Written in collaboration with Anna H. Crofts, "Poetry and the Gods" (1920) combines the Lovecraftian ideal of the Poetic Imagination with romantic devotion to the ancient Gods.
If much of HP Lovecraft's narrative can be said to be based on dreams or inspired by them [cf. βOniriconβ: HP Lovecraft, the Dream and the Elsewhere], there are some cases in which dreams have been "borrowed": an example in this sense is Poetry and the Gods, a story that derives from a vision of the aspiring poet Anna Helen Crofts and which Lovecraft provided to give narrative form. The story appeared in "The United Amateur" of September 1920 by Anna Helen Crofts and Henry Paget-Lowe.
image: William Russell Flint, βTheocritus' Idyll XVIII / Chorus and Musiciansβ, 1913.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft
Poetry and the gods
in collaboration with Anna Helen Crofts
One damp and dark evening in April, shortly after the end of the Great War, Marcia found herself alone with strange thoughts and desires, aspirations that up until that moment she had never nourished and that took her away from the large living room of the twentieth century. I flew east and left her in the olive groves of Arcadia which she had only seen in a dream. Marcia had entered the living room distractedly, had blown out the candlesticks, and had leaned on a soft sofa next to a lonely lamp, from which a circle of green light rained on the reading table like a soothing moonbeam sprouting among the leaves, nearby. of an ancient temple.
Dressed simply, in a low-cut black evening dress, Marcia externally looked like a typical product of modern civilization, but she had the impression that an abyss separated her from the prosaic environment that surrounded her. Was she the fault of the strange house in which she lived, that frozen abode where relationships between people were always tense and family members little more than strangers? Was it this or a greater, inexplicable displacement in time and space for which she was born too late, too early or too far from the ideal seat of her spirit to harmonize with the ugliness of contemporary reality? To dispel the mood that was engulfing her more and more gloomy with every minute, Marcia took a magazine and sought a moment of relief in a page of poetry.
Poetry had always been a cure-all for his troubled spirit, even if not all of them had that effect. Even in the most sublime lines she seemed to perceive, at times, something artificial and suffocating, like dust on a window from which one is looking at a magnificent sunset. Leafing through her pages absently, as if in search of an elusive treasure, she suddenly found something that freed her from her temper. An observer who could read her thoughts would have concluded that she Marcia, at last, had found an image or a fantasy that brought her closer than any other to her ideal destination; in reality it was just an essay in free vers, that pitiful poetic compromise that detaches itself from the prose but does not reach the divine melody of numbers. His merits were a vigor and spontaneity worthy of a bard who lives in ecstasy, who enjoys and seeks beauty not yet revealed. Without regularity, he had the music of winged and spontaneous words, a harmony that was totally lacking in the formal and respectful verses of the conventions that Marcia was used to. As she read, the real environment disappeared and around her hovered the fog of dreams, that purple, star-studded veil that frees itself from time and in which gods and dreamers find themselves.
Moon that shines on Japan,
O white moon-butterfly!
Where the half-closed Buddhas
They dream at the call of the cΓΉculo ...
The white wings of the moon butterflies
They dart in the streets of the city
And they silence the useless wicks of the sound lanterns in the hands of the girls.Moon of the tropics,
Curved bud
That slowly unfolds your petals in the warmth of the skies ...The air is fragrant with smells,
Languid warm sounds ...
A flute plays music in the night like the chirping of insects
Under the curved moon petal in the skies.Moon that shines on China,
Tired moon of the river of heaven,
The thrill of the light among the willows is like the flash of a thousand silver fish
Between dark cliffs;
The tiles on the tombs, the abandoned temples
They shine like rippling undines
While the sky is crossed by clouds like dragon scales.
Captivated by dreams, the reader sent a cry to the stars of poetry, a cry of pleasure at the arrival of a new age of singing, the rebirth of Pan. With half-closed eyes she repeated the words whose secret melody made one think of crystals at the bottom of a stream before dawn: invisible crystals but ready to shine in the first rays of the sun.
Moon that shines on Japan,
O white moon-butterfly!Moon of the tropics,
Curved bud
That slowly unfolds your petals in the warmth of the skies.
The air is fragrant with smells,
Languid warm sounds ...Moon that shines on China,
Tired moon of the sky river ...
