There is an ambiguity maintained to the end of the tale as to whether the narrator’s friend actually existed or was merely a product of his imagination; but this point may not affect the analysis appreciably. The tale is, as with “The Other Gods,” one of hubris, although more subtly suggested. At one point the narrator states: “I will hint—only hint—that he had designs which involved the rulership of the visible universe and more; designs whereby the earth and the stars would move at his command, and the destinies of all living things be his.” If the friend really existed, then he is merely endowed with overweening pride and his doom—at the hands of the Greek god of sleep, Hypnos—is merited. On a psychological interpretation, the friend becomes merely an aspect of the narrator’s own personality; note how, after the above statement, he adds harriedly, “I affirm—I swear—that I had no share in these extreme aspirations”—a clear instance of the conscious mind shirking responsibility for its subconscious fantasies. Like “Beyond the Wall of Sleep,” the story features the notion that certain “dreams” provide access to other realms of entity beyond that of the five senses or the waking world.
An early entry in HPL’s commonplace book (#23) provides the plot-germ for the story: “The man who would not sleep—dares not sleep—takes drugs to keep himself awake. Finally falls asleep—& somethinghappens—” A recently discovered typescript of the tale bears the dedication “To S[amuel] L[oveman],” probably in recognition of his interest in Greek antiquity, evinced in much of his verse. See Steven J.Mariconda, “H.P.Lovecraft: Art, Artifact, and Reality,” LSNo. 29 (Fall 1993): 2–12.
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I
“Ibid.”
Short story (1,720 words); written probably in the summer of 1928. First published in O-Wash-TaNong(January 1938); rpt. Phantagraph(June 1940); first collected in Uncollected Prose and Poetry II(1980); corrected text in MW
In this “biography” of the celebrated Ibidus, the author is careful to point out that his masterpiece was not, as is sometimes believed, the Lives of the Poetsbut in fact the famous “ Op. Cit.wherein all the significant undercurrents of Graeco-Roman expression were crystallised once for all.” Ibid was born in 486 and taught rhetoric in Rome. His fortunes were mixed during the succession of barbarian invasions in Italy, and by 541 he had moved to Constantinople. He died in 587, but his remains later were exhumed and his skull began a long series of peregrinations and ended up—by way of Charlemagne, Alcuin, William the Conqueror, Oliver Cromwell, and others—in the New World, specifically in Salem, Mass., then in Providence, and finally in Milwaukee, where it rolled down into the burrow of a prairie-dog, only to be brought back to earth by a convulsion of Nature. HPL on one occasion dated this sketch to 1927 (see HPL to Maurice W.Moe, January 19, [1931]; AHT), but the first mention of it is in a letter by Moe to HPL dated August 3, 1928, so a date of 1928 seems more probable. The story was either included in a letter to Moe or was a separate enclosure in a letter to him; its epigraph (“‘…As Ibid says in his famous Lives of the Poets.’—From a student theme”) may refer to an actual statement from a paper by one of Moe’s students. HPL uses this real or fabricated piece of fatuity as the springboard for an exquisite tongue-in-cheek squib with numerous in-jokes (particularly in relation to HPL’s residence in Providence and Moe’s in Milwaukee). The target of the satire in “Ibid” is not so much the follies of students as the pomposity of academic scholarship. It is full of learned but preposterous footnotes and owlish references to real and fabricated historical events. Moe considered submitting the sketch to the American Mercuryor some such journal and asked
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HPL to revise it slightly; but later he and HPL concluded that revision for a commercial magazine was not possible and that the work “would have to be content with private circulation” (Maurice W.Moe to HPL, January 29, 1931; ms., JHL).
“Idealism and Materialism—A Reflection.”
Essay (4,310 words); written in 1919/20/21. First published in the National Amateur(“July 1919”); rpt. MW
Forceful essay presenting an anthropology of religion (derived largely from Nietzsche and from John Fiske’s Myths and Myth-Makers[1872]), asserting that religious belief is a holdover from primitive times in which human beings invented gods as a means of explaining natural phenomena, the causes of which they did not understand. HPL mentions his “seeing” a dryad in the woods near his home at the age of seven or eight, an anecdote repeated in “A Confession of Unfaith” (1922). Its date of composition is unknown: the July 1919 National Amateurwas long delayed and did not appear until the summer of 1921; as the issue also contained HPL’s “The Picture in the House” (December 1920), the essay could have been written in 1920 or early 1921.
“In a Major Key.”
Essay (1,050 words); probably written in the summer of 1915. First published in the Conservative (July 1915); rpt. MW
A response to Charles D.Isaacson’s In a Minor Keythat seeks to refute Isaacson’s claims that Walt Whitman is a great American thinker and poet, that race prejudice is an unmitigated evil, and that pacifism is a morally upright stance to take in the face of the European war. The essay contains an untitled poem (18 lines), which in a letter HPL titled “Fragment on Whitman” ( SL1.57), condemning the sexual elements in Whitman’s poetry.
“In a Sequestered Providence Churchyard Where Once Poe Walk’d.”
Acrostic poem (13 lines); written on August 8, 1936. First published in Four Acrostic Sonnets on Edgar Allan Poe(1936); rpt. Science-Fantasy Correspondent(March– April 1937; as “In a Sequestered Churchyard Where Once Poe Walked”); HPL(Bellville, N.J.: Corwin F.Stickney, 1937); WT(May 1938) (as “Where Poe Once Walked”).
The poem was written in St. John’s Churchyard in Providence, where HPL and his guests R.H.Barlow and Adolphe de Castro wrote acrostic “sonnets” (they lack one line for a true sonnet) to Poe. De Castro promptly send his to WT,where it was accepted; HPL’s and Barlow’s were rejected, as Farnsworth Wright only wished one such poem. Maurice W.Moe hectographed the three poems, along with one of his own, in Four Acrostic Sonnets on Edgar Allan Poe. Later Henry Kuttner wrote another.
See David E.Schultz, “In a Sequester’d Churchyard,” CryptNo. 57 (St. John’s Eve 1988): 26–29, which reprints all five poems.