1918:

As to the Rubaiyat of Omar & FitzGerald, it is so long since I read the thing that I have forgotten its details. I did not especially like it—which is doubtless the reason I never perused it a second time.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Rheinhart Kleiner, 11 Jun 1920, LRKO 167-168

Lovecraft doesn’t explain further, but there are certainly some aspects of Khayyám’s poetry that might have rubbed the weird writer the wrong way—his meticulousness for meter, Khayyám’s topics including love and drinking, the obtuseness of some of the translated images—and perhaps the sheer prosaicness of the poetry, which were far less fantastic than the 1,001 Nights.

During the course of discussion [George Kirk] gave me two books—one a fine sidelight on colonial life at Princeton College, & the other a variorum edition of the Rubaiyat which I wanted to send my correspondent Woodburn Harris—an Omar enthusiast. Nothing could make him take pay for either.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Lillian D. Clark, 27-28 May 1930, LFF 2.855

Kirk was a bookseller and friend of Lovecraft’s; Harris was another correspondent, unfortunately none of their published letters attest to any conversations on Khayyám. Lovecraft’s final word on the poet and his work appeared in his suggestions for a reading guide, the final chapter for Anne Tillery Renshaw‘s textbook Well Bread Speech (1936), which never made it into the finished product:

In the Oriental field we do not have to be asked to read the Arabian Nights or Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar’s Rubiyat.
—H. P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays 2.186

Lovecraft’s reading list didn’t necessarily reflect his personal tastes, only his professional assessment of what books qualified as those people should read as part of a literary education. It is a reflection of his acknowledgement of the tremendous popularity and influence of Khayyám’s poetry in FitzGerald’s translation as much as anything else.

It’s a pity we don’t have more of Lovecraft’s thoughts on Khayyám, and especially whether the Persian poet’s poetry was any inspiration at all to that of his famous Arabic poet, Abdul Alhazred and his Al Azif—which was at least partially written in poetry. Though aside from the common geographic origin in the Middle East (albeit different parts of it) and being poets, the biographies of Alhazred and Khayyám show few similarities.

Robert E. Howard

In the words of Omar Khayyam: “East is East and West is West To a ramblin’ gay galoot.”
—Robert E. Howard to Tevis Clyde Smith, 8 Jun 1923, CL1.3

In the first surviving letter from Robert E. Howard, he mentions Omar Khayyám by name—although the poetic reference is actually to Rudyard Kipling’s “The Ballad of East and West” (1889). Howard’s interest in poetry is often overlooked, but poetry pervades his fiction, and Howard himself was lauded as a poet of considerable power by Lovecraft.

Howard’s letters to his friend Tevis Clyde Smith include a great deal of off-the-cuff poetry (some of it ribald, jocular, or doggerel verse), as well as quotations from other verses that Howard had read, heard, or memorized. For example:

“Methought a voice within the temple cried,
When all the temple is prepared within,
Why loiter drowsy worshippers outside?”
“I tell you this, when started from the goal,
Over the flaming shoulders of the foal,
Of heaven’d Parwin and Mushtari they flung,
In my predestined plot of dust and soul.”
“A book of verses underneath a bough,
A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou,
Beside me singing in the wilderness,
Ah, wilderness were Paradise enow!”
“Look to rose about us,” Lo,
“Laughing,” she says, “Into the world I blow,
“At once the silken tassel of my purse,
Tare [sic], and my treasures to the garden throw.

— Robert E. Howard to Tevis Clyde Smith, 6 Aug 1925, CL1.61-62

These are lines for quatrains II, LXXV, XII, and XIV of the 5th (1898) edition. It isn’t clear if Howard read this specific edition, but he seems to have read at least some version derived from the 5th edition text. Howard scholar Steve Trout noted Howard’s quotations may have come from Little Blue Book #1, which followed the text of FitzGerald’s 5th edition (Howard History).

In more serious letters, Howard would praise Khayyám, e.g.:

I have carefully gone over, in my mind, the most powerful men — that is, in my opinion — in all of the world’s literature and here is my list:

Jack London, Leonid Andreyev, Omar Khayyam, Eugene O’Neill, William Shakespeare.

All these men, and especially London and Khayyam, to my mind stand out so far above the rest of the world that comparison is futile, a waste of time. Reading these men and appreciating them makes a man feel life not altogether useless.
—Robert E. Howard to Tevis Clyde Smith, week of 20 Feb 1928, CL1.166

Howard also wrote to Lovecraft, listing Khayyám among his favorite poets (MF1.510/ CL2.419). Although Howard was still just as likely to take the poet’s name in vain for the sake of a joke:

“Old Stiff had a friend, Hatrack by name;
The life he led was a sin and a shame.
He, lounged like Omar beneath a bough,
With a whore and jug of beer — and how!”
—Robert E. Howard to Tevis Clyde Smith, c. Mar 1929, CL1.319

The reference is to one of the most famous of Khayyám’s quatrains:

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness—
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
—XII. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (5th ed, 1898)

One of Howard’s greatest tributes to Khayyám and FitzGerald was to quote from the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám‘s 1898 edition in the opening chapters of the serial “Skull-Face” (Weird Tales Oct–Nov–Dec 1929). And in One Who Walked Alone (1986) by Novalyne Price Ellis, it is written:

Bob’s attention was centered on a copy of The Rubáiyat. He already had a copy, but he said he might come back next week and pick up that book and another one—that one by Cabell. (92)

Price would herself quote from Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in her memoir.

Upon his death, Howard’s father donated his library to Howard Payne University in nearby Brownwood; this included a copy of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, a later edition which combined the aspects of FitzGerald’s previous translations, and is listed as “the First and Fifth versions.”

