The Hound
In my tortured ears there sounds
unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and a faint, distant baying as
of some gigantic hound.
Many have written that H. P. Lovecraft's
The Hound, is a weak and overwritten story. I would strongly disagree. This
story is filled with HPL's deluge of atmospheric descriptions and builds to a
tense paranoid end. It certainly isn't the greatest of his works, nor one of
the most well known, but to me it is a good and important one.
In 1922, Lovecraft and a friend
travelled to Brooklyn. There they toured the graveyard of the Dutch Reformed
Church. Finding a gravestone dating back to the mid-18th century, Lovecraft
broke off a piece of the tomb and took it home with him. According to his
letters, this is probably the initial seed that lead to the story of the hound.
Lovecraft wrote that he was enamored with the tiny chunk of stone and wondered
what dreams would come if he kept it beneath his pillow at night.
The Hound is written as confessional
suicide note by the narrator, a grave-robber. It tells of the final exploits in
a Dutch graveyard, in which he and his friend uncover the tomb of a fabled
ghoul killed by some unknown beast half a millennia before. Inside the tomb
they find a clean near perfect skeleton wearing a green amulet. Stealing the
amulet, the two men unleash unspeakable evil upon the night as they are hunted
down by a shadowy beast.
Working with that central theme,
Lovecraft fills every sentence with building dread. His language is over the
top, but in a classic style that we have come to know Lovecraft for. This work
could be seen as self-parody, pushing the limits of how serious it takes
itself, though Lovecraft doesn't use the same wit he has employed in the past
for comical tales. He certainly makes references to other works, conjuring up
elements of Poe and even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. To me, this tale typifies a
distinct kind of gothic story. It feels as pulpy as Lovecraft should, and
conjures images that would fill the imagination of any Hammer Horror fan.
Though Lovecraft did not like this
story, saying it was a "dead dog and a piece of junk", it does have some
importance for the greater Lovecraft works. Most importantly, of course, is
that this story presents the first explicit mention of the Necronomicon. This
ancient tome and it's fictional author have been hinted at in previous works (The Nameless City), but this is the
first time it is mentioned by name. This closely ties this story to the more
significant works of Lovecraft, but it serves as the literary genesis point of
Lovecraft's most influential creations. Elements and themes of Lovecraftian
horror stretch through popular media like far reaching tentacles, but none is
more prevalent than this fictional text.
Lovecraft's origin of this book is
unclear, though it is possible it was inspired by the evil play depicted in
Chamber's The King in Yellow. Lovecraft
mentioned this work throughout his mythos stories and even quoted from it
occasionally. Later we will look at his fictionalized history and background
story for the book. Creating a fictional work to then reference in your writing
was a rather new idea for the time, and with the dark mystery surrounding it
and the later appropriation of the idea by many of HPL's followers, the
Necronomicon has gained a bit of a cult following. Some have even tried to
argue its legitimacy, though more humorous is the attempts by ivy-league
pranksters to sneak a catalogue card for the book into the Yale University
Library.
Another connection in this story is the
origin of the symbol on the amulet. Once again we get a mention of the region
of Leng. Leng was first mentioned in Celephais and will come up again in a
number of other stories. It is a commonly mentioned place, but is never
mentioned to be in the same place. Each story depicts it in places as far flung
as Central Asia to Antarctica. This is probably due to its connection with the
Dreamlands, and it is hinted that it might be a hub which connects planes of
reality. Or Lovecraft could just be reusing his fun sounding names and not
bothering to check back in his own works, remember Lovecraft never really
thought of his works as being a single cohesive whole.
It might be a bit overwritten, and a
little heavy on the atmospheric language as Lovecraft often does with his
gothic pieces. But it is certainly worth checking out. And if you want to read
the full story, you can check it out here: HPL's The Hound
Next time: The
Lurking Fear
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