The Other Gods

"The Other Gods"
Author	H.P. Lovecraft
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Fantasy
Published in	The Fantasy Fan
Publication date	1933

"The Other Gods" is a fantasy short story written by American author H. P. Lovecraft, on August 14, 1921.[1] It was first published in the November 1933 issue of The Fantasy Fan.[2]

Plot

Barzai the Wise, a high priest and prophet greatly learned in the lore of the "gods of earth", or Great Ones, attempts to scale the mountain of Hatheg-Kla in order to look upon their faces, accompanied by his young disciple Atal. Upon reaching the peak, Barzai at first seems overjoyed until he finds that the "gods of the earth" are not there alone, but rather are overseen by the "other gods, the gods of the outer hells that guard the feeble gods of earth!" Atal flees, and Barzai is never seen again.

Characters

Atal

Atal first appears in Lovecraft's "The Cats of Ulthar" (1920) as the young son of an innkeeper in Ulthar who witnesses the weird rites of the cats on the night that the old cotter and his wife are killed. In "The Other Gods", he becomes the apprentice of Barzai the Wise and accompanies him on his doomed climb to the top of Mount Hatheg-Kla to see the gods.

When Randolph Carter visits Atal in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1926), he is the patriarch of the Temple of the Elder Ones and is now well over 300 years old, "but still very keen of mind and memory". After many draughts of moon-wine, he reveals an important piece of information that helps Carter in his quest. As befits his age and station, Atal sports a long beard.

Barzai

In "The Other Gods", Barzai the Wise is high-priest of the Gods of Earth (the Great Ones) in Ulthar and one-time teacher of Atal. According to the story, he often delved into the unknown, reading such works as the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan. He is the son of an aristocrat, which makes him skeptical of commoners' superstitions. He is said to have advised the burgesses of Ulthar when they passed their ban on cat-slaying. He vanishes shortly after climbing to the top of Hatheg-Kla to see the gods reveling on its peak. In "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath", Nyarlathotep himself speaks to Randolph Carter in a brief and sardonic fashion of the ill-fated expeditions of other impertinent god-seekers, and therein relates that when Barzai's hubris brought him to the baleful attention of the Other Gods, they "did what was expected".

Sansu

According to the story, Sansu is "written of with fright" in the Pnakotic Manuscripts, having once scaled the mountain of Hatheg-Kla "in the youth of the world" and found "naught but wordless ice and rock". He is the last person to have climbed the mountain before Barzai.

Setting

Though some readers assume that "The Other Gods" is set in Lovecraft's Dreamlands, critic S. T. Joshi points out the connections to the story "Polaris", which seems to be set in Earth's distant past, in arguing that "the clear implication is that this tale too takes place in a prehistoric civilization."[3]

Hatheg-Kla is a "high and rocky" mountain in the "stony desert" thirteen days' walk from the village of Hatheg, for which it is named. It is one of the places where the "gods of earth" once dwelt and sometimes return to when they are homesick.
"White-capped Thurai" is another of the mountains where the gods of earth used to dwell. It is said that at Thurai men mistake the tears of the gods for rain.
Lerion, whose "plaintive dawn-winds" are the sighs of the gods, is another mountain formerly inhabited by the gods. In The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Lerion is described as the source of the river Skai.
Ulthar, the hometown of the story's main characters, was introduced in the story "The Cats of Ulthar". It is said to lie "beyond the river Skai" and to be a neighbour of Hatheg.
Lovecraft mentions the mountain of Kadath for the first time in "The Other Gods"; the story is set up as an explanation of why the gods of earth removed themselves to "unknown Kadath in the cold waste where no man treads." Lovecraft's novel The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath involves Randolph Carter's attempt to reach Kadath in order to consult the gods.

In addition to Dream-Quest, the mysterious mountain is mentioned in several other Lovecraft stories, including "The Strange High House in the Mist", "The Dunwich Horror", and At the Mountains of Madness.

