THE DEEP ONES: "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" by H.P. Lovecraft

"The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" by H.P. Lovecraft

Discussion begins on February 13, 2019.

Completed in 1927. First published posthumously in Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1943).



ONLINE VERSIONS

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/dq.aspx
http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/library/stacks/literature/lovecraft/nove...

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?69741

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
The Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft: Dreams of Terror and Death
The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories
H. P. Lovecraft: Masters of the Weird Tale

MISCELLANY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream-Quest_of_Unknown_Kadath
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyarlathotep
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cats_of_Ulthar
https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Kadath

Posting this one a week or so early because it's a long one. So, head's up!

I read this recently in my copy of the old Ballentine TDQoUK paperback, but I might just pull down my 800-lb Centipede edition of H. P. Lovecraft: Masters of the Weird Tale to review.

Great idea to post early. I noticed last week that this was coming up, and need to get me hence to the library if I want a paper edition. Though I made it through "Mountains of Madness" online without too much aggravation ....

I read it a while ago and I'm simply hoping I remember enough to talk about it, though it could be a point to see what I remember and what's slipped my mind.

Bump. Just a reminder that it's a long one.

I remember thinking that when I read it, the Randolph Carter stories felt more core to the whole "Lovecraft" canon than Cthulhu. I think Dream Quest was the second time I bumped into him, after The Statement of Randolph Carter.

I do like cats (and dislike dogs), but I confess to finding HPL's panegyrics for them a little over the proverbial top here.

I've read this a number of times now, and find it holds up very well to re-reading. The plot does lose some of its sense of wonder when you know more-or-less what's going to happen, but the language and imagery loses none of its force.

From a "Mythos" perspective, this is one of the "connecting" stories, like AtMoM, that pulls together characters from a whole slew of previous stories, notably "Nyarlathotep", "The Other Gods", "Pickman's Model", and, of course, "The Statement of Randolph Carter". (IIRC, there's no suggestion within "The Other Gods" itself that it takes place in the dreamlands rather than the waking world.)

One nagging question this read left me is just what happened to Carter's ghoul and night-gaunt army after Nyarlathotep made them disappear? Where they teleported somewhere? Or did they simply get erased from existence? The latter would increase the darkness level of the story by a few notches methinks, even if they're "soul-less": the ghouls at least plainly have individual personalities.

I haven't had time for a re-read this month, but I'm a long-time fan of this story. Although it has little bits of yog-sothothery, the setting is mostly a straight hijacking of Lord Dunsany's Dreamlands, fleshed out with "nightmare" elements that Dunsany eschewed. And thus it has become "Lovecraft's Dreamlands," used by many subsequent authors.

Ones that come quickly to mind are the Brian Lumley New Adventures in Lovecraft's Dreamlands (which are more ERB than they are HPL or Dunsany), the recent Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe, and the Arkham Files game-inspired To Fight the Black Wind.

>8 frahealee:

I enjoyed it more than At the Mountains of Madness...

Surprisingly, I did too.

after 3 volumes of Varney the Vampire, it was refreshing to hear zero dialogue

Haha!

I actually hadn't read Kadath until last year, but I'd always heard that it was lesser Lovecraft, that it was substandard Dunsany, that it was boring, etc. Even Joshi is fairly dismissive of it. It's actually a very entertaining, interesting read. I was surprised to find that it is a tale of Nyarlathotep. Also that the ghouls - and Pickman - are seen in such a sympathetic, even heroic, light. It's actually a kind of MAD MONSTER PARTY of Lovecraftian creatures and peoples. It does weigh more heavily in favor of cosmic awe rather than cosmic fear, however. Maybe that has something to do with its reputation as being a lesser tale. The stakes just aren't as high.

I share HPL's love of inscrutable feline furballs, so there wasn't enough of the cats, as far as I was concerned!

The notion of the Night Gaunts "tickling" Randolph Carter into submission is a different kind of weird.
:-D

Speaking of night-gaunts, in case somebody doesn't know, I'll mention they come from Lovecraft's childhood nightmares.

>10 paradoxosalpha:

I don't know if Dunsany eschewed nightmare exactly - Perdóndaris needed avenging for reasons nightmarish enough.

Well, this is the third time over the decades I've read this. I still think it's too long, but I'm more favorably inclined towards it each time. For instance, last time I didn't catch the probable reference to Robert W. Chambers' King in Yellow with that priest with the yellow silk mask.

>14 frahealee:

The sea and/or seamen figure frequently in Lovecraft (think e.g. of "The White Ship" and "The Call of Cthulhu"). It seems likely this is something to do with him being from coastal New England, yes. He doesn't seem to have liked the sea too much, however, as it's only too often where unpleasant things come from. He also had a strong aversion to seafood.

I'm not aware that Lovecraft had any particular connection to Cornwall.

That there's seventy and seven hundred steps is surely significant, though I don't know if there's more to it than the generically symbolic force of the number seven. The bit about forgiving 7 x 70 times is from Matthew 18:21-22.

>12 gwendetenebre: Those "tickling" bits have probably stuck the most with me, since I found it odd and yes, a different sort of weird. I think some of it might be not knowing how to react. It didn't seem like a laugh-inducing tickle, and pain is obvious, so what was with that? It's an ambiguity like are they being threatening or not?