Clark Ashton Smith

Then I began to write verse, including, I remember, some rather lame imitations of the Rubaiyat. Gradually I acquired a feeling for meter and rhythm; and at sixteen or seventeen was able to sell a few poems to magazines.
—Clark Ashton Smith to Samuel J. Sackett, 30 Jun 1939, SLCAS 359

Poe, not Omar Khayyam, was the first poet who impressed me, and I’ll never forget the thrill of finding his poems in a grammar-school l ibrary at the age of thirteen. I remember too that the librarian commented reprovingly on my morbid and unhealthy taste in reading-matter!
—Clark Ashton Smith to Samuel J. Sackett, 11 Jul 1950, SLCAS 364

I did a lot of boyhood scribbling, imitations of Omar, lurid Oriental romances, etc;, and at 17 sold several pseudo-Orientales to the Black Cat and the Overland Monthly.
—Clark Ashton Smith to L. Sprague de Camp, 21 Oct 1953, SLCAS 371

Compared to Lovecraft and Howard, Smith was the most accomplished poet of the three, having collected and published a good deal of his poetry during his lifetime, and having achieved some small measure of fame for his poetry while breathing. Smith was not as hidebound as early Lovecraft was, and more experimental than Howard, even to the point of translating and writing poetry in other languages. His rich vocabulary, striking images, and the mentorship of poets like George Sterling steered made Clark Ashton Smith a weird poet par excellance—and Sterling was well-versed in poetry enough to comment on a perceived lift, intentional or not:

But here is your excellent poem to comment on, which I’ll venture to the extent of saying I like it very much, but am of the opinion that it’s first line is too suggestive of that which begins “The Rubaiyat.”
— George Sterling to Clark Ashton Smith, 14 Jul 1914, SU 109, SLCAS 23

You’re quite right about the resemblance of the first line of my poem to the one in the Rubaiyat:—“Before the phantom of false morning died,” which begins the second quatrain of that poem. It’s strange that I’d not noticed the reminiscence before. I’ve not thought of a new line, so far.
— Clark Ashton Smith to George Sterling, 27 Jul 1914, SU 110

Before the phantom of False morning died, Methought a Voice within the Tavern cried, “When all the Temple is prepared within, “Why nods the drowsy Worshiper outside?”	Ere yet the soaring after-fire was flown, I found a city in the twilight lone— Asleep in lapse of some forgotten land And griping horizons of deserts prone.
II. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (5th ed, 1898)	“A Phantasy of Twilight” by Clark Ashton Smith

Unfortunately, Smith’s maturation as a poet came at a time when U.S. tastes in poetry were shifting away from his preferred style. As a consequence, despite initial fame as a young poet, Smith struggled throughout his adult life with poverty and the difficulty of making a living and supporting his parents. Selling poems and fiction were two ways Smith worked during the 1910s-1920s to sustain himself and his family, as well as gifts from friends, manual labor, and efforts to self-publish his own verse (among his enthusiastic customers were Lovecraft and Howard). Smith had literary appetites, but little cash to feed it.

Most of my reading now will have to be in the form of re-reading, since I can’t afford new books. The prices have gone up astoundingly. . . . I spent yesterday afternoon with Omar and Leopardi (the latter the volume you sent me) and found them better company than ever.
— Clark Ashton Smith to Samuel Loveman, 7 Nov 1918, BUS 132

My table is covered with a litter of borrowed books—“The Rubaiyat of Hafiz,” “Thus Spake Zharathtustra,” [sic] “A Feast of Lanterns,” and others . . . Do you know this rendering of Hafiz, by L. Cranmer-Byng? Much of it is excellent (d—d if I can see much difference between Hafiz and Omar, in regard to thought and feeling) and one stanza haunts me:

“That night we wrought Love’s miracle again;
For one brief gloom one soul was born of twain:
Now Death shall weary at the springs of Youth,
By singing water that he sealed in vain.”
— Clark Ashton Smith to Samuel Loveman, 15 Dec 1918, BUS 142-143

The Rubáiyát of Hafiz is another collection of Persian quatrains rendered into English. Hafiz (also as Hafez) had been translated into English before Khayyám, but the success of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám encouraged further translations of Persian poetry in the now-familiar mold of FitzGerald’s translations. Good marketing strategy, if nothing else.

Khayyám forms one of Smith’s poetic touchstones, at least in his letters, no doubt because of his re-reading of his poetry. The quotations from and allusions to Khayyám’s verses all seem to come from FitzGerald’s 1898 text, or a text derived from that edition.

It desolates me to hear that you have been unwell. There’s d—d little in life, beyond the brief Epicurean category of Omar’s stanza, “A book of verses underneath the bough, etc.” Even art is a kind of Barmecides-feast, when one is sick, or indisposed. As for the rest—the “wine” and “bread” are worse than mockery to a sick and queasy stomach. And love—love is the shadow of a dead, forgotten dream,—or a ravenous, writhing, serpent-shapen flame from the cauldron-fires of Malebolge.
— Clark Ashton Smith to Samuel Loveman, 12 Aug 1919, BUS 169

I can’t imagine what the place is like now, even with such oases, and “wells amid the waste” as will continue to exist.
— Clark Ashton Smith to George Sterling, 28 Aug 1919, SU 174

A Moment’s Halt—a momentary taste
Of BEING from the Well amid the Waste—
And Lo!—the phantom Caravan has reach’d
The NOTHING it set out from—Oh, make haste!
—XLVIII. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (5th ed, 1898)

Clark Ashton Smith shared Lovecraft’s love of the fantasy Middle East and Near East of the 1,001 Nights, but unlike his friend, Smith was very much fond of alcohol and the company of women, and so was more able to marry Khayyám into his fantasy Orientalist mindset:

I can readily imagine you in Alexandria or Lesbos, or, in a later incarnation, wandering through the Baghdad of Haroun or Almansour, after the journey of the Persian wastes. . . . Alas, for Omar, and Saddi, and Shiraz with its golden wine and golden roses! I wish we were there in Shiraz or Baghdad or Ispahan, with “Time’s purple” a thousand years deep between us and this nightmare of the modern world!
— Clark Ashton Smith to Samuel Loveman, 29 Aug 1919, BUS 171

