7, No 2 (Whole Number 25).****Edited by Leigh Blackmorefor the SSWFT (Apr 30, 2012/45th mailing),& Esoteric Order of Dagon (Apr 30, 2012/158th mailing) Amateur Press Associations.***78 Rowland Ave, Wollongong, NSW 2500. Australia.***

“DRIVEN TO MADNESS WITH FRIGHT”:THE INFLUENCE OF POE’S “ULALUME”

ON LOVECRAFT’S “NEMESIS”

RIP HADES

RIP Michael Wykes

MANTICHORE 25Leigh Blackmore

Contact lvxnox@gmail.com/ leigh.blackmore@proofperfect.com.auProof Perfect Editorial Services: www.proofperfect.com.au; Facebook http://tiny.cc/ag50mLB at Australian Horror Writers Association:http://www.australianhorror.com/member_pages.php?page=86Official Website: Blackmausoleum – http://members.optusnet.com.au/lvxnox/Latest SSWFT news at: http://sswftapa.blogspot.com/LB’s library : http://www.librarything.com/profile/666777

This issue is dedicated to Michael Robert Wykes (1955-2012)and Hades Ravenhawk (d.2012) R.I.P.

Contents This Issue

Mantic Notes………………………………………………………………………...2“Driven to Madness with Fright: The Influence of Poe’s “Ulalume” on Lovecraft’s“Nemesis”” by Leigh Blackmore…………………………………………………..3

Mantic Notes(Pronunciation:'man-tik. Etymology: Greek mantikos, from mantis: of, relating to the faculty of divination; prophetic).

Little time to discuss happenings of the last three months, as I am rushing to meet thedeadline (geez, that’s a new feeling ). The main events I can recall were both good and bad. On theup side, we held a poetry reading at Owls Café in Wollongong (organized by local science fictionenthusiast and playwright Laura Goodin, to read ‘speculative poetry’. Most of the night wasdominated by weird poetry – yay! – read by poets ranging from myself and Margi Curtis to DannyLovecraft, Richard Harland, & Kyla Ward. No space here to post photos, but there is an album fromthe night at my Facebook page if anyone’ s keen to see. Also on the up side, Margi has participated innumerous exhibitions, selling a landscape she displayed at the Thirroul Seaside Arts Festival, andselling several different pieces at this year’s Tin Shed Art Gallery exhibition (the group of women sheregularly meets with to work). My business (Proof Perfect) has been slow but steady. I recently didmy first job for an overseas client – Edward Lipsett in Japan, who produces a beautiful horrormagazine (in Japanese) called NIGHT LAND. Graham continues to build his current theatre organ.On the ‘series of unfortunate events’ side, we had a flood just after the last mailing, resulting fromtorrential rains across NSW, which caused us to have to remove all our downstairs carpet in oneroom, since it began to rot once we had disposed of the intruding waters. Following that has been along process of deciding how to reseal the concrete floor, choosing and buying tiles, and beginning tolay them, most of which has been done by Graham. We’re halfway there. Further sad events occurredwhen on 12 April, Graham’s brother Michael passed away. Our beloved cat Hades, who had beenailing for some time, finally failed as well, on 19 April and it was necessary to assist him to return tothe Underworld whence he came. This issue is dedicated to them both.

This issue consists of my long essay on “Ulalume” and “Nemesis”. I wrote this back in Marchand revised it this week. There are a few wrinkles not yet ironed out, for which I beg indulgence untilI can completely finalise this piece. I’m not yet completely happy with the interior arrangement ofsections, either. However, I think the essay is in good enough shape to make it worthwhile presentinghere. Once again I must apologise for lack of mailing comments to both SSWFT and EOD members.No time! And special thanks to Scott Shaeffer, my Emergency Editor in SSWFT, for stepping up andcoordinating the Feb and April SSWFT mailings while I have been so inundated with other things.

“Driven to Madness with Fright”:

The Influence of Poe’s “Ulalume”

on Lovecraft’s “Nemesis”

By Leigh Blackmore © 2012

Lovecraft’s poem “Nemesis” (written “in thesinister small hours of the black morning afterthe Hallowe’en of 1917”) (HPL to ReinhardtKleiner, 8 Nov, 1917; SL I: 51) is often regarded

as one of his most effective weird poems.Like many of Lovecraft’s works, “Nemesis”

has had an impact on popular culture – the poem has influenced the lyrics of thesong “Slumber Soul” by metal band Surrender, and composer Huw Catchpole-Davies has set the work to haunting music in his “Nemesis: Song for Soprano andPiano” (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPEOzdAIYsw).

In the only critical study of “Nemesis” to date,Donald R. Burleson has examined the role of thenarrator’s persona within the poem, a narratorBurleson refers to as “a sort of dream-presence, apersona appearing to be an undyingembodiment of the collective unconscious, or atimeless dreamer who seems doomed to eternal

Illustration for "Ulalume" by W. Heath Robinson

Handbound edition of "Nemesis" by Lovecraft,

available from Etsy.com

memory by some primordial sin of the spirit.” (Burleson, 1990, 40). He also examinesvarious aspects of indeterminacy and self-subversion within the poem.

Burleson’s examination is valid and informative. However, I will here examine“Nemesis” from some points of view not touched on by Burleson’s essay. Firstly, Iwill examine the possible influence of other poems and poets (principally Swinburneand Poe) upon Lovecraft’s piece. I will go on touch on various technical devices ofboth “Nemesis” and “Ulalume” and on thematic issues and similarities between thetwo poems, as well as Lovecraft’s references to “Ulalume” in At the Mountains ofMadness. Lastly, I will explore the issues of sin/hubris, retribution and reincarnationin the poem.

To place “Nemesis” briefly in context, let us recall that inrelation to his fiction, 1917 was the period when Lovecraft,then aged 27, was resuming his writing of fiction after thelong hiatus since 1908’s “The Alchemist.” During 1917 he hadpenned “The Tomb” in June, “Dagon” in July, and “AReminiscence of Dr Samuel Johnson” in September. In Novof 1917, he applied to join the National Amateur PressAssociation. “Nemesis” was, as mentioned above, written on1 Nov, 1917 (as it happens, the day US soldiers were firstkilled in combat in WWI); it was published about six months

later in W. Paul Cook’s The Vagrant for June 1918.

It is notable that Lovecraft wrote his poem in the small hours of the morningfollowing Hallowe’en – technically 1 November, but at a time that could also beconsidered an extension of Hallowe’en itself – October 31. He wrote it, in fact, on “anight in the lonesome October” – the same night on which Poe’s poem is set. Line 25of “Ulalume” reads: “Ah! night of all nights” in the year.” Mabbot makes clear that“the night of all nights” is Hallowe’en, when the dead have power. (Mabbot, 422)Can it be mere coincidence that Lovecraft decided to write his poem, so influencedby Poe (as I will shortly demonstrate), at almost precisely the time that “Ulalume” isactually set? I think not. More likely, the timing was one of Lovecraft’s ways ofpaying tribute to Poe’s inspiration and memory – apart, of course, from the actualtextual clues we find in “Nemesis.”

Anapaestic and ‘Swinburnian’ Metre, and the Metrical Structure of “Nemesis”

Before turning to discussion of Poe’s influence on “Nemesis,” let us look at the issueof Algernon Swinburne’s influence on the poem. The influence of Swinburne’s poem“Hertha” on “Nemesis” has often been remarked. It is in terms of metre, not in termsof subject matter, that the influence can be observed, for Swinburne’s long (fortystanzas) poem is a pantheistic subversion of Christianity, in the form of a dramaticmonologue narrated by the Teutonic goddess of fertility or ‘EarthMother’. While Lovecraft would not have been out of sympathywith such subject matter, “Nemesis” itself dwells on differentthemes, as we shall see.

Lovecraft himself confessed to the metrical influence of “Hertha”on “Nemesis” in the same letter to Reinhardt Kleiner where hediscusses his poem’s composition.

Lovecraft was certainly familiar with Swinburne’s overall poeticoutput. He owned a Modern Library edition of Swinburne’s Poems, given to him byGeorge Kirk (Joshi, Lovecraft’s Library, item 859). Moreover, he had a high opinion ofSwinburne’s work: “It seems to me that A.C. Swinburne was the only real poet eitherin England or America since the death of Mr Poe” (Lovecraft, Selected Letters I, 73).Lovecraft saw Swinburne as one of the “wholly aesthetic-pagan tradition from Keatsto Baudelaire” to which his own literary ‘gang’ belonged. (Lovecraft, Selected LettersII, 276). He believed that “Of Swinburne, the earlier work is the best” (Lovecraft,Selected Letters III, 315), though elsewhere he writes that the English poet “babbledhimself out in repetition.”

S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz assert that “Nemesis” uses the actual metre ofSwinburne’s “Hertha” (Joshi and Schultz, 188). But this is not quite accurate. Theyare close in metre and metrical pattern, but not identical. The superficial similarityof metre in the two poems is mainly due to the use of the anapaest, a form oftrimeter (three feet or beats), where the first two are unaccented/unstressed, and thethird is accented/stressed (e.g. Da-da-DUM).

