Arthur Jermyn

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HP Lovecraft, photograph from 1915

Arthur Jermyn ( English original title: Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family ) is the title of a fantastic horror story by the American writer HP Lovecraft , which was probably written in autumn 1920 and printed in two parts in March and June of the following year in the amateur magazine Wolverine . In April 1924 it appeared in pulp magazine Weird Tales and in 1939 it was included in The Outsider and Others collection of Arkham House . In 1973 the library of the House of Usher presented a German translation by Charlotte Gräfin von Klinckowstroem in the anthology Stadt ohne Namen , which was reprinted in 1981 in the Fantastic Library of Suhrkamp Verlag .

In the early short story, the narrator explores a spectacular suicide by self-immolation by the eponymous protagonist and suggests that he has found the missing link between apes and humans as the real origin of civilization . Arthur Jermyn sets himself apart from the previous texts with her reserved language and already points to the late story Shadows over Innsmouth with the motif of fear of “racial contamination” .

Form and content

The event can be divided into two parts. If the first section deals with the ancestral line of the protagonist, the second covers the actual story up to the suicide. Arthur Jermyn, offspring of an eccentric British aristocratic family of African explorers, doused himself in oil, ran out onto the moor and burned himself after opening a box that had arrived from the Kingdom of the Congo .

At the beginning, the narrator talks about the ugly nature of life and suggests truths that are better kept hidden and sometimes make it even more unsightly. Certain scientific revelations could be so shocking that they destroy the “human species” “if we are a species of our own”.

Kingdom of the Congo, 1754

Jermyn's great, great, great grandfather, the anthropologist Sir Wade Jermyn, was one of the first discoverers of the Congo region, which he described in many bizarre texts. He talked with horrid comfort about the animals and antiquities of the region, gigantic "walls and columns of a forgotten" metropolis overgrown with tendrils, creatures and mythical creatures that belonged half to the jungle, half to the city and were described skeptically even by Pliny . He said he lived in the ruins of the city that was overrun by monkeys at some point and that he met his future wife there, allegedly the daughter of a Portuguese trader. From this point on, Jermyn's ancestors were considered strange and appeared strange to ugly to their fellow men , while they were not noticed before this marriage. The mysterious woman lived in a remote wing of the property, so that not even the servants saw her, and their son Philip was only allowed to be looked after by a “repulsive negress from Guinea ”. After his wife died in Africa and Sir Wade returned to Jermyn House , he was the only one to raise his child until he was admitted to an asylum in 1765 . Physically, Philip resembled his father, but was small and extremely agile, at the same time so raw and violent that he was generally avoided. He married a "woman with gypsy blood", became a sailor on a merchant ship after the end of the Civil War, and one day disappeared off the coast of the Kingdom of Congo.

His comparatively handsome son Robert led a scholarly life, collecting the finds his mad grandfather brought back from Africa, and being blessed with three sons, two of whom were mentally and physically handicapped and therefore could not be seen in public. The unaffected son Nevil, a repulsive personality, ran off with a dancer , but returned the following year as a widower with his child Alfred, who later became Arthur Jermyn's father. When an explorer called on Sir Robert to talk about the legendary city and white monkeys that were "ruled by a white god", it came to a catastrophe. Robert strangled him and then killed his disabled children, while Nevil died trying to save his two-year-old son. Years later, Alfred left his wife and son Arthur and joined a traveling circus , where he was torn to pieces by a strikingly bright male gorilla .

Arthur grows up sheltered and differs from his ancestors with his dreamy-poetic disposition, which the neighboring families scornfully explain with the "Romance (n)" blood of the unknown Portuguese woman or with his socially unrecognized mother. With strange facial features and long arms , he is considered particularly repulsive, but is accepted because of mental and character advantages. He studies at the University of Oxford , becomes a scholar and wants to continue the ethnographic work of his forefathers, for which he can use Sir Wade's extensive collection. The nebulous allusions to the “nameless race of jungle bastards” fill him, enthusiastic as he is, with a mixture of horror and attraction, until he finally wants to shed light on the data, sells part of his property and goes on an expedition to the Congo embarks. A native chief confirms the rumors about the city and the white monkey, but adds that a tribe of conquerors, the N'bangu, destroyed them, exterminated the bastard creatures and the stuffed “white monkey”, revered by the residents and presumed builders of the city Monkey Goddess ”. Once she was the wife of a “great white god” from the West, with whom she ruled until her son was born.

A little later Arthur comes across the city ruins, but finds no sculptural or other clues. A Belgian agent, on the other hand, confirms the chief's information and explains that with a little skill he could convince the former conquerors, now subjects of King Albert , to surrender the stolen relic . Arthur returns to England, patiently waiting for the package, and delving further into his ancestor's strange manuscripts. He is tormented by the question of why any memory of the woman has been erased, which he finally tries to explain with her husband's madness. The Belgian informed him by letter that he had been able to get the mummy , but as a layman he did not know whether it was human or animal in nature.

