{"id":527,"date":"2010-08-04T21:01:49","date_gmt":"2010-08-04T18:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tentaclii.wordpress.com\/?p=527"},"modified":"2010-08-04T21:01:49","modified_gmt":"2010-08-04T18:01:49","slug":"vacation-necronomicon-school-assignment-nine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/2010\/08\/04\/vacation-necronomicon-school-assignment-nine\/","title":{"rendered":"Vacation Necronomicon School \u2013 assignment\u00a0nine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vacation Necronomicon School<\/a>, summer 2010 reading assignment for 4th August 2010: “The Necronomicon”.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Your assignment today is […] to discuss some aspect of The Necronomicon<\/em>, either in Lovecraft’s writing or in one of its other guises.”<\/p>\n

TASK NINE<\/strong>: 4th August 2010.<\/p>\n

A note on the origin and derivation of \u2018Necronomicon\u2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The origin of the name Necronomicon<\/em> appears to have come to Lovecraft in a dream. Or so he wrote — but I suspect that Lovecraft may sometimes have intended certain parts of his letters to be read with a humorous eye, or expected that an off-handedly ironic manner would be inferred by the reader. He may even have used the vague “oh, it came to me in a dream”<\/em> phrase as a convenient gentlemanly excuse to avoid writing an even longer letter than otherwise to yet another enquiring young fan — a fan who would not have appreciated a complex explication of the Latin or Greek origins of certain words. Or he may simply have forgotten how a certain fictional element first came into being.<\/p>\n

George Wetzel suggests an inspiration in the title of the Astronomicon<\/a><\/em>, a five-book astrological\/astronomical poem by the Roman poet Manilius, whom Lovecraft quoted in an astronomy column of 1915. <\/p>\n

This may well be the case. Alternatively his grandfather’s library may have contained the Poeticon Astronomicon<\/a><\/em>, a star-atlas and anthology of Ancient Greek myths about the stars and constellations — a book possibly originally compiled by the writer Julius Hyginus in about the 1st century AD.<\/p>\n

Or one could simply suggest that Lovecraft was working on a scrap of paper to get a suitable Latin name for an invented book of spells. He combined “Necromantic” (Latin: necromantia, meaning literally “dead divination”) with “icon”. He would thus have been aiming for something along the lines of “The Deathly Divination Images”. This would fit with his general elision of ‘seeing’ with ‘madness’\/’death’ in his works.<\/p>\n

But by combining the two he got “Necromanticon” — and then realised he had<\/em> to remove “romantic” (Necromantic<\/strong>on). So he took out “mant”, and substituted “nom” (meaning in Latin ‘law\/order’) from “astronom<\/strong>y”. Given the devotional\/sculptural meaning inherent in “icon”, the Latin title of The Necronomicon<\/em> would thus literally mean something like: ‘The Dead Law of Graven Images’.<\/p>\n

In a late letter Lovecraft casually traces the — by-then-famous — name back from the Latin, to the even older ancient Greek… <\/p>\n

“The name Necronomicon (nekros, corpse; nomos, law; eikon, image = An Image [or Picture] of the Law of the Dead) occurred to me in the course of a dream, although the etymology is perfectly sound.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

S.T. Joshi says of this derivation that Lovecraft was wrong about “icon” having a Greek root. But Joshi’s judgement appears to be based on the findings of modern linguistics. Lovecraft was right when judged by the scholarship of his own time, since the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica<\/em><\/a> — used extensively by Lovecraft — clearly states that…<\/p>\n

“The term icon comes from the Greek eikon<\/em>, which means ‘image’.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The dream explanation is not entirely at odds with the idea of Lovecraft puzzling it out on a scrap of paper. He may have got as far as “Necromanticon”, and then slept on the puzzle of how to remove the ‘romantic’ element.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vacation Necronomicon School, summer 2010 reading assignment for 4th August 2010: “The Necronomicon”. “Your assignment today is […] to discuss …<\/p>\n

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