The first stanza of Hertha reads (accented feet shown in caps):

“I am THAT/ which beGAN/

Out of ME/the years ROLL;

Out of ME/ God and MAN;

I am EQU/al and WHOLE;

God CHANG/es, and MAN,/ and FORM/ of them BOD/i-ly; I /am the SOUL”.

It can easily be seen that the metrical structure of Swinburne’s poem variessomewhat from that of Lovecraft’s; “Hertha” has long final lines of 16 ‘feet’;Lovecraft final lines in “Nemesis” are even longer, consisting of six anapaests,totalling 18 ‘feet’. Lovecraft’s lines in “Nemesis” are purely anapaestic, whereasSwinburne’s last lines in “Hertha” mix four anapaests with two iambs, and thus arenot purely anapaestic. The metrical mixture of anapaests and iambs is mostcharacteristic of late-19th-century verse, particularly that of Swinburne in poemssuch as his “The Triumph of Time” and the choruses from “Atalanta in Calydon.”True, Swinburne also wrote several poems in more or less straight anapaests, withline-lengths varying from three feet ("Dolores") to eight feet ("March: An Ode"), but”Hertha” does not fit this pattern.

Neither do the short lines forming the first four lines of Swinburne’s stanzas (eachconsisting of six feet) conform to the pattern of Lovecraft’s lines in “Nemesis” (eachconsisting of nine feet). Swinburne does use the anapaest in each of his first fourlines of each stanza in “Hertha.” But he only uses two anapaests per line. Lovecraftuses three, and the rhythmic result of Lovecraft’s lines is therefore significantlyunlike Swinburne’s.

The metrical structure of Lovecraft’s lines in “Nemesis” is in fact a consistent threeanapaests (= nine feet) per line:

Through the GHOUL/- guarded GATE/ways of SLUM/[ber][catalexis]

Past the WAN/-mooned aBYSS/es of NIGHT

I have LIVED/o’er my LIVES/ without NUM/[ber],[catalexis]

I have SOUND/ed all THINGS/ with my SIGHT;

And I STRUG/gle and SHRIEK/ ere the DAY/break, being DRIV/en to MAD/ness withFRIGHT.

Though Lovecraft structures his stanzas in “Nemesis” as quintrains (or five-linedstanzas), with the last line consisting of six anapaests, they could equally well be setout as sextets (or six-lined stanzas), by dividing the long last line in half, whichwould then see each of the fifth and sixth lines consisting (as the first four lines do)

of three anapaests. His long last lines are basically doublings of the three-anapaeststructure of lines 1-4.

The only inconsistency in Lovecraft’s strict metric scheme is the extra beat or stresswhich comes at the end of his lines 1 and 3 in each stanza. This extra syllable at theend of a line is a device known as catalexis (see above).

Joshi states that Lovecraft’s poems “Festival” (published in slightly abridged form inWeird Tales as “Yule Horror”) “The House” and “The City” are written in the sameSwinburnian metre as “Nemesis.” (Joshi, I Am Providence, 657) All these poemscertainly use anapaestic metre, but there are some significant differences from poemto poem as well.

“The Festival” (1925), like “Nemesis,” is structured in quintrains. However, whereasin “Nemesis” lines 1-4 consist of three anapaests, “Festival” has stanzas consisting ofonly two anapaests in each of its first four lines. In this, it is admittedly similar toSwinburne’s “Hertha”:

There is SNOW/ on the GROUND,

And the VALL/eys are COLD,

And a MID/night proFOUND

Blackly SQUATS/ o’er the WOLD;

However, the final line of each stanza of “Festival” consists of six anapaests:

But a LIGHT/on the HILL/tops half-SEEN/ hints of FEAST/ings unHALL/ow’d and OLD.

This makes the structure of “Festival” a little different than that of Swinburne’s“Hertha.” They are similar in a general sense – the use of anapaest – but, as we havealready seen, “Hertha”’s final lines in each stanza consist of a mixture of anapaestand iamb (admittedly dominated by anapaests). Lovecraft has used a strictanapaestic metre throughout “Festival.”

Let us look at Lovecraft’s poem “The House” (1919). The first stanza reads:

’Tis a GROVE/-circled DWELL/ing [cathexis]

Set CLOSE/ to a HILL,

Where the BRAN/ches are TELL/ing [cathexis]

Strange LEG/ends of ILL;

Over TIM/bers so OLD

That they BREATHE/of the DEAD,

Crawl the VINES,/ green and COLD,

By strange NOUR/ishment FED;

And no MAN/ knows the JUIC/es they SUCK/ from the DEPTHS/ of their DANK/ slimyBED.

In “The House”, we have a variation of structure and metre which differs from both“Nemesis” and “Hertha”. Lovecraft has chosen to use a mixture of anapaests andiambs in this poem. Each stanza of this poem consists of nine lines, of which lines 1,3 and 5-9 inclusive use only anapaests, but with lines 2 and 4 consisting of an iambfollowed by an anapaest. Lines, 1, 3, and 5-8 consist of two anapaests per line (lines 1and 3 also have cathexis, or an unstressed final foot); while the final line, Line 9,consist of six anapaests (as do the final stanza lines in “Nemesis” and “Festival”).(This metre is consistent throughout the poem).

We can see that it might be acceptable in a general sense to refer to such a poembeing written “in the same Swinburnian metre as “Nemesis,” but that only applies toLovecraft’s overall use of anapaest in each poem. When we closely analyse linestructure and metre, we can see that ‘Hertha”, “Nemesis”, “Festival” and “TheHouse” all differ from each other in significant respects.

It is unnecessary to examine “The City” (1919), for while that poem employsanapaestic metre, there is an admixture of other forms of metre as well, and instructure it scarcely resembles the other Lovecraft poems mentioned.

“Nemesis” and “The Poe-et’s Nightmare”

In his Introduction to Lovecraft’s Fantastic Poetry (1990, 8), Joshi discusses the factthat Lovecraft’s poem “The Poe-et’s Nightmare” (1916) is really “the first instance ofLovecraft’s artistic expression of cosmicism”. Joshi quotes the lines:

..whirling ether bore in eddying streams

The hot, unfinish’d stuff of nascent worlds

as making clear the influence of Lucretius on the cosmic middle section of that poem.This is inarguably valid.

There are some discernible similarities between “Nemesis” and “The Poe-et’sNightmare”. The cyclical framework of “Nemesis,” which shows the narratorentering his dreams at the poem’s beginning and emerging from them at the end,with the poem’s core being the substance of his nightmares, rather resembles “ThePoe-et’s Nightmare”, in which Lucullus Languish experiences a cosmic nightmareafter partaking of both too much food and too much Poe.

“Nemesis”, however, presents a very unified and coherent account of the dream (orspirit) voyagings of the narrator, leaving it to the reader to experience the horror ofthe narrator’s state, without wagging an admonishing finger at the reader, as does“The Poe-et’s Nightmare.” Consequently, “Nemesis” is all the more powerful as aweird but objectively-related narrative.

The two poems also differ in various respects. Firstly, in “Nemesis” Lovecraftdispensed with the extended comical framework he used in “The Poe-et’sNightmare” and which significantly detracts from the dramatic and horrific impactof that poem’s middle section (which is why he later preferred to publish only themiddle section, under its subtitle of “Alethia Phrikodes.”) In “Nemesis.” the singlestanza operating as a frame either end of the middle nightmare section is consistentwith the overall tone and subject matter of the poem. Such consistency demonstratesLovecraft’s increasing mastery of this sort of material, making “Nemesis” anextremely effective piece of work.

In a second difference from “The Poe-et’s Nightmare”, the shortening of the actualparenthetical framework in “Nemesis” to a single recapitulated stanza (as opposedto the prolix framework, penned in couplets, of “The Poe-et’s Nightmare”, whosebeginning section runs to 76 lines and whose coda runs to 38 lines) makes “Nemesis”a far superior example of the framing technique, for both clarity and concision ofartistic effect.

Lastly, as opposed to the trite moralistic tone which mars the end of “The Poe-et’sNightmare” with its:

Curb your rash force, in numbers or at tea

Not overzealous for high fancies be…

Lest ye, like young Lucullus Languish, groan

Beneath Poe-etic nightmares of your own,”

“Nemesis” does not point a moral, but only describes the protagonist’s entrapmentin the endless cycle of existence.

Poetical Devices in “Nemesis”

The metrical scheme used by Lovecraft in “Nemesis,”rather than that of Swinburne’s “Hertha,” is observablyfar closer to that used by Poe in his classic “Ulalume.”Lovecraft’s letter to Reinhardt Kleiner of Nov 8, 1917(previously cited), in which Lovecraft discusses thecomposition of the piece, says that the poem “has a verydifferent metre and appeal.” (SL I:51). Lovecraft opinesthat he shall probably send the piece to W. Paul Cook’sThe Vagrant “since Cook seems so fond of the unusual.”(SL I: 51). But most revealingly, in discussing his metricalscheme for the poem, Lovecraft says “The hybrid metre,a cross betwixt that of Poe’s “Ulalume” and Swinburne’s“Hertha”, ought to satisfy the couplet-hating souls of yourself & Mo!” (SL I: 52).Here we have the truth – that “Nemesis” was influenced metrically by bothSwinburne and Poe.