After a few months the box will be delivered. Arthur examines the object, runs from the room screaming and commits suicide. The face of the mummified creature resembles Arthur Jermyns and around its neck it wears a chain with the coat of arms of its family.

Emergence

Lovecraft himself went into the creation of his early short story several times. In a letter to Arthur Harris dated May 1, 1921, he wrote that the work was suitable for publication in sequels; he wrote it “with this form in mind”. It follows that he wrote Arthur Jermyn for the amateur magazine Wolverine, which was edited by Horace L. Lawson and in which it appeared in two parts in 1921. He explained this in even greater detail in October 1923 to the first publisher of the pulp magazine Weird Tales and made malicious and derogatory comments about contemporary writers.

The background of the story is curious and far removed from its atmosphere. Someone forced him to “ read some things from the iconoclastic moderns” that “sniff around behind the facades and shed light on hidden desires and wounds”, as he wrote to the publisher Edwin Baird. While reading the short story cycle Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson , he almost fell asleep and still had the idea to come up with "some ancestral secret" that would make Anderson's worst revelations seem harmless. Perhaps inspired by Frank Belknap Long , Lovecraft wanted to familiarize himself with modern literature during this time and read some authors whom he disparagingly referred to as “modernist writers”. If one takes his words in the letter to Edwin Baird seriously, they indicate that he saw in eerily fantastic literature a comparable medium of social criticism as in realism .

To Lovecraft's annoyance, his short story was first published by Weird Tales under the title The White Ape , which the publisher gave her while she was titled Arthur Jermyn there in May 1935 .

Background and interpretation

The straightforward narrative is more complex than it first seems, highlights Lovecraft's ideas of race , civilization, and degeneration, and circles typical, fear-laden themes that he later takes up again. In addition to the consequences of "degeneracy" that are painted in the sequel story The Lurking Fear or Shadows Over Innsmouth , this is the fear of a knowledge that man cannot endure without going mad .

An example of this can be found at the beginning of the story of Cthulhus Ruf , written in 1926 , which outlines the myth for the first time. In it, the narrator praises ignorance and considers it the “greatest grace in this world” that the human spirit cannot yet connect all the “inner events”, so that we “are on a peaceful island of ignorance in the midst of black people Seas of Infinity ”. The narrator of the earlier work hints at the dangers of the truth right from the start: If you had Arthur Jermyn's knowledge, you would act like him.

In Arthur Jermyn , the creatures of the prehistoric white Congo culture, half of the city, half of the jungle , which even Pliny would have reluctantly described, not only form the missing link between apes and humans, but also the origin of what Lovecraft understood by white civilization . This must have been more fatal for someone with his ideology than individual cases of "racial mixing". The horror arises when the consequences of the degeneration are initially indicated step by step and finally shown in full.

The "white monkey" that Sir Wade marries does not belong to the original, long-extinct white Congo culture, but is already the result of their mixing with the monkey population, since otherwise it would not be possible to explain that it is white. The protagonist is so shocked that humans are hybrids that he is driven to suicide. The dividing wall between animals and humans appears extremely fragile. As early as 1918, Lovecraft had written in his short essay At the Root that one must see the hidden “savagery” that is inherent in the “essence of that animal called man”. For him, “civilization was just a thin layer of varnish” under which the ruling animal slumbers and can wake up at any time.

reception

In the Wolverine's review column, Alfred Galpin praised the work of his friend and correspondent as a milestone in a “new phase” of a “dark but powerful genius”. The narrative, perfect in its implementation, is characterized by moderate style and effective design of the opening and closing passages. For Galpin, the story was not as impressive as many of Lovecraft's previous “dreams”, but it was original and shaped neither by Edgar Allan Poe nor Lord Dunsany or other role models. Arthur Jermyn is closer to Ambrose Bierce 's short stories and can be placed alongside his masterpieces.

Commentators pointed to the limited focus of the narrative: if the degeneration processes in the shadows over Innsmouth affect an entire city , or in the lurking fear, create a diabolical horde that haunts a region, only a family is affected here. Arthur Jermyn merely forms a bridge between stories that paint individual horror, such as The Grave or Dagon , and works that relate the horror to all of humanity.

In Joshi's opinion , the comparison with Bierce is a bit remote, apart from the clear style and the blatant pessimism of the beginning. Like Galpin, he praises her tight and reserved language, with which she stands out from the sometimes flamboyant style of the early work, to which he counts stories like The Verderben that came over Sarnath or Celephaïs . Although he could not find any role models for the work, it is conceivable that Lovecraft was influenced by Patrick Gallagher's serial novel The Ape at the Helm , in which a ship's captain takes on board a being that has human and ape-like features. It appeared in Frank Andrew Munsey's pulp magazine The Cavalier , which Lovecraft claims to read regularly.

