Nyarlathotep (1920) The figure of Nyarlathotep became a stable element in Lovecraft's own Cthulhu mythos, but the first appearance of the character was in this prose poem carrying his name. It is said Lovecraft wrote the poem of this wandering showman presenting people to the true horrors and doom of the world after a vivid dream he had.The story itself is rather straightforward. The narrator of the poem attends a show of Nyarlathotep, where he shows people horrifying things. During the show, the narrator, as does the audience, dismiss the horrific visions as mere trickery.
The audience leaves the show and separates into their own groups. One group heads to an alley, after which a moaning is heard, the other descends to a subway from where mad laughter echoes. The narrator continues towards the inner city to find that the doom and horror shown by Nyarlathotep have fallen on the world.
And that's the end of it. Nyarlathotep is presented in the poem as a harbinger of death and destruction, against which humans are incapable of doing anything. With him, the doors to the netherworlds where the old, grim gods dwell are opened and the destruction of humanity arrive. It's a good read if you are a fan of the mythos and for some reason have not already read the story.
Celephaïs (1920) A man, known as Kuranes, not his real name in the real world, dreams a world in his boyhood. A city in a valley with the ocean beyond, overlooked by snowy mountains. In this dream the boy also named himself again, choosing the name Kuranes, for he had no family to speak in the real world, no one to remind him who he had been.
Kuranes preferred his dreams to reality and the more he withdrew to his dreams, the more magnificent they got. The most impressive of his dreamings is the city of Celephaïs, in which he spends many a happy day until he loses it. To find it again, he turns to drugs, which deepen his dreams, allowing him to spend longer intervals in the world of his creation.
Then finally, he meets an army of knights, who had been looking for him in order to take him back. It was like they were taking him through the time, past the old lands of his ancestors in the real world until finally, Kuranes saw the shining minarets of the city of his dreams, the place which king he was destined to become.
And there he reigns, in his courts of Celephaïs. All of Ooth-Nargai and the regions of the dream he rules, destined to be happy forever. And yet, somewhere in the cliffs of Innsmouth, the real world, tides play with a body of a tramp who stumbled through the city.
Celephaïs is, perhaps, a story on the futility of dreams. Or better yet, dangers of them and succumbing too deeply in them. In many ways, you can see Kuranes as a warning example of a person, who isn't able to separate the true world from his dreams. He does nothing else, but dreams a better world for himself, doing it so well, that he is willing to forfeit everything else to chase them.
But then again, according to the story, what else did he have? Not much, according to the story, so perhaps it's also a story of the solace of dreams, of the sweet, soothing escape they can give to one in distress. They are not futile, they provide a way to escape for those who have nothing else. Even though Kuranes draws this escape to the extreme.
Or perhaps Lovecraft wrote this story to himself, of himself, as a warning. Perhaps he was to an extent, afraid, that if he'd come up with dreams too beautiful, he would be tempted to escape into them, to chase them, maybe even in the same fashion as poor Kuranes did.
However it is, Celephaïs is a nice little story, very much in the same vein as the White Ship, which also handled a bit similar subject matter, but didn't take itself into a grim conclusion. Oh, it has a mention of Innsmouth in it, the city that came much better known as the dwelling grounds of the fishy followers of the great old ones.
From Beyond (1920) To see things beyond the natural realm, now there's a common motif for Lovecraft. A scientist, Crawford Tillinghast, has asked his friend, an unknown narrator of the story to his mansion to witness his newest experiment.
The narrator finds the mansion of his friend empty beyond the man himself. The whole house is dark and all of his servants are gone. Mumbling to himself, Tillinghast escorts his quest to the attic, where his laboratories are and seats him next to a machine bathing the room in UV light.
The machine allows the men to see beyond the veil of reality, to witness the things not commonly seen by mortals. The monsters and other horrors of the world entangling with ours without our knowledge.
But during this voyage, Tillinghast begins a rant on how he has actually asked his friend to his house to die, as he feels he was betrayed by him. Then he, like all the others, laughed at him behind his back and now he is to take his vengeance with the help of his new pets, who had already devoured his servants.
The narrator, carrying a gun in his pocket because he was at some time a robbery victim, shoots the infernal machine and the scientist dies in shock at the same time. The police find no evidence of the lost servants but suspect that the mad man had killed them as well and hidden the bodies.
The story isn't very well written and is a good example of the overly dramatic fashion Lovecraft at times succumbed to using. Especially the lengthy monologues of Tillinghast come out as poor attempts in writing dramatic exposition. The overall story just feels like an idea Lovecraft couldn't get working in the end.
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