May 3, 2025 • 15 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dagon by H. B. Lovecraft. I am writing this under
an appreciable mental strain, since by to night I shall
be no more penniless, and at the end of my
supply of the drug which alone makes my life endurable,
I can bear the torture no longer, and shall cast
(00:22):
myself from this garret window into the squalid street below.
Do not think, from my slavery to Morphine that I
am a weakling or degenerate. When you have read these
hastily scrawled pages, you may guess, though never fully realize,
why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death.
(00:44):
It was in one of the most open and least
frequented parts of the Broad Pacific that the packet of
which I was supercargo fell victim to the German sea raider.
The Great War was then at its very beginning, and
the ocean forses of the hun had not completely sunk
to their later degradation, so that our vessel was made
(01:06):
legitimate prize, whilst we of her crew were treated with
all the fairness and consideration due us as naval prisoners.
So liberal, indeed was the discipline of our captors, that
five days after we were taken I managed to escape
alone in a small boat with water and provision for
a good length of time. When I finally found myself
(01:28):
adrift and free, I had but little idea of my surroundings.
Never a competent navigator, I could only guess vaguely by
the sun and stars that I was somewhat south of
the equator of the longitude. I knew nothing, and no
island or coast line was in sight. The weather kept fair,
(01:50):
and for uncounted days I drifted aimlessly beneath the scorching sun,
waiting either for some passing ship or to be cast
on the shores of some habitable land. But neither ship
nor land appeared, and I began to despair in my
solitude upon the heaving vastness of unbroken blue. The change
(02:11):
happened whilst I slept. Its details I shall never know,
for my slumber, though troubled and dream infested, was continuous.
When at last I awaked, it was to discover myself
half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire,
which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as
(02:33):
I could see, and in which my boat lay grounded
some distance away. Though one might well imagine that my
first sensation would be of wonder at so prodigious and
unexpected a transformation of scenery. I was, in reality more
horrified than astonished, For there was in the air and
(02:55):
in the rotting soil a sinister quality which chilled me
to the very core. The region was putrid with the
carcasses of decaying fish and of other less describable things,
which I saw protruding from the nasty mud of the
unending plane. Perhaps I should not hope to convey in
(03:15):
mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute
silence and barren immensity. There was nothing within hearing, and
nothing in sight save a vast reach of black slime.
Yet the very completeness of the stillness and homogeneity of
the landscape oppressed me with a nauseating fear. The sun
(03:39):
was blazing down from a sky which seemed to me
almost black in its cloudless cruelty, as though reflecting the
inky marsh beneath my feet. As I crawled into the
stranded boat, I realized that only one theory could explain
my position. Through some unprecedented volcanic upheaval, a portion of
(04:03):
the ocean floor must have been thrown to the surface,
exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain
hidden under unfathomable watery depths. So great was the extent
of the new land which had risen beneath me that
I could not detect the faintest noise of the surging
(04:23):
ocean strain my ears as I might, nor were there
any sea fowl to prey upon the dead things. For
several hours I sat thinking or brooding in the boat,
which lay upon its side, and afforded a slight shade
as the sun moved across the heavens. As the day progressed,
(04:44):
the ground lost some of its stickiness and seemed likely
to dry sufficiently for traveling purposes in a short time.
That night, I slept but little, and the next day
I made for myself a pack containing food and water,
preparatory to an overland journey in search of the vanished
sea and possible rescue. On the third morning, I found
(05:08):
the soil dry enough to walk upon with ease. The
odor of the fish was maddening, but I was much
too concerned with graver things to mind so slight and evil,
and set out boldly for an unknown goal. All day
I forged steadily westward, guided by a faraway hummock, which
rose higher than any other elevation on the rolling desert.
(05:32):
That night I encamped, and on the following day still
traveled toward the hummock, though that object seemed scarcely nearer
than when I first espied it. By the fourth evening
I attained the base of the mound, which turned out
to be much higher than it had appeared from a distance.
An intervening valley set it out in sharper relief from
(05:52):
the general surface. Too weary to ascend, I slept in
the shadow of the hill. I know not why my
dreams were so wild that night, but ere the waning
and fantastically gibbous moon had risen far above the eastern plain.
