The story of “The Haunter of the Dark” begins with a teenage Robert Bloch, who went on in adulthood to win the Hugo, Bram Stoker, and World Fantasy Awards and become best known for his novel Psycho.
As Bloch explains in “Time-Traveling with H.P. Lovecraft”:
In 1935 I’d written a story, “The Shambler from the Stars,” dedicated to Lovecraft, in which he appeared as a character. A year later he returned the compliment in “The Haunter of the Dark,” dedicated to me and using me as a character…. At the time his tale was published I found it oddly disconcerting to read about myself, thinly-disguised as young “Robert Blake,” traveling from my real-life home at 620 East Knapp Street in Milwaukee to take up residence in Lovecraft’s real-life home where I spent a fictional life — and met a fictional death — in the very study where the actual story had been written.
Indeed, the house in which Lovecraft wrote and set the story still stands.
You can see pictures of it here, here, and here in my virtual walking tour of Lovecraft’s Providence.
* What is your reaction to “The Haunter of the Dark”? What do you think of the idea Kenneth Hite has suggested, that the Trapezphedron is a kind of Grail? (“It’s found in a Perilous Chapel, which seems to exist in an Otherworld… by a young and inexperienced quester who doesn’t even know what he’s looking for….” who “gains wisdom from an old man” and “achieves the Grail, being adopted into its lineage and taken into the Otherworld.”) Or maybe it’s an “anti-Grail,” since a trapezohedron is the opposite of a prism, drawing in color to create darkness rather than producing illumination. And rather than ascending into heaven, it is dropped into the deepest channel of the sea. What do you think?
* Now to bring our Lovecraft conversation full circle back to our discussion of “The Outsider.” Robert Bloch notes in his reminiscence about “The Haunter of the Dark” the issue of Lovecraft’s identity and the issue of identity in Lovecraft’s writing:
If indeed he was the epitome of his own story-character, “The Outsider” — a creature who realized self-identity only when finally confronted with his revolting image in a mirror — then possibly we cannot discern his nature clearly through all the well-meaning or ill-meaning examinations of his life and work. We must seek out that same mirror to catch a glimpse of his true being; stare at the many-faceted, many-faced reflection or reality that was Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
Look closely, and you’ll see yourself.
So… what do you think?
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I like the “Grail” idea a lot. For all his differences from all our favorite fairy tale folks, he does has a certain similarity to them all, believing that imaginative fiction is superior to other forms of fiction. And Tolkien did say, after all, that Arthur was the King of Faerie. So to whatever extent Lovecraft was eating from the story Soup of Tolkien’s “On Fairy-Stories,” it wouldn’t surprise me that his own ingredients would mix with Grail legend to produce something new and freaky. “Anti-Grail” is probably a good phrase for it.
I’m a big fan of “The Haunter of the Dark.” I need to give it a re-read , probably tonight, but it’s among my favorite HPL stories – maybe even my favorite, though there are stories I still need to read. Somehow, when reading it for the first time, the church got paired in my mind with Van Gogh’s darker church-paintings, and those images are stuck in my mind as I consider it.
Not sure about the Grail analogy, but there is a suggestion of myth or fairy tales in the fate of Robert Blake.
This is the bare-bones plot. Blake is attracted to something otherworldly but forbidden. He sneaks a peek, is fascinated and repelled, and runs away. For his act of – sacrilege? – he is pursued by the forces which serve that otherworldly thing and smitten to death.
It sounds a lot like the Greek myth where the young man sneaks a peek at the naked goddess bathing in the moonlight, and is smitten for the insult. Or the fairy tale where the human witnesses the revels of the faires and is snatched away – transported to fairy land – and his apparent corpse left behind.
I have only read a handful of HPL stories, but this one – which I would agree with Travis is one of the best – is the only one where the horror which attracts and repels, becomes up close and personal. Which strongly suggests that Blake does something which is offensive at a very basic level.
This is one of my favorite Lovecraft stories, as well. One of the things I failed to mention is the grounding this work has in history – connections to real history, to Lovecraft’s fictional history that threads throughout his stories (later known as his “Mythos” thanks to August Derleth), and to fictional history specific to this tale. One of my favorite passages shows the remarkable world-building project he has undertaken:
Of the Shining Trapezohedron he speaks often, calling it a window on all time and space, and tracing its history from the days it was fashioned on dark Yuggoth, before ever the Old Ones brought it to earth. It was treasured and placed in its curious box by the crinoid things of Antarctica, salvaged from their ruins by the serpent-men of Valusia, and peered at aeons later in Lemuria by the first human beings. It crossed strange lands and stranger seas, and sank with Atlantis before a Minoan fisher meshed it in his net and sold it to swarthy merchants from nighted Khem. The Pharaoh Nephren-Ka built around it a temple with a windowless crypt, and did that which caused his name to be stricken from all monuments and records. Then it slept in the ruins of that evil fane which the priests and the new Pharaoh destroyed, till the delver’s spade once more brought it forth to curse mankind.
And of course, like Tolkien and even Rowling, he also gives his myth added credibility by referring to additional fictional texts:
He had himself read many of them- a Latin version of the abhorred Necronomicon, the sinister Liber Ivonis, the infamous Cultes des Goules of Comte d’Erlette, the Unaussprechlichen Kulten of von Junzt, and old Ludvig Prinn’s hellish De Vermis Mysteriis. But there were others he had known merely by reputation or not at all- the Pnakotic Manuscripts, the Book of Dzyan, and a crumbling volume of wholly unidentifiable characters yet with certain symbols and diagrams shuddering recognizable to the occult student. Clearly, the lingering local rumours had not lied. This place had once been the seat of an evil older than mankind and wider than the known universe.
Great stuff!
Questions: Are the Lovecraft books appropriate for young teens/pre-teens? What books should be read in what order? THANKS!
Carol, some of the professional authors who write in Lovecraft’s universe today recall first reading his fiction at 10-12 years of age. There is no objectionable sexual content or language, while there are quite a few interesting (and accurate!) history lessons. Perhaps the biggest obstacle to young readers might be Lovecraft’s word choice – sometimes my university students admit to consulting the dictionary – but tenacious readers won’t be stopped by the occasional archaic term.
There’s no reason in particular to read the works in the order they were published; there is no “arc” binding the stories, although many share common references and settings. I’d think reading through a good anthology such as the new Barnes & Noble edition, or the Library of America’s Tales, or the three-volume set from Arkham House Press, would be a great experience, whether reading in order or skipping around from one story to another. Most of his stories are online, too, which makes it easy to get a taste before committing to buying a book.
I’m not sure if I answered your questions, but I hope this helps!
THANKS! I truly appreciate you taking the time to answer.
Amy I like your Anti-grail plot device in the same way the Necronomicon is like an anti-bible. Whereas in the bible, the word of God is mysteriously somehow God incarnate (Gospel of John and the Epistle of First John) this is diametrically opposed to the corruption of the Necronomicon (and other forbidden books) which are like corpses being always “worm-riddled.” From a Christian perspective, Lovecraft’s work constitutes an complete work of antithetical pseudepigrapha in that diametrically opposed to man’s place in the universe. Someone once called Lovecraft a “literary Copernicus” and to me, this is the essence of all his literary “weirdness.”
This story, like many of his others (such as The Colour Out of Space, At the Mountains of Madness, etc), is what I describe as a “forensic horror.” The story builds slow and delibriately and we open glimpse the horror (if at all) and only then at the end of the story. Other Lovecraftian currents are employed which is what Gaiman calls “the wrongness” of The Colour Out Of Space. It’s the way in which things or creatures from the stars always seem to affect the characters’ health and mental states. The Haunter creature’s self temperature is suggested to be many times higher than a human’s and leaves behind scorched yellow odorous residue. This would seem to suggest sulfur in the same way that Giger’s ‘Alien’ has acid for blood.
Unlike the typical ’spaceman’ of the day, the Haunter is pigmentless and membraneless cloud that can’t exist in light. It’s a fish out of water and it begs the question: what is it’s water like? Well, one thing is for sure, the planet(s) it lives on are not illuminated by visible light. In this way, Lovecraft paints a picture of the universe that prefigures the discovery of “dark matter.” In the same way Edgar Allen Poe prefigures the Big Bang Theory in an 1848 essay, which opposed the prevailing theory of the day which was the “Steady State” theory. More than once Lovecraft wrote about planets of swirling black mists and it’s not surprising that some extreme surface chemistry (like sulfur) would be present for life to exist. Sulfur, of course, is also associated with Christian hell.
The name of the cult “Starry Wisdom” is a loaded word phrase. It harkens back to a gospel music genre called “Sacred Harp” in which many themes and titles included the word ’starry’ to refer to heaven. Examples of which are “A thousand starry beauties there” ,”Beyond the starry regions” ,”To wear a starry crown”, “Ye starry lights, ye twinkling flames”. This curious choice of words was not curious prior to the advent of 20th century multi-dimensional psychics. Prior to God being relocated in another dimension, heaven was still located off the earth and associated with stars.
Once again Lovecraft manages to drag everything onto one axis and in doing so highlights the fact that the universe is totally alien to us and the way we have attempted to pigeon hole it are completely local and human prejudices.