The works of H. P. Lovecraft have never entered another language wholesale; they tend to trickle in, translated a story here and a story there, or at best one collection at a time. Tracing the spread and influence of Lovecraft’s work in languages other than English thus becomes doubly tricky. A Spanish translation might have first been published in Barcelona, Mexico City, or Buenos Aires, just as an English edition might be published in New York, London, or Brisbane, and by what paths a copy in one nation might end up in the hands of a reader in another…well, the distribution is ultimately uneven.

According to S. T. Joshi’s H. P. Lovecraft: A Comprehensive Bibliography (2009), Lovecraft began being translated into Spanish in the 1940s, although publication was largely piecemeal until the 1980s (which in Spain, at least, may have been in part due to the Francoist regime), and regional languages like Galician and Catalán have their own publication histories that largely start in the 1980s and 1990s. However, when it comes to the history of Lovecraft in Catalan and Spanish, there is at least one really interesting outlier, which has been largely overlooked in much English-language histories of Mythos fiction.

Joan Perucho Gutiérrez (1920 – 2003) was a noted writer and poet in the Spanish and Catalán languages in Spain, who wrote under the pen-names Joan Perucho (Catalán) and Juan Perucho (Spanish). In 1956 he published his first short fiction, “Amb la tècnica de Lovecraft” (“In the style of Lovecraft”) in the Catalán publication Els Quaderns d’atzavara (“The Agave Notebooks”). Perucho must have been a precocious writer indeed, because Lovecraft was far from a household name in Spain at the time, and this is sometimes credited as Lovecraft’s introduction to Catalán audiences—a claim I cannot verify or deny.

In 1969, Perucho translated “Amb la tècnica de Lovecraft” into Spanish, where it was published in the newspaper La Vanguardia Española (16 Aug 1969, p.9) under the title “Magia Negra” (“Black Magic”), and in the anthology Los Mitos de Cthulhu (Alianza Editorial) under the more well-known title “Con la técnica de Lovecraft” (“In the style of Lovecraft”); the two Spanish versions have some minor differences, particularly in the beginning of the text. Largely because of its inclusion in that important Spanish-language Mythos anthology, Perucho’s story has gained a degree of notability, if not exactly acclaim, and has been republished a few times. However, it has largely gone without comment in English.

The following translation is taken from the “Magia Negra” Spanish version of the piece:

TRADUJO el texto, hace aproximadamente diez años, el poeta José Corredor Matheos, en homenaje a Philip Howard Lovecraft, escritor de «science fiction» que murió perseguido por los seres invisibles. Sólo entonces se supo la verdadera relación de los hechos y que, en un momento impreciso, el automático de la gramola se disparó; hizo un ruidito y lentamente bajó el disco. Hubo uno pausa. Alguna cosa, como una corriente de aire casi imperceptible, fue creciendo en intensidad; entreabrió una puerta y descendió unos escalones que daban a un patio interior; tropezó con algo sólido y opaco, y blasfemó en vox baja; después se dirigió a un pequeño pasadizo, al otro lado del patio, y allí se arremolinó. La música se oía ahora lejana, sorda, filtrada. Era una noche silenciosa y tranquila, de una gran suavidad, con el aromo de la primavera que descendía de los árboles. La magia de la boca desapareció debajo de las pequeñas placas de la sífilis en los labios y en el paladar. Eran unas luces rojas y verdes, en el interior de las cuales podía verse perfectamente su imagen con un rictus de ironía amarga y de decepción. Ironía nacida de la desesperación y de la muerte, más allá de las cuales, débiles ráfagas de aire descansan en el interior de los vasos abandonados, llenos de ceniza y agua pútrida; o dentro de la caja de resonancia de los pianos «Chassaigne», modelo 1906, esperando la oportunidad del conducto sutilísimo que les una, con unas cuantas palabras no pronunciadas, al oído del caballero momificado o de la dama solitaria. Formas gastadas de vida o de muerte, de nacimiento mecánico en un dolor visceral; de vómitos que se suceden implacables (o que por lo menos atormentan con la angustia del espasmo que ha de venir y que siempre, siempre desemboca en una suerte de abismo, y en el sudor, y en los cabellos enganchados) y de pequeñas crisis de histeria, y de dientes que se carían y que la lengua percibe voluminosos y febricitantes. No era esto. Sólo la quemadura gélida de un «thoulú», uno di aquellos seres informes y terribles que ya había descrito minuciosamente en el siglo XII el árabe Al-Buruyu en su tratado «Los que vigilan». La evidencia de las cosas surgía de improviso con mil y una significaciones aterradoras y alusivas. No había fuerza humana capaz de conjurar lo inevitable, de alejar el dogal que ceñiría al elegido, el cual, por un impulso misterioso, sería arrastrado al sacrificio, al aniquilamiento de lo propia personalidad, y se convertiría en algo horrible y sin nombre. Abominable concepción ésta, fruto de las nupcias del cielo y del infierno. No era otra cosa lo aparición de señales en todas las habitaciones de la casa, y aquellos restos de cuerpos extraños, hallados en el patio una mañana, y que se volatilizaron misteriosamente una hora después. El magisterio de Al-Buruyu se presentaba como una fuerza maléfica, anticipándose a los siglos; como un ojo impasible y escrutador; y con una voz caligráfica y cabalística que iba avanzando como una risa en la noche, sobre la nieve surcada de pisadas deformes y con alaridos alucinantes cerca de las rejas de los manicomios. Se oyó la bocina de un automóvil. La presencia, inquieta, se distendió. Murmuró unos sonidos ininteligibles y se insinuó —leve fosforescencia apenas— en el fondo del pasadizo, entre inmundicia y botellas de licor vacías. Se encendió una luz en una ventana vecina y poco después se apagó. La primavera respiraba afuera. El tiempo se acumulaba en el cerebro y en la sangre en pliegues suavísimos y turbadores, en los cuales se percibía la claridad solar. Había cortezas y una materia rugosa, resquebrajada por surcos sin dirección precisa, que parecía calcinada por un contacto satánico o sordamente enfurecido. O bien una superficie enharinada con polvos de arroz, debajo de la cual, latían, vívidas y sensibles, amplias llagas supuradoras, como bocas martirizadas y ocultas, como flores monstruosas y sonámbulas que súbitamente se agrandaban inflándose, tensando su estructura íntima hacia un delirio febril. Era demasiado tarde para el antídoto: la invertida esvástica de plata, que traería ecos de los cantos litúrgicos hasta la huida de la estepa y la venida de la savia vivificadora. El vuelo de las hojas era un vuelo de bronces, enlutado y solemne, sobre una tierra árida y espectral. Apenas se podío entrever, con un supremo esfuerzo, la risa de un niño vestido de marinero, medio nublada por el dolor; o la triste tenacidad del hombre que medita hasta altas horas de la madrugada, y que se veía ahora bajo el peso de una lágrima; o la inútil trenza perfumada, aire de una mirada que alimentaba el deseo. La carne había comenzado a corromperse, todavía con la presencia de la vida, y exhalaba una pestilencia indefinible que lo impregnaba todo. Lentamente se inició el éxodo, e incluso la araña huyó, con su perezosa pero terrible seguridad, abandonando el refugio de su vida feliz. Entreveía lecturas de íncubos y súcubos, formulas mágicas dé la muerte y del diablo, traspasando todo vestigio de razón, viéndose hojear la «Dissertation sur les apparitions des anges, des demons et des esprits et sur les revenants et vampirs», del monje Calmet, que ponía en evidencia la realidad de la fría certeza de Al-Buruyu. Ya Angela Foligno había revelado al comentarista que al principio «non est in me membrum quod non sit percussum, tortum, et pœnatum a dœmonius, et semper sum infírma, et semper stupefacta, et plena doloríbus in omnibus membris vivís». Existía también un flotar sobre la realidad, un ir a la deriva a través de paisajes inexistentes, de algas mortecinas que se crispaban airadas y amenazadoras al contacto más leve, y manubrios que giraban vertiginosamente dentro del cráneo, con un alboroto insufrible de timbres y altavoces disporados, para desaparecer después en un angustioso silencio de tumba. Se alisó el cabello con la mano, despacio y maquinalmente. Bebía con delectación y a pequeños sorbos una copa de auténtico «scotch» Forrester, y se encontraba seguramente a diez millas de la costa y con una tempestad de todos los diablos. Una muchacha rió, con la risa provocadora di Jane Rusell, y se aproximó desde la barra. Llevaba la boca pintada de un rojo intenso, color de sangre de buey, y un jersey que le ceñía apretadamente el busto. Le hizo una caricia en la mejilla y le murmuró algo afectuoso, mientras rozaba con su cara la de él. Había una atmósfera densa y enturbiada por el humo del tabaco, y algunos invitados se habían quitado la chaqueta. Otra muchacha, que movía las ancas como una estrella de Hollywood, cantaba con éxtasis lánguido y sensual que se adhería a la piel. Creía que no lo volvería a ver. De pronto se le ocurrió ponerse a reír delante de aquel niño vestido de marinero, pasado de moda y ridiculo. Lo relacionó con muchas otras cosas, como el banderín de un club de hockey clavado en alguna pared, una desteñida fotografía que fijaba unos rostros ausentes en una lejana excursión a Bañólas, un día de mucho frío; o en un pequeño bar del Paseo de Gracia, mucho tiempo después, cuando ella ya preparaba el equipo de novia y le regalaba corbatas el día de su santo. La cantante agradeció los aplausos con una sonrisa. Ahora la gente intentaba bailar, excepto un grupito que bebía y conversaba con el camarero y con la muchacha, que ya había concluido su número. Había una media luz, sucia y gastada. Penetrado por las sombras, detrás del gran monumento a Napoleón, detrás de las campanas de los tranvías, bajo los burdeles de todas las ciudades del mundo, en el último momento lúcido, necesitaba ahora buscar la luz, engañar a la presencia, acercarla si era preciso, de la manera que fuese, a la luz limpia y purificadora, a la luz que a veces rasgaba las tinieblas. Debía haber luz en algún sitio. Así se lo parecía a él. Muy lejos, seguramente a diez millas de distancia, alguien o algo reptaba por la alfombra. Dejó atrás las dos butacas y se incorporó poco a poco. Era como un babear o como un ruido inconfesable. Se hizo una claridad lívida. Como una alucinación de Lovecraft. Juan PERUCHO