I was awake in a cold perspiration, determined to sleep
(06:14):
no more. Such visions as I had experienced were too
much for me to endure again. And in the glow
of the moon, I saw how unwise I had been
to travel by day. Without the glare of the parching sun,
my journey would have cost me less energy. Indeed, I
(06:35):
now felt quite able to perform the ascent which had
deterred me. At sunset, picking up my pack, I started
for the crest of the eminence. I have said that
the unbroken monotony of the rolling plain was a source
of vague horror to me, But I think my horror
was greater when I gained the summit of the mound
(06:57):
and looked down the other side into an immeasurable pit
or canyon, whose black recesses the moon had not yet
soared high enough to illuminate. I felt myself on the
edge of the world, peering over the rim into a
fathomless chaos of eternal night. Through my terror ran curious
reminiscence of paradise lost, and of Satan's hideous climb through
(07:20):
the unfashioned realms of darkness. As the moon climbed higher
in the sky, I began to see that the slopes
of the valley were not quite so perpendicular as I
had imagined. Ledges and outcroppings of rock afforded fairly easy
footholds for a descent, whilst after a drop of a
few hundred feet the declivity became very gradual. Urged on
(07:45):
by an impulse which I cannot definitely analyze, I scrambled
with difficulty down the rocks, and stood on the gentler
slope beneath, gazing into the stygen deeps, where no light
had yet penetrated. All at once my attacks was captured
by a vast and singular object on the opposite slope,
which rose steeply about one hundred yards ahead of me,
(08:09):
an object that gleamed whitely in the newly bestowed rays
of the ascending moon. That it was merely a gigantic
piece of stone, I soon assured myself, But I was
conscious of a distinct impression that its contour and position
were not altogether the work of nature. A closer scrutiny
(08:29):
filled me with sensations I cannot express, for, despite its
enormous magnitude and its position in an abyss which had
yawned at the bottom of the sea since the world
was young, I perceived beyond a doubt that this strange
object was a well shaped monolith, whose massive bulk had
known the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and
(08:53):
thinking creatures. Dazed and frightened, yet not without a certain
thrill of the sight scientists or archaeologists delight, I examined
my surroundings more closely. The moon now nearer the scenith
shone weirdly and vividly above the towering steeps that hemmed
in the chasm, and revealed the fact that a far
(09:16):
flung body of water flowed at the bottom, winding out
of sight in both directions and almost lapping my feet
as I stood on the slope across the chasm. The
wavelets washed the base of the cyclopean monolith, on whose
surface I can now trace both inscriptions and crude sculptures.
(09:36):
The writing was in a system of hieroglyphics, unknown to
me and unlike anything I had ever seen in books, consisting,
for the most part of conventionalized aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopi,
crustacean mollusks, whales, and the like. Several characters obviously represented
(09:57):
marine things which are unknown to the modern world, but
whose decomposing forms I had observed on the ocean risen plain.
It was the pictorial carving, however, that did the most
to hold me spell bound, plainly visible across the intervening
water on account of their enormous size, where an array
(10:18):
of base reliefs whose subjects would have excited the envy
of Dora. I think that these things were supposed to
depict men, at least a certain sort of men. Though
the creatures were shown disporting like fishes in waters of
some maring grotto or paying homage at some monolithic shrine
which appeared to be under the waves. As well of
(10:40):
their faces and forms, I dare not speak in detail,
for the mere remembrance makes me grow faint grotesque. Beyond
the imagination of a poe or a bulwer, they were
damnably human in general outline, despite webbed hands and feet,
shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other
(11:01):
features less pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, they seemed to
have been chiseled badly out of proportion with their scenic background.
For one of the creatures was shown in the act
of killing a whale, represented as but little larger than himself.
I remarked, as I say, their grotesqueness and strange size,
but in a moment decided that they were merely the
(11:22):
imaginary gods of some primitive fishing or seafaring tribe, some
tribe whose last descendant had perished Eiris before the first
ancestor of the pit down or Neanderthal Man was born.
Awe struck at this unexpected glimpse into a past beyond
the conception of the most daring anthropologist. I stood musing
whilst the moon cast queer reflections on the silent channel
(11:45):
before me. Then suddenly I saw it, with only a
slight churning to mark its rise to the surface. The
thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, polyphemus
like and loathsome it darted like a stoop pendous monster
of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its
gigantic scaly arms. The while it bowed its hideous head
(12:08):
and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I
went mad then, of my frantic ascent of the slope
and cliff, and of my delirious journey back to the
stranded boat. I remembered little. I believe I sang a
great deal, and laughed oddly when I was unable to sing.
