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This November we continue our sojourn through the Dream Cycle of Lovecraft with another early short story: "Celephais". Like most early stories by H. P., this one too is short, just six pages of text in the story collection we're following. If you have not bought that collection, you can access the story online here: .

The first two sentences of the story are as follows: "In a dream Kuranes saw the city in the valley, and the sea-coast beyond, and the snowy peak overlooking the sea, and the gaily painted galleys that sail out of the harbour toward the distant regions where the sea meets the sky. In a dream it was also that he came by his name of Kuranes, for when awake he was called by another name."

We see here the typical features that make this story part of Lovecraft's Dream Cycle. The main thread is going to be the dream world occupied by Kuranes. He is anchored in the real world, this time in London, by a character of another name who is having the dreams. Again, the dream world is more real, alive, and interesting than what happens in the real world. As always, the juxtaposition of the two worlds and how they relate to one another forms a key part of the story element.

If you have been reading closely you will see many elements repeat themselves. We, or rather Randolph Carter, met Kuranes before in "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath". The city Celephais is apparently supposed to be like Cornwall. We also see Innsmouth again. Remember those creepy people in that fishing village the bus traveler would have avoided had he not been so economical? I just discovered that Innsmouth and its inhabitants as depicted by Lovecraft is based on a real English village: Fleetwood, Lancashire. I am 99 percent certain you will not find that fact on any travel brochure anywhere in Fleetwood! Not given how uncomplimentary was Lovecraft's description.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading this month's installment. Anyone else?

That was an easy read, not written in as high a language as Lovecraft is capable, but a still competent short story, nevertheless. Here is my modest, two-paragraph review, if you're interested: /review/show...

I enjoyed his descriptions of the dream worlds, which is good since this story is basically all description with a hint of a plot.

I added my own review of the short story.
Check it out.
/review/show...

Nice review, Gary. I think you capture the point of the story well, especially through the use of those quotes.

You know this is a classic when every time you read the story you find some new points about it. One struck me in particular on this reread. It's when Lovecraft writes (in the first paragraph), "Kuranes was not modern, and did not think like others who wrote. Whilst they strove to strip from life its embroidered robes of myth, and to shew in naked ugliness the foul thing that is reality, Kuranes sought for beauty alone."

Lovecraft's short story was published in 1920. Through his character Kuranes, it seems to me Lovecraft is offering a criticism of the realist movement in literature. According to one definition, "Realism, or literary realism, is an era of literary technique in which authors described things as they are without embellishment or fantastical plots. Works of literary realism shun flowery language, exotic settings and characters, and epic stories of love and heroism." Famous writers in this tradition include Henry James, William Dean Howells, Sherwood Anderson, Mark Twain, Anton Chekhov, George Eliot, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, and Leo Tolstoy. These guys all wrote their works primarily in the last third of the nineteenth century, maybe the first ten years of the twentieth. Modernist literature came along in the 1890s and had superseded realism by 1920, yet Lovecraft seems not to have heard of Modernism. His criticism is of a period of literature that has already largely passed into history. Strange. Unless Lovecraft's criticism was meant to apply to Modernism as well?

Perhaps Lovecraft was thinking that 'modern' literature was the equivalent of realistic literature. A tendency to move away from the fantastic and the mythic and to explore 'realistic' themes and descriptions of ordinary people in ordinary settings. Thought that mainstream, 'true literature', was dealing with the real everyday modern life of ordinary people. Which is clearly not what the world of Dreamland evokes.

You've both made some interesting observations and are making some good points. Thank you for sharing your reviews as well. Great reviews with different perspectives than my own, or with views similar to mine, but expressed in better ways than I was going to, always seem to make me appreciate a story even more. I thought this one was wonderful trough and through - escapism at its finest!