I TRANSLATED the text, about ten years ago by the poet José Corredor Matheos, in homage to Philip Howard Lovecraft, a science fiction writer who died persecuted by invisible beings. Only then did the true story become known, and that at an imprecise moment, the jukebox automatically triggered; it made a little noise and slowly lowered the record. There was a pause. Something, like an almost imperceptible current of air, grew in intensity; it half-opened a door and went down some steps that led to an inner courtyard; it stumbled against something solid and opaque, and cursed in a low voice; then it went to a small passageway on the other side of the courtyard, and swirled there. The music now sounded distant, muffled, filtered. It was a night silent and calm, of great softness, with the aroma of spring descending from the trees. The magic of the mouth disappeared beneath the small syphilis plaques on the lips and palate. They were red and green lights, inside which one could perfectly see his image with a rictus of bitter irony and disappointment. Irony born of despair and death, beyond which, weak gusts of air rest inside abandoned glasses, full of ashes and putrid water; or inside the sound box of the “Chassaigne” pianos, model 1906, waiting for the opportunity of the subtlest conduit that would unite them, with a few unspoken words, to the ear of the mummified knight or the lonely lady. Worn-out forms of life or death, of mechanical birth in visceral pain; of vomiting that follows one another relentlessly (or that at least torments with the anguish of the spasm that is to come and that always, always ends in a kind of abyss, and in sweat, and in tangled hair) and of small hysterical crises, and of cavities in teeth that the tongue perceives as voluminous and feverish. It was not this. Only the icy burn of a “thoulú”, one of those formless and terrible beings that the Arab Al-Buruyu had already described in detail in the 12th century in his treatise “Those Who Watch”. The evidence of things emerged suddenly with a thousand and one terrifying and allusive meanings. There was no human force capable of adjuring the inevitable, of removing the noose that would bind the chosen one, who, by a mysterious impulse, would be dragged to sacrifice, to the annihilation of his own personality, and would become something horrible and nameless. Abominable conception this, fruit of the marriage of heaven and hell. It was nothing else than the appearance of signs in all the rooms of the house, and those remains of strange bodies, found in the courtyard one morning, and which mysteriously vanished an hour later. The teaching of Al-Buruyu presented itself as an evil force, anticipating the centuries; like an impassive and scrutinizing eye; and with a calligraphic and cabalistic voice that advanced like a laugh in the night, on the snow furrowed with deformed footprints and with hallucinatory screams near the bars of the asylums. The sound of a car horn honked. The presence, uneasy, became relaxed. It murmured some unintelligible sounds and insinuated itself—barely a faint phosphorescence—at the end of the passage, among filth and empty liquor bottles. A light came on in a neighboring window and shortly after went out. Spring was breathing outside. Time accumulated in the brain and blood in soft and disturbing folds, in which the light of the sun could be perceived. There were crusts and rough matter, cracked by furrows without a precise direction, which seemed calcined by a satanic or dully enraged contact. Or a surface floured with rice powder, beneath which, vivid and sensitive, wide suppurating sores throbbed, like martyred and hidden mouths, like monstrous and somnambulistic flowers that suddenly enlarged and inflated, straining their intimate structure towards a feverish delirium. It was too late for the antidote: the inverted silver swastika, which would bring echoes of liturgical chants until the flight from the steppe and the coming of the life-giving sap. The flight of the leaves was a flight of bronze, mournful and solemn, over an arid and spectral land. It was only with a supreme effort that one could make out the laughter of a child dressed as a sailor, half clouded by pain; or the sad tenacity of the man who meditates until the early hours of the morning, and who now saw himself under the weight of a tear; or the useless perfumed braid, the air of a look that fed desire. The flesh had begun to rot, still with the presence of life, and exhaled an indefinable stench that permeated everything. Slowly the exodus began, and even the spider fled, with its lazy but terrible security, abandoning the refuge of its happy life. He glimpsed readings of incubi and succubi, magical formulas of death and the devil, transcending all vestiges of reason, seeing himself leafing through the “Dissertation sur les apparitions des anges, des demons et des esprits et sur les revenants et vampirs” [1], by the monk Calmet, which highlighted the reality of the cold certainty of Al-Buruyu. Angela Foligno had already revealed to the commentator that at the beginning “non est in me membrum quod non sit percussum, tortum, et pœnatum a dœmonius, et semper sum infírma, et semper stupefacta, et plena doloríbus in omnibus membris vivís.” [2] There was also a floating above reality, a drifting through non-existent landscapes, through dying algae that twitched angrily and threateningly at the slightest touch, and handlebars that turned vertiginously inside the skull, with an unbearable uproar of ringing bells and loudspeakers, to then disappear in an agonizing silence of the grave. He smoothed his hair slowly and mechanically. He sipped a glass of genuine Forrester scotch with delight and in small sips, and was probably ten miles from the coast and in a hell of a storm. A girl laughed, the provocative laugh of Jane Russell, and came over from the bar. Her mouth was painted a deep red, the color of oxblood, and her sweater cinched tight around her bust. She caressed his cheek and murmured something affectionate as she brushed her face against his. The air was thick and clouded with tobacco smoke, and some of the guests had taken off their jackets. Another girl, who moved her haunches like a Hollywood star, sang with a languid, sensual ecstasy that clung to the skin. He thought he would never see her again. Suddenly it occurred to him to laugh in front of that boy dressed as a sailor, old-fashioned and ridiculous. He connected it to many other things, like the pennant of a hockey club nailed to a wall, a faded photograph that showed some absent faces on a distant excursion to Bañólas, one very cold day; or in a small bar in Paseo de Gracia, long after, when she was already preparing her bridal outfit and giving him ties on his saint’s day. The singer acknowledged the applause with a smile. Now people were trying to dance, except for a small group that was drinking and talking with the waiter and the girl, who had already finished her number. There was a half-light, dirty and worn. Penetrated by the shadows, behind the great monument to Napoleon, behind the bells of the trams, beneath the brothels of all the cities of the world, in his last lucid moment, he now needed to seek the light, to deceive the presence, to bring it closer if necessary, in whatever way, to the clean and purifying light, to the light that sometimes pierced the darkness. There had to be light somewhere. It seemed so to him. Far away, surely ten miles away, someone or something was crawling across the carpet. He left the two armchairs behind and slowly sat up. It was like drooling or an unutterable noise. It became a livid clarity. Like an hallucination of Lovecraft. [1] French: “Dissertation on the apparitions of angels, demons and spirits, and on ghosts and vampires” [2] Latin: “There is not a member in me that is not struck, twisted, and punished by the devil, and I am always sick, and always astonished, and full of pains in all my living members.” Juan PERUCHO