It is highly surprising that the influence of “Ulalume “upon “Nemesis” appears tohave been overlooked in favour of that of “Hertha,” since “Ulalume,” in addition toits metrical similarities, has far more textual points of similarity with Lovecraft’spoem, which point to it being the greater influence on “Nemesis”.

Let us consider some other technical aspects of “Nemesis” as verse. Firstly,Lovecraft’s use of alliteration in “Nemesis” is nothing less than delicious. Adorningthe first stanza are such phrases as phrases as “ghoul-guarded gateways,” “soundedall things with my sight,” and “struggle and shriek”; while the poem’s subsequentstanzas are darkly bejewelled by such alliterative phrases as “sinister grey-cloudedskies,” “barren and bleak,” “frog-foetid fountains,” “marsh and the main,”“mouldering meadows,” “grave-girdl’d ground,” and “the sin of my spirit”. Andthis takes account of only one poetic technique utilised in “Nemesis.”

Secondly, the technique of anaphora (that is, the deliberate repetition of words orphrases at the beginning of successive clauses) is another rhetorical deviceeffectively used by Lovecraft in the poem. The repetition of actions the narrator hastaken include “I have liv’d,” “I have sounded,” “I have whirl’d,” “I have seen,” “Ihave drifted,” “I have plung’d,” “I have stumbled,” “I have drunk,” “I havescann’d,” “I have trod,” “I have peer’d,” “I have haunted,” and – in two lines of thesecond-to-last stanza, the repetition of “I was old.” In other uses of this techniquewithin the poem we have the repetition of the phrase “where the...” twice withinstanza 2, once in stanza 3, once in stanza 6, and once more in stanza 8.

Lovecraft effectively lends emphasis via this technique to the endlessly repetitivenature of the various places, times and scenes through which the narrator (or itssoul/spirit) (or “dream presence” in Burleson’s terminology) travels. The narratortravels from the waking to the dream state, from the very “earth at the dawning”,through seas, forests, mountains, palaces and tombs, to the icy regions of theAntarctic (“where the smoke-belching Erebus rages”) and the scorching regions ofthe desert (“where the sun of the desert consumes”)— both in stanza 8 – to the“infinite aeons” of what is effectively the poem’s last line (excepting therecapitulation of the first stanza as the last).

By contrast to such devices as anapaestic metre, alliteration and anaphora, the actualrhyme scheme of “Nemesis” is unremarkable. Lovecraft rhymes such words as“slumber” and “number”, “night and “sight” and “fright” in the first stanza. Therhymes in the following stanzas are for the most part equally simple, though thepresent participles in stanzas 2 and 3 are effective: “dawning” with “yawning”, and“ending” with “rending.” The false rhyme of “palace” with “valleys” in six is ratherlax, unless it reflect some peculiar Yankee pronunciation of Lovecraft’s which madethe rhyme sound closer than it really is. (One notes that in “Ulalume”, Poe rhymes“Titanic” with “Yaanek” – no doubt due to his particular regional accent.)

The Poetical Merits of “Nemesis”

S.T. Joshi has commented that “Nemesis” is “vague and insubstantial, and lapsesinto bombast and obscurity” (Joshi, Subtler Magick, 231-32). This seems an odd thingto say of a poem often considered one of Lovecraft’s finest weird productionsoutside of the “Fungi from Yuggoth” cycle.

For one thing, vagueness, suggestiveness and indefiniteness are of often componentsof effective weird fiction – why not, then, of weird verse as well? The Italian scholarMassimo Berruti recently devoted a whole section of his critical study of Lovecraft’s

friend Robert H. Barlow to the quality of vagueness as one of the “essential aestheticaspect[s] of Barlow’s narratives, pointing out that it was Lovecraft who taughtBarlow the importance of vagueness – and of the depiction of a mood – whenwriting weird fiction. If mood and atmosphere are aesthetically “all” in weird fiction,with plot being “inartistic” and “excess baggage” (as Lovecraft often wrote orcommented to Barlow), how much more so is it justified that weird poem be “apicture of a mood”? In a weird story, wrote Lovecraft – and his aesthetic view appliesequally to weird verse – “Prime emphasis should be given to subtle suggestion –imperceptible hints and touches of selective associative detail which expressshadings of moods and build up a vague illusion (emphasis mine) of the strangereality of the unreal” (Lovecraft, “Notes on the Writing of Weird Fiction”, Marginalia,1379). The same essay begins with the statement that “My reason for writing storiesis toi give myself the satisfaction of visualising more clearly and detailedly andstbaly the vague, elusive, framentary (emphasis mine) impressions of wonder, beautyand adventurous expectancy which are conveyed to me by certain sights (scenic,architecttural, atmpospheric, etc.) ideas, occurrences and images encountered in artand Literature (Marginalia, 135). Let us recall that it was the very qualities ofvagueness and indeterminacy which Lovecraft valued so highly in such stories asAlgernon Blackwood’s “The Willows” and Robert H. Barlow’s “The Night Ocean.”In his own story “The Green Meadow” (which, as Stefan Dziemanowicz has shown,soewhat anticipates themes & motifs of Blackwood’s “The Willows”), the nature ofthe awesome presence the narrator of the “The Green Meadow” sees in the forestbehind him is “sentient impulses of a vast vague kind”.

For another thing, despite the charge of obscurity, “Nemesis” has a quite discernibleplot, beginning with the narrator’s confession that has he “lived o’er his liveswithout number,” and moving on through the various scenes which over the aeonshe has witnessed and experienced. The majority of these scenes are perfectlyconcrete in nature, including: the beginnings of the universe, the seas, the grey-clouded skies, the many-forked lightning, the hoary primordial grove and its oaks,the cave-ridden mountains and the frog-foetid fountains, the ivy-clad palace, themoon and the valleys, the many-roofed village with its cemetery filled with whiteurn-carven marble, not to mention the Pharaohs’ “jewel-decked throne by the Nile.”

Perhaps Joshi objects to the indefinite nature of certain forces that trouble thenarrator during his wanderings – for instance in stanza three, the narratorencounters “invisible daemons”; in stanza four, he says “I flee from a thing thatsurrounds me, and leers through dead branches above” without defining the exact

nature of this thing; in stanza six, he sees strange figures “discordantly woven” inthe tapestries on the wall – figures that he “cannot endure to recall.” Or perhaps theobjection is made in reference to the narrator/persona’s motivation or exact form,which are admittedly somewhat unclear. But we know from the poem that thenarrator has a consciousness – whether embodied or disembodied is difficult to say.Lovecraft’s intention seems to have been to deliberately create an ambience ofindefiniteness around the nature of this consciousness, though he does provide someclues in the final stanzas which we shall discuss later.

Really, the answer to the charge of vagueness and obscurity, a quality which iscommon to the horrors in many of Lovecraft’s works, is clearly set out in Lovecraft’sphilosophical story “The Unnamable”(1923) by its narrator: “And since spirit, inorder to cause all the manifestations attributed to it, cannot be limited by any of thelaws of matter; why is it extravagant to imagine psychically living dead things inshapes—or absences of shapes—which must for human spectators be utterly andappallingly “unnamable”?” As for “Nemesis”, I would argue that the poem has aninterior thematic coherence and strength which place it above such criticisms as“bombast and obscurity.”

Joshi is not the only critic to have judged “Nemesis” less effective than it might havebeen. L. Sprague de Camp, too, criticised “Nemesis,” which he regarded as a Poepastiche, because “despite a good, swinging rhythm, “Nemesis” (probably inspiredby Poe’s “Ulalume”) is not only painfully derivative but also uses the gallopinganapaestic metre. This is fine for Browning’s “Boot, saddle, to horse and away!” butunsuited to Lovecraft’s somber subject.” (de Camp, 124). A more valid criticism thande Camp’s of the application of anapaestic metre to weird verse might well be thatthat it is oft-times used in English verse is as a comic metre. Examples include thefoot of the limerick, “The Hunting of the Snark” by Lewis Carroll, the nonsensepoems of Edward Lear, and the poems of T.E. Eliot’s Book of Practical Cats.Nevertheless, I would argue that Lovecraft’s use of anapaest in “Nemesis” is highlyeffective and strengthens rather than weakens the weird effect. Not only does itreinforce the sonorous, rolling nature of the planets spoken of in stanza 2, but itprovides a feeling of rhythmical motion which accords well with the narrator spirit’sjourneyings through space and time. Lovecraft, in my view, succeeds in making hismetrical scheme dignified and portentous, as befits his subject matter in this poem –quite an accomplishment given his choice of metre.