Inspiration

The story resembles the many tales of hubris written by Lord Dunsany, like "The Revolt of the Home Gods" from The Gods of Pegana (1905).[4]

Connections

The Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan (misprinted as "...of Earth" in the story's original publication) appear for the first time in "The Other Gods". The Pnakotic Manuscripts make their second appearance in "The Other Gods", having been introduced in "Polaris", along with Lomar. Both later reappear in Dream-Quest.

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References

"Lovecraft's Fiction", The H. P. Lovecraft Archive.
"H. P. Lovecraft’s 'The Other Gods'", The H. P. Lovecraft Archive.
Joshi, p. 21.
Joshi, S.T.; Schultz, David E. (2004). An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Hippocampus Press. p. 196. ISBN 978-0974878911.

Sources

S. T. Joshi, "The Real World and the Dream World in Lovecraft", The Horror of It All, Robert M. Price, ed.

External links

Works related to The Other Gods at Wikisource
The Other Gods title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.

[1] "Lovecraft's Fiction", The H. P. Lovecraft Archive.

[2] "H. P. Lovecraft’s 'The Other Gods'", The H. P. Lovecraft Archive.

[3] Joshi, p. 21.

[Joshi-4] Joshi, S.T.; Schultz, David E. (2004). An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Hippocampus Press. p. 196. ISBN 978-0974878911.

H. P. Lovecraft
Bibliography
Short stories	"The Beast in the Cave" "The Alchemist" "The Tomb" "Dagon" "A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson" "Polaris" "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" "Memory" "Old Bugs" "The Transition of Juan Romero" "The White Ship" "The Street" "The Doom that Came to Sarnath" "The Statement of Randolph Carter" "The Terrible Old Man" "The Tree" "The Cats of Ulthar" "The Temple" "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" "Celephaïs" "From Beyond" "Nyarlathotep" "The Picture in the House" "Ex Oblivione" "Sweet Ermengarde" "The Nameless City" "The Quest of Iranon" "The Moon-Bog" "The Outsider" "The Other Gods" "The Music of Erich Zann" "Herbert West–Reanimator" "Hypnos" "What the Moon Brings" "Azathoth" "The Hound" "The Lurking Fear" "The Rats in the Walls" "The Unnamable" "The Festival" "The Shunned House" "The Horror at Red Hook" "He" "In the Vault" "Cool Air" "The Call of Cthulhu" "Pickman's Model" "The Silver Key" "The Strange High House in the Mist" "The Colour Out of Space" "The Descendant" "History of the Necronomicon" "The Very Old Folk" "Ibid" "The Dunwich Horror" "The Dreams in the Witch House" "The Thing on the Doorstep" "The Evil Clergyman" "The Book" "The Haunter of the Dark"
Novellas	The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath The Whisperer in Darkness At the Mountains of Madness The Shadow over Innsmouth The Shadow Out of Time
Novels	The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
Collaborations	"The Green Meadow" "Poetry and the Gods" "The Crawling Chaos" "The Horror at Martin's Beach" "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" "The Curse of Yig" The Mound "Medusa's Coil" "The Horror in the Museum" "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" "Out of the Aeons" "The Tree on the Hill" "Till A’the Seas" "In the Walls of Eryx" "The Thing in the Moonlight"
Poetry	Fungi from Yuggoth
Essays	"Supernatural Horror in Literature" To Quebec and the Stars Autobiography: Some Notes on a Nonentity
Locations	Arkham Dunwich Innsmouth Miskatonic University Lovecraft Country R'lyeh Yuggoth
Characters	Randolph Carter Herbert West
Books about	H. P. Lovecraft: A Life H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia Lovecraft: A Biography Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos
Related	Cthulhu Mythos Dream Cycle Lovecraftian horror Cosmicism H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society Necronomicon Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (documentary) Sonia Greene (wife)
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