H.P. Lovecraft

Polaris strikes me as the retelling of a fever dream. I did enjoy The White Ship more than Polaris because it seemed to be a little more cohesive. Either story could easily be the basis for a concept album by Rush or an epic song by Iron Maiden.

I have to admit that I don't much care for these early writings. They are brief and somewhat disjointed, a little too dreamlike to hold my interest. I do hold them in some regard since they show the beginnings of his Dreamlands ideas that take on fuller form in his later writings.

In The White Ship we get our first glimpse of some of the geography of the Dreamlands. More interestingly we first see mention of godlike creatures other than the maddening Great Old Ones and Outer Gods. The eidolon Lathi rules over Thalarion, a city of Daemons and mad things which once were men.

The bearded man aboard the ship also mentions gods which are "greater than men, and they have conquered." The voyagers of the White Ship are guided to fantastical cities by a heavenly blue bird which seems to have suddenly appeared. It leads the voyagers to locations of increasing beauty and splendor, and each time the voyagers seek greater places. Ultimately, the bird leads the ship to its doom: a monstrous cataract where the waters of the world fall to abysmal nothingness. The watchman of this story closes his eyes and braces for the fall, only to wake at his old lighthouse.

Peering into the waters, he sees the remnant of a white ship, shattered on the rocks. Again this leads us to wonder: are Lovecraft's Dreamlands some mirror of our living world, or perhaps a physical space somehow connected to our world? Is there perhaps a more mundane explanation; are the dreamers simply dreaming of that which they may have perceived and then forgotten in the waking world? Could this inability to disassociate dream from reality merely be some form or madness?