Another criticism of “Nemesis” is made by Joshi in his introduction to Lovecraft’sFantastic Poetry. He criticises both “The Rutted Road” (a poem of 1917) and

“Nemesis” as “deserving of Winfield Townley Scott’s censure: “To scare is a slimpurpose in poetry.” (Lovecraft, Fantastic Poetry, 9). Joshi adheres to this opinion of“Nemesis” as late as 2008 (Joshi, Emperors ofDreams, 33). I am unsure why Joshi does not seegreater merits in “Nemesis” (which is brilliantly,illustrated, by the way, by Jason C. Eckhardt, inJoshi’s edition of The Fantastic Poetry) butperhaps it is a matter of taste.

Townley Scott’s criticism of Lovecraft’s weirdverse has always struck me as rather inane; onecould equally well say “to scare is a slim purposein fiction.” Lovecraft himself, however,demonstrated the aesthetic significance of theweird tale; the aesthetic significance of thesubgenre of the weird poem is just as valid,though the purpose of such verse may be partlyor even solely to “scare.” Scott might also havewritten “To entertain is a slim purpose in literature” – well, yes, so it may be; butmany writers find this “slim purpose” all the motivation they need to create worksof literature. For a horror writer and weird poet such as Lovecraft, what is more

natural than that in his weird verse he wouldseek to “scare” – or unsettle – the reader? Thisobject is in perfect harmony with the object ofhis weird fiction— to creatively deliver, via abuildup of atmospheric language andconception, those feelings of dread which heso valued, as expressed in his famous dictumin Supernatural Horror in Literature:

“A certain atmosphere of breathless andunexplainable dread of outer, unknownforces must be present; and there must be a

hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of thatmost terrible conception of the human brain – a malign and particular suspension ordefeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against theassaults of chaos and the dæmons of unplumbed space." (Lovecraft, AnnotatedSupernatural Horror, 23).

The second stanza of “Nemesis” (which Lovecraft would quote as the epigraph tohis Nov 1935 story “The Haunter of the Dark,” indicating his continued fondness forthe poem across a span of nearly twenty years) is surely at least as redolent of theinfluence of Lucretius, and as representative of Lovecraft’s increasingly crystallisingcosmic philosophical attitude, as those lines from “The Poe-et’s Nightmare” pennedtwo years earlier. The second stanza of “Nemesis” reads:

I have whirl’d with the earth at the dawning

When the sky was a vaporous flame,

I have seen the dark universe yawning,

Where the black planets roll without aim;

Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name.

The utilisation of the last three lines of this stanza as the epigraph to Lovecraft’s tale“The Haunter of the Dark” (1935) foreshadows the cosmic nature of the mystery thatwill be unveiled in that story, with its extra-terrestrial creature worshipped by theStarry Wisdom cultists via the medium of the Shining Trapezohedron. And giventhat “Nemesis” is also to some extent a poem on the dangers of hubris and sin,Lovecraft may have used the poem fragment to hint that Robert Blake’s curiosity inseeking the mysteries of the Starry Wisdom church was a form of hubris which ledinevitably to his downfall.

Edgar Allan Poe and “Ulalume”

Let us now turn to aconsideration of Poe’spoem “Ulalume”(written December 1847).It is one of his mostfamous verses; criticism on it runs to at least thirty-fiveseparate essays by diverse hands (For a list seehttp://www.eapoe.org/works/info/pp087.htm).

”Ulalume” was written late in the same year that Poe’syoung wife, Virginia Clemm, died (she died in January 1847)

and probably reflects to some extent the poet’s brooding on her death and burial.

It is a dreamlike ballad of 104 lines which presents a psychologically divided poet inconflict with his soul over his temptation to escape the memory of his dead lover,

Ulalume, by pursuing new hope and new love under theinfluence of Astarte, the moon goddess. The story of Poe’spoem is fundamentally that (paraphrasing Mabbott’sdescription) in October of a year when recollection isdifficult, in the imaginary realm of music and painting theprotagonist and his soul walk together through a strangelandscape. It is Hallowe’en (when the dead have power),and as dawn approaches they see the planet of love in thesky. She is seen as warmer than the moon and as havingescaped from the turmoil of lust. The soul distrusts Venusbut is claimed by reasoning until stopped by a tomb, nowseen to be that of the protagonist’s lost love. The question isasked whether the ghouls (friendly to living people) havecalled up a phantom of hope to save the walkers frommemory of an irreparable loss. (Mabbott, 414).

The publication history of Poe’s “Ulalume” is too complicated to reiterate here. (Fora full discussion see Mabbott, 409-15). But after it was initially publishedanonymously in George Hooker Colton’s magazine The American Review (Dec 1847),it was reprinted in the Home Journal of Jan 1, 1848 with a query about its authorship(the query being at Poe’s request). It was thereafter, in Providence RI – Lovecraft’shome town – that Poe first wrote his name asauthor in the copy of the American Review at theProvidence Athenaeum; the actual signed copy ispreserved there.

Poe also discussed the poem with HelenWhitman, finally arranging to have it reprintedas his own in the Providence Journal of November

22, 1848. Apart from the well-established generalinfluence that Poe as a writer had on Lovecraft,we might conjecture that the appearance of“Ulalume” under Poe’s name in the verynewspaper of Lovecraft’s hometown (albeit nearlyseventy years earlier) may well have influencedLovecraft’s decision to partly base his metricalstructure in “Nemesis” on that of “Ulalume.”

Ulalume (1847)

by Edgar Allan Poe(1809-1849)

The skies they were ashen and sober;The leaves they were crisped and sere-

The leaves they were withering and sere;It was night in the lonesome October

Of my most immemorial year;It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,

In the misty mid region of Weir-It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Here once, through an alley Titanic,Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul-Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.

There were days when my heart was volcanicAs the scoriac rivers that roll-As the lavas that restlessly roll

Their sulphurous currents down YaanekIn the ultimate climes of the pole-

That groan as they roll down Mount YaanekIn the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober,But our thoughts they were palsied and sere-

Our memories were treacherous and sere-For we knew not the month was October,And we marked not the night of the year-

(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)We noted not the dim lake of Auber-

(Though once we had journeyed down here),Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,

Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

And now, as the night was senescent,And star-dials pointed to morn-As the star-dials hinted of morn-

Illustration for Ulalume by W. Heath Robinson

At the end of our path a liquescentAnd nebulous lustre was born,

Out of which a miraculous crescentArose with a duplicate horn-

Astarte's bediamonded crescentDistinct with its duplicate horn.

And I said-"She is warmer than Dian:She rolls through an ether of sighs-

She revels in a region of sighs:She has seen that the tears are not dry on

These cheeks, where the worm never dies,And has come past the stars of the Lion,

To point us the path to the skies-To the Lethean peace of the skies-Come up, in despite of the Lion,

To shine on us with her bright eyes-Come up through the lair of the Lion,

With love in her luminous eyes."

But Psyche, uplifting her finger,Said-"Sadly this star I mistrust-Her pallor I strangely mistrust:-Oh, hasten!-oh, let us not linger!Oh, fly!-let us fly!-for we must."

In terror she spoke, letting sink herWings until they trailed in the dust-

In agony sobbed, letting sink herPlumes till they trailed in the dust-

Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

I replied-"This is nothing but dreaming:Let us on by this tremulous light!

Let us bathe in this crystalline light!Its Sybilic splendor is beaming

With Hope and in Beauty to-night:-See!-it flickers up the sky through the night!

Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,And be sure it will lead us aright-We safely may trust to a gleaming

That cannot but guide us aright,Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,And tempted her out of her gloom-

And conquered her scruples and gloom;And we passed to the end of the vista,

But were stopped by the door of a tomb-By the door of a legended tomb;

And I said-"What is written, sweet sister,On the door of this legended tomb?"

She replied-"Ulalume-Ulalume-'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"

Then my heart it grew ashen and soberAs the leaves that were crisped and sere-

As the leaves that were withering and sere-And I cried-"It was surely October

On this very night of last yearThat I journeyed-I journeyed down here-

That I brought a dread burden down here-On this night of all nights in the year,

Ah, what demon has tempted me here?Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber-

This misty mid region of Weir-Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,

This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."

"Ulalume" is a ballad, a poem that tells a story. Like other ballads, "Ulalume"includes refrains (repetition of key phrases). Although the poem is not intended tobe sung, its rhyme, rhythm, repetition, and alliteration give it a musical quality.

Regarding its title, some critics have surmised that the name comes from the verb"ululate", meaning to cry loudly. Another of the many explanations given for Poe’sderivations of the word “Ulalume” is that “Ul-ul-loo” (variously spelled) is a Gaelicphrase of wailing. (See Mabbot, pp. 419-20 for this and further speculations on thesource of the name). (Interestingly, and aside, the Gaelic phrase is found liberallyused, as “Ou lou lou,” throughout the fantasy stories of M. John Harrison’sViriconium sequence). If one accepts this derivation, and recalling that Lovecraftpronounced his later invention Cthulhu as something akin to “Klew-loo”: “The u issimilar to that in full; with the first syllable not unlike klul in sound, hence the hrepresents the guttural thickness” (H. P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters V, pp. 10 – 11.),

one might conjecture that the title of Poe’s poem may even have influenced thecreation of Lovecraft’s Great Old One itself!

