Images of the Mountains of Madness

OK, this post is quite different from the stuff I usually put here, but I was reading  The Mountains of Madness by HP Lovecraft and noticed that there recurring references to ancient ruins and stone formations. I was interested in how these sites where portrayed at the time the book was written. So I googled, and even though I know most of them before, looking at the old pictures somehow felt like I was getting closer to Lovecrafts original vision.

I figured it was well worth sharing...

Images taken from Library of congress website (http://www.loc.gov/index.html),

except the imag of Monument Valley, which is from the library of the University of Utah (http://content.lib.utah.edu/) and the images of Machu Picchu, which are random webfinds. (The first of these presumably from the original 1911 expedition, the latter one of unknown date, but due to the state of the ruins must also predate 1930.)

All images predate the writing of Mountains of Madness

***************************

[…]

As he had said, their edges were crumbled and rounded from untold aeons of savage weathering; but their preternatural solidity and tough material had saved them from obliteration. Many parts, especially those closest to the slopes, seemed identical in substance with the surrounding rock surface. The whole arrangement looked like the ruins of Macchu Picchu in the Andes,

 

 or the primal foundation walls of Kish as dug up by the Oxford Field Museum Expedition in 1929;

 and both Danforth and I obtained that occasional impression of separate Cyclopean blocks which Lake had attributed to his flight-companion Carroll. How to account for such things in this place was frankly beyond me, and I felt queerly humbled as a geologist. Igneous formations often have strange regularities - like the famous Giants’ Causeway in Ireland –

 but this stupendous range, despite Lake’s original suspicion of smoking cones, was above all else nonvolcanic in evident structure.

[…]

V

I think that both of us simultaneously cried out in mixed awe, wonder, terror, and disbelief in our own senses as we finally cleared the pass and saw what lay beyond. Of course, we must have had some natural theory in the back of our heads to steady our faculties for the moment. Probably we thought of such things as the grotesquely weathered stones of the Garden of the Gods in Colorado,

or the fantastically symmetrical wind-carved rocks of the Arizona desert.

Perhaps we even half thought the sight a mirage like that we had seen the morning before on first approaching those mountains of madness. We must have had some such normal notions to fall back upon as our eyes swept that limitless, tempest-scarred plateau and grasped the almost endless labyrinth of colossal, regular, and geometrically eurythmic stone masses which reared their crumbled and pitted crests above a glacial sheet not more than forty or fifty feet deep at its thickest, and in places obviously thinner.

[…]

We also came upon several star-shaped open spaces, evidently public squares, and noted various undulations in the terrain. Where a sharp hill rose, it was generally hollowed out into some sort of rambling-stone edifice; but there were at least two exceptions. Of these latter, one was too badly weathered to disclose what had been on the jutting eminence, while the other still bore a fantastic conical monument carved out of the solid rock and roughly resembling such things as the well-known Snake Tomb …

(here is a really nice photograph which shows it in context: http://eu.art.com/products/p15527056-sa-i3696219/posters.htm?ui=73968881EA724F93957B0D144DC46585)

… in the ancient valley of Petra.

*

Here is a link to the original novel by Lovecraft: http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/mountainsofmaddness.htm

I also created a .pdf of this post for other reasons, but in case you want it, here is the downlaod:

http://www.facepalmbook.com/paul/mountains/images_mountains_lovecraft.pdf

off topic --> Translating & The Acceleration of Time

I held a presentation on time the other day. And while doing my research I sort of got sidetracked and found some interesting things.

As I am a science fiction fan, and randomly collect books, I somehow ended up owning this book three times. Once the English original, then a translation published in the 50’s and a newer translation published in the 70’s. As this is pulp literature, my theory is that the translators are less motivated to preserve original wordings then when, say, translating Virginia Woolf. So I figured that comparing the two German versions of the book might give some interesting information on how language had developed in those 20 years.

Take a look yourself, here is the first paragraph in all three versions.

Farmer in the Sky by Robert Heinlein - 1950

Our troop had been up in the High Sierras that day and we were late getting back. We had taken off from the camp field on time but Traffic Control swung us 'way east to avoid some weather. I didn't like it; Dad usually won't eat if I'm not home.

50 Words, 196 Characters - 1950

-

Pioniere im Weltraum (Gebrüder Weiß, 1951)

An jenem Tage war unser Trupp hoch oben in den Sierras gewesen, und wir kehrten mit Verspätung zurück. Wir waren pünktlich vom Lagerfulgplatz gestertet, erhielten aber vom Flugüberwachungsdienst die Weisung, nach Osten auszuweichen, weil wir sonst in schlechtes Wetter geraten würden. Das paßte mir gar nicht; Dad ißt nämlich nicht, wenn ich nicht da bin.

55 Words, 301 Characters – 1951

-

Farmer im All (Heyne, 1970)

Unsere Truppe war an dem Tag oben in der Sierra gewesen, und wir kamen spät zurück. Wir waren rechtzeitig vom Feldlager aufgebrochen, aber die Leute von der Verkehrskontrolle drängten uns wegen irgendeines Unwetters nach Osten ab. Das paßte mir nicht. Paps ißt meistens nicht, wenn ich fort bin.

48 Words, 248 Characters

-

Aside from the obvious difference in the length of these fragments, there is also a huge stylistic difference. Personally, I find that the second, newer version does the original more justice – so maybe it has nothing to do with language development after all, and we are just looking at a better translation. An interesting point is that while the Heyne book uses an Anglicism in its title, it refrains from using the Anglicism “dad”. I wish they would have refrained from using the word farmer as well…