On the ocean thing, oceans are dark and scary, slimy, and deep. I think it makes for a great place to incorporate horror and uncertainty. I grew up on the coast, swam in the ocean and all that, but I still got creeped out swimming in anything larger than confined lake. I remember swimming of a boat in English Bay, Vancouver, at night and looking down at the water was never not ominous somehow. It's like even though I now the likelihood of their being something like a shark or a killer whale is pretty nil, there is nothing but your mind to comfort you because you can't see beyond a couple feet into the water. You have to depend on what you feel, and at the same time hope you don't feel anything.

I remember reading that H.R. Giger suffered from night terrors I think into adulthood. Later I read that Philip K. Dick had them too, or similar things. Not sure about Howard, but Lovecraft yes. I did start to wonder if such psychological concerns influenced sort of 'outside' thinking that came with creativity. Night terrors are apparently pretty normal in younger childhood, but Giger and such had them longer.

I had night terrors as a kid but not such that I remember. My childhood was all sunshine and rainbows and I was super sensitive to anything remotely creepy or scary. Not sure how I would up now venturing freely and intentionally into Gothic, weird, and horror.

This is getting off topic.

On Lovecraft in general, I read the book I had pretty much front to back, and I think it was neat to bump into familiar characters. Dream Quest is the biggest Randolph story, but it does mention that he is a habitual dream wanderer. It might be good to follow this up (some time down the road) with "The Silver Key."

Several new words for me, HPL playing CAS this time: kalpas, hippocephalic, diarite, glibber, and his seeming favourite pshent which would have been more effective for being used a half-dozen fewer times.

Like AtMoM, I appreciate the story as much for plot as for the wealth of world-disclosive hints and references, as though it were a travelogue through a land that I would visit later in more detail. The many references to other stories were also provocative: "Cats of Ulthar" of course, and "Pickman's Model", and more.

Somehow the "it was all a dream" ending doesn't seem like a cheat, though factually it would seem to qualify. Perhaps because we know that while a dream, it is no less real. Nyarlathotep remains there, waiting.

The Dream Quest is one of my favourite Lovecraft stories, and I've read it many times over the years, but one thing that struck me on this rereading was the sheer unlikeliness of its heroes. The cats, for starters: since we're declaring our proclivities here, I'm a great cat lover, but even I have to admit that they're one of the least public-spirited animals you could come across. The thought of them forming an army to come to anyone's rescue is just ludicrous. (Though I must admit I liked the idea of them all going over to the dark side of the moon at night - for all those who wonder where exactly it is their moggy gets to.) And the ghouls! The most unlikely heroes of the hour you could imagine.

I'm not quite sure what to take from this, but an affection for and defence of society's rejects isn't what one normally associates with Lovecraft. Did he see himself as a reject? I think I'll just say that he was obviously a complex man, and leave it at that.

>18 elenchus: diarite

Your copy had that typo too? It's supposed to be diorite, the rock.

Yeah, looking it up online identified the typo. I don't think it was HPL's, there were a couple others in the online version I used (second link above).

One was fortuitous: "terrible squatting gargoyles that were mountains till some titan hand carved fright into their virgin rock." I assume HPL intended "right into their virgin rock", but that works pretty well!

>10 paradoxosalpha: And thus it has become "Lovecraft's Dreamlands," used by many subsequent authors.

I've read a few of the TPBs for Gaiman's Sandman graphic novels, but it was over a decade ago and I wasn't familiar then with HPL's Dream Cycle. Am I right that Gaiman isn't playing in that sandbox?

>22 elenchus:
You've read more Gaiman Sandman than I!

I only read one awesome Orientalist number illustrated by P. Craig Russell--it didn't scream Dunsany or HPL to me.

>22 elenchus:

Gaiman could pretty easily incorporate HPL's Dreamlands if he wanted to, but I don't think he's done that deliberately in the Sandman books so far.

>19 Zambaco:

The thought of them forming an army to come to anyone's rescue is just ludicrous.

Ha! You're absolutely correct, of course!

>17 WeeTurtle:

As Andreas noted, the Night-Gaunts come from nightmares HPL had as a very young child. I think the tickling is simply a direct quotation from those. Doing so makes for a pretty memorable scene!

>18 elenchus: I never thought about this story as ending in any way with the "all a dream" hack. The impression I have of Randolph Carter is that he wanders dreams and such to the point that they may as well be real, and he can access things in them that the average dreamer doesn't see. He has a special agency that allows him to go places that only exist on the dream side of things. If this were D&D, I'd liken it the traveling the Astral plane. What happens to him on one side, will have effects on the other.

I enjoyed getting into layer after layer of this story. The first time I read it I thought the ending was sort of a copout, but having read it several more times I have gained an appreciation for it, and in fact it was probably the fittest way Lovecraft could have ended the narrative.

Not sure if it's been mentioned here already but "The Other Gods" also mentioned Kadath as it describes Earth's gods moving about after too much pestering by man. Barzai felt he had enough knowledge to go climbing mountains that superstition said not to. I can't recall if Randolph had similar thoughts.