With Abraham Merritt on the Vessel of Ishtar

Thanks to the types de the Palindrome, Italian readers now have the opportunity to read the original and complete edition of "The ship of Ishtar" by Abraham Merritt, an initiatory novel focused on the Mystery of the 'coincidentia oppositorum'.


di Marco Maculotti

Born in 1884 in New Jersey and moved with his family from an early age to Philadelphia, Abraham Merrittย โ€”ย of Welsh origin such as Arthur Machenย โ€”ย he is perhaps best known above all as a journalist, an occupation that allowed him large earnings with which he foraged numerous trips around the world, as well as as an archaeologist: his expeditions to Mexico, in search of the legendary buried temples of the Maya [1]:

ยซThe story of his explorations is often enriched by adventurous details that already foreshadow the stories of his characters: in Tulum, among unexplored ruins immersed in the rain jungle, he comes across natives who force him to make a daring escape; in Chichรฉn-Itza, however, he locates a treasure ... and is "baptized" by an important member of a local tribe through a blood rite. "

Nonetheless, here we will focus on the novelist Merritt, author of literary evidence ascribable to strand of "Fantastico", "Weird" and "Pulp" of which Ishtar's shipย (The Ship of Ishtar, 1924)ย โ€” that here we are preparing to reviewย โ€” constitutes one of the most successful attempts, as well as most appreciated by the English-speaking public who got to know him in the first half of the last century.

The credit for this rediscovery in the Italian publishing scene goes to the guys in the series "The three deserted seats " de the Palindrome of Palermo, to whom we owe the recent publication of the novel, hitherto unpublished in Italy in its complete form [2]. In fact, so far only the second version, more conciseย โ€”ย which Merritt drafted in 1926 for publication in volumeย โ€”ย had been translated and published by Fanucci (1978), in a volume that also housed the short introductory essay by Gianfranco de Turris and Sebastiano Fuscoย Science fiction and mythology, also kept in the preface to this new edition. To further enrich this editorial novelty, the reader will be able to appreciate the original illustrations of the era of Virgil Finlay, as well as the very punctual appendices of Andrea Scarabelli e Mary Ceraso, the first of a mythical-traditional-symbolic character, the second biographical-literary.

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Merritt's literary debut took place in 1917 with the publication of Through the dragon's mirror (Through the Dragon Glass), which followed the following year The people of the abyss (The People of the Pit). Success came immediately with his third work,ย The well of the moon (The Moon Pool), also released in 1918, based on the mythology of advanced civilization residing in the Underworld [3]ย โ€”ย and, in this case, also underwaterย โ€”an intuition which in all probability inspired in turnย HP Lovecraft for the submergedย R'lyehย where the abominable Cthulhu lies waiting for the future awakening [4].

Although it is good to remember with Scarabelli that ยซthe field of action of Merritt's heroes is made up of those themselves "cosmically indifferent" forcesยป [5]ย that fascinated the Master of Providence, it should be emphasized, however, that Lovecraft was only one of his many admirers. Among others it can also be mentioned Ira Levin โ€”ย author of the cult-novel Rosemary's Babyย โ€” which was influenced by the studies and research on practices of witchcraft, survivals of human sacrifice and folkloric beliefs made by ours in Pennsylvania, as well as by his novels attributable to the demonic-witchcraft vein:ย Seven Steps to Satanย (Seven Footprints to Satan, 1927),ย Burn witch burnsย (Burn Witch Burn!, 1932) and its entourageย Swipe, Shadow!ย (Creep, Shadow!.

And again the Russian painter Nicholas Roerich, of whom he was a close friend, as well asย the investigator of the "magical realism" Jacques Bergier, who in his autobiography tells how one of the purposes of his trip to the United States in 1947 was precisely to meet Merritt in person ... who unfortunately had been dead for four years. However, she did not fail to applaud him in an essay completely dedicated to him, in which she wrote [6]:

โ€œMerritt is beyond a shadow of a doubt, and has always firmly claimed it, a rationalist. His universe of him is that of science and not the magical universe of Do. But it comes down to an extremely large cosmos and very similar to that of "The morning of the wizards" [7]. There are civilizations that have disappeared, others still exist under the oceans or in secret places on the globe, genetic memory, parapsychology, doors wide open to other dimensions. "

Bergier in his writing dutifully analyzes all of Merritt's works [8], doing his utmost to review in a particularly enthusiastic way Ishta's vesselr [9]:

ยซAn extraordinary masterpiece, which stands out from the rest of his work both for its eroticism and for the extremely original circumstance of taking place in a timeless reality. In this world, hardly accessible to ours, the vessel of Ishtar, the goddess of love, and Nergal, the god of darkness, sails for ever. The ship is made up half of ebony and half of ivory. The struggle between the forces of love and destruction, between heat and the great cosmic cold, explodes there, without end. ยป

And it is precisely this Mystery of coincidence oppositorum, as admirably "unveiled" by Scarabelli in his commendable essay in the appendix to the edition in question here to permeate the whole novel, "the mysterium contiuctionis he talked about Carl Gustav Jung, the union of Animus and Anima, the masculine in the feminine and the feminine in the masculine, dissolving the chain of becoming in which the opposites live when it comes to e of own insufficiency " [10]. A Mystery that we reserve the right to set aside temporarily, and on which we will return at the end of the article.

