Dark Hauntings…

“I see it – coming here – hell-wind – titan blur – black wings – Yog Sothoth save me – the three-lobed burning eye…”

-Last sentence of The Haunter of the Dark, HPL.

This sentence has been my personal bugbear for quite some time now; long-time readers will know that I’ve discussed it before. It has been bothering me again however, so I would like to take the time to pin down everything about it that annoys me.

When I was a teenager, I first discovered Lovecraft and immediately tried to devour everything of his that I could get my hands on. I borrowed and bought compilations and re-prints and, after consuming them, lost them in house moves or gave them away to fellow readers to (of course!) never see them again. It wasn’t until much later that I began seriously to collect editions of Lovecraft and amass my own private library. Long before that stage though, I had noticed something peculiar: this sentence changed depending upon the edition you were reading.

It became a sort of game with me to turn to this page of each collection I stumbled across and see which version of the sentence had been committed to print. I rapidly learned that there were three main variants and I sometimes purchased the volume, or not, simply based upon whether the variation was the one that I favoured.

As time passed, things changed – now only one iteration of the last sentence appears in print (the one above). It seems that a “definitive text” has been prepared and that this version is the one that all publishers turn to at need. This is fine. However (and I have to say that this is just my opinion), I think it’s the wrong one.

Let me issue a caveat at this point: I have never seen the original manuscript, or drafts, of this story; I have never seen it as it appeared in its first presentation in “Weird Tales” magazine; I also have no idea how Lovecraft prepared his texts for publication. All I’m proceeding upon is gut instinct, a knowledge of the publication industry and a long familiarity with HPL’s writing style. In short, I’m no expert, but I think my point is a valid one.

Without going into the specifics of the words themselves, let’s first take notice of how the sentence is constructed. It works something like this:

(Phrase1: “I see it”) (Dash) (Phrase2: “coming here”) (Dash) (Hyphenated Phrase1: “hell-wind”) (Dash) (Phrase3: “titan blur”) (Dash) (Phrase4: “black wings”) (Dash) (Phrase5: “Yog Sothoth save me”) (Dash) (Hyphenated Phrase2: “the three-lobed burning eye…”)

From this we can see that the sentence is comprised of five disjointed phrases, between two and four words apiece; two phrases which contain hyphens; and six dashes. Breaking it up like this allows us to look more closely at the sentence’s construction and to start untangling its riddle.

The purpose of this sentence is to show the narrator’s fear and desperation at the approach of the entity which is coming to destroy him. It has been noted in the past that this device – the last written words of the doomed scribe – is a bit ludicrous, a bit like Eric Idle reading the wall inscription about Castle Aaargh! in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”. Many people have told me that this story needs to end with a pen scrawl running off the edge of the page. These views are all valid, but HPL was living in a pre-Monty Python world and so we can largely forgive him his indiscretion. We’re supposed to feel as though Robert Blake (the narrator) is busy watching his approaching doom, turning from the window erratically to hastily pen a few more sketchy words as it gets closer. Some have said that in such circumstances he probably wouldn’t have written “Yog Sothoth save me”, but whether it works or not really comes down to the individual reader.

What the sentence does have though, is pace. As you read it, it starts to speed up of its own accord: it revs and growls a bit at first, then tears off down the verbal highway to jangling horror. This, I think, is not an accident; I think HPL deliberately wrote it this way.

Let’s think about how it was written. As I said, I’m no expert on HPL’s writing method, but we can assume a few things: first, the story might have started as a few scribbled notes, or ideas, in a notebook, and then it might have migrated onto some larger sheets of paper, like a legal notepad. Once it began to crystallise, HPL might then have started a first draft, typing it out onto standard-sized sheets of paper. After that, he might have taken to it with a red pen and made corrections and alterations, removing bits that didn’t work and scribbling in other new concepts (remember, he was working Old School, without the benefit of a word processor). Then, once it was all good to go, he would have typed out a “clean copy” to send off for consideration; he might also have created a carbon copy while doing so, using sheets of carbon paper to duplicate his keystrokes onto a second sheet of paper.

So far, so good. Now comes a wrinkle. Writers use a style guide to write. Often, this is just picked up as part of learning the craft and amounts to little more than standard, correct grammar usage. But certain things are idiosyncratic: do you indent each new paragraph, or each paragraph after the first one in each new section of writing? Do you use colons and semi-colons? Is it okay to use more than one exclamation point at once? Each writer will have their own rules. That being said, when a writer is creating a piece for a specific publisher, they often find that they have to conform with that publisher’s way of doing things and use their style guide. It’s not inconceivable that HPL would follow the rules of the “Weird Tales” regimen when writing a piece for them, although it’s also as likely that he would have deliberately chosen not to (he was a bit cantankerous).

When it comes to dashes and hyphens, most publishers usually have rules regarding them, and they help serve to make clear which is which, especially when a manuscript is not as pristine as they would like. Oftentimes, dashes are required to be written like this: “ — ", a double hyphen with a space at each end. This helps clearly delineate them from hyphens, which are singular and bounded at either end by the words that they tie together. You can start to see how our sentence might have been mangled during the printing process.

After finishing the story, HPL would have sent it off to Farnsworth Wright at “Weird Tales” for consideration. We know from correspondence that these two men had a somewhat contentious relationship, and that HPL often refused to alter anything that didn’t quite pass muster. When Wright passed this piece on to be put through pre-press and prepared for publication, can we be sure that he meticulously annotated this sentence to guarantee that it was transcribed correctly? Journals and magazines are notoriously time-pressured in production, so I don’t know…

There's a further wrinkle to all this: Lovecraft's documents languished for quite some time after his death in the hands of a young man in Florida, who didn't know - as HPL's unexpectedly chosen literary executor - exactly what to do with them. It took some time before August Derleth was able to acquire them and build Arkham House around this potential gold mine. What kind of damage might have affected the manuscripts during this time? Add to this that Derleth is notorious for having tampered with Lovecraft's vision, imposing his own creative notions upon the texts, including the detested "Elemental Theory" of the Mythos. Could he have tinkered with our sentence, re-working it for publication under his new publishing banner?

Let’s look now at one of the other variations on this line:

“I see it – coming here – hell-wind – titan blue – black wings – Yog Sothoth save me – the three-lobed burning eye…”

The only real change here is that the word “blur” has been replaced by the word “blue”; everything else remains unchanged.

We now have a curious image – what is “titan blue”? It sounds like something you would find written on the side of a Crayola carton, like “Prussian blue”, or “cerulean blue”, but it isn’t; it doesn’t mean anything; it’s a nonsense. You don’t have to have read Houellebecq or Harman to know that HPL had a very precise, scientific turn of mind. You can’t read “At the Mountains of Madness” or “The Shadow Out of Time” without sensing that HPL had a yen for scientific exactitude. This is a guy who was an amateur astronomer from a young age. It doesn’t make sense that he would let his character say something meaningless at this point.

Of course, you can argue that the fact that it is nonsense underscores Robert Blake’s disintegrating mental state, but really? This is the climax of the story; words are crucial here and you don’t want to waste a single one of them. All it takes is just one reader to stop and say, “what the hell is a ‘titan blue’?” and you can call the story an utter failure. (Of course, here in Australia, a “titan blue” is a really big fight, but equally, I’m sure that’s not what Lovecraft was going for!)

I’m confident that this version of the sentence is incorrect; however, it’s still closer to being right than the “definitive” one. Let’s turn to the last alternative:

“I see it – coming here – hell-wind – titan blue–black wings – Yog Sothoth save me – the three-lobed burning eye…”

As you can see, the previous version of the line exists simply because the hyphen between the words “blue” and “black” was misread as a dash. It’s not “titan blue”; it’s “titan blue-black wings”. Now we have a clearer picture of the menace and a greater precision in the language which accords well with HPL’s technique. The wings aren’t black and they’re not blue; they’re “blue-black”, like a raven’s wing.

The other thing to consider about this variant is the rhythm. Blake’s panic is building at this point as his doom becomes clear to himself and us. Accordingly, Lovecraft ratchets up the pitch, making the flow of the words convey the growing sense of hysteria. “I see it” is almost a sentence unto itself; it stops the preceding action cold. Then we get two fearful stutters: “coming here – hell wind”. The next phrase is the last time we get a measured sense of reportage from Blake: “titan blue-black wings”. It’s panic stations from here on in: “Yog Sothoth save me”. Then the rest is madness. Each step in the sentence gets longer as the fear heightens; if you read it aloud, you will see that you have an instinctive tendency to speed up as you go. This is what Lovecraft intended. This is madness exploding out into the open.

For my money, this is the correct version.

Let’s now go back and look at the “definitive” version once more.

“I see it – coming here – hell-wind – titan blur – black wings – Yog Sothoth save me – the three-lobed burning eye…”

Compared to the “titan blue-black wings” variant, this version is choppy. The first five phrases stall the terror, rather than letting it off the leash. It may have seemed that this punchiness would speak to a sense of rising incoherence, but it actually robs the sentence of its power by making. It. Stop. Again. And. Again.

Where did the “blur” come from? Well there are a number of possibilities. The letter ‘E’ is the hardest-working symbol in the English language, and it makes sense that, on an old-fashioned typewriter, it would wear out long before the other letters – maybe this was the case with HPL’s machine? We know that he was too much of a skinflint to get it fixed or buy a new one. There’s also the possibility that Wright was working from HPL’s carbon copy of the manuscript and carbon paper, if not replaced regularly, tends to wear and get a bit unreliable – perhaps the bulk of the ‘e’ on the end of “blue” was lost in transmission? There’s also the possibility that HPL actually wrote “blur” accidentally and missed it – this was the last long piece he wrote before he died, so he might have slipped up. Or Farnsworth Wright, or one of his typesetters, might have made a compositing error while preparing it for print. We’ll probably never know for sure.

So, what makes me so positive about this? Read on…

“Blur”, by definition, is an imprecise word. Lovecraft hates imprecise words. If he can use a definitive term – even while trying to describe the indescribable – he will do so. He will call it “squamous”, or “rugose”, or “quinquepedalian”, but he will never call it “fuzzy”. “-Ish” is not in his overly developed vocabulary. So why is there a “blur” here? It doesn’t read right.

Secondly, HPL would not have used the word “titan” like this. The phrase “titan blur” (and “titan blue”, for that matter) has an implied indefinite article in front of it – “(a) titan blur”; “(a) titan blue” (whatever that is). Conversely, there is no implicit article before “titan blue-black wings” which changes its delivery and the usage of the word “titan”. Lovecraft’s style of writing was Victorian; olde worlde; archaic: with an article ahead of it, he would have used the adjectival form of the word - “titanic”- in preference. If he was just going to use the word “titan”, I think he might well have capitalized it – Titan – because Titans are creatures from Greek mythology who were titanic. The “definitive” version of the sentence tends to shipwreck itself on the very two words it claims to be original and correct.

*****

As I said earlier, I haven’t seen an original manuscript version of this story, or a first draft from which the story was originally published. I haven’t seen the first printing of the story from “Weird Tales”. All I have is my memory of the fact that there used to be variations on this line and now they’ve been subsumed by a variant which seems to me to be incorrect. Everything I’ve posited to this point might well be blown away by hard, textual evidence. I don’t mind – it would be nice to put this issue to bed.

Some might say that this is just a storm in a (non-Euclidean) teacup, and I heartily agree: nothing will be changed by resolving this issue – the Universe is a huge, uncaring void after all. What bugs me most about this state of affairs, however, is that someone, somewhere, made a decision about this, and it has had ramifications upon the enjoyment that fans have in these works. This is not what Lovecraft said; this is what someone thinks Lovecraft might have said, which is something quite different. That decision might have been well-intentioned and based upon the evidence available to hand, but I hope that I have shown that it’s not conclusive. Lovecraft himself made his creations “open source” before such a term was even dreamed into being; at the very least, this line in the sand should have had some kind of fanbase discussion centred upon it before being signed off. Perhaps there should have been a vote? I don’t know.

All I can say is, once upon a time, there were three (at least three) variants to the last line of this story, Lovecraft’s last. Back then, you could take your pick. Nowadays, I think we get short-changed…

Postscript:

My recent evening indulging S.T. Joshi and friends provided some insights into this question which have moved the answer closer to a resolution of some kind. So that evening wasn't a complete waste of time after all! In no particular order, here are some further revelations:

1) The original manuscript for this story is considered lost. When Joshi "re-mastered"  Lovecraft's work for Arkham House in the 90s - creating the "definitive versions" - the only texts that he had to go on were those reproduced in the original publications (both books and magazines);

2) August Derleth - far from being cavalier with HPL's words as I suggested - seemed to hold them as almost sacred. It seems that, even if he couldn't make out what the words were supposed to be (from Lovecraft's original drafts), even if they didn't make sense, he left them unaltered. Joshi was quick to deride him for not being able to read HPL's handwriting (a skill that he claimed as his own "superpower" on several occasions) but was not able to intuit that Derleth was perhaps being acutely - even didactically - cautious, as the custodian of these works; and

3) Apparently, the original text for the story - the Holy Grail that would put this question to bed once and for all - was bought at auction by a buyer in (of all places) Melbourne, here in Australia. At this time, no-one knows who that was or where they are - and better-connected people than I have tried to run this issue to ground with no result. So, if anyone out there has a crazy uncle or aunt who collects (or collected) Lovecraftiana and who was actively buying in the 80s and 90s, sit them down and have a really good chat with them about this!