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A Hawthorne quote may have inspired the Necronomicon
🕑 Added 2019-12-31 14:52:41 +0000 UTCIn Lovecraft's essay Supernatural Horror in Literature he wrote:
"Some of Hawthorne’s notes tell of weird tales he would have written had he lived longer—an especially vivid plot being that concerning a baffling stranger who appeared now and then in public assemblies, and who was at last followed and found to come and go from a very ancient grave."
This plot seed comes from the 1868 book Passages from the American Notebooks of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Lovecraft scholar Donald Burleson astutely draws attention to this plot seed from the same work:
"An old volume in a large library,--every one to be afraid to unclasp and open it, because it was said to be a book of magic."
This further demonstrates that while Lovecraft was very taken with Robert Chambers' stories, the fictional play the King in Yellow did not inspire the Necronomicon (HPL read Chambers in 1927, the Necronomicon is first mentioned in 1922). In fact, Lovecraft's concept of Dark Stars (mentioned in the Call of Cthulhu) also predates his reading of the "Black Stars" of Carcosa.
Comments
Christian Matzke
That is an intriguing possibility!
Bret Kramer
I wonder if "dark stars" might have been inspired by photo-negative images of deep space. Astrophotography was in its early years when Lovecraft was born, and considering his interest in astronomy and the time he spent at the Ladd observatory, I assume he'd seen some negatives of the night sky. For example - http://www.wvi.com/~rberry/astronomy/qsipictures/abell2151neg.jpg
