“Azathoth”: HP Lovecraft; story and analysis

“Azathoth”: HP Lovecraft; story and analysis.

Azathoth is a fantasy story by American writer HP Lovecraft (1890-1937), written in June 1922 and published posthumously by Arkham House in the 1943 anthology: Beyond the Wall of Sleep. ), and later reissued in the 1944 collection: Marginalia (Marginalia).

The name of Azathoth, one of the best-known creatures of both the Dream Cycle and the Cthulhu Mythos, makes its first and most spectacular appearance here.

For many, Azathoth is the tentative first page of a novel that HP Lovecraft He did not dare to write.

Some may argue that HP Lovecraft did write a novel: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward – and perhaps also At The Mountains of Madness – although we could argue that classification with irrefutable arguments. The true unpublished novel of HP Lovecraft It is found in the embryonic paragraphs of Azathoth.

According to the testimony of HP Lovecraft himself, expressed in his copious epistolary, the original intention of Azathoth was to operate as a preface to a horror novel in the style of the old gothic novels of an oriental style, perhaps paying homage to William Beckford’s classic: Vathek (Vathek ), where Azathoth would be a kind of demon-sultan banished from the circles of the physical world.

The truth is that that gothic novel never made it past the first page, which after HP Lovecraft’s death would be published under the name Azathoth.

Azathoth is, subjectively, one of the best tales in HP Lovecraft. The protagonist, whose name is never mentioned, lives in a small, oppressive room whose single window opens onto many other openings that press on each other. To look at the sky he must look up almost vertically. Night after night, dazzled by the stars, that man oppressed by the city and its architecture receives an unexpected visit that will free him from the suffocating bonds of his environment.

The story of Azathoth as a character in the Cthulhu Mythos, he starts from a simple note dated 1919. There HP Lovecraft wrote:

AZATHOT: hateful name.
(AZATHOTH: hidden name)

The origin of the name Azathoth It perhaps comes from the combination of the biblical names Anathoth and Azazel, a demon that is also mentioned in the story: The Dunwich Horror.

Other possible sources could be, in principle, the alchemical term Azoth, title of a notable book by Arthur Edward Waite, the author who would serve as inspiration for the sorcerer Ephraim Waite in the story: The Thing on the Doorstep. ; and, secondly, some creatures mentioned by Lord Dunsany in The Gods of Pegana.

Azathoth is known as: “the prime mover of chaos”, “the antithesis of creation”, “the foolish sultan of demons”; “he who gnaws, moans and drools in the center of the final void.” He is described as an amorphous, colossal and chaotic mass. The entire universe is part of his essence, which has not prevented a terrible curse from leaving him blind and idiotic, according to HP Lovecraft, “lobotomized.” Azathoth moves like a cloud that floats incessantly to the rhythm of blasphemous drums and flutes. Yog-Sothoth is one of the few gods with whom he maintains cordial relations.

HP Lovecraft mentions Azathoth in numerous stories, including The Whisperer in Darkness, The Dreams in the Witch House, and The Haunter. of the Dark).

Other authors belonging to the Lovecraft Circle also dealt with Azathoth, for example, in Hydra (Henry Kuttner), The Lurker at the Threshold (August Derleth), The Insects from Shaggai , Ramsey Campbell), The Snout in the Alcove, Gary Myers), The Sect of the Idiot, Thomas Ligotti), Azathoth (Azathoth, Edward Pickman Derby), Azathoth in Arkham (Azathoth in Arkham, Peter Cannon), The Revenge of Azathoth, Peter Cannon), The Pit of the Shoggoths, Stephen M. Rainey), The Madness Out of Time (Lin Carter), The Throne of Achamoth ( Richard L. Tierney and Robert M Price), The Last Night of Earth (The Last Night of Earth, Gary Myers), The Daemon-Sultan, Donald R. Burleson), The Space of Madness, Stephen Studach), The Nameless Tower, John Glasby), to name just a few.

Azathoth.
Azathoth, H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937)

When old age fell upon the world, and wonder left the minds of men; when gray cities raised tall towers, dark and gloomy, under whose mantles no one can dream of the sun, or the blossoming fields of spring; when knowledge stripped the earth of its carpet of beauty, and the poets sang nothing but distorted ghosts, seen with bleary eyes; When these things had passed, and the childhood longings had vanished forever, there was a man who spent his life searching for the spaces to which the dreams of the world had fled.

There is little recorded about the name and origin of this man, since that corresponded exclusively to the Awakened World, although it is believed that both were dark. It is enough to know that he lived in a city with high walls, where a barren twilight reigned; and who struggled daily among shadows and disturbances, returning home during the evening, to a room whose window did not open on grass and trees, but on a misty patio, upon which many other windows opened in painful despair.

From that window you could only see walls and windows, unless you leaned down to peer up into the heights, towards the timid stars that lived there. And since both the bare walls and the windows soon lead to madness (the man who reads and dreams too much), the tenant of this room used to look out night after night, observing the heights to catch a glimpse of some tiny part of the things that were more beyond the Awakened World.

As the years went by, he came to know the slow-moving stars by name, and to follow them with fantasy when, with regret, they slipped out of his sight; until finally, his eyes opened to that infinity of secret landscapes, whose existence the vulgar gaze never notices.

One night, the heavens covered with dreams rushed towards the window of the Solitary observer, to merge with the stale atmosphere of his bedroom, and make him participate in their ominous wonders.

Unknown streams of violet twilight arrived over the room, shining with clouds of gold; hurricanes of gold and fire swirling from the deepest spaces, flooded with perfumes from Beyond the universes. Opiate seas poured out there, illuminated by suns that eyes have never contemplated, sheltering between their revolutions strange fish and sea nymphs from forgotten abysses.

Silent eternity revolved around the dreamer, snatching him away without even touching the body that stood rigidly out of the solitary window; and for days not recorded by man’s calendars, the tides of the distant spheres transported him to reunite with the Dreams for which he had longed, the Dreams that man had lost. And in the course of a multitude of cycles, tenderly, they laid him sleeping on a green beach at dawn; a green, lush shore, exhaling sweet fragrances through the lotus buds and strewn with red camalotes…

H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937)

More about HP Lovecraft. I Cthulhu Mythos. I Short film about Azathoth.

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