Text output

  • Wolverine , March and June 1921
  • Weird Tales under the title The White Ape , April 1924
  • Weird Tales , May 1935
  • The Outsider and Others , Arkham House , 1939
  • Dagon and Other Macabre Tales , 1986
  • The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories , 1999
  • City without a name. German from Charlotte Countess von Klinckowstroem, Library of the House of Usher , 1973
  • City without a name. Fantastic Library, Vol. 52, 1981
  • The color from the room. Scary and fantastic stories. Under the title The Truth About the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family. Verlag Das Neue Berlin, 1990

literature

  • Sunand T. Joshi . HP Lovecraft - Life and Work. Volume 1, German by Andreas Fliedner, Golkonda-Verlag, Munich 2017, ISBN 3944720512 , pp. 470–473
  • Sunand T. Joshi, David E. Schultz: Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family. In: An HP Lovecraft Encyclopedia , Hippocampus Press, Westport 2001, ISBN 0-9748789-1-X , pp. 89-90

Web links

Wikisource: Arthur Jermyn  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ HP Lovecraft: Arthur Jermyn. In: City without a name. Horror stories. German by Charlotte Countess von Klinckowstroem, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1973, p. 197
  2. ^ HP Lovecraft: Arthur Jermyn. In: City without a name. Horror stories. German by Charlotte Countess von Klinckowstroem, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1973, p. 199
  3. ^ HP Lovecraft: Arthur Jermyn. In: City without a name. Horror stories. German by Charlotte Countess von Klinckowstroem, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1973, p. 198
  4. ^ HP Lovecraft: Arthur Jermyn. In: City without a name. Horror stories. German by Charlotte Countess von Klinckowstroem, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1973, p. 204
  5. Sunand T. Joshi : HP Lovecraft - life and work. Volume 1. German by Andreas Fliedner, Golkonda-Verlag, Munich 2017, p. 472
  6. Quoted from Sunand T. Joshi: HP Lovecraft - Life and Work. Volume 1. German by Andreas Fliedner, Golkonda-Verlag, Munich 2017, p. 493
  7. Sunand T. Joshi: HP Lovecraft - life and work. Volume 1. German by Andreas Fliedner, Golkonda-Verlag, Munich 2017, p. 472
  8. Sunand T. Joshi, David E. Schultz: Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family. In: An HP Lovecraft Encyclopedia , Hippocampus Press, Westport 2001, p. 90
  9. Sunand T. Joshi: HP Lovecraft - life and work. Volume 1. German by Andreas Fliedner, Golkonda-Verlag, Munich 2017, p. 561
  10. Sunand T. Joshi: What Happens in Arthur Jermyn. In: Lovecraft and a World in Transition , Collected Essays on HP Lovecraft, Hippocampus Press 2014
  11. ^ So Rein A. Zondergeld : Lexicon of Fantastic Literature. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1983, p. 271
  12. HP Lovecraft: Cthulhu's reputation. In: Cthulhu. Ghost stories. German by HC Artmann , Suhrkamp, ​​Fantastic Library, Frankfurt am Main 1972, p. 193
  13. So Sunand T. Joshi: HP Lovecraft - life and work. Volume 1. German by Andreas Fliedner, Golkonda-Verlag, Munich 2017, p. 471
  14. Sunand T. Joshi: HP Lovecraft - life and work. Volume 1. German by Andreas Fliedner, Golkonda-Verlag, Munich 2017, p. 471
  15. Quoted from: Sunand T. Joshi: HP Lovecraft - Life and Work. Volume 1. German by Andreas Fliedner, Golkonda-Verlag, Munich 2017, p. 472
  16. Sunand T. Joshi: HP Lovecraft - life and work. Volume 1. German by Andreas Fliedner, Golkonda-Verlag, Munich 2017, p. 473
  17. Sunand T. Joshi: What Happens in Arthur Jermyn. In: Lovecraft and a World in Transition , Collected Essays on HP Lovecraft, Hippocampus Press 2014
  18. Sunand T. Joshi: HP Lovecraft - life and work. Volume 1. German by Andreas Fliedner, Golkonda-Verlag, Munich 2017, pp. 470, 473
  19. Sunand T. Joshi: What Happens in Arthur Jermyn. In: Lovecraft and a World in Transition , Collected Essays on HP Lovecraft, Hippocampus Press 2014
  20. Sunand T. Joshi: HP Lovecraft - life and work. Volume 1. German by Andreas Fliedner, Golkonda-Verlag, Munich 2017, p. 473