Transcribed from La Vanguardia Española (16 Aug 1969, p.9)

English translation

“Magia Negra” / “Con la técnica de Lovecraft” is more of a prose poem than a short story; a collection of images and ideas meant to invoke the mood and style of Lovecraft more than a pastiche like “Celui qui suscitait l’effroi…” (1958) by Jacques Janus. It isn’t clear what exactly Perucho had read of Lovecraft at this point, but several themes are and ideas are evocative of Lovecraft’s Mythos tales without being direct references to any specific story.

We have a strange Arab author (“Al-Buruyu” instead of Abdul Alhazred), and his mysterious book (Those Who Watch, rather than the more familiar Necronomicon). There is no Cthulhu but there are the strange and formless “thoulú.” Was this deliberate, mangling things like Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s name for effect, or the result of a botched translation from English into another language? I suspect the cumulative differences represent Perucho’s innovation and playing of the Mythos game, mixing fact and fiction. Which is very Lovecraftian.

The work remains a liminal entry, a Catalán introduction to an English-language author that was later translated into Spanish for a wider audience, even as Lovecraft himself began to enjoy wider translation in Spanish-language markets. It is easy to see how it might have frustrated early readers of Los Mitos de Cthulhu (1969); it doesn’t fit neatly into the Mythos like many early pastiches. The very ambiguity gives it character, however; so few early efforts to write in Lovecraft’s style try to capture the essence. While I don’t think Perucho really nailed it—like the pasticheurs, he tends to focus on the more obvious elements—it’s an interesting experiment, and strikes an interesting contrast with some of the other Lovecraft-inspired works in the 1950s and 60s.

Thanks to Mariano Villarreal ( literfan@yahoo.es ) for his help and assistance; all the errors in the translation are mine.

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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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