Another popular suggestion for the basis of the name “Ulalume” is that Poe simplyused a Latin stem of some kind which he then ended with ume (pronounced oom) sothat the word would rhyme with other words in the poem, gloom and tomb, andrhyme with an unspoken word that looms over the poem: doom. The vowel in umealso rhymes with the vowels in ghoul.

Some of the principal figures of speech we find in "Ulalume" include: alliteration -

Of my most immemorial year (Line 5, Stanza 1)Our talk had been serious and sober (Line 1, Stanza 3)

anaphora:

It was night in the lonesome OctoberOf my most immemorial year;

It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,In the misty mid region of Weir-

It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Simile - There were days when my heart was volcanic / As the scoriac rivers that roll-

and personification/metaphor: (reference to thesoul, Psyche, as a person).

Atmosphere and Word Choice in “Ulalume”

The atmosphere of "Ulalume" is not only bleakand depressing but also mysterious andotherworldly. To create this atmosphere, Poeused words connoting decay, disease, death,destruction, loneliness, and suffering; hecombines them with words connotingvagueness, ethereality, and mystery. Among thewords enabling Poe to create his nightmarishpoem are ashen, withering, lonesome, dim, misty,dank, ghoul-haunted, sulphurous, groan, agony,sorrowfully, senescent, liquescent, nebulous, andLethean. The phrase mid region in Stanzas 1 and 9

Illustration for "Ulalume" by W. Heath Robinson

seems to suggest a place halfway between the world and the underworld.

Likewise, in “Nemesis,” Lovecraft used words connoting fear, terror and suffering,combining them with words connoting vagueness, ethereality and mystery.Lovecraft’s significant word-choices in this regard include: ghoul-guarded, wan-mooned, abysses, struggle, shriek, madness, whirled, horror, sinister, hysterical, invisible,hoary, primordial, presence, stalks, flee, leers, dead, stumbled, barren, bleak, frog-foetid, ooze,cursed, untenanted, discordantly, peered, mouldering, grave-girdled, haunted, fear, rages,drear, vile, doom, infinite, aeons, unmerciful, and gloom.

Rhyme Scheme and Metre in “Ulalume”

Poe uses end rhyme throughout his poem. In each stanza, the first line rhymes withthe fourth, and the second line rhymes with the third. The rhyme scheme of otherlines varies, since not all stanzas have the same length.

However, the most notable element of “Ulalume”’s form comes in its use ofvariations of rhyme and of repetition. The rhyme scheme makes frequent use notonly of end rhyme but also of repetition of words. For example, the first stanza'srhyme scheme is A1 B1 B1 A2 B2 A3 B3 A3 B3, where B1 is the repetition of the word"sere," A3 is the repetition of "Auber," and B3 is the repetition of "Weir." All ninestanzas begin with A1 B1 B1 A2 as the scheme of the first four lines, and the rest ofthe verses' schemes are all very similar. Poe also repeats much of the description ofsetting in the first stanza in the third and last verses, giving the poem a circular formthat parallels his metaphorical voyage of a year and return to Ulalume's grave.

The metre also varies, but Poe relies mainly on anapaestic feet, sometimes mixedwith iambic feet. (As we have seen, Swinburne tended to use this mixture, butLovecraft usually used unmixed anapaestic metre where he used anapaests at all).The rhythm of "Ulalume" consists mainly of dactyls (which consists of one accentedfollowed by two unaccented syllables), and of anapaests (which reverse the patternwith two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one). Catalexis (an extrasyllable at the end of a line) occurs occasionally. Following are examples:

....iamb..... | ....anapaest....... |....anapaest. | .catalexisThe SKIES | they were ASH | en and SO | ber

........anapaest...... | .......anapaest....... | ...anapaest.....| .catalexisThere were DAYS | when my HEART | was vol CAN | .ic

......iamb......... | ....anapaest..... |........anapaestThough ONCE | we had JOUR | neyed down HERE

Despite the admixture of iambs in certain places, the principal metre of “Ulalume” isanapaestic, thus Lovecraft’s “Nemesis” is closely akin to it in this regard.

Critical response to “Ulalume” has been varied, just as to Lovecraft’s “Nemesis”.Eric Carlson reminds us that it was roundly attached by Aldous Huxley as the heightof “vulgarity” in literature, by Yvor Winters as a prime example of Poe’s deliberateobscurantism and by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren as a flagrant exampleof cheap mystification, but that on the other hand, ““Ulalume” is invariablyanthologised as one of Poe’s best poems –- one of his two or three finest. Some havecriticised its allegedly gross defects of trite diction, heavy meter, overuse of rime andcloying sounds, and general effect of theatricality; yet other critics have argued thatthese defects are as nothing as compared to Poe’s special hypnotic purpose and thelasting influence of his theory and practice on modern verse.” (Carlson, “Symbol andSense”, 22.)

Where there is so much room for debate on the merits of a poem by Poe, it is hardlysurprising that different critics may view several of Lovecraft’s verses in differentlights according to their individual standards and tastes.

Amusingly enough, though Lovecraft probably didn’t know if it (there is noreference to Hart in the Selected Letters) author Bret Harte (1836-1902) composed aparody of Poe’s poem entitled "The Willows" featuring the narrator, in the companyof a woman called Mary, running out of credit at a bar:

“And I said ‘What is written, sweet sister,

At the opposite side of the room?’

She sobbed, as she answered, “all liquors

Must be paid for ere leaving the room.”

Textual Similarities in “Ulalume” and “Nemesis”

In “Nemesis”, there is a clear echo of Poe’s lines from “Ulalume” about Mt Yaanek inLovecraft’s repetition of the word “roll” in the last two lines of this stanza, as theblack planets “roll without aim” and “roll in their horror unheeded.” Not only is thisa choice instance of anaphora (the deliberate repetition of a word or phrase, foremphasis, at the beginning of successive verses, clauses or paragraphs) but itirresistibly recalls the repetition of the word “roll” in Poe’s lines from stanza 2 of

“Ulalume”: the section of Poe’s poem where the narrator compares his “volcanicheart” to “the lavas that roll down Mount Yaanek.”

As the scoriac rivers that ROLL –

As the lavas that restlessly ROLL-

Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek

In the ultimate clime of the pole

That groan as they ROLL down Mount Yaanek

In the realms of the boreal pole.

Poe uses the word “roll” here both as an end-rhyme, at lines 1 and 2 (a word en-rhyming with itself is technically called “identical rhyme“) and as an internal rhyme,in line 5, as well rhyming it with “pole” in lines 4 and 6. Lovecraft has varied theusage by making his repetition of “roll” an internal rhyme but the similarity ofphraseology in the two poems can hardly go unnoticed.

All this being said, Lovecraft does not thematically follow “Ulalume” in “Nemesis”on every level. Poe’s poem, for instance, is replete with symbolism from Grecianmythology – Titan, Psyche, Lethe, Sibyls, etc, as well as astrological symbolismregarding the planets Venus and the sign of Leo. This is not symbolism whichLovecraft chose to imitate in “Nemesis,” despite his own fondness for Grecianmythology.

Cosmic Philosophy, Reincarnation and the Horrors of InfiniteAge in “Nemesis”

Furthermore, Lovecraft’s adoption of the verb “roll” apropos theplanets is far more cosmic than Poe’s conception. Poe utilises themetaphor of lava rolling down the sides of the volcanic Mt Yaanekto symbolise the restiveness of his narrator’s heart – a purelyphysical and earth-based metaphor for a human emotion.

However, in Lovecraft’s poem, human emotions play no part – orat least are dwarfed by the enormous forces of creation and cyclicexistence that are the narrator’s fate. In “Nemesis,” it is not merely

lavas that roll, but the planets themselves, rolling gigantically in their orbits – anextrapolation undreamed of by Poe. The planets are “without knowledge or lustre orname” because the narrator of “Nemesis” is the only witness to them – no other lifehas yet appeared in the universe, hence the planets have not been observed ornamed by any living being (divine or otherwise). The planets are nameless – in fact,“unnameable” – because the narrator (himself nameless) is observing the planets ofthe cosmos at its very creation, “at the dawning, when the sky was a vaporousflame.”

The fact that the planets roll “without aim” also emphasises Lovecraft’s mechanistmaterialist philosophy as regards the process of creation. There is no divine Creatorguiding the planets in their courses, only blind idiot force – the force that Lovecraftfrequently personified (if one can use such a term) as “Azathoth.” Indeed, the“aimless” nature of the planets in “Nemesis” merely foreshadows such ofLovecraft’s works as “Azathoth”, the 22nd poem of the “Fungi from Yuggoth”sequence, with its:

They danced insanely to the high, thin whining

Of a cracked flute clutched in a monstrous paw,

Whence flow the aimless waves whose chance combining [emphasis mine]

Gives each frail cosmos its eternal law.