In time, Smith’s appreciation of Khayyám/FitzGerald’s bore poetic fruit:

I’ve completed two longer poems, which I’ll send you in my next. One is an ode to Omar Khayam [sic], the other a fantastic dialogue entitled “The Ghoul and the Seraph.”
— Clark Ashton Smith to Samuel Loveman, 31 Aug 1919, BUS 191

The poem was “To Omar Khayyam.” It was well-received by Smith’s friends, but faced some initial difficulty getting published, apparently due to the stigma of Prohibition:

“Asia” has returned my “Omar” ode. They seemed to like the poem, but, I dare say, thought its publication in their pages not “advisable.” It might “get them in bad” with many of their readers. The hedonism (not to mention the pessimism) of the poem would be anathema to a lot of people in this Puritan paradise. It’s incredible, but ch is the fact . . . Even in San Francisco, people are being fined or imprisoned for carrying pocket-flasks! The old Blue Laws were nothing to some of these new statutes. I dare say they’ll want to stop the publication of such books as “The Rubaiyat.” Why not, when it’s against the law to publish or disseminate recipes for the manufacture of wine or beer, or even to use the word “beer,[”] “whiskey,” etc in an advertisement or label, or on a bill-board!
— Clark Ashton Smith to Samuel Loveman, 25 Feb 1920, BUS 202-203

Smith eventually sold the poem to The Lyric West in 1921 for $5. However, the magazine sat on the poem for years, so the first publications was actually Smith’s own 1922 self-published poem collection Ebony and Crystal, where Lovecraft and Howard would have read it. In June 1926, The Lyric West finally published Smith’s ode. It was well-received.

I won a poetry prize the other day, much to my amazement. I was awarded fifty dollars for the best poem published in volume 5 of “The Lyric West”, a Los Angeles poetry magazine. The poem was “To Omar Khayyam”, which they had held for years before printing. I had forgotten all about it, in fact.
— Clark Ashton Smith to Donald Wandrei, 13 Mar 1927, TWU 53

Three Weird Talers. Three different takes on the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. While an 11th/12th century Persian poet (as filtered through a 19th century Englishman) might not be the most obvious of influences, this work was part of the shared cultural heritage of weird fiction in the 1920s and 30s.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“The Well” (2023) by Georgia Cook

And the feasting shall begin anew.
—Georgia Cook, “The Well” in From Beyond the Threshold (2023) 69

In “The Things We Did in the Dark” (2024) by Julia Darcey, two women are isolated in a special place, to service the needs of an unseen god in the dark. In that story, their position is not voluntary. They are there as a punishment, and ultimately as a sacrifice, valued only for their bodies and the work they can do. Georgia Cook’s “The Well” in the 2023 cosmic horror anthology From Beyond the Threshold by Eerie River Publishing, the situation is almost the mirror opposite. Two women, a special place, an unseen god below—but this nameless pair have been called. They are there of their own free will. Cast off everything else to embrace a life of service to the dark.

They call through loss and sorrow.
—Georgia Cook, “The Well” in From Beyond the Threshold (2023) 65

Cosmic horror, at least as Lovecraft tried to define it in his essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” is a kind of inversion of religious awe. It is the dark twin to wonder and glory at the face of the divine, the elucidation and humility that comes from the revelation of cosmic mystery. The sure sense or knowledge that there is something more than this life, with all of its pains and disappointments; something that by its very revelation of existence upends how we think of the world and how it works.

Yet there are those for whom darkness is a part of them. Perhaps it completes them, in a very different way than others are fulfilled by faith. While some Lovecraftian protagonists go mad from the revelation—as the trope goes—others find a kind of acceptance in the new order that the truth reveals.

A very few embrace the revelation. This is part of the discussion in “The Book of Fhtagn” (2021) by Jamie Lackey; the question of why someone would become a cultist in service to an eldritch entity and the trappings of religion that have sprung up about them. The answer in that story is a kind of parallel to this one: having become aware of the dark truth, they do not fight it, reject it, go mad, or simply go through the motions of life under the knowledge that all is pointless. They welcome it. They want to be a part of it.

In the opening to Arthur Machen’s “The White People” (1904), the great Welsh horror writer presents an opening episode on the nature of sorcery and sanctity:

‘Yes, and of the sinners, too. I think you are falling into the very general error of confining the spiritual world to the supremely good; but the supremely wicked, necessarily, have their portion in it. The merely carnal, sensual man can no more be a great sinner than he can be a great saint. Most of us are just indifferent, mixed-up creatures; we muddle through the world without realizing the meaning and the inner sense of things, and, consequently, our wickedness and our goodness are alike second-rate, unimportant.’

‘And you think the great sinner, then, will be an ascetic, as well as the great saint?’

‘Great people of all kinds forsake the imperfect copies and go to the perfect originals. I have no doubt but that many of the very highest among the saints have never done a “good action” (using the words in their ordinary sense). And, on the other hand, there have been those who have sounded the very depths of sin, who all their lives have never done an “ill deed.”‘

In a Machenian sense, the women of “The Things We Did In The Dark” are not sinners, and those in “The Well” are. Not because the women on that windswept island with the well are having murderous orgies in the swamp like Lovecraft’s Cthulhu cultists, but because they are working in their slow and deliberate way, to serve an end. They’ve turned their back on the human race…and though they harm no one directly, in their service they have tossed away everything they once knew and loved.

“…I’m not afraid,” she whispers.

