by Benjamin Lomax

Created on: December 03, 2010

“Celephais” is a short story by the creator of the Cthulhu mythos, second only to Edgar Allen Poe as the master of macabre short fiction, H.P. Lovecraft. It was written in September of 1920 and originally published in the May 1922 issue of Rainbow Magazine. It was also collected in The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath collection of related Lovecraft stories in 1970.

“Celephais” was written and published before the Randolph Carter series (Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath and several others) but is very similar and clearly set the tone for the later works as well as many other Lovecraft stories. It relates dream travel which is the cornerstone of the Randolph Carter stories and the titled city does recur in those stories as does the main character of this story, Kuranes, who advises Randolph Carter in the later longer and more developed stories.

Celephais is a land untouched by time, the dream traveler who ventures there can spend many years (as Kuranes does) and return without losing more than an hour of real time. Kuranes is the dream name he adopts in his travels, abandoning the lost name of his reality among the thronging millions of London. In Celephais Kuranes is recognized for his talent and vision, and quickly put in a position of leadership.

Unfortunately in real life it is noted that the body of a tramp lies near the half-deserted village of Innsmouth (another featured player in Lovecraft stories) where he briefly dreamed before the waves tossed his body aside. Kuranes is certainly avatistic of Lovecraft, just as Randolph Carter and most of his other protagonists were. Unrecognized for his writing and not accepted in the world, Kuranes found satisfaction and joy in the dream. It’s a disturbing fate for Lovecraft’s avatar, though, just as many of his stories relate. One can only imagine the author’s opinion of his own likely fate.

Like many of Lovecraft’s stories, this one is tributary to Lord Dunsany, and (also like many other of his stories) it was inspired upon waking after a dream. The story reads very much like that, with vague and fantastic but unspecific images. This early story seems to be the depiction of a dream even on paper, as the amorphous expression and experiences narrated are ethereal. This led to a whole series of similar type stories, not horror as Lovecraft became famous for, but rather simply creative and in some cases bizarre. For those not into the tentacled monsters but more of a head trip, this is one of Lovecraft’s better ones.

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