R'lyeh
R'lyeh is a fictional lost city that was first mentioned in the H. P. Lovecraft short story "The Call of Cthulhu", first published in Weird Tales in February 1928.[1] R'lyeh is a sunken city in the South Pacific and the prison of the entity called Cthulhu.
Description
The nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh...was built in measureless eons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults.
— H. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu" (1928)
Lovecraft claims R'lyeh is located at 47°9′S 126°43′W / 47.150°S 126.717°W in the southern Pacific Ocean.
Significance and criticism
R'lyeh is characterized by bizarre architecture likened to
Rather than having science expand its boundaries to include genuine supernatural phenomena through brand new theories, the alleged supernatural phenomena are instead accounted for in scientific terms through existing models of nature. Thus, science is not so much embracing the supernatural as reducing it to a manifestation of the natural. Lovecraft's fascinating approach to science and the supernatural is further illustrated by the fact that he reverses the usual technique for ghostly fright. Rather than breaking the laws of science with supernatural means and thus generating fear, he creates a feeling of horror by showing that the common sense views of physics and nature (that is, the old Newtonian views) are the comforting fantasy. In contrast, the counterintuitive "new physics", the true scientific reality, provides the source of horror.[5]
Other interpretations
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In Alan Moore's Lovecraft-derived comic book mini-series Neonomicon and Providence it is implied, in a fashion suiting a non-Euclidean entity such as Cthulhu, that R'lyeh and subsequently Cthulhu himself do not yet exist in a physical sense. R'lyeh and Cthulhu's "dead dreaming" are instead a metaphor for the fetal development of Cthulhu in the womb of a female human detective-turned-cultist, impregnated by a male Deep One while held prisoner by his followers. Similarly to the Antichrist, it is stated that Cthulhu's inevitable "return" to destroy civilization and liberate mankind from rule of law will begin with his physical birth.
Notes
References
- Derleth, August (2000) [1952]. "The Black Island". Quest for Cthulhu. New York: Carroll & Graf. ISBN 0-7867-0752-6.
- Harms, Daniel (1998). "R'lyeh". The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana (2nd ed.). Oakland, CA: Chaosium. pp. 255. ISBN 1-56882-119-0.
- Lovecraft, Howard P. (1984) [1928]. "The Call of Cthulhu". In S. T. Joshi (ed.). The Dunwich Horror and Others (9th corrected printing ed.). Sauk City, WI: Arkham House. ISBN 0-87054-037-8. Definitive version.
- Pearsall, Anthony B. (2005). The Lovecraft Lexicon (1st ed.). Tempe, AZ: New Falcon. ISBN 1-56184-129-3.
- Schweitzer, Darrell, ed. (2001). Discovering H. P. Lovecraft. Holicong, PA: ISBN 1-58715-470-6.
External links
- "I, Cthulhu, or, What’s A Tentacle-Faced Thing Like Me Doing In A Sunken City Like This (Latitude 47° 9′ S, Longitude 126° 43′ W)?" Archived 2021-12-26 at the Wayback Machine, Neil Gaiman (1986)
- A Colder War, Charles Stross (2000)