“Nemesis” is therefore imbued with a cosmic quality not unlike that which we findin Clark Ashton Smith’s cosmic verse. Joshi is of the view that Lovecraft becameaware of the abysmal inferiority of his verse to Smith’s (Joshi, Subtler Magick, 222).This is true, but “Nemesis” was nevertheless a worthy effort in this vein. Lovecraftfirst wrote to Smith in August 1922, so the penning of “Nemesis” predates thatcorrespondence by around five years – a testament to Lovecraft’s own originalimaginative power in weird verse.

The opening stanza of “Nemesis” is resoundingly effective in its evocation of thephilosophical concept known as “the eternal return.” The lines

I have liv’d o’er my lives without number,

I have sounded all things with my sight;

evoke a vision of endlessly repeated cycles of incarnation which can be found inmany other places in Lovecraft’s work – in the poems “The House” (1919) and in

“Recapture” (Nov 1929) from the Fungi from Yuggoth sequence, to name but two. Iwill deal further with the theme of reincarnation in “Nemesis” later.

Such lines as “I have haunted the tombs of the ages” and:

“I was old when the Pharaohs first mounted

The jewel-deck’d throne by the Nile;

I was old in those epochs uncounted when I, and I only, was vile,”

tie in to the theme of vast epochs of time which Lovecraft often associates in hiswork with feelings of horror. Lovecraft wrote: “The reason why time plays so great apart in so many of my tales is that this element looms up in my mind as the mostprofoundly dramatic and grimly terrible thing in the universe. Conflict with timeseems to me the most potent and fruitful theme in all human expression.” (“Noteson the Writing of Weird Fiction,” Marginalia, 135).

Lovecraft’s works do not always display a horror of time’s vast extent. A notableexception to this theme in his work is the sonnet “Continuity” (the 36th and last ofthe sonnets in the “Fungi from Yuggoth” cycle), where the poet, rather than beinghorrified by contemplation of the aeons confesses himself emotionally moved by theslanting beams of light which fall on an old barn:

“In that strange light I find myself not far

From the fixt mass whose sides the ages are.”

In these lines, which verges on capturing a mystical experience experienced by thepoet, we detect a latent tendency in Lovecraft to be affected by what theologianRudolf Otto called “the numinous,” despite Lovecraft’s avowed disbelief in anyshred of supernatural or religious belief.

But such a sentiment as this anent the flow of time is rare in Lovecraft’s work. Moreoften, as in “Nemesis”, we find time and history as sources of not simply awe andwonder, but of terror Consider, for instance, the opening lines of the story ‘”TheFestival” (1923): “It was the Yuletide, that men call Christmas though they know intheir hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind”(italics mine), where Lovecraft implies that the very ancientness of the ritualsomehow associates it with horrors beyond the ken of humankind; or indeed, hisfrequently-expressed conviction that that any place or thing that is very old isintrinsically horrible, as in “The Outsider” (1921) with its line in the second

paragraph: ‘I know not where I was born, save that the castle was infinitely old andinfinitely horrible…”. (italics mine). This horror of infinite oldness is closely related tothe concept of “strange aeons”, as in the second line of the infamous couplet byAbdul Alhazred:

“And with strange aeons even death may die” (emphasis mine)

In “Nemesis”, we see this as (last line of the second-last stanza):

Down the infinite aeons come beating the wings of unmerciful gloom. (emphasis mine).

Lovecraft’s conception of aeons and epochs (what the Hindus refer to as kalpas) oftime as being horrifying can also be observed in the titles of such stories as “Out ofthe Aeons” and “The Shadow Out of Time” and in the themes of (amongst othertales) The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, “The Shunned House,” “Imprisoned with thePharaohs,” and “The Nameless City,” with their manifold horrors arising from theancient past. In “Nemesis”, not only does the narrator live out his “lives withoutnumber” (that is, lives uncountably numerous), but he lives through “epochsuncounted” – a reinforcement of the fact that his plight is both “infinitely old andinfinitely horrible.”

The word “unmerciful” utilised in the above-quoted line is a kind of inversion of acharacteristic Lovecraftian usage. Elsewhere in his work, Lovecraft frequentlycharacterised the forces of the universe as “merciful”, but in an ironic way – forinstance in “The Outsider” (1921) – “It was the awful baring of that which themerciful earth should always hide” and “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926) – “The mostmerciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate allits contents”. And “The Other Gods” (1921) – “Merciful gods of earth, I am fallinginto the sky!" And “Hypnos” (1922) —: “May the merciful gods, if indeed there besuch, guard those hours when no power of the will, or drug that the cunning of mandevises, can keep me from the chasm of sleep. Death is merciful, for there is noreturn therefrom...”And yet again, in ”The Colour Out of Space”(1927) – “He hadcome of late to do nothing but stare into space and obey what his father told him;and Ammi thought that his fate was very merciful.” . In “Nemesis,” Lovecraft’snarrator refers to a personification of the cosmic forces which show no mercy to theminds of humankind.

Ghoul Imagery in “Nemesis”, “Ulalume” and The Dream-Quest of UnknownKadath

The phrase “Ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber” from the first line of “Nemesis” isan intriguing foreshadowing of motifs in Lovecraft’s short novel The Dream-Quest ofUnknown Kadath (1926/27), written some ten years after “Nemesis.” George Wetzelfirst observed the connection between this line of “Nemesis” and the LovecraftianDreamlands stories in his essay “Genesis of the Cthulhu Mythos” in Schweitzer,Discovering H.P. Lovecraft. (p. 57-58). Of course, the phrase also recalls the title ofLovecraft’s 1919 story “Beyond the Wall of Sleep.” Sleep and dreams figured largelyin Lovecraft’s oeuvre, from “Hypnos” (1922) (the name for the Greek God of sleep”)to “The Dreams in the Witch-House” (1932).

In Dream-Quest, Randolph Carter descends the seven hundred steps to the cavern offlame, to the Gates of Deeper Slumber, whereby he enters the Haunted (orEnchanted) Wood. Dream-Quest’s hero, Randolph Carter, first encounters the ghoulsafter having been snatched away from Mt Ngranek (whose name sounds remarkablylike that of Poe’s Mt Yaanek in “Ulalume”) by night-gaunts, who leave him to die in

the underworld Vale of Pnath.The friendly ghouls, includingRichard Upton Pickman, returnhim to the upper Dreamlands. Sowhile the Gateway of DeepSlumber in Dream-Quest is notactually guarded by ghouls (as inthe first line of “Nemesis”), theimagery embodied by the poem’sfirst line is neverthless strikingly

to important motifs in Dream-Quest.

It seems reasonable to suggest the existence of such foreshadowings in Lovecraft’swork, since many of the key images, tropes and themes explored in his early workswere obsessively repeated and amplified throughout his later oeuvre. To take butone similar example of thematic foreshadowing from a poem to a story, one ofLovecraft’s earliest fantastic poems, “Unda, or the Bride of the Sea” (1915), in whicha young man falls in love with a sea-nymph (her name, of course, indicating that sheis an “undine” or water-spirit), loses her when she returns to her native deep, andthen himself drowns, so that he is now safe with his “bride.” In this theme we mayread an early variant (apart from its obvious warning of what Lovecraft then

perceived as the ‘dangers’ of the womanly sex’, via depiction/demonisation of thewoman as a femme fatale) of the events of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” In thistale, the narrator is firstly (unbeknownst to himself) born from the genealogical lineof Obed Marsh of Innsmouth (interbred with the Deep Ones), during his youth‘loses’ this part of himself, but in discovering his ancestry, is eventually reconciled tothe idea of living happily forever in the undersea city of Y’ha-nthlei.

Turning to Poe’s “Ulalume,” we may note the significant usage there of the phrase“ghoul-haunted” – and not merely “ghoul-haunted”, but “ghoul-haunted woodland[of Weir]” In “Ulalume” though the ghouls haunt the woodland of Weir, they are (insome interpretations) friendly, and seen as not wishing to harm living people (see ll.96-97, where Poe calls them “...”the woodlandish ghouls, The pitiful, the mercifulghouls…”).

It is at first sight remarkable that Poe portrayed his ghouls in “Ulalume” as friendly,and that Lovecraft, in The Dream-Quest, did the same. (In the slightly earlier tale,“Pickman’s Model” (1926), Lovecraft depicts ghouls as terrible and fearsomecreatures; however, in the Dream-Quest, they are both loyal and helpful to theprotagonist, their less disturbing nature in this tale verging at times on the comical).According to David Robinson, Line 97 of “Ulalume”, where the narrator describesthem as “The pitiful, the merciful ghouls” indicates “his feeling that the ghouls havedisplayed a sympathy toward him in their action. It is ironic that any creatures whosupposedly feed upon corpses could be called merciful, but the irony deepens whenthe nature of the ghouls’ mercy is fully understood.” (Robinson, 8).