“Of course you ain’t,” the old woman snaps. “S’not right to be afraid.”
—Georgia Cook, “The Well” in From Beyond the Threshold (2023) 68

There is a parallel in both stories to cloistered nuns; and nunneries were sometimes used as prisons to dispose of unwanted daughters and those who fell out of accepted society. Yet in “The Well,” the Keepers have walked willingly into their prison. There are no walls, nothing to prevent them from escaping that we can see. No rules and no enforcers.

They’re there because they want to be there.

That’s a bit marvelous and horrific. The acceptance of the darkness within. The recognition of something greater than themselves. Women who have pushed through pain and loss and out the other side, and found a place and purpose there, in the chaos beyond their old lives and every human attachment that held them there.

“The Well” by Georgia Cook was published in From Beyond the Threshold (2023) by Eerie River Publishing.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Reanimator (2008) by Florent Calvez v. Herbert West: Carne Fresca (2021) by Luciano Saracino & Rodrigo López

Not all of H. P. Lovecraft’s works are of equal merit, or of equal attractiveness to readers, artists, and writers. While some stories have been adapted many times in different media, others languish in relative obscurity—reprinted in Lovecraft’s collections, but rarely in anthologies, and with less impact on popular culture. The whys and wherefores differ with each tale; generally, such works were not popular during Lovecraft’s lifetime and may have only been published after his death, have little or no direct connection to the Mythos, or represent some difficulty due to changing tastes or the prejudices expressed in the story.

As something that represents all three of these categories, “Herbert West—Reanimator” is an unexpected posthumous breakout hit for Lovecraft. Initially published as a series of six interconnected short tales in the pages of Home Brew, and not published more widely until after Lovecraft’s death when Weird Tales reprinted them, “Herbert West—Reanimator” has only slight connection to Lovecraft’s wider Mythos with the Arkham/Miskatonic University setting, and contains a chapter with one of the most baldly racist characters and characterizations in Lovecraft’s oeuvre. Written as Lovecraft’s first attempt at commercial fiction, it isn’t really typical of his later style or efforts at all.

Yet…there is something about Dr. Herbert West that has thrilled audiences and inspired writers and artists for decades. The 1985 film Re-Animator spawned a small film franchise, a novelization, comic books, and merchandise; helped launch the Lovecraftian film careers of Stuart Gordon, Brian Yuzna, Jeffrey Combs, and Barbara Crampton; and even a hardcore pornographic film: Re-Penetrator (2004). Beyond this, many writers have taken a stab at the Re-Animator, including the anthology Legacy of the Reanimator (2015), Peter Rawlik’s Reanimators (2013) and Reanimatrix (2016), “Herbert West in Love” (2012) by Molly Tanzer, “Kanye West—Reanimator” (2015) by Joshua Chaplinsky, “Herburt East: Refuckinator” (2012) by Lula Lisbon, “(UN)Bury Your Gays: A Queering of Herbert West – Reanimator by H.P. Lovecraft” by Clinton W. Waters, and “Herbert West and the Mammaries of Madness” (2015) by Dixie Pinoit, “Albertina West: Reanimator” by TL Wiswell—among many others.

Comic and graphic adaptations of “Herbert West—Reanimator” are especially fascinating, because on those rare occasions where readers get two full adaptations, of approximately equal length, for side-by-side comparison, you can see how very different two adaptations can be of the same material—and how much work goes into turning a prose text into a comic script.

Such an opportunity presents itself with Reanimator (2008) by Florent Calvez, a hardbound 112-page French-language bande dessinee published by Delcourt, and Herbert West: Carne Fresca (“Fresh Meat”) (2021) by Luciano Saracino (script) and Rodrigo López (art), a 96-page Spanish-language hardbound album published by Dolmen. Both of these works adapt the full six episodes of “Herbert West—Reanimator” fairly faithfully—but how they do it and what they choose to emphasize is very different.

Calvez’ Reanimator is a sepia-toned period piece, starkly realistic. Unlike many later works, there are few if any visual cues or references to the 1985 film; Herbert West is blond, for example, as Lovecraft’s narrator described him, not a brunet like actor Jeffrey Combs. The most notable reference to the film is the brief shot of West being attacked by a reanimated black cat, a scene made infamous in the movie.

The main departure from Lovecraft’s story is that Calvez provides a framing narrative: the nameless assistant, older now, and visually similar to William S. Burroughs, is writing down his account of events on a ship. This wraparound segment helps give shape to the narrative as a Memoir, which features little speech and a great deal of exposition translated directly from Lovecraft’s text.

The stark realism of the work helps make the horrors stand out. There’s not a lot of gore in the traditional sense; the world of Reanimator is dark, murky, washed out like the sepia photographs of long-ago atrocities. Care and attention to detail are everywhere apparent: the details of costume and press, the architecture of houses, bits of English on newspapers and gravestones for the scenes set in the United States. It is a testament to Calvez’ skill and dedication to get the details right.

In Lovecraft’s story, we don’t see the boxing match, only the aftermath. Calvez has taken another liberty here: “Kid O’Brien” is implicitly a Jewish boxer under an Irish name, while “Buck Robinson, ‘The Harlem Smoke'” is almost a caricature of Black boxers like world heavyweight champion Jack Johnson. Boxing was a major national sport, and while Lovecraft may have cared little for it, he was certainly aware of some of the major boxers of his era, including Jackson.

The narrator’s prejudices that depicted the dead boxer in animal-like terms, and wondered if some obscure biological difference between white and black caused the failure of the reanimation experiment, Calvez leaves out. Their absence isn’t particularly noticeable, unless you know to look for them. It does not diminish the horror that marks the climax of the episode.

Saracino and López take a slightly different approach to Herbert West. The art style, in black and white, is more stylized. There is still great care and attention to detail, but the pages tend to more standard layouts, based around a six-panel grid, and there is much more dialogue. Herbert West himself is allowed to speak in his own words, instead of being relayed through his assistant.

So instead of doing a lot of telling, which Lovecraft was more or less forced to do by the nature of his medium, we get a lot more showing. Instead of a wraparound segment, we get more of an extended prologue, a demonstration of West’s experiments with animals.

