H.P. Lovecraft. Nyarlathotep
Nyarlathotep
by H. P. Lovecraft
Written early Dec 1920
Published November 1920 in The United Amateur, Vol. 20, No. 2, p. 19-21.
Nyarlathotep... the crawling chaos... I am the last... I will tell the
audient void...
I do not recall distinctly when it began, but it was months ago. The
general tension was horrible. To a season of political and social upheaval
was added a strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger;
a danger widespread and all-embracing, such a danger as may be imagined
only in the most terrible phantasms of the night. I recall that the people
went about with pale and worried faces, and whispered warnings and
prophecies which no one dared consciously repeat or acknowledge to himself
that he had heard. A sense of monstrous guilt was upon the land, and out
of the abysses between the stars swept chill currents that made men shiver
in dark and lonely places. There was a demoniac alteration in the sequence
of the seasons the autumn heat lingered fearsomely, and everyone felt that
the world and perhaps the universe had passed from the control of known
gods or forces to that of gods or forces which were unknown.
And it was then that Nyarlathotep came out of Egypt. Who he was, none
could tell, but he was of the old native blood and looked like a Pharaoh.
The fellahin knelt when they saw him, yet could not say why. He said he
had risen up out of the blackness of twenty-seven centuries, and that he
had heard messages from places not on this planet. Into the lands of
civilisation came Nyarlathotep, swarthy, slender, and sinister, always
buying strange instruments of glass and metal and combining them into
instruments yet stranger. He spoke much of the sciences of electricity and
psychology and gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away
speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised
one another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered. And where Nyarlathotep
went, rest vanished, for the small hours were rent with the screams of
nightmare. Never before had the screams of nightmare been such a public
problem; now the wise men almost wished they could forbid sleep in the
small hours, that the shrieks of cities might less horribly disturb the
pale, pitying moon as it glimmered on green waters gliding under bridges,
and old steeples crumbling against a sickly sky.
I remember when Nyarlathotep came to my city the great, the old, the
terrible city of unnumbered crimes. My friend had told me of him, and of
the impelling fascination and allurement of his revelations, and I burned
with eagerness to explore his uttermost mysteries. My friend said they
were horrible and impressive beyond my most fevered imaginings; and what
was thrown on a screen in the darkened room prophesied things none but
Nyarlathotep dared prophesy, and in the sputter of his sparks there was
taken from men that which had never been taken before yet which shewed
only in the eyes. And I heard it hinted abroad that those who knew
Nyarlathotep looked on sights which others saw not.
It was in the hot autumn that I went through the night with the restless
crowds to see Nyarlathotep; through the stifling night and up the endless
stairs into the choking room. And shadowed on a screen, I saw hooded forms
amidst ruins, and yellow evil faces peering from behind fallen monuments.
And I saw the world battling against blackness; against the waves of
destruction from ultimate space; whirling, churning, struggling around the
dimming, cooling sun. Then the sparks played amazingly around the heads of
the spectators, and hair stood up on end whilst shadows more grotesque
than I can tell came out and squatted on the heads. And when I, who was
colder and more scientific than the rest, mumbled a trembling protest
about imposture and static electricity, Nyarlathotep drove us all out,
down the dizzy stairs into the damp, hot, deserted midnight streets. I
screamed aloud that I was not afraid; that I never could be afraid; and
others screamed with me for solace. We swore to one another that the city
was exactly the same, and still alive; and when the electric lights began
to fade we cursed the company over and over again, and laughed at the
queer faces we made.
I believe we felt something coming down from the greenish moon, for when
we began to depend on its light we drifted into curious involuntary
marching formations and seemed to know our destinations though we dared
not think of them. Once we looked at the pavement and found the blocks
loose and displaced by grass, with scarce a line of rusted metal to shew
where the tramways had run. And again we saw a tram-car, lone, windowless,
dilapidated, and almost on its side. When we gazed around the horizon, we
could not find the third tower by the river, and noticed that the
silhouette of the second tower was ragged at the top. Then we split up
into narrow columns, each of which seemed drawn in a different direction.
One disappeared in a narrow alley to the left, leaving only the echo of a
shocking moan. Another filed down a weed-choked subway entrance, howling
with a laughter that was mad. My own column was sucked toward the open
country, and presently I felt a chill which was not of the hot autumn; for
as we stalked out on the dark moor, we beheld around us the hellish
moon-glitter of evil snows. Trackless, inexplicable snows, swept asunder
in one direction only, where lay a gulf all the blacker for its glittering
walls. The column seemed very thin indeed as it plodded dreamily into the
gulf. I lingered behind, for the black rift in the green-litten snow was
frightful, and I thought I had heard the reverberations of a disquieting
wail as my companions vanished; but my power to linger was slight. As if
beckoned by those who had gone before, I half-floated between the titanic
snowdrifts, quivering and afraid, into the sightless vortex of the
unimaginable.
Screamingly sentient, dumbly delirious, only the gods that were can tell.
A sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and
whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of
dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the
pallid stars and make them flicker low. Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of
monstrous things; half-seen columns of unsanctifled temples that rest on
nameless rocks beneath space and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres
of light and darkness. And through this revolting graveyard of the
universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous
whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond
Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly,
awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods the blind,
voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep.
-------------------------------------
NOTE: Nyarlathotep appeared in the November issue the United Amateur, but
as that publication was often several months late, it is not clear exactly
when the story actually saw print. Rheinhart Kleiner had read it by
December 1920, though it is not certain whether he had read it in the
United Amateur, or HPL had mailed him a copy of the manuscript.