From the mists of the dream emerged the figure of a resplendent young man, a god. He had a hat and winged sandals, he held the caduceus in his hand and he was as beautiful as nothing is on earth. He waved three times, in front of the sleeper, the wand given to him by Apollo in exchange for the nine-stringed musical shell, then he encircled Marcia's forehead with a crown of myrtle and roses. Hermes spoke in adoration:
Β«O nymph more blond than the sisters of Ciene who have golden hair, more than the Atlanteans who live in heaven, loved by Aphrodite and blessed by Pallas Athena, you have discovered the secret of the gods which resides in song and beauty. O more beautiful prophetess than the Cumaean Sibyl when Apollo first met her, you have told the truth about the new era that is about to come, because at this moment, on Mount Menalus, Pan sighs and moves in sleep, anxious to wake up and see around him the fauns girded with roses and the ancient satyrs. Desire has allowed you to guess what no mortal, save a few that the world rejects, now remembers: that the gods never died, but they slept and dreamed the dream of the gods in the gardens of the Hesperides, rich in lotus and located beyond the sunset. Now the time of awakening is approaching, when coldness and ugliness will disappear and Zeus will sit on Olympus again. Already the sea around Paphos is stirring and producing a foam that only the ancient skies have seen, and at night on Mount Helicon the shepherds hear strange murmurs and notes that they hardly remember. Fields and woods glisten in the twilight with the glare of white dancing figures, and the original ocean yields disconcerting visions to the moon. The gods are patient and have slept for a long time, but no man or giant can challenge them for eternity. In Tartarus the Titans suffer and under the mighty Etna the sons of Uranus and Gaea groan. The day is approaching when man will have to answer for having denied them for centuries, but in their sleep the gods have learned to be kind and will not throw him into the abyss made for the deniers of divinity. No, their revenge will strike the darkness, the ugliness and the error that have upset the mind of man; and under the leadership of the bearded Saturn mortals will sacrifice to him again, and live in beauty and pleasure. Tonight you will know the favor of the gods and you will see, on Parnassus, the dreams that for centuries they have sent to earth to prove that they were not dead. Because poets are the dreams of the gods and in every age there has been someone who sang, unaware, the message and the promise that comes from the lotus gardens beyond sunset Β».
Then Hermes picked up the girl he dreamed of and took her with him to the heavens. Gentle breezes that blew from the tower of Aeolus pushed them over the warm and fragrant seas until they came in the presence of Zeus, who holds court on the two hills of Parnassus and sits on a golden throne flanked by Apollo and the Muses on the right. on the left by Dionysus crowned with ivy and the red bacchantes of pleasure. Marcia had never seen such splendor, either awake or in a dream, but the splendor of the scene was not as unbearable as it would have been on high Olympus because, in that minor court, the father of the gods had toned down his glories to allow sight to mortals. In front of the laurel-covered entrance to the Coricia cave sat six noble figures with a human appearance but a divine bearing. The dreamer recognized them from the portraits she had seen so many times and understood that she was in the presence of none other than the divine Meonis, the abysmal Dante, the immortal Shakespeare, the explorer of chaos, Milton, the cosmic Goethe and the beloved Keats. . These were the messengers sent by the gods to say that Pan was not dead but only asleep, because it is with poetry that the divine speaks to the human. Then said the Thunderer:
"O daughter ... since you belong to my infinite lineage and therefore you are my daughter ... look on the ivory thrones at the august messengers that the gods have sent to earth, so that in the words and writings of men there was still a trace of superior beauty . Other bards have been rightly crowned by men, but Apollo himself rewarded them and I separated them from everyone because, despite being mortal, they can speak the language of the gods. We have long dreamed in the lotus gardens beyond the West, communicating only in dreams, but the time is approaching when we will no longer be silent. It is a moment of awakening and change: once again Phaeton drove the chariot of the sun too low, burning the fields and drying the streams; in Gaul solitary nymphs with untidy hair weep near fountains that give no water and wander around rivers reddened by the blood of mortals. Ares and his followers went wild with divine madness and returned: Deimos and Phobos quivered with pleasure from the violence. The earth is in mourning and the faces of men resemble those of the Erinyes when Astrea fled into the skies and the waves unleashed by our will engulfed the world with the exception of this peak. In this chaos, ready to announce his arrival but to hide his actual coming, our last messenger struggles, whose dreams contain all the images that his predecessors have dreamed of in the past. It is he that we have chosen to mold the beauty of the primeval world into a single whole and to write words in which the wisdom and harmony of the past echo. This man will announce our return and will sing the days to come when fauns and dryads will populate the woods of yore again. Our choice was guided by those who sit on ivory thrones in front of the Coricia cave: in their songs you will hear sublime notes that will allow you to recognize the supreme messenger when he arrives. Listen to the voices of the poets who will sing for you one by one; you will hear each of those notes in the future poem, the poem that will give peace and pleasure to your soul but that you will have to search for for long and dry years. Listen carefully because every hidden vibrating string will reappear when you return to earth, just like Alfeo who, after having sunk his waters in the heart of Hellas, reappears in distant Sicily to court the limpid Arethusa Β».
