Deaf, dumb and blind

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Deaf, dumb and blind , English title Deaf, Dumb, and Blind , is a short story by American author HP Lovecraft in collaboration with Clifford Martin Eddy Jr. (known as CM Eddy Jr.), which for the first time in April 1925 in the journal Weird Tales is out. It is about an author who has been cut off from the environment due to war injuries, who dies under mysterious circumstances in his house and leaves a document of his last impressions before death.

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Deaf, Dumb, and Blind tells the story of the disabled war veteran and poet Richard Blake, who, together with his servant Dobbs, rented a house on the swamp near Fenton, which was considered cursed by the residents of the city and in which a while ago a retired person lived Man, Simeon Tanner, was inexplicably killed. Blake was blind , deaf and dumb as well as partially paralyzed , thus largely isolated from the outside world and dependent on the help of his servant. He moved into the house to be inspired by the stories around it in his writing.

One day, for unknown reasons, Dobbs flees the house in a panic to his neighbors and leaves Blake there. Led by the doctor Dr. Arlo Morehouse wants several neighbors to see Blake and the house. Upon their arrival, they hear the author's typewriter and Morehouse enters the property. He finds Blake dead in his study, sitting at his typewriter, his eyes wide in panic. He examines the body and determines that it must have died well before the neighbors arrived, but keeps it to himself. He takes the sheets of paper scattered on the floor and the sheet of paper in the typewriter and reads them only after he has arrived at his house. It is later increasingly locked, buying Blake's house and having it torn down. The documents he intended to burn were kept and quoted at the end of the story.

According to what was written, Blake had felt tremors in the house and then determined that his servant must have disappeared as he did not respond to knocking and ringing. At first he felt and smelled burnt meat and had the feeling that the house was on fire, then it took it off and he could hear noises and later a tangle of voices in his head that came closer and dissolved into understandable words:

"Nefarious revelations of soul-wracking Saturnalia ... ghoulish ideas of devastating debauchery ... profane bribery of Kabirian orgies ... malicious threats of unimaginable punishments ..."

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At the same time it became increasingly colder around him due to a stinking wind coming from the direction of the swamp and he felt the presence of a being that he described as " Belial's envoy ". He thank God for his blindness before he is touched by invisible fingers that pull on him but are not strong enough to pull him away from the typewriter, and he is kissed by "a long-dead being" whose "stormy breath" his "hot throat" "scorched" with a frozen flame. At last he sees darkness, "the pitch black darkness of purgatory" and concludes: "It is the end".

After this point, there are more lines on the paper that represent a style break from the previously written and were hammered into the document with significantly more force and with which the story ends:

“The mortal spirit is not given to resist a power beyond the human imagination. It is not given to the immortal spirit to conquer that which has plumbed the depths and made a fleeting moment out of immortality. The end? No, really not! It's just a blissful beginning ... "

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Origin and publications

Deaf, Dumb, and Blind was written in collaboration between the American authors HP Lovecraft and CM Eddy Jr., probably in 1924, and appeared in Weird Tales magazine in April 1925 .

CM Eddy Jr. wrote in a letter to August Derleth that HP Lovecraft was unhappy with the handling of the last document in the typewriter:

"[HPL] was unhappy with my handling of the note found in the typewriter at the very end of the protagonist's account of his eerie experiences, the final paragraph that seemed to have been typed by one of his persecutors. After several conferences over it, and an equal number of attempts on my part to do it justice, he finally agreed to rewrite the last paragraph. "

“[HPL] was dissatisfied with my handling of the note found in the typewriter at the end of the protagonist's account of his uncanny experiences, the last paragraph that appeared to be written by one of his pursuers. After several deliberations about this and an equal number of attempts on my part to do him justice, he finally agreed to rewrite the last paragraph. "

ST Joshi and David E. Schultz assume in the An HP Lovecraft Encyclopedia that Lovecraft revised the entire text that Eddy had written as a draft and in which Lovecraft especially rewritten the ending. They also draw parallels to the story The Testimony of Randolph Carter , in which the evil entity also communicates its presence verbally. In addition, they see a parallel in Simeon Tanner's behavior to Old Man Whatelay in The Dunwich Horror : In both cases, they try to stop the horror through walls and thus lock it out of the house.

After it was published in Weird Tales , the story appeared in several anthologies, including first in the collection The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces (1966) of Lovecraft stories compiled by August Derleth for his publisher Arkham House in 1966 , which appeared in collaboration with other authors, and in 1970 in The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions in a slightly revised form. The latter represents u. a. forms the basis for Franz Rottensteiner's German translation , which first appeared in 1989 as a collection under the title Azathot at Suhrkamp Verlag and in other collections and was edited by Kalju Kirde .

supporting documents

  1. ^ A b C. M. Eddy Jr., HP Lovecraft: Deaf, dumb and blind. In: HP Lovecraft: Azatoth Suhrkamp Taschenbuch 2759, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1997; Pp. 53-66. ISBN 3-518-39259-X .
  2. ↑ a b c d "Deaf, Dumb, and Blind." In: ST Joshi, David E. Schultz: An HP Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001; Pp. 61-62.
  3. ^ CM Eddy Jr., HP Lovecraft: Deaf, Mute, and Blind. In: HP Lovecraft: Azatoth Suhrkamp Taschenbuch 1627, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1989. ISBN 3-518-39259-X .

literature

  • "Deaf, Dumb, and Blind." In: ST Joshi, David E. Schultz: An HP Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001; Pp. 61-62.
  • CM Eddy Jr., HP Lovecraft: Deaf, Mute, and Blind. In: HP Lovecraft: Azatoth Suhrkamp Taschenbuch 2759, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1997; Pp. 53-66. ISBN 3-518-39259-X .