Robinson actually goes on to query the notion of many critics that Poe’s ghouls arehelpful, in that that they try to prevent the narrator of “Ulalume” finding the tomb ofhis lost beloved and thus being plunged again into grief. He ultimately reverses the“friendly ghoul” interpretation, considering that “the ghouls are far more sinisterthan the critics have realised.” (Robinson, 10) and that “the ghouls are the supremeironists. Mercifully and pitifully they give the speaker his wish for peace, but in sodoing frustrate him all the more…they give him the knowledge of death…they killhim spiritually…Thus the ghouls are not well-meaning deceivers, but cruelinstruments through which the narrator sees the impossible disparity between hishopes and abilities. (Robinson, 12).

Beowulf and the Ghoul: A Possible Source for Ghoulsin Lovecraft?

Some lines (102-105) in Beowulf referring to the creatureGrendel are rather reminiscent of the opening line of“Nemesis”:

“That ghastly grim one, Grendel they called him

Was that fiend of fens who defended the waste,

Marsh and moorland. Where the monsters dwell

That gloom-weary ghoul guarded a season

after the Creator had outlawed the cursed one

among the kin of Cain” (emphasis mine)

The author of Beowulf is here saying that all of the descendants of Cain werebanished and sent away to a mere, where Grendel then set up his lair. (Lehmann, 24)

Beowulf is the conventional title of an Old English heroic epic poem. It consists of3182 alliterative long lines, is set in Scandinavia and is commonly cited as one of themost important works of Anglo-Saxon literature. It survives in a single manuscriptknown as the Nowell Codex. Its composition by an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet isgenerally dated between the 8th and the early 11th century.

Had HPL read Beowulf? We know that he was familiar with its existence, as with theexistence of other ‘bardic productions’ such as the Norse Sagas and the Iliad, becausehe refers to it in passing a letter to J. Vernon Shea of Oct 9, 1931(Lovecraft, SelectedLetters III, 420). But had he read it? More to the point, had he perhaps read it by 1917when “Nemesis” was composed? English translations were certainly available tohim. In 1805, Sharon Turner first translated selected verses into modern English.This was followed in 1814 by John Josias Conybeare who published an edition "inEnglish paraphrase and Latin verse translation." In 1815, Grimur Jonsson Thorkelinpublished the first complete edition in Latin. Nikolaj Frederick Severin Grundtvigreviewed Thorkelin’s edition in 1815, creating the first complete verse translation inDanish in 1820. In 1837, J.M. Kemble created an important literal translation inEnglish. In 1895, William Morris and & A. J. Wyatt published the ninth Englishtranslation.

But Lovecraft owned no standalone copy of the work according to Lovecraft’s Library.(Joshi, Lovecraft’s Library). Despite the reference in Beowulf to Grendel as the “gloom-weary ghoul guard,” we can probably discount the work from having influenced thefirst line of “Nemesis.” (Of course, Lovecraft may have drawn his ghoul legendryfrom sources also accessible to Poe such as The Thousand and One Nights, HansChristian Anderson’s “The Wild Swans” and Lord Byron’s “The Giaour”, which allfeature ghouls).

Poe’s Mount Yaanek, & Mount Erebus in Lovecraft

In his short novel At the Mountains of Madness (1932), Lovecraft pays tribute to Poevia several means. One of the methods he uses is to incorporate motifs from Poe’sThe Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838). But we are here concernedwith Lovecraft’s references to “Ulalume” in his novel.

The narrator tells of observing, while nearing the end of the approach with theMiskatonic expedition to Antartica, the region of Ross Island:

“On the 7th of November, sight of the westwardrange having been temporarily lost, we passedFranklin Island; and the next day descried thecones of Mts. Erebus and Terror on Ross Islandahead, with the long line of the Parry Mountainsbeyond. There now stretched off to the east thelow, white line of the great ice barrier, risingperpendicularly to a height of two hundred feetlike the rocky cliffs of Quebec, and marking theend of southward navigation. In the afternoonwe entered McMurdo Sound and stood off thecoast in the lee of smoking Mt. Erebus. Thescoriac peak (italics mine) towered up sometwelve thousand, seven hundred feet against the

eastern sky, like a Japanese print of the sacred Fujiyama, while beyond it rose the white, ghostlikeheight of Mt. Terror, ten thousand, nine hundred feet in altitude, and now extinct as a volcano.

Puffs of smoke from Erebus came intermittently, and one of the graduate assistants - a brilliant youngfellow named Danforth - pointed out what looked like lava on the snowy slope, remarking that thismountain, discovered in 1840, had undoubtedly been the source of Poe's image when he wrote sevenyears later:

As the scoriac rivers that roll –As the lavas that restlessly roll-

Their sulphurous currents down YaanekIn the ultimate clime of the pole

That groan as they roll down Mount YaanekIn the realms of the boreal pole.

Ross Island, showing position of Mt Erebus (Poe's Yaanek)

“Danforth was a great reader of bizarre material, andhad talked a good deal of Poe. I was interested myselfbecause of the Antarctic scene of Poe's only long story -the disturbing and enigmatical Arthur Gordon Pym. Onthe barren shore, and on the lofty ice barrier in thebackground, myriads of grotesque penguins squawkedand flapped their fins, while many fat seals were visibleon the water, swimming or sprawling across large cakesof slowly drifting ice.” (Lovecraft, At the Mountainsof Madness, 7-8).

Lovecraft echoes Poe’s volcanic imagery of MtYaanek in “Ulalume” in the eighth stanza of “Nemesis”, which reads in part:

“I have flown on the pinions of fear

Where the smoke-belching Erebus rages,

Where the jokulls loom snow-clad and drear.”

This clinches the connection of “Ulalume” with Lovecraft’spoem “Nemesis” (where, back in 1917, Lovecraft hadmentioned Erebus). A “jokull,” by the way, is an Icelandicname for glaciers. We may note that the use of an Antarcticlocation in part of “Nemesis” both foreshadows and isconsistent with Lovecraft’s horror of the cold and this lateruse of Antarctica as a locus redolent with potent horror in At the Mountains ofMadness. Mount Erebus was discovered on January 27, 1841 (and observed to be ineruption) by polar explorer Sir James Clark Ross, who named it Mount Erebus afterhis ships, Erebus and Terror (which were also used by Sir John Franklin on hisdisastrous Arctic expedition). Recall that Poe’s “Ulalume” was written in 1847, soPoe’s incorporation of Erebus into his poem as “Mount Yaanek” utilisedcomparatively recent contemporary knowledge at the time he penned “Ulalume.”Mt Erebus is the second highest volcano in Antarctica (afterMount Sidley). With a summit elevation of 3,794 metres (12,448ft), it is located on Ross Island, which is also home to threeinactive volcanoes, notably Mount Terror. Mount Erebus is partof the Pacific Ring of Fire, which includes over 160 activevolcanoes. Erebus was a primordial Greek god of darkness, theson of Chaos.

Volcanic Mt Erebus (Poe's Yaanek)

The Greek God Erebus

Lovecraft has not been the only student of Poe to associate Poe’s “Mount Yaanek”with Mount Erebus. Mount Yaanek, with its "sulphurous currents" in the "ultimateclimes of the pole", has frequently been associated by modern Poe critics with MountErebus. If Lovecraft realised the association between Yaanek and Erebus as early as1917, when he wrote “Nemesis” – and this seems likely – then he was one of theearliest students of Poe to do so. He confirms his knowledge of this connection byexplicitly referencing it in At the Mountains of Madness, and by going so far as toquote the relevant parts of “Ulalume,” as noted supra.

Strangely, in Poe’s “Ulalume,” Yaanek's location is specified as being in "the realmsof the boreal pole", indicating an Arctic location rather than an Antarctic one for thepoetic counterpart. It is worth repeating the view of William P. Trent, in histextbook, The Raven (1897), who says “Generally speaking boreal means northern,from Boreas, the north wind. But Poe’s imagination usually turned to the South Pole,so that it seems possible that he was following the French terminology, in which‘boreal pole’ is that pole of the magnetic needle which points to the south. The wholeexpression would then be equivalent to ‘Antarctic regions.’” Since no active volcanowas known in Poe’s time within the Arctic Circle – Mount Hecla in Iceland is southof it – this is necessarily correct. (Quoted in Mabbott, 421).

Of course, Lovecraft’s horror of the cold in general, and by extension the Antarcticregions in particular would have proved a further attraction to him when firstreading “Ulalume.” While Poe’s description of Mt Yaanek does not stress its chillyaspects, for Lovecraft the mention that it lay “in the realms of the boreal pole” wouldprobably have been sufficient to conjure a vista of horror which may haveencouraged him to emulate Poe by mentioning Erebus in “Nemesis.”

To briefly note a more minor instance of textual similarities between Poe’s andLovecraft’s poems, we may note that in “Ulalume”, the figure of Pysche has wings,which at one point she trails in the dirt. While there is no direct correlation to thisimagery in “Nemesis”, the imagery of wings and flight does occur in two places inLovecraft’s poem and this may be slightly significant. In stanza 8, the second linereads

I have flown on the pinions of fear (emphasis mine)

In stanza 10, the imagery of a winged doom is conveyed via the line:

Down the infinite aeons come beating the wings of unmerciful gloom (emphasis mine).

