Dream Cycle Book Club: Week Nine

Oh Hello! Is this a Lovecraft bookclub sort of thing? If so I'd love to participate but I couldn't find any rules or guidelines on the about page

The Silver Key is our introduction to Randolph Carter, a Rhode Island based amateur novelist and expert dreamer (do we need any more evidence that this is a Lovecraft self-insert?).

Carter is an avid dreamer who finds that, as he reaches his "middle age" (I feel very called out that 30 is middle-aged), he finds it harder and eventually impossible to dream. He finds that he has fallen under the influence of the values of the waking world, who undervalue dreams and overvalue the "real world".

Looking to make the most out of his loss of dreams, Carter invests himself in the philosophies of the modern time, from empiricism employed in the scientific method, to spiritualism and occultism. While he finds scientists to simply be obsessed with a fantasy of their own - speculating on the void between atoms and the dimensions of outer space - he is even less impressed by the spiritualists and occultists whose fantasies he disregards as not even being based upon fact and evidence.

He reads ancient manuscripts and seeks adventure with other thrill-seekers. Here we see mention to another short story, The Statement of Randolph Carter. Eventually he recalls a family heirloom, mentioned by his grandfather. In the attic of the Carter family manor, secreted away in some fearsomely carved dark wooden box, is an ornate silver key, featuring arabesques which our narrator speculates may contain answers to deeper secrets. In a confusing flash of memory, Carter finds himself falling back through time until he finds himself in his ten year old body. He is being called in for it is past his curfew. Reaching for his spyglass to read the nearby clocktower, he finds the silver key in his pocket.

The silver key is an artifact that has belonged to the Carters for centuries. It was last used over 2 centuries ago by a Carter sorcerer who was a master of dream.

The tale ends with a shift in narrative, revealing that another person in the fiction who is dictating to the reader the story of Randolph Carter. This person eagerly awaits Randolph using the key and their eventual meeting.

This is some of my favourite Lovecraft fiction. Time travel is seen in some of his other stories, such as being employed by the Yithians. I love the idea that the Dreamlands, via use of the silver key, can hold the secret to passing between periods in time in the waking world. It hints at an even greater influence and connectivity between the Dreamlands and the Waking World. Are the two spaces in fact merely subspaces of some larger superspace? Through my mathematical eye I view it as some smooth manifold representing all of existence. Within this manifold we have two open subsets, which in fact intersect at many points. These intersections could be physical intersections allowing for travel, or they could be intersections in some time-like dimension that somehow link two times together.

The Outsider is a bit of a mind bender, though we should come to expect that in our dream stories. A common occurrence in Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle are the seamless transitions between dreaming and waking worlds, which leave the reader pondering on what part is dream and what part is reality.

Our narrator is seemingly the sole denizen of an ancient castle, surrounded by a dense tall forest which blocks most natural light. Indeed, our narrator takes to watching candles for comfort. He is undersocialised as he does not recall ever interacting with anyone, though he remarks that there must be servants who have cared for him. He can read and believes that he can speak, though he never had a teacher and has never had a reason to speak.

One day he commits to climbing the treacherous tallest tower in his castle. Though he may fall in the process, it would be worth it for him to have caught a single glimpse at the moon. Reaching the top of the tower, the narrator climbs through a trapdoor and finds that he is not at some precipitous height on the tower of a castle, but stood in a churchyard. Off in the distance, he sees an uncannily familiar castle.

In the castle he sees people reveling. He wishes to join them and so climbs through a window. The guests flee in panic and the narrator looks around for the monster from which they escape. Stood within a frame is some terrible unspeakable monstrosity. The narrator nearly swoons and reaches out, accidentally touching the monster. He then flees in fear and finds the way back to the comfort of his “castle” is forever closed. He finds a new life roaming with the ghouls of this land, forever haunted by the memory of touching the cold glass of a mirror when he reached out to the monster.

Of course this story is up for interpretation as to what is dream or if in fact all of it is a dream. Having read the Dream Cycle before, I believe that the monster may in fact be a ghoul who once lived in this castle. We will see in this week’s story that ghouls have some way of accessing the dreamworld, which for some reason encompasses the land of the dead. My interpretation of the tale is that the ghoul retreated into the dreamlands, where he was comforted by a dream simulacrum of the castle in which he lived before his ghoulification.