I have the distinct recollections of a great storm some
(12:29):
time after I reached the boat. At any rate, I
know that I heard peals of thunder and other tones
which nature utters only in her wildest moods. When I
came out of the shadows. I was in a San
Francisco hospital, brought thither by the captain of the American
ship which had picked up my boat in mid ocean.
(12:49):
In my delirium, I had said much, but found that
my words had been given scant attention of any land
upheaval in the Pacific. My rescuers knew nothing, nor did
I dem it necessary to insist upon a thing which
I knew they could not believe. Once I sought out
a celebrated ethnologist and amused him with my peculiar questions
(13:10):
regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon the fish god,
but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did
not press my inquiries. It is at night, especially when
the moon is gibbus in waning, that I see the thing.
I tried morphine, but the drug has given only transience
or cease, and has drawn me into its clutches as
(13:32):
a hopeless slave. So now I am about to end
it all, having written a full account for the information
or the contemptuous amusement of my fellow men. Often I
asked myself if could not all have been a pure phantasm,
a mere freak, or fever as I lay sun stricken
(13:52):
and raving in the open boat after my escape from
the German man of war. This, I asked myself, But
ever does there come before me a hideously vivid vision?
In reply, I cannot think of the deep sea without
shuddering at the nameless things that may, at this very
moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshiping
(14:16):
their ancient stone idols, and carving their own detestable likeness
on submarine obelisks of water soaked granite. I dream of
a day when they may rise above the billows to
drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny
war exhausted mankind, of a day when the land shall
(14:38):
sink and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium.
The end is near. I hear a noise at the door,
as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It
shall not find me, God, that hand window, the window
(15:04):
end of Dagon
Dagon by H. B. Lovecraft. I am writing this under
an appreciable mental strain, since by to night I shall
be no more penniless, and at the end of my
supply of the drug which alone makes my life endurable,
I can bear the torture no longer, and shall cast
(00:22):
myself from this garret window into the squalid street below.
Do not think, from my slavery to Morphine that I
am a weakling or degenerate. When you have read these
hastily scrawled pages, you may guess, though never fully realize,
why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death.
(00:44):
It was in one of the most open and least
frequented parts of the Broad Pacific that the packet of
which I was supercargo fell victim to the German sea raider.
The Great War was then at its very beginning, and
the ocean forses of the hun had not completely sunk
to their later degradation, so that our vessel was made
(01:06):
legitimate prize, whilst we of her crew were treated with
all the fairness and consideration due us as naval prisoners.
So liberal, indeed was the discipline of our captors, that
five days after we were taken I managed to escape
alone in a small boat with water and provision for
a good length of time. When I finally found myself
(01:28):
adrift and free, I had but little idea of my surroundings.
Never a competent navigator, I could only guess vaguely by
the sun and stars that I was somewhat south of
the equator of the longitude. I knew nothing, and no
island or coast line was in sight. The weather kept fair,
(01:50):
and for uncounted days I drifted aimlessly beneath the scorching sun,
waiting either for some passing ship or to be cast
on the shores of some habitable land. But neither ship
nor land appeared, and I began to despair in my
solitude upon the heaving vastness of unbroken blue. The change
(02:11):
happened whilst I slept. Its details I shall never know,
for my slumber, though troubled and dream infested, was continuous.
When at last I awaked, it was to discover myself
half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire,
which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as
(02:33):
I could see, and in which my boat lay grounded
some distance away. Though one might well imagine that my
first sensation would be of wonder at so prodigious and
unexpected a transformation of scenery. I was, in reality more
horrified than astonished, For there was in the air and
(02:55):
in the rotting soil a sinister quality which chilled me
to the very core. The region was putrid with the
carcasses of decaying fish and of other less describable things,
which I saw protruding from the nasty mud of the
unending plane. Perhaps I should not hope to convey in
(03:15):
mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute
silence and barren immensity. There was nothing within hearing, and
nothing in sight save a vast reach of black slime.