West’s assistant gets a name and an identity beyond memoirist: Gregory Carter is a fellow medical student at Miskatonic University—and swiftly becomes West’s accomplice in his experiments—but here at least we get to see more interaction between the two. This isn’t Carter writing what has happened; the reader watches over his shoulder, so to speak, as events unfold.

Rodrigo López’ style shows a certain European influence; while the architecture, the dress, and the hairstyles are all very specifically old-fashioned in accordance with the setting, there are details that are more reminiscent of and older Europe than an older New England. There are roofs that look more like tile than anything you’d see in a New England winter, churches without steeples, police officers in kepi hats. A subtle transmigration of atmosphere that doesn’t change much of anything in the story, but reinforces the idea that this is not just an adaptation—it’s a localization.

Probably López’ best moments are when he gives himself a full page to really go while and showcase a scene, often from above to capture some of the landscape, to really play with broad white empty spaces and dark shadows. There’s a very Edward Gorey-like character to this splash pages. As always though, the horror is lurking near the climax of every episode.

As with Calvez, Saracino & López gently excise the racism expressed by the narrator. It is enough that initial injections of the reanimation serum have no effect, the body is disposed of…and it comes back.

It is interesting how both artists focused on this moment as the climax of the episode; both were determined to present the stark horror, the rare bit of action and excitement in these stories, the most arresting visual image in perhaps the whole story. Yet they do it very differently; the reanimated corpse of Robsinon here is still half-dressed, more human-like, and despite the hatching, not as dark in complexion compared to the other characters (a common issue with black-and-white, which needs hair, facial features, and other cues to help delineate race to the audience visually).

Both stories approach the end with characteristic foreshadowing. Yet in this instance, López’ formatting standardization helps set up the scene better. We see the passage that leads from the old funeral home’s basement to the nearby cemetery; we see Carter and West bricking it up. Centrally placed, a Chekov’s gun loaded and with safety off.

When you’ve read “Herbert West—Reanimator” and seen so many different adaptions and variations on it over the years, there’s rarely any surprise in the ending, just as there is no real shock when Godzilla goes on a rampage through a city. The cities in Godzilla films are there to be squashed. Yet there is an aesthetic appreciation for how the job is done, how well the adaptation captures something of the tone and feel of the story, what grue the artist can supply—and how the writer and artist together choose to portray events.

It is not a question of whether Reanimator or Herbert West: Carne Fresca is the better adaptation: they each have their strengths, and they each have their differences. To convey the geographic setting, the period, the tone and atmosphere all requires going beyond just the words printed on the page in Lovecraft’s story. The adaptors need to block out the story, episode by episode, scene by scene, finally page by page and panel by panel. How to establish where the events take place. Leaving room for dialogue, for exposition. Finding the balance between showing and telling—and, in some cases, what not to say, to remain faithful to the spirit of the text without offending present audiences with old prejudices.

Neither of these works has been translated into English; non-English adaptations of Lovecraft rarely are. Yet there are few if any graphic adaptations of “Herbert West—Reanimator” in English to really equal them.

Reanimator (2008) by Florent Calvez is available in hardcopy and as a Kindle ebook.

Herbert West: Carne Fresca (2021) by Luciano Saracino and Rodrigo López is available in hardcopy.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

London Lovecraft: Volume I (2023) by TL Wiswell

Festival shows are, sadly, an ephemeral lot. While some lead to full length plays, TV shows, or even films, most of them rise and fall with their creators, and said creators’ energy and willingness to sacrifice time and money getting their works on stage. This is especially sad for fans of Lovecraft, who are most receptive to works that expand the canon. It is hoped that this slim book of scripts can in some way help these plays reach a larger audience that they were able to when they were originally performed.
—Introduction, London Lovecraft: Volume I, 4

The London Lovecraft Festival has been running since 2018, though the annual festivities were interrupted by the Covid 19 pandemic. A key part of the festivities are the dramatic or theatrical presentations, which expand on or re-cast Lovecraft’s familiar works in a new light. In 2023, four of these brief plays by LLF founding producer TL Wiswell were collected into an independently-published book by Vulcanello Productions.

Each of the four works is a specific riff off a familiar Lovecraft story, condensed and adapted into short plays with typically 2 or 3 main characters. The connecting theme is that the stories are altered to focus on the female characters, either expanding on the roles and thoughts of existing characters or by gender-flipping characters (so Herbert West may become Albertina, for example).

Other writers have had similar ideas, such as in HPL 1920 (2020) by Nick O’Gorman & Tales from the Cthulhuverse #1 (2020) by Zee Romero & Luca Cicognola, but the play as a format shifts how a story can be told, and tends to zero in on the relationship between the characters portrayed by the actors. It actually works rather well for Lovecraft’s fiction as passages of expository narration in his work can be just that, whereas in comics or film they tend to cutaway into flashbacks.

Much of the stories also have to be removed, the plot boiled down and simplified to what can feasibly be acted or narrated on a small stage at a budget. That kind of condensation is an art unto itself, and as adaptations go, Wiswell treads the fine line between faithfulness, practicality, and originality.

Mountains of Madness

CHARACTERS:
Dr Willa Dyer – Geologist
Dr Pomona Peabodie – Engineering
Frances Danforth – graduate student, engineering

Setting: 1928. A lecture hall at Miskatonic University, set up with a film projector and a gramophone. WILLA DYER is behind the podium addressing the audience as if they are the audience of her lecture. All people referred to are substantially only present in her memories: Peabodie is dead; Danforth has gone mad.
—Introduction, London Lovecraft: Volume I, 10

The Miskatonic University expedition to Antarctica in Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness was implicitly all white men; the reimagined expedition of Wiswell’s play took place in the decade prior. The all-female expedition raises no more comment than the all-male one did for the bulk of readers. Much of the grand cosmic backstory of the Old Ones is truncated in summation—as it would be, during a lecture—and neatly bypassed Dyer’s exclamation “They were men!” in Lovecraft’s version.

