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Various guesses have been made as to
where Lovecraft got the idea for the Necronomicon, including Robert W.
Chambers's The King in Yellow. Yet strangely neglected is Ambrose
Bierce's use of passages from his invented scribe Hali to introduce his stories
"The Death of Halpin Fraser" and "An Inhabitant of Carcosa".
Whether or not Hali's unnamed text begat Lovecraft's Necronomicon, a
certain feature of Hali's style seems to have influenced Necronomicon
passages invented by other Cthulhu Mythos writers, namely Clark Ashton Smith and
Brian Lumley.
For purposes of comparison, let us
start with the most recent example, that of Lumley, and work our way back. In
his tale "Aunt Hester", Lumley supplies this quote from Alhazred's Necronomicon:
'Tis a veritable & attestable
Fact, that between certain related Persons there exists a Bond more
powerful than the strongest Ties of Flesh & Family, whereby one such
Person may be aware of all the Trials & Pleasures of the other, yea, even
to experiencing the Pains or Passions of one far distant; . . .
The passage begins with what we might
call an attestation formula; the author does not mean for you simply to take his
word on the matter to follow. Rather he is presenting that upon which numerous
but unnamed witnesses agree. The report, of course, is likely to embody mere
rumor or folklore, but in this instance Alhazred goes on to describe his own
researches into the matter. We may suspect that this passage has been influenced
by Lumley's reading of Clark Ashton Smith's version of Alhazred in "The
Return of the Sorcerer", where this text appears.
It is verily known by few, but is
nevertheless an attestable fact, that the will of a dead sorcerer hath
power upon his own body and can raise it up from the tomb and perform
therewith whatever action was unfulfilled in life. And such resurrections are
invariably for the doing of malevolent deeds and for the detriment of others.
Most readily can the corpse be animated if all its members have remained
intact; and yet there are cases in which the excelling will of the wizard hath
reared up from death the sundered pieces of a body hewn in many fragments, and
hath caused them to serve his end, either separately or in a temporary
reunion. But in every instance, after the action hath been completed, the body
lapseth into its former state.
Note again the initial attestation
formula.
Next we turn to Ambrose Bierce's Hali,
from whose necrological treatise Smith's Alhazred would seem to have learned
much. "The Death of Halpin Fraser" begins with this quotation:
For by death is wrought greater
change than hath been shown. Whereas in general the spirit that removed cometh
back upon occasion, and is sometimes seen of those in flesh (appearing in the
form of the body it bore) yet it hath happened that the veritable body without
the spirit hath walked. And it is attested of [i.e., "by"]
those encountering who have lived to speak thereon that a lich so raised up
hath no natural affection, nor remembrance thereof, but only hate. Also, it is
known that some spirits which in life were benign become by death evil
altogether.
This time the attestation formula
occurs in the middle of the passage, but its presence is strikingly reminiscent
of both Necronomicon texts. But the resemblances to Smith's passage do
not stop there. Alhazred and Hali are both concerned with the return of corpses
to a semblance of life.
Similar themes occur in the Hali
passage with which "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" begins.
For there be divers sorts of death
--- some wherein the body remaineth; and in some it vanisheth quite away with
the spirit. This commonly occurreth only in solitude (such is God's will) and,
none seeing the end, we say the man is lost, or gone on a long journey ---
which indeed he hath; but sometimes it hath happened in sight of many, as
abundant testimony showeth. In one kind of death the spirit also dieth, and
this it hath been known to do while yet the body was in vigor for many years.
Sometimes, as is veritably attested, it dieth with the body, but after
a season is raised up again in that place where the body did decay.
Again, the dead return to life, and
again it is "attested" that they do.
Where did Bierce get this device? He
may have made it up himself, or he may have derived it from Morryster's Marvells
of Science, a book referred to by Lovecraft in "The Festival".
Bierce mentions the work and quotes from it at the beginning of "The Man
and the Snake". Assuming that this book actually existed and was not a mere
prop invented by Bierce for this story, we would seem to have traced our
attestation formula down to its source. The passage from Morryster reads.
It is of veritabyll report, and
attested of [i.e., "by"] so many that there be nowe of wyse and
learned none to gaynsaye it, that ye serpente hys [= "the
serpent's"] eye hath a magnetick propertie that whosoe falleth into its
svasion [= "suasion"] is drawn forwards in despyte of his wille, and
perisheth miserabyll by ye creature hys [= "the creature's"] byte.
Lin Carter's "H. P. Lovecraft: The
Books" attributes this book to Lovecraft's imagination on the strength of
its appearance in "The Festival" in a list of books also including
"The unmentionable Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Al-hazred."
But the list also includes Glanvil's Saducismus Triumphatus and
Remigius's Daemonolatreia, both of which are real works. Whether or not Marvells
of Science is similarly authentic, we are too ignorant to say, but that
Lovecraft derived the reference from Bierce is evident from his choice of
epithets. He speaks of "old Morryster's wild Marvells of Science."
Bierce's phrase is nearly identical: "old Morryster's Marvells of
Science." And as we have seen, the influence of Morryster's text on the
Necronomicon, though subtle, is much greater than the juxtaposition of
the two works in "The Festival" would lead one to suppose.
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