Then Homer, dean of poets, got up and took the lyre and sang his hymn to Aphrodite. Marcia did not know a word of Greek but the message was not unheard, because the mysterious rhythm was what spoke to men and gods and she did not need an interpreter. The same happened to Dante and Goethe, whose incomprehensible words spread through the air with a timbre that was easy to hear and love. But finally the listener heard familiar verses: it was the Swan of the Avon, once a god among men and still a god among gods.
Write, write that from the bloody curse of war
May my beloved lord, your son, escape:
May he stay at home in peace, while I am from afar
I honor his name with zeal and fervor.
Even more familiar were the accents of Milton, no longer blind, whom he recited in immortal harmony:
Or let me see at midnight
Your lantern on a lonely tower,
Where I can watch the Bear
With the three times great Mercury,
And awaken Plato's spirit
To reveal worlds and vast regions
Contained in the immortal mind: it has forgotten
His stay in this prison of flesh.* * *
Let the splendid tragedy come sometimes
Wrapped in a pallium and equipped with a scepter
To speak of Thebes or of Pelops's lineage,
To tell the story of divine Troy.
Lastly, the youthful voice of Keats rose, closest to the magnificent people of the fauns than any messenger:
The melodies we've already heard are sweet,
But the ones we haven't heard are sweeter still:
So keep playing, dear bagpipes ...* * *
When old age devastates this generation
You will remain in the midst of pains that are not only ours,
Friend of the man to whom you said:
Β«Beauty is truth, truth is beauty. That's all
What you will know on earth,
All you will need to know Β».
When the poet stopped the wind that blew from Egypt brought with it a lament: for every night, near the Nile, Aurora mourns the killing of her Memnon. The rosy-fingered goddess came at the feet of thundering Zeus, and she knelt down and cried out: "Father, it's time for me to open the gates of the east." And Phoebus, having passed the lira to Calliope (his wife of him among the Muses), prepared to leave for the very rich Palazzo del Sole adorned with columns, where he spurred the stallions yoked to the golden chariot of the Day. So Zeus descended from the carved throne and placed his hand on Marcia's head, saying:
βDaughter, the dawn is near and it is good that you go home before the mortals wake up. Do not cry if life seems empty to you, soon the shadow of false faiths will disperse and the gods will once again walk among men. Seek our messenger without tiring, because in him you will find peace and comfort. His words will guide your steps towards happiness, and in his dreams of beauty your spirit will find what it longs for Β». As soon as Zeus had finished speaking, the young Hermes gently took the girl and carried her towards the pale stars in the west and over invisible seas.
* * *
Many years have passed since Marcia dreamed of the gods and the conclave on Parnassus. She is sitting in the living room tonight, but she is not alone. Her old restlessness has disappeared, because at her side is a man whose name shines with fame: the young poet of poets at whose feet the whole world lies. From a manuscript he reads verses that no one has ever heard before, but which when they spread throughout the world they will restore to men the dreams and hopes lost many centuries ago, when Pan fell asleep in Arcadia and the great gods retired to the lotus gardens beyond the earth. of the Hesperides. In the poet's subtle cadences and hidden melodies the spirit of the young woman has finally calmed down, because the sublime notes of the Thracian Orpheus echo, the same ones that moved stones and trees on the banks of the Ebro. The cantor is silent and anxiously asks for a verdict, but what can Marcia say except that it is music "worthy of the gods"?
And while she speaks the vision of Parnassus returns and the distant sound of a divine voice that says: "His words will guide your steps towards happiness, and in his dreams of beauty your spirit will find what it longs for."
(Poetry and the Gods, 1920)
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