Lovecraft: The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath

by H.P. Lovecraft

Free Online Text 

“There were, in such voyages, incalculable local dangers; as well as that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe, where no dreams reach; that last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity—the boundless daemon-sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes; to which detestable pounding and piping dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic ultimate gods, the blind, voiceless, tenebrous, mindless Other Gods whose soul and messenger is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.”

Now we have one of my first literary loves in my reading career and certainly my favorite story by H. P. Lovecraft. The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath was never published in his lifetime, only being released by Arkham House in 1943- in an edition which also contained The Silver Key and Through the Gates of the Silver Key. These lesser stories were sequels. And I mean lesser in both the senses of they being of shorter and poorer quality.

Original cover for the book

 

This is the culmination of all of Lovecraft’s dreamland stories. Each one the previous tales is incorporated under the umbrella of this story. In fact without Pickman’s Model, The Cats of Ulthar, Azathoth (though after re-reading it, it seems this novella is a second attempt at writing the story), Celephias, and The White Ship, this story is not possible. The protagonists of each are all featured and are integral to the plot of this story.

The protagonist is Lovecraft’s literary alter-ego Randolph Carter who enters the realm of sleep in order to find a marvelous city of marble that he glimpsed three times as a child. He has spent years looking for it without success, so he decides to scale the impossible heights to unknown Kadath where the Gods of the Earth play (whether these are the Gods of our world or the Dreamland is unclear), and who also have a tenuous connection to the Outer Gods (of whom Azathoth, located at the center of the Universe, is king).

He travels long and hard, sails to the moon, befriends the legions of intelligent cats, runs from monsters and evil denizens- all of which are servants of the dreaded Nyarlathotep who is the the messenger and soul (whatever that means) of the Outer Gods. He appears as a “tall and swarthy man, resembling an Egyptian Pharaoh”. In his quest, he must travel through the dreaded Plateau of Leng, now located in the Dreamlands and mentioned in many previous stories. There are ancient Stonehenge-type monoliths and rude huts, and the plateau is populated by near-men, like satyrs, the have horns and cloven feet.


Map of Lovecraft's Dreamlands

 

When he arrives, Carter finds the Gods are gone, actually abandoning their high perch to live in the city he is searching for. With the added twist (or kick in the groin) that his “fabled jeweled city” that he searched for all his life was not an aspect of his dreams, but simply childish memories of his hometown of Boston. All Carter was looking for was his lost sense of juvenile wonder, that excitement which is crushed under experience and maturity. And, like so many older Star Wars fans, he discovers that once it is gone, there is no recovering it.

Strangely enough, Lovecraft never attempted to get this story published. He wrote, "it isn't much good; but forms useful practice for later and more authentic attempts in the novel form." He expressed concern while writing it that "Randolph Carter's adventures may have reached the point of palling on the reader; or that the very plethora of weird imagery may have destroyed the power of any one image to produce the desired impression of strangeness." So this was his practice attempt at the novel. Of which he never completed another one. Despite the author’s dismissal, I have to disagree about its quality.

H. P. Lovecraft

 

Why I love this book so much is that it was my first encounter with a fantasy style that has been all but erased from modern literature. The Dunsayian technique (Lord Dunsay) which heavily influenced Lovecraft’s style, along with Edgar Allen Poe. If you’ve never heard of him and like fantasy try it out. Dunsay wrote close to ninety books and all are in the public domain. Just remember, it is fashioned in a deliberately poetic style and were written over a hundred years ago. Call it a mythic fantasy approach, which was the style of J. R. R. Tolkein (and maybe perfected by him), where all of the prose is given a gothic-heroic style of speaking. Stilted, yet noble. Lovecraft simply altered it, by making the hero an average man.  It is an incredibly rare style, almost never used in modern books.

Linked, as usual are a hardcopy and a free online version of the text, as well as some brief videos on The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath.

 For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.