Much of this short play consists of long monologues by Dyer and Peabodie, with brief interjections by Danforth; shifts in light and focus emphasize when one character is speaking from the past (as when a recording of the dead Peabodie “plays” on the gramophone). It is an effective truncation, and shows how gender need not shape every role in one of Lovecraft’s stories.

Asenath’s Tale

CHARACTERS:
Viola Danforth
Asenath Waite Derby

Setting: New England, 1962

Suggested stage setup: two armchairs with a table between them, upon which rests a phone.
—Introduction, London Lovecraft: Volume I, 28

“The Thing on the Doorstep” features one of the more famous of Lovecraft’s women characters, Asenath Waite—but the depiction is somewhat married because of the unique gender dynamics of Waite in that story, as discussed by Joe Koch in Must I Wear This Corpse For You?: H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Thing on the Doorstep” (1937), among others. Wiswell doesn’t shy away from this; rather, she puts Asenath’s identity as a woman, and her friendship with Viola Danforth, at the center of the story.

Reading about Asenath Waite as a child in Innsmouth, her relationship with her father and with the other children, an insight into her heritage in Innsmouth, provides a humanizing perspective that is completely absent in Lovecraft’s story—where the reader never “meets” Asenath as she was in youth, but only later, as an adult, with all that implies. Wiswell makes the most of the sexism expressed by Ephraim Waite in Lovecraft’s story to frame a contentious relationship between father and daughter that goes all too badly wrong.

There is something more poignant about “Asenath’s Tale” than “The Thing on the Doorstep.” Edward Derby is almost a born victim in Lovecraft’s story, and his final act of rebellion is late in the game. Wiswell’s story with its light-hearted banter becomes something more like a tragedy; the events unfold, unstoppable, and though the players on the stage can only read their parts, those who know in the audience can see their brief, fleeting happiness and friendship for what it is: the prelude to horror.

Albertina West: Reanimator

CHARACTERS:
Dr Albertina West
Dr Isabel Milburn
The Undead: The animated corpses of Major Sir Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee and others.

All scenes set in a laboratory with a dissecting table and a sitting room in front, in Scotland and France (or maybe Belgium)

Time: 1890-1922
—Introduction, London Lovecraft: Volume I, 50

From a narrative standpoint, “Herbert West—Reanimator” is really six brief episodes strung out like an old film serial; it’s why each individual episode ends with a mini-climax, and might be separated by months or years in time. Adapting that to the stage or screen is tricky; when Dennis Paoli, William J. Norris, and Stuart Gordon put together the screenplay for Re-Animator (1985), they ended up jettisoning entire episodes while burning through the plot to fit a tightly-paced 86-minute runtime.

Wiswell’s approach rearranges the episodes in favor of focusing on a narrower thread of plot: the friendship of West and her assistant Milburn, and reanimation of Major Sir Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee during World War I, and the aftermath. Zeroing-in on this particular plotline has a lot of benefit, because it gives West an effective antagonist to play against, a monster of her own creation, not unlike Frankenstein‘s Adam.

More than that, though, it gives Bertie West’s usually nameless, gormless, and racist assistant (and the narrator of the story in Lovecraft’s version) an identity. The fact that they’re women medical doctors during the late 19th and early 20th century actually gets a bit of attention, which is nice; while these are stories to address the gender gap in Lovecraft rather than historical societal trends to misogyny as a whole, Bertie’s nod to the National Society for Women’s Suffrage and the restrictions of women in higher education and medical practice is appropriate for the character and the setting.

Period prejudice with regard to race, on the other hand, is out. Much as with “Kanye West—Reanimator” (2015) by Joshua Chaplinsky vs. “Herburt East: Refuckinator” (2012) by Lula Lisbon, we get a version of the seen of a reanimated corpse with a baby’s arm dangling out of its mouth, but the race of the reanimated is not explicitly mentioned. Horror is mixed with bathos at this point, as Milburn and West trade quips and bon mots in a style that owes a bit more to a deranged P. G. Wodehouse than H. P. Lovecraft.

More than pretty much any other of Lovecraft’s stories “Herbert West—Reanimator” seems hard to play straight; the potential for over-the-top gore and dark humor has been made too apparent.

The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath

Unlike the others, this adaptation of Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath was done in collaboration with experimental musician Shivers (Sam Enthoven) and takes the form of a puppet show, narrated and accompanied by music. An audio production of the production is available on Bandcamp.

Randolph Carter has become Miranda Carter, but the gist of the plot and the character are the same as in Lovecraft’s story—albeit with a little more humor.

As she turned to go, Carter wondered why the Zoogs had stopped pursuing her. Then she noticed all the complacent cats of Ulthar licking their chops. She recalled, too, the hungry way a young Zoog had regarded a small black kitten in the street outside. And because she loved nothing on Earth more than small black kittens, she did not mourn the Zoogs.
—London Lovecraft: Volume I, 68

Puppetry, especially shadow puppetry, can be singularly evocative; action that could not be feasibly acted out can be implied, with the audience’s imagination filling in the gaps. As with most of the other stories, Carter’s gender plays little role in how the events play out; it’s a change of face, but the core of Lovecraft’s tale and characterization remains intact.

While all of these plays are competently written and I’d like to see them performed sometime, the best are doubtless “Asenath’s Tale” and “Albertina West: Reanimator” specifically because those are the two stories that diverge most from Lovecraft’s characterization, while keeping true to his plots, and thus add some new dimension to the old stories.

