{"id":10904,"date":"2014-06-16T15:36:56","date_gmt":"2014-06-16T12:36:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tentaclii.wordpress.com\/?p=10904"},"modified":"2014-06-16T15:36:56","modified_gmt":"2014-06-16T12:36:56","slug":"lovecraft-and-phaeton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/2014\/06\/16\/lovecraft-and-phaeton\/","title":{"rendered":"Lovecraft and Phaeton"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new post on the Lovecraftian Science<\/em> blog, “Smith and Lovecraft\u2019s Use of the Asteroid Belt in their Fiction”<\/a>. Here’s the actual Lovecraft quote, not given by the LS blog…<\/p>\n

It came to me that this was the language used by a captive mind I had known slightly in my dreams — a mind from a large asteroid on which had survived much of the archaic life and lore of the primal planet whereof it formed a fragment. At the same time I recalled that this level of the archives was devoted to volumes dealing with the non-terrestrial planets [meaning, the gas-giant planets in our outer solar system].” (H.P. Lovecraft, from “The Shadow out of Time”)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The name of the “primal planet” was Pha\u00ebton<\/a>, in the ‘the Belt is the remains of an exploded planet’ hypothesis then current. This then perhaps gives a new twist to the understanding of Lovecraft’s poem “On Receiving a Picture of Swans” (1916)…<\/p>\n

  With pensive grace the melancholy Swan
\n  Mourns o\u2019er the tomb of luckless Pha\u00ebton;
\n  On grassy banks the weeping poplars wave,
\n  And guard with tender care the wat\u2019ry grave.
\n  Would that I might, should I too proudly claim
\n  An Heav\u2019nly parent, or a Godlike fame,
\n  When flown too high, and dash\u2019d to depths below,
\n  Receive such tribute as a Cygnus\u2019 woe!
\n  The faithful bird, that dumbly floats along,
\n  Sighs all the deeper for his want of song. <\/p>\n

Cygnus (the Swan) is a key constellation in astronomy. Thus the poem might be understood as lightly bearing a secondary underlying meaning, that of an astronomical picture of the constellation of Cygnus seen rising over the asteroid belt. Apparently there is a huge “Veil Nebula” which “sprawls across southern Cygnus”, and one wonders if this might evoke weeping willow trees in leaf? Can any visual astronomers out there say if such a picture is possible in astronomy: Cygnus and the Veil Nebula rising above the Asteroid Belt?<\/p>\n

Lovecraft also wrote a poem titled “Phaeton” in August 1918, but sadly I don’t have access to that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new post on the Lovecraftian Science blog, “Smith and Lovecraft\u2019s Use of the Asteroid Belt in their Fiction”. Here’s …<\/p>\n

Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical-context"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10904\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}