Yet the very completeness of the stillness and homogeneity of
the landscape oppressed me with a nauseating fear. The sun
(03:39):
was blazing down from a sky which seemed to me
almost black in its cloudless cruelty, as though reflecting the
inky marsh beneath my feet. As I crawled into the
stranded boat, I realized that only one theory could explain
my position. Through some unprecedented volcanic upheaval, a portion of
(04:03):
the ocean floor must have been thrown to the surface,
exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain
hidden under unfathomable watery depths. So great was the extent
of the new land which had risen beneath me that
I could not detect the faintest noise of the surging
(04:23):
ocean strain my ears as I might, nor were there
any sea fowl to prey upon the dead things. For
several hours I sat thinking or brooding in the boat,
which lay upon its side, and afforded a slight shade
as the sun moved across the heavens. As the day progressed,
(04:44):
the ground lost some of its stickiness and seemed likely
to dry sufficiently for traveling purposes in a short time.
That night, I slept but little, and the next day
I made for myself a pack containing food and water,
preparatory to an overland journey in search of the vanished
sea and possible rescue. On the third morning, I found
(05:08):
the soil dry enough to walk upon with ease. The
odor of the fish was maddening, but I was much
too concerned with graver things to mind so slight and evil,
and set out boldly for an unknown goal. All day
I forged steadily westward, guided by a faraway hummock, which
rose higher than any other elevation on the rolling desert.
(05:32):
That night I encamped, and on the following day still
traveled toward the hummock, though that object seemed scarcely nearer
than when I first espied it. By the fourth evening
I attained the base of the mound, which turned out
to be much higher than it had appeared from a distance.
An intervening valley set it out in sharper relief from
(05:52):
the general surface. Too weary to ascend, I slept in
the shadow of the hill. I know not why my
dreams were so wild that night, but ere the waning
and fantastically gibbous moon had risen far above the eastern plain.
I was awake in a cold perspiration, determined to sleep
(06:14):
no more. Such visions as I had experienced were too
much for me to endure again. And in the glow
of the moon, I saw how unwise I had been
to travel by day. Without the glare of the parching sun,
my journey would have cost me less energy. Indeed, I
(06:35):
now felt quite able to perform the ascent which had
deterred me. At sunset, picking up my pack, I started
for the crest of the eminence. I have said that
the unbroken monotony of the rolling plain was a source
of vague horror to me, But I think my horror
was greater when I gained the summit of the mound
(06:57):
and looked down the other side into an immeasurable pit
or canyon, whose black recesses the moon had not yet
soared high enough to illuminate. I felt myself on the
edge of the world, peering over the rim into a
fathomless chaos of eternal night. Through my terror ran curious
reminiscence of paradise lost, and of Satan's hideous climb through
(07:20):
the unfashioned realms of darkness. As the moon climbed higher
in the sky, I began to see that the slopes
of the valley were not quite so perpendicular as I
had imagined. Ledges and outcroppings of rock afforded fairly easy
footholds for a descent, whilst after a drop of a
few hundred feet the declivity became very gradual. Urged on
(07:45):
by an impulse which I cannot definitely analyze, I scrambled
with difficulty down the rocks, and stood on the gentler
slope beneath, gazing into the stygen deeps, where no light
had yet penetrated. All at once my attacks was captured
by a vast and singular object on the opposite slope,
which rose steeply about one hundred yards ahead of me,
(08:09):
an object that gleamed whitely in the newly bestowed rays
of the ascending moon. That it was merely a gigantic
piece of stone, I soon assured myself, But I was
conscious of a distinct impression that its contour and position
were not altogether the work of nature. A closer scrutiny
(08:29):
filled me with sensations I cannot express, for, despite its
enormous magnitude and its position in an abyss which had
yawned at the bottom of the sea since the world
was young, I perceived beyond a doubt that this strange
object was a well shaped monolith, whose massive bulk had
known the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and
(08:53):
thinking creatures. Dazed and frightened, yet not without a certain
thrill of the sight scientists or archaeologists delight, I examined
my surroundings more closely. The moon now nearer the scenith
shone weirdly and vividly above the towering steeps that hemmed
in the chasm, and revealed the fact that a far
(09:16):
flung body of water flowed at the bottom, winding out
of sight in both directions and almost lapping my feet
as I stood on the slope across the chasm. The
wavelets washed the base of the cyclopean monolith, on whose
surface I can now trace both inscriptions and crude sculptures.
(09:36):
The writing was in a system of hieroglyphics, unknown to
me and unlike anything I had ever seen in books, consisting,
for the most part of conventionalized