London Lovecraft: Volume I (2023) was first made available as a softcover volume directly from the author. TL Wiswell was kind enough to sell me a copy during their visit to NecronomiCon Providence 2024, and I appreciate the chance to add to my small store of Lovecraftian plays, alongside works like Lovecraft’s Follies (1971). It is now (2026) also available as an ebook.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“The Things We Did in the Dark” (2024) by Julia Darcey

My uncles sold me in the morning, and by the afternoon I stood in the grave of the Long-Sleeping God, fouling the second of the twelve sacred rites.
—Julia Darcey, “The Things We Did in the Dark” in Beyond the Bounds of Infinity: An Anthology of Diverse Horror 87

Christianity is a patriarchal religion. For most of its history in most of its sects, the priesthood has been exclusively male; so have most prophets and saints. The dogma of Christianity and the social norms of Christian cultures tend to circumscribe women’s place and sexuality in religion and society. H. P. Lovecraft was a materialist, but he was raised in a Baptist household, and many elements of Protestant culture remained with him throughout his life, despite his disbelief in the specifics of the Bible—or the Qur’an, Talmud, Book of Mormon, or any other religious text.

Which is why, perhaps, the gender dynamics of Lovecraft’s cults is a bit patriarchal. We never see the full rites of the Esoteric Order of Dagon in “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” or the cult of Cthulhu in “The Call of Cthulhu,” yet the members of those sects we do see are explicitly male. Lovecraft did not show a priestess of Cthulhu or Mother Hydra, did not show female worshippers among the orgiasts in the swamp about Cthulhu’s idol. The witch-cult is a little different; Keziah Mason was definitely a member of that old religion, women members of the de la Poer family were apparently party to goings-on in “The Rats in the Walls,” and Lavinia Whateley apparently participated in rites and celebrations in “The Dunwich Horror”—at least, before she was shut out. Yet for the most part, Lovecraft seems to have not been overly concerned about depicting or defining the role of women in these cults of eldritch worship.

On the other hand, Lovecraft also seldom had virgin girls sacrificed on altars to sate the lust (for blood or sex) of a god. When Ghatanathoa was placated in “Out of the Æons” (1935) by Hazel Heald & H. P. Lovecraft, it was a rather egalitarian sacrifice of twelve young men and twelve maidens. While Lovecraft was not exactly equal-opportunity in his depiction of these cults and sects, neither did he succumb completely to popular tropes.

Later writers have begun to explore the possibilities of what women would actually be like inside these religions. “A Coven in Essex County” (2016) by J. M. Yales looks at women trapped in the patriarchal culture of Innsmouth; “Mail Order Bride” (1999) by Ann K. Schwader plays with the idea of a all-women fertility cult devoted to Mother Hydra; “The Book of Fhtagn” (2021) by Jamie Lackey gives a glimpse of who would choose to go full cultist in such a community; Innsmouth (2019) by Megan James touches on bake sales and all the ways people keep a church going with thankless, unpaid, often unacknowledged labor of women.

“The Things We Did in the Dark” by Julia Darcey is another exploration in the same vein, although this is not specifically Lovecraftian, it plays with the tropes of eldritch horror while also picking at themes of virgin sacrifice, cloistering women into religious roles, using religion as a means to dispose of young women in a socially acceptable manner (cf. Magdalene laundries). There is, too, an aspect of the SCP wiki or The Cabin in the Woods: she is part of the special containment procedures, and she is the D-class personnel whose very lives are acceptable losses to keep the greater evil contained.

The language is straightforward, stark, and grim. There’s an implication that the family structure has broken down; the unnamed protagonist speaks of uncles but not mother or father, implying her parents are dead and she is at the mercy of male authority figures. Physical abuse is taken as a matter of course. Treated as a commodity to be bought and sold.

That is the setup, and it takes the unnamed protagonist the length of the short story to work out some of the harsh truths of the world and her situation—and finally, to realize her own empowerment. There is something dark and alluring about that final sentence in this story. Darcey has not painted a picture of a lovely and thriving culture; we see it only by how it treats its most unvalued prisoners, who did nothing wrong except being born women in a society that does not value women.

Something to think about.

“The Things We Did in the Dark” by Julia Dacey was published in Beyond the Bounds of Infinity: An Anthology of Diverse Horror (2024) by Raw Dog Screaming Press.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard & Others (2019) and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos (2014).

Lettres d’Arkham (1975) by H. P. Lovecraft & François Rivière

H. P. Lovecraft appartient corps et âme à la grande familie des écrivains puritans de Nouvelle-Angleterre.

Névropathe exemplaire, il vécut à Providence—Arkham pour tes initiés—une existence tout entière vouée à l’exorcisme des démons de son imaginaire.

D’où l’œuvre fantastique que l’on sait.

Sa correspondance participle de façon à la fois ironique et passionnée à ce douloureux mais aussi fascinant combat : pour la première fois, les lecteurs français sont à même de pénetrer dans le labyrinthe le plus intime du créateur magique de Démons et merveilles et di La coouleur tombée du ciel.

Ces Lettres d’Arkham les y invitent…

H. P. Lovecraft belongs body and soul to the great family of New England Puritan writers.

Exemplary neurotic, he lived in Providence—Arkham for the initiates—a life entirely devoted to exorcising the demons of his imagination.

Hence the fantastic work we all know.

His correspondence is an ironic and passionate contribution to this painful but fascinating struggle: for the first time, French readers are able to penetrate the most intimate labyrinth of the magical creator of Démons et merveilles and La coouleur tombée du ciel.

These Letters from Arkham invite them to do so…

Back cover copy

English translation

French audiences may have been aware of H. P. Lovecraft as early as the 1930s, when English-language books and periodicals made it to European shores; Jacques Bergier even claimed to have carried on a brief correspondence with Lovecraft, and he certainly had two letters published in the pages of Weird Tales despite living in France at the time.

