The Lovecraft Project:

Howard Phillips Lovecraft is the father of cosmic horror – the genre constructed around the notion that we humans are just a tiny, insignificant part of the universe, which holds much bigger, ancient, and more powerful beings. We are nothing compared to what lies out there, beyond our reach and understanding.

The plan is to write a few paragraphs – a small review – on each of H.P. Lovecraft’s short stories and novellas, following a chronological order – as they are structured in the Barnes & Noble edition of H.P. Lovecraft The Complete Fiction. The point is to analyze how Lovecraft crafted his tales of horror, the narrative devices he used, the patterns in his writing, the common themes present in his work, and – of course – the blatant racism that permeates some of his stories.

There will be spoilers, of course.

The Statement of Randolph Carter

“I repeat to you, gentlemen, that your inquisition is fruitless.”

The Statement of Randolph Carter is a short story about the price those who search for forbidden knowledge must pay. Narrated in the first person, the story has Randolph Carter giving the police his statement about the events that led to the death of his colleague, Harley Warren.

The Statement of Randolph Carter begins, like many other stories written by Lovecraft, with a narrator claiming that his tale is governed by reason and contains nothing but the truth. There’s a need for these narrators to establish themselves as reliable ones because the events that are going to follow are too fantastical in nature. It’s as if they’re pleading with us to consider the horrors that they’re going to describe possible so as to amplify their effect.

Randolph Carter speaks just like the other Lovecraftian narrators, describing those horrors with vague terms. They are of “nebulous nature”; the creatures that appear are referred to as “nameless things”; and the events themselves feel like a “vision” or a “nightmare.”

Carter tries to justify this language, saying that “if anything remains vague it is only because of the dark cloud which has come over my mind.” In other words, the horrors here are indescribable not only because of their strange nature, which defies language, but also because they left an impression on the narrator, a lasting effect, making him dazed and uncertain.

The subject of his tale is his colleague, Harley Warren, and the time they went to a swamp together. Carter and Warren used to study forbidden books without abandon – “Most, I believe, are in Arabic,” he explains, helping to build that famous connection between the Orient and the supernatural – but now the character shows signs of regret regarding his past actions. If he used to read about the occult before, now Carter defends that, when it comes to certain matters, ignorance is actually a blessing, while knowledge brings only damnation: “As to the nature of our studies – must I say again that I no longer retain full comprehension? It seems to me rather merciful that I do not, for they were terrible studies, which I pursued more through reluctant fascination than through actual inclination.”

Forbidden knowledge often fascinates Lovecraft’s characters with its secrets; it has this irresistible lure that guides them into a trap. Carter and Warren are drawn to it and pay the price.

The narrator is desperately trying to avoid blame, however. He claims that he no longer wants to study those books – or even understand them – and renounces his past.  He says that he feared Warren, describing him as a fearsome and dominating person so as to invite us to believe that he was coerced into diving into that world.

It’s said that the story is based on a dream Lovecraft had one day. Carter indeed narrates everything as if he were explaining a dream he can’t fully remember, being extremely vague about certain plot points, such as the reason they went to the swamp: “Once more I have to say that I have no clear idea of our object on that night,” he says. This dream-like quality works here because it also removes his agency from the events, as if he is trying to frame his actions as not his own, as if in a trance or a sleep-walking episode.

Among all the books on forbidden knowledge they had, there was a special one that came from India – a book so foreign Carter couldn’t even identify the language it was written in. This book leads them to an ancient cemetery in the swamp filled with “creeping weeds,” “rank grass,” and the absurd “stench of rotten stone.”

In this cemetery – Carter gives it scope, calling it a Necropolis – Warren opens up a sealed tomb and goes underground, leaving his colleague on the surface because “it would be a crime to let anyone with your frail nerves go down there.” Warren fears the “work” he has to do would drive Carter mad – and, since the narrator never went down to look at the “thing” and is still traumatized, maybe Warren had a point.

But Warren goes down with a telephone and huge amounts of wire to call Carter when the deed is done. Carter begins to freak out alone, however, believing the shrines and monoliths that surround him are “half-sentient.” The rocks smelled as if they were rotten for a reason: it gives the tombs an organic quality, making them more alive than they should be.

Eventually, Warren calls Carter and begins to talk about what he’s seeing underground with the usual Lovecraftian vagueness: the horrors are a “thing” that is “terrible,” “monstrous,” and “unbelievable.” “It’s too utterly beyond thought – I dare not tell you – no man could know it and live,” explains Warren.

He begs Carter to seal the tomb and leave quickly, but Carter is too paralyzed to act. He stays on the phone, listening to his colleague shriek and scream and then to silence. Soon, this silence is filled with a horrible voice. The voice of the “unbelievable, unthinkable, almost unmentioned thing.” The narrator says words can’t describe it, of course, but proceeds to try to anyway: “Shall I say that the voice was deep; hollow; gelatinous; remote; unearthly; inhuman; disembodied?” he says, inviting us to apply the same adjectives to the “thing” itself; not only to its voice.

The story ends with what the voice says. “YOU FOOL, WARREN IS DEAD!” it screams, finishing the narrative on an obvious, but curious note. Usually, these ancient and unfathomable creatures can’t speak English as their dreadful nature is usually tied to a feeling of foreignness. Here, however, they apparently can speak English, and maybe that’s why the voice alone, by itself, has such an effect on Carter – just like in Stoker’s Dracula, where the vampire learned English with hostile intentions, the voice here represents the threat a foreign being invading “civilization.”

What makes The Statement of Randolph Carter stand out from the previous tales about unspeakable things is that it’s imbued with a dream-like quality that manages to function as a reflection of the narrator’s guilty conscience.

April 07, 2021.

—> Read or listen to The Statement of Randolph Carter here.