The Temple of Dagon

Aleister wrote:I really do want to figure this one out. Don't worry.. we will!

"Mound, The." Novelette (29,560 words); ghostwritten for Zealia Brown Reed Bishop, December 1929-January 1930. First published (abridged) in WT (November 1940); first collected in BWS; corrected text in HM.
A member of Coronado's expedition of 1541, Panfilo de Zamacona y Nuñez, leaves the main group and conducts a solitary expedition to the mound region of what is now Oklahoma. There he hears tales of an underground realm of fabulous antiquity and (more to his interest) great wealth and finds and Indian who will lead him to one of the few remaining entrances to this realm, although the Indian refuses to accompany him on the actual journey. Zamacona comes upon the cibilization of Xinaian (which he pronounces "K'n-yan"), established by quasi-human creatures who came from outer space. These inhabitants have developed remarkable mental abilities, including telepathy and the power of dematerialization - the process of dissolving themselves and selected objects around them into their component atoms and recombining them at some other location. Zamacona initially expresses wonder at this cibilization but gradually finds that it has declined both intellecually and morally from a much higher level and has now become corrupt and decadent. He attempts to escape but siffers a horrible fate. His written record of his adventures is unearthed in modern times by an archeologist who paraphrases his incredible tale.
Bishop's original plot-germ for the story (as recorded by R. H. Barlow on surviving typescript) was of the most skeletal sort: "There is an Indian mound near here, which is haunted by a headless ghost. Sometimes it is a woman." HPL found this idea "insufferably tame & flat" (SL 3.97) and fabricated a lengthy novelette of underground horror, incorporating many conceptions of his evolving myth-cycle, including Cthulhu (under the variant form Tulu).
The story is the first of HPL's tales to utilize an alien civilization as a transparent metaphor for certain phases of human (and, more specifically, Western) civilization. Initially, K'n-yan seems a Lovecraftian utopia: the people have conquered old age, have no poverty because of their relatively few numbers and their thorough mastery of technology, use religion only as an aesthetic ornament, practice selective breeding to ensure the vigor of the "ruling type," and pass the day largely in aesthetic and intellectual activity. But as Zamacona continues to observe the people, he begins to notice disturbing signs of decadence. Science is "falling into decay"; history is "more and more neglected"; and gradually religion is becoming less an aesthetic ritual and more a degraded superstition. The narrator concludes: "It is evident that K'n-yan was far along in its decadence - reacting with mixed apathy and hysteria against the standardised and time-tabled life of stultifying regularity which machinery had brought it during its middle period." This comment mirrors HPL's ruminations regarding the current state of Western Civilization (see, e.g., SL 2.309).
The story was far longer a work than HPL needed to write for this purpose, and its length bode ill for prospects of publication. WT was on increasingly shaky ground, and Farnsworth Write had to be careful what he accepted; accordingly, he rejected the story in early 1930 because it was too long and not capable of convenient division as a serial. HPL had, apparently, already been paid by Bishop for his work, but he no doubt would have liked to see the story in print.
The belief that Frank Belknap Long had some hand in the writing of this story - derived from Zealia Bishop's declaration that "Long ... advised and worked with me on that short novel" ("H. P. Lovecraft: A Pupil's View" [1953]; in LR) - is countered by Long's own declaration that "I had nothing whatever to do with the writing of The Mound. That brooding, somber, and magnificently atmospheric story is Lovecraftian from the first page to the last" (Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Nightside [Arkham House, 1975], pp. xiii-xiv). Long was at this time acting as Bishop's agent. He had apparently typed HPL's manuscript of the tale, for the typescript seems to come from Long's typewriter. After WT rejected the story, Bishop evidently felt that the text should be abridged in order to make it more salable. Long did this by reducing the initial typescript's eighty-two pages to sixty-nine - not by retyping, but by merely omitting some sheets and scratching out parts of others with a pen. The carbon was kept intact. Long apparently attempted to market the shortened version, but without success. After HPL's death, August Derleth prepared a radically adulterated and abridged text for publication in WT, which was reprinted in Arkham House editions until the unadulterated text was published in 1989.
See W. E. Beardson, "The Mount of Yig?" Etchings and Odysseys No. 1 (1973): 10-13; S. T. Joshi, "Who Wrote 'The Mount'?" Nycyalops No. 14 (March 1978): 41-42 (revised in Crypt No. 11 [Candlemas 1983]: 27-29, 38); Peter H. Cannon, "'The Mound': An Appreciation," Crypt No. 11 (Candlemas 1983): 30-32, 51; Michael DiGregorio, "'Yig,' 'The Mount' and American Indian Lore," Crypt No. 11 (Candlemas 1983): 25-26, 38; S. T. Joshi, "Lovecraft's Alien Civilisations: A Political Interpretation," in Selected Papers on Lovecraft (Necronomicon Press, 1989).

Lovecraft also slipped references to his self-created mythology into the work of clients like Hazel Heald or Adolph de Castro, for whom he ghost-wrote or revised stories. In one revision, Zealia Bishop's "The Mound," Lovecraft slipped in a reference to his octopus-headed god Cthulhu, this time under the name Tulu, providing what seemed to be an independent variant of a real myth to the untrained eye.

wizard76 wrote:That is really cool, I appreciate your help in this matter, it was not so muchthe story line that I loved here, although it was avery in depth storry, but more the way the narrative makes you feel almostt as if you go on the journey with the person to this long lost civilization.

Aleister wrote:My favorite Poe tale was The Fall of the House of Usher.. I remember reading it when I was very young, and even to this day I can still recall the same mental images I got when reading it.

Near the beginning of the tale, the narrator is troubled by the landscape of the house and its surroundings.. he attibutes this not to one particular detail, but the sum of the details as a whole, and thinks perhaps that if any one thing were changed, it would not be seen the same way. As if there are certain combinations of things occuring in life which can give an altogether 'special' impression. I am very fond of that idea.