Hubris, Retribution and the Eternal Return: The Cyclical Nature of “Nemesis”:

“Nemesis” may more be more than simply onesignificant instance of an attempt on Lovecraft’s partat literary catharsis of his nightmares.We turn now, atlast, to a major theme of “Nemesis,” that ofreincarnation, coupled with the idea of retribution forsin or hubris. We have referred above to the cyclicalnature of “Nemesis” and the way in which thisstructure is similar to that of Lovecraft’s own “ThePoe-et’s Nightmare.” But the cyclical structure of“Nemesis” is also strongly connected with its theme –that of hubris, which can be simply defined as“arrogance before the gods.”

Coupled with the theme of hubris in “Nemesis” is thephilosophical concept of “eternal return” or “eternalrecurrence.” This idea can be found throughout

numerous cultures, from classical Indian philosophy through thebeliefs of ancient Egypt and on to the Pythagoreans and Stoics ofancient Greece. In modern times, Friedrich Nietzsche resurrected it as athought experiment to argue for amor fati (“love of one’s fate”).Lovecraft discovered Nietzsche’s writings as early as 1915, and foundhis philosophy greatly appealing; so there is every chance the theme of“eternal return” in “Nemesis” owes something to the influence ofNietzsche’s thought on Lovecraft.

The narrator in “Nemesis” actually uses the old-fashioned word “sin”rather than “hubris”. From the last stanza but one:

“O great was the sin of my spirit

And great is the reach of its doom “

Lovecraft notes that the poem “presents the conception,tenable to the orthodox mind, that nightmares are thepunishments meted out to the soul for sins committed inprevious incarnations –perhaps millions of years ago!” (Lovecraft, Selected Letters I, 51).

The Goddess Nemesis depicted by Tattarescu

Alfred Rethel's depiction of the goddess Nemesis

Note Lovecraft’s stress on the conception of retribution for sins via nightmares as“tenable to the orthodox mind.” His, of course, was an unorthodox mind, and hedisbelieved in both the concept of divine punishment for sin, and of reincarnation.But as an artist, he was capable of representing those ideas in poetic form, and this iswhat “Nemesis” does.

I believe we need to consider the poem’s titles to truly understand its ending. Why“Nemesis”? In Greek mythology, Nemesis (Greek, Νέμεσις) (also calledRhamnousia/Rhamnusia ("the Goddess of Rhamnous”) at her sanctuary atRhamnous, north of Marathon), symbolised the remorseless spirit of divineretribution against those who succumb to the sin of hubris. The name Nemesis isrelated to the Greek word νέμειν [némein], meaning "to give what is due.

We have seen already that Lovecraft found the conception of being trapped in anendless cycle of time a horrifying one, and used this as a recurring motif innumerous works. In “The Green Meadow,” Lovecraft’s narrator, a Greekphilosopher somehow transported out of his own time and place, is trapped in justsuch an infinitely repeating, Samsara-like cycle of reincarnation: “...”I knew theendless cycle of the future which none like me may escape…I shall live forever, beconscious forever, though my soul cries out to the gods for the boon of death andoblivion…” (Lovecraft, The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions, 8). Examples ofthis theme in his work could easily be multiplied.

The essence of Lovecraft’s horror at the idea of being imprisoned in consciousnessforever seems to be twofold. In many of his works he seems to regard consciousnessitself as a torture and torment, and the idea of death or oblivion as a boon or release.One need only consider a work such as the prose poem “Ex Oblivione” (1920), wherethe narrator opens by confessing that “the ugly trifles of existence began to drive meto madness like the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly upon onespot of their victim’s body” (Lovecraft, Miscellaneous Writings, 35) to find a cogentexpression of the Lovecraftian attitude that the mundane world (what occultistAustin Osman Spare referred to as “the inferno of normalcy”) was oft-times anabhorrent form of existence which he sought to escape via retreat into “dreams andfancies.” Lovecraft would undoubtedly have been amused, too, if he knew of theChristmas card once sent out by occultist Aleister Crowley during his Buddhistphase around 1902, which wished his friends and correspondents “a speedytermination of existence.”

The idea of being trapped forever in the human consciousness, with its limitedviewpoint and subject to “ugly trifles” must have seemed appalling to Lovecraft –and this, together with his deeply-held feeling that “conflict with time” was “themost profoundly dramatic and grimly terrible thing in the universe” would havecombined to make Lovecraft see the endless cycle of reincarnation as the very acmeof horror. Even more than this, Lovecraft surely would have viewed the notion ofbeing forced into a state of perpetual consciousness by forces outside of one’ s own will– that is, by way of the retribution of the goddess Nemesis – as one of the horrorspar excellence that he was able to imagine. This is what “Nemesis” is all about.

Emphasising the concept of eternal return, “Nemesis” ends with a repetition of itsopening stanza as stanza 11. This, at one level, reinforces the notion of circularity inthe motif of spiritual reincarnation and having “liv’d o’er my lives without number.”On the other hand, the opening and closing stanzas establish a framework wherebythe narrator is actually entering the dreaming state, which may equally imply thatstanzas 2-10 (the poem’s core) do not involve an experience of reincarnation, butonly a recurring dream or sequence of dreams. It may be only that “thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber” (and not in reality) the narrator lives over hisnumberless lives, sounding all things with his sight.

Of course, for many believers in reincarnation, life itself is seen as a dream, and sothe idea of an endless cycle of dreaming is not incompatible with the notion of anendless cycle of lives.

As a slight aside: the line ”sounded all things with my sight” is a rather deliciousplay on the names of two of the five human senses as well as on the “sense” of theword “sounded,” which is employed here as a synonym for “plumbed” (as whenone “sounds” the depths of a well). Of course, the “sight” the narrator refers to heremay not be physical sight, but a sort of “second” or “spiritual” sight.

In his essay “Reincarnation in Lovecraft’s Fiction,” Robert M. Price distinguishes fivebasic understandings of the concept of reincarnation, ranging from primitive andPlatonic reincarnation, through the Gnostic form of the concept, to the Buddhist andVedanta Hindu concept of anatta/advaita (where ‘deliverance’ is from maya, the veryillusion that any individual self exists) and finally the Theosophical doctrine ofreincarnation in which the process of reincarnation involves “not onlytransmigration between stages of evolution, but also between planets arranged alongvarious chains spanning the dimensions.” In this context, Price discusses “Nemesis”as well as other works by Lovecraft in which reincarnation figures: “Lovecraftaccurately reflects the despair felt by Eastern believers in reincarnation at the

prospect of the crushing burden of countless lives yet to be endured, a burdenseemingly lessened not one whit by the countless births already undergone. Heretoo, we find lamented the remorseless working of karma, that ineluctable cosmic lawof redress which dictates payment of “the last farthing” of sins committed inprevious lives.” In Price’s view, “though he did not believe in the doctrine,[Lovecraft’s] vivid dreams of the past led him to use the theme in his fiction [andpoetry], where he managed to recapitulate several forms (primitive, Platonic andTheosophical) of reincarnationism.”

The narrator of “Nemesis” then, appears trapped, due to his hubris – someunidentified sin he has committed against the ‘gods’ (the vast cosmic forces of theuniverse) in an endless cycle of waking and dreaming (sometimes known in Hindumetaphysics as “the treadmill of Samsara”) in which the dreams are horrific – anexperience not unfamiliar to Lovecraft.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the metre of Lovecraft’s “Nemesis” is not simply “Swinburnian”, butalso (and possibly primarily) “Poe-esque.” “Nemesis” has, in addition tocommonality of metre with Poe’s “Ulalume,” several suggestive textual similaritieswhereby Lovecraft demonstrates his debt to Poe’s poem. Lovecraft paid homage toPoe’s “Ulalume,” but the cosmic themes that he utilised in “Nemesis” make it awork with a wholly original viewpoint.

Despite the adopted viewpoint of the ‘orthodox mind’ which may viewreincarnation of the soul as a possibility, Lovecraft’s narrator serves primarily as avehicle of his view that agelessness and longevity are in themselves likely to lead tohorror.

“Nemesis,” far from deserving the disparagement with which some critics haveheaped upon it, is a poem of considerable complexity and substance which willrepay further study. We may reassess “Nemesis” as a powerful poem of greatsuggestiveness as well as of metrical felicity, in which (as in “The Poe-et’sNightmare” and others of his weird verses), Lovecraft sought to convey his cosmicphilosophy. It stands as a testament to Lovecraft’s varied achievements in weirdverse.

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“Ulalume — A Ballad” — 1965 — The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, ed.Floyd Stovall, Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia (pp.103-106, and pp. 271-274)

“Ulalume” — 1969 — The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 1:Poems, ed. T. O. Mabbott, Cambridge: Belknap Press of HarvardUniversity Press (1:409-423)

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