Lovecraft’s major introduction to French audiences came in the 1950s with collections like La couleur tombée du ciel (“The Color from the sky”/”The Colour Out of Space”) [1954, Denoël], and Démons et merveilles (“Demons and Marvels”) [1955, Deux Rives] that translated Lovecraft’s prose into French. Both of included introductions from Bergier, who provided many readers with their first insight into Lovecraft himself—who he was, and where he came from. Both books went through many reprints and editions.

In 1964, Arkham House published the first volume of Lovecraft’s Selected Letters. This project had begun shortly after Lovecraft’s death in 1937, as August Derleth and Donald Wandrei had begun contacting Lovecraft’s correspondents and requesting letters to transcribe for future publication. The scope and cost of the project soon made actual publication of the Arkham House Transcripts—at least in their entirety—impractical; war time paper rationing and rising post-war costs delayed the project further. The first three volumes, released under the editorship of Derleth and Wandrei, represent a compromise to their original vision—but also a tremendous effort, and one nearly unique.

Lovecraft had died broke and was far from a popular or mainstream author; the publication of his letters not only kick-started real Lovecraft biographical scholarship and literary criticism, but it helped center Lovecraft himself as an individual worth reading. More of Lovecraft’s letters would be published than those of Ernest Hemingway, Dashiell Hammett, or dozens of other much more popular authors.

Of course the French had to get in on the action.

Early translations of Lovecraft’s letters into French began piecemeal, in literary and fan periodicals; the biography is a bit opaque to English-language readers living in the United States, but a special issue of L’Herne dedicated to Lovecraft in 1969 stands out for translating a few letters, amid a mass of literary and biographical material that marks the first major critical publication on Lovecraft in any language. The 1970s in France would see growing interest in Lovecraft, especially in the field of Franco-Belgian comics; the contributors of Metal Hurlant (“Howling Metal,” translated into English markets as Heavy Metal magazine), which began in 1974, was founded by Jean Giraud (Mœbius) and Philippe Druillet, both of whom would go on to fame…and through Metal Hurlant, many graphic adaptations of Lovecraft’s stories, and stories inspired by Lovecraft and his creations, would be published in the pages of Metal Hurlant and Heavy Metal, to audiences around the world.

Lettres d’Arkham (1975, Jacques Glénat), translated by François Rivière, is a slim booklet of 80 pages, counting all the introductory material. The cover is by Mœbius, and plays to Lovecraft’s legend: seated at a table, writing with a quill pen, a row of antique volumes behind him, against a starry landscape, a tail or tentacle discreetly emerging from beneath the table cloth.

Jacques Glénat had founded Glénat Éditions in 1972; it is now a major publisher of bandes dessinées, and also publishes French translations of manga and nonfiction periodicals. But this was early days, and Lettres d’Arkham was the second entry in a series titled Marginalia; the first was a reprint of Les clefs mystérieuses (“The Mysterious Keys”) by Maurice Leblanc, the creator of Arsène Lupin. This was apparently an experiment in shorter-form material, mostly fiction reprints, with Rivière as overall editor of the series. Lettres d’Arkham appears to be the sole non-fiction entry.

Given the short format, Yves Rivière apparently opted against trying to translate entire letters. Instead, after a brief initial essay (“Lovecraft, un cauchemar Américan”/”Lovecraft, an American nightmare”) and chronology of his life, Rivière presents a series of excerpts from the first two volumes of the Selected Letters, divided into individual topics.

The initial letters, reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts, were created by the artist Floc’h (Jean-Claude Floch), who would become known for his many collaborations with François Rivière.

Most of the translations don’t specify date or even the recipient of the letter, so from a scholastic viewpoint Lettres d’Arkham wasn’t ideal—but translating one of Lovecraft’s letters is more difficult than translating one of his stories or poems. There is no guiding narrative, the letters are full of quirky language, obscure topical and geographic references, callbacks to previous correspondence. Even though Derleth and Wandrei had already edited and censored Lovecraft’s letters to give the excerpts in the Selected Letters volumes better readability (and to remove or downplay some of Lovecraft’s more racist sentiments), Rivière was trying to translate some pretty tricky material for an entirely new audience.

Generally speaking, Rivière seems to have done a pretty decent job of the translations. The most egregious errors are (and this might be expected), geographical. For example, the entry for Salem places it in New York instead of Massachusetts. Still, for a Lovecraft fan in 1970s France, how else were you going to read any of Lovecraft’s letters at all?

For francophone readers, that is still an issue. The vast majority of Lovecraft’s letters have never been translated into French, and might never be (one can only imagine the difficulty of trying to translate some of Lovecraft’s slang-filled letters or stream-of-consciousness sections into French). Some further attempts have been made to present a part of Lovecraft’s correspondence to a French audiences: in 1978 there was Lettres Tome 1 (1914-1936), translated by Jacques Parson, for example, but there was no Lettres 2 forthcoming. Several other collections of part of Lovecraft’s letters have been published, especially in recent years, much of the correspondence from Lovecraft’s later years, and with friends like Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, C. L. Moore, Fritz Leiber, E. Hoffmann Price, and Robert E. Howard, remains untranslated.

There are people working on that last one, however. A translation of the correspondence of Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft into French by David Camus and Patrice Louinet was successfully crowdfunded, and although health issues have delayed the project, it still looks fantastic.

It has to be emphasized what a labor of love translation is; it is never simply a matter of translating word-for-word, but always trying to capture the essence of what is being communicated. English-language readers have an advantage over the French in that we have practically every word that Lovecraft has written published, but as he wrote them; French readers and scholars face not only a limited amount of such material, but have to deal with multiple translations of those same stories and letters in various formats.

Considering that the whole of Arkham House’s Selected Letters has never been translated, much less any of the later, more complete volumes of letters by Necronomicon Press or Hippocampus Press, Lettres d’Arkham remained relevant in France long past the point where most Lovecraft scholarship had superseded the Arkham House Selected Letters.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard & Others (2019) and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos (2014).