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Portrait of Abraham Merritt.

As for the narrative devices used here by Merritt, it should be noted that, as often happens with this genre of authors, the protagonist John Kenton it is to some extent a kind of alter-ego of its author, who sketches a portrait of him in the opening chapter of the novelย [11]:

ยซ He had always heard the call of the past. Over the years she had listened to it, wandering through forgotten lands and stopping at places that belonged to extinct civilizations, waning empires and vanished cities.. She had neglected love, preferring that ghostly passion over a human one. Cultured, almost an ascetic, leaving aside any sentimental experience, he had acquired another erudition, deep enough to arouse in the learned a respectful silence when he uttered a word. "

If we know from Merritt's biography that he was careful not to neglect love and any sentimental experience, likewise we are aware of his passion for the ancient world, for the disappeared civilizations and for the (more or less) "mysterious" archeology of which he was actively interested in the first person. These predilections of him, together with the daring adventures narrated in his literary works, make it a sort of "godfather"ย ante-literam by Indiana Jonesย et similiaย [12], as well as one of the most eligible candidates responsible for "grafts" of an archaeological-occult nature in the horror literary and cinematographic vein of the second half of the 900s (an example above all: the discovery in the incipit ofย The exorcist of the ominous statuette of Pazuzu).

And it is precisely with an "archaeological" expedient that begins the adventure narrated in Ishtar's ship: it all begins when John Kenton receives from a colleague a block of stone found during an excavation campaign in the Middle East, inside which is kept the "model" of a ship of carved gems. Far from being a common artifact, it is a real one stargate, a portal to the Elsewhere [13], thanks to which at any moment our hero will find himself catapulted into a world other, located in a space-time segment distinct from ours, although somehow superimposed on itย [14]:

In front of him was a vast mist: globular silvery vapors descended upon him; the curved belly of another world. Was that world colliding with hers? No! She was overlapping it! [...] Thanks to the lights of this revelation, Kenton saw his Earth not for what it seems, but for what it is: an etheric vibration in the intervals between the electronic pulsations of worlds upon worlds that intersect, worlds originating from the primal force of to which these vibrations are expression, in the forms we know and in those we ignore. [...] Worlds that intersect according to different frequencies, higher or lower, in the total unawareness of these tangencies. Worlds that moved around and through us, coinciding randomly, like radio signals intercepted by an unsynchronized device. Overlapping worlds as streams of information that, without interfering with each other, flowed together on the same cable, thanks to the diversity of vibrations. Ishtar's vessel sailed on one of these parallel worlds. The jewel of gems was not the ship itself, but a key capable of opening a passage from the Kenton dimension to that of the vessel: a device that adapted the material vibrations of his body to that of the world of the ship. "

That 'โ€œenchantedโ€ object that acts as a threshold to other dimensions it's a topos which Merritt uses since the earliest literary proofs: in Through the dragon's mirror it is a slab of jade that magically brings the protagonist into "a ghost world, where seven artificial moons rotate forever around a valley, veiled in fog and surrounded by walls of fire" [15]. Huhย The well of the moon it is instead a bright opening, in the presence of the full moon, to lead to the gigantic caves located below the Pacific Ocean, where a civilization as malevolent as it is advanced resides, almost ignored by the unsuspecting surface inhabitants (that is, we human beings). Neitherย The dwellers of the mirageย (The Dwellers in the Mirage, 1932), finally, it is an abject complex of black pyramids found in Alaska to represent a gateway to the absolute Elsewhere.

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Two illustrations by Virgil Finlay for โ€œThe Ship of Ishtarโ€ (ed. 1949).

As already mentioned, underlying the entire narrative of de Ishtar's shipย there is the conception of a dualism that permeates everything that exists in the cosmos: a dichotomy of which Ishtar, goddess of Love, and Nergal, god of Death, are the emblem, but which, far from being exhausted in the respective divine hypostases, extends to innumerable levels below them, permeating the same shape of the ship plowing the timeless ocean and its two priestly castes.

And yet, unlike Lovecraft's masterpieces of "cosmic horror", the human being is not in the inauspicious position of mere cog in the cosmic system, the sacrificial victim of an indifferent universe: exquisitely as a writerย pulpย Merritt prefers, hand in hand with the creation of fantastic and dreamlike atmospheres worthy of Lord Dunsany, the heroic action, the adventurous impulse, the longing for love and, why not, erotic. And it's right here, in the extreme conjunction between Eros and Thanotos, that the Ultimate Mystery is realized, the union of opposites, the conjunction and the final overcoming between the Sacred Masculine and the Sacred Feminine and of all the existing dichotomies in the empirical reality that can be experienced through our senses human, too human.

Obviously not all characters on the vessel are "heroes" or "awakened": it is certain that ยซthey are all medium more or less aware of the ancient rivalry [between Ishtar and Nergal, ed], which do not act but are act by Gods who for centuries have waged a merciless battle, without losers or winners, whose theater is the ship, which they launched "on this strange sea, in this strange world, a battlefield for Love and Hate" " [16]. Nonetheless, in the midst of so many "unwitting mediums", it is the chosen few who push themselves to the bastions of the permitted and the know that heavily influence the mocking destiny of the vessel.ย โ€” and the existence of its occupants.

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The very "creation" of the enchanted boat finds its origin in this one hybris heroic, in this will to power of a man and a woman, Zarpanit and Alusar, who dared, in an age shrouded in the mists of time, to challenge the gods who had the honorย - and honor - ofย represent on Earth: the two greatest priests of Ishtar and Nergal dared to love each other, despite the ontological opposition which characterized the respective sacred functions, which they had been used by the gods. The irreparable happened: the two, following a divine council, were severely punished by their Lords, exiled forever on the vessel that is destined to sail the timeless ocean endlessly and for eternity.ย This is pure hybris, which as we know is reserved only for heroes.

And yet, as befits the heroes, not even on the "prison ship" did the two lovers stop challenging the gods of which they were ministers, looking for a concidentia oppositorum that it alone could have saved them from the perennial damnation of Manichaean dualism. Thus, meeting exactly at the point of the ship where the "half Ishtar" collides with the "half Nergal", after having "received" the respective deities in their own body, they managed with a last and exceptional momentum to embrace and kiss each other, until they fell on the bridge, now lifeless; dead close to each other.

A prelude to their salvation and rebirth into a higher form of consciousness, superior to the dichotomous structure of the sublunar world, of which Ishtar and Nergal are not only supreme guarantors but, ultimately, even slavesย without any hope of escape, as they lack free will and the possibility of ascent that is only granted to the enlightened human being. Thus, after the physical death of the two lovers, one of the ecstatic witnesses of the "miracle" narratesย [17]:

โ€œThere was a flash equal to the flash of a thousand lightning bolts. The ship rocked and shuddered. But before all of that, I think I saw two glowing flames rise from their bodies, whirl for a moment, then whiz toward each other, merge and disappear. Neither Ishtar nor Nergal had won. No. The love of the man and the love of the woman had prevailed. The flames were free, invincible before the gods. ยป

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One of Virgil Finlay's illustrations for โ€œThe Ship of Ishtarโ€ (ed. 1949).

Note:

[1] M. Ceraso, Biographical note of Abraham Merritt, appendix to A. Merritt, Ishtar's ship, Il Palindrome, Palermo, 2018, p. 453.

[2]ย The translation of this new edition, edited by Joseph Aguanno, is based on the edition published in 1949 by Borden Publishing Company, reissued in 2009 by Pablo Publishing, which reflects the six-week serial publication in the magazine Argosy All Story Weekly starting in November 1924.

[3] See M. Maculotti,ย "Underground" civilizations in myth, occultism and "alternative reality", on AXISmundi and M. Maculotti,ย Underworld civilization in science fiction fiction, its Cosmic Dimension n ยฐ 2, Spring 2018, Tabula Fati Edition.

[4] On HP Lovecraft, see S. Fusco,ย Lovecraft, or the inconsistency of the real, A. Scarabelli,ย Beasts, men or gods: HP Lovecraft's alien cultsย and M. Maculotti,ย โ€œOniriconโ€: HP Lovecraft, the Dream and the Elsewhere, on AXISmundi.

[5] A. Scarabelli, Mysterium Coniunctionis, appendix to A. Merritt, op. cit., p. 429.

[6] Cit. in A. Scarabelli, op. cit., p. 419.

[7]ย L. Pauwels and J. Bergier, The morning of the wizards, Mondadori, Milan, 1964.

[8] For a complete list of Merritt's literary works, see M. Ceraso, op. cit.

[9] Cit. in A. Scarabelli, op. cit., p. 420.

[10] Ivi, p. 435.

[11] A. Merritt, op. cit., chap. I, pp. 23-24.

[12]ย As suggested by G. Fucile,ย Gods, heroes and readers aboard the fantastic. The unabridged edition of a classic of pulp literature: The Ship of Ishtar by Abraham Merritt, on Notebooks of other times.

[13] See M. Maculotti,ย Access to the Other World in the shamanic tradition, folklore and "abduction", on AXISmundi.

[14] A. Merritt, op. cit., chap. IV, pp. 48-49.

[15] M. Ceraso, op. cit., p. 455.

[16]ย A. Scarabelli, op. cit., p. 433.

[17] A. Merritt, op. cit., chap. VII, p. 72.