The Lovecraft Project:

H. P. Lovecraft is the father of cosmic horror – the genre constructed around the notion that we human beings are a tiny, insignificant fraction of the universe, and that there are things much bigger and more important than us hidden in the depths of the world.

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 White Ship

The White Ship is all about description and imagery. It tells the story of a lonely man that boards a magic ship to travel to the most incredible places, and it puts the focus solely on the strange qualities of these locations in order to produce a sense of wonder and awe.

The narrator of The White Ship is in love with the sea. He considers it a powerful, wondrous entity that holds many mysteries. After being alone in a lighthouse for far too long (“I thought I were the last man on the planet,” he confesses in the first paragraph), the protagonist starts to see things in the water, having powerful visions when he’s staring at the waves crashing on the shore.

The narrator frequently talks about the sea as if it were a living, breathing thing, capable of dreaming and speaking about old memories. He listens to it with reverence and respect, believing that it has knowledge about the past, the present, and the future. He claims that by looking at the water he can experiences glimpses “of the ways that were and the ways that might be, as of the ways that are; for the ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and dreams of Time.”

Sometimes, he used to spot a white ship sailing in the distance – a ship that always managed to move with grace no matter how fierce the waves and the wind. This ship is linked to a sense of serenity: it sails silently, glides smoothly, and moves rhythmically; its captain speaks with a soft language, beckoning him to come aboard, while the oarsmen sing sweet songs under the full moon.

One night, the narrator accepts the invitation to board the strange ship, getting to it by walking over “a bridge of moonbeams,” which immediately sets the fantastical, dreamlike tone of the narrative.

The protagonist then begins to speak of the wondrous places he visited. First is Zar, the Land of Dreams, where there were “visions of young poets who died in want before the world could learn of what they had seen and dreamed,” signaling that the sea knows not only what there was, is and will be, but also what could have been.

Next is Thalarion, the City of Mysteries, which is described in ambivalent terms to fit its theme: it’s “fascinating yet repellent”, it’s “alluring” but also “weird and ominous.” The city is a trap; a place that lures people with its questions but offers no answers – even the spires of its temples reach beyond the horizon just “so that no man might behold their peaks.”

Not all places are welcoming, after all. There’s also one that enchants the protagonist with its colors and music, but when they get near it, the wind brings the foul scent of disease and death. The captain explains, “This is Xura, the Land of Pleasures Unnatained.”

Finally, they arrive at the Land of Fancy, where they stayed happily for countless aeons, for it was a place free of suffering and death, as time and space didn’t dwell there.

Eventually, however, the narrator hears about a city of gold in the west, called Cathuria, and becomes enchanted with its image: “Of marble and porphyry are the houses, and roofed with glittering gold that reflects the rays of the sun and enhances the splendour of the cities, as blissful gods view them from the distant peaks.”

The captain warns him about the city, claiming that no one has ever seen it, but the protagonist doesn’t heed the warning and sets sail anyway to find his El Dorado. El Dorado, because his search for this city of gold in the unexplored west ends up leading only to death and ruin. He finds no city; he finds no gold. The white ship reaches the edge of the world instead and falls to its destruction.

The protagonist wakes up in his lighthouse, alive and well, but cut off from the magic world forever, as the sea never spoke with him again.

This ending functions as a cautionary tale. The narrator tried to bit more than he could chew, he reached too far, trying to get, see and experience everything, but just lost all he had in the process. The world closed itself to him, denying him a piece of its magic.

The White Ship is an interesting tale, but solely because of the quality of its imagery. The protagonist has no personality whatsoever – we don’t even fully get why he would leave the Land of Fancy to search for a golden city – but the descriptions are certainly fascinating, capturing the wondrous qualities of those fantastical places.

February 27, 2021.

—> Read or listen to The White Ship here.