THE DEEP ONES: "Polaris" by H.P. Lovecraft

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THE DEEP ONES: "Polaris" by H.P. Lovecraft

2AndreasJ
Fév 3, 2021, 8:44 am

Read this one from a epub I had lying on my e-reader, which turned out to be rather typo-riddled. Ah well.

Unusually for variants on the Butterly Dream, it seems that rather than it being undecidable which "reality" is really real, both are, and indeed are both the same, modulo some 26 000 years (Polaris indulges in some poetic license - a precessional cycle isn't exactly 26 000 years).

At about 80°N, Lomar is clearly in northern Greenland or the northern parts of the Canadian Arctic archipelago. The migration from Zobna cannot have been a long one - there isn't much land further north to place it in - and one wonders how "warm" Olathoë could be if Zobna was already glaciated.

In the real real world, the world of 26 000 BP was significantly colder than now, in the middle of the latest ice age. I wonder, though, if HPL might have been working on a pre-radiological timescale when this was thought to be towards the end of a warm period?

"Inutos" is of course intended to be a proto-form of "Inuit". It doesn't make much real-world sense, since we now know the Inuit arrived in the High Arctic only in medieval times (replacing the people bearing the so-called Dorset culture), but again it may have made more sense given the state of knowledge in 1920. (Also, an ethnonym being recognizable after 26 000 years is a bit of a stretch in itself.)

3semdetenebre
Modifié : Fév 3, 2021, 9:23 am

I just realized that the randomly generated tinyurl link up in >1 semdetenebre: makes use of a very Lovecratian-sounding "yyaefngl".

4RandyStafford
Fév 6, 2021, 2:42 pm

>2 AndreasJ: Somehow, when I read this years ago, I missed the whole significance of 26,000 years being tied to axial precession.

I'm wondering if the narrator's unsuitability to fight off, personally, the yellow hordes psychologically owes something to Lovecraft's very short stint in the military.

5AndreasJ
Fév 6, 2021, 3:23 pm

>4 RandyStafford:

Certainly, various critics have suggested that the “denied a warrior’s part” bit is autobiographical.

It’s also been suggested that the narrator’s predicament reflects Lovecraft’s fear of following his parents into the asylum.

6elenchus
Fév 6, 2021, 5:57 pm

I found this episode in HPL's Dream Cycle quite affecting, and his Dunsanian pastiche more effective than other efforts. I especially liked the suggestion that our world is the illusory or at least secondary one for the narrator: he belongs in Olathoë, and is trapped here, a precessional cycle later. Just as poignant was tying this abstract concept to the motif of Polaris, "which strives to convey some strange message, yet recalls nothing save that it once had a message to convey." In the opening paragraphs, these words are more mysterious than they are sinister, but by the end have become almost malevolent.

>2 AndreasJ: "Inutos" is of course intended to be a proto-form of "Inuit".

It's probably taking things too far to look for other parallels in the story. Beyond the point already made, that any linguistic similarity is highly suspect, I don't suppose HPL has in mind any specific history. Still, when he mentions "Esqimaux", it's tempting to then wonder about the "hairy, long-armed, cannibal Gnophkehs", the valley of Banof, the mountain peaks of Noton and Kadiphonek. I recall his descriptions in AtMoM could be traced generally to contemporary understanding of the geography at the South Pole.

7elenchus
Modifié : Fév 6, 2021, 6:26 pm

Reading the Tor.com article linked under MISCELLANY, a couple of interesting tidbits emerge.

First, evidently HPL hadn't yet read Dunsany, so my mention of pastiche at >6 elenchus: is inappropriate. Parallel evolution?!

Then, the commentary there suggested to me that this story isn't so much about the narrator's "time travel", that is: dreaming himself from a common location separated by two different time periods. Rather, it could be the narrator has been cursed by Polaris (a personage? a daemon? an ally of the Inutos?) to sleep, and only awaken after an axial cycle is over:
Only when my round is o’er
Shall the past disturb thy door

Anne's commentary in that piece repeated what was said above about HPL's autobiographical parallels to story points, so a good summary for someone like me who wasn't familiar with the particulars.

ETA The comments to the article include their own interesting tidbits, including about the contemporary understanding of the climate at the pole one axial cycle prior, as well as the suggestion that HPL's poem "Astrophobos" is kindred to this story.

8AndreasJ
Fév 7, 2021, 5:59 am

>7 elenchus:

I didn't read the comments on the Tor piece the first time, which turns out to have been a mistake. Thanks for prompting me to do so now.

Regarding the Gnophkehs, I've on previous reads taken them as non-human, something like CAS' voormis. I was likely influenced by the use of the name for a species of Arctic monsters in Chaosium's roleplaying game. But reading the story again, I guess that for all we're told here they might equally have been intended as a particularly low, apish, human race.

9WeeTurtle
Modifié : Avr 4, 2021, 5:08 am

I never really thought much about the astronomical details going on. From a completely ignorant perspective as far as influences, I've always enjoyed this piece as a sort of surreal side-step, sort of like the Matrix films. The fellow originally on watch is foiled by some supernatural effect of the stars, such as one might find in myths and legends and the like, and that memory is clinging to the individual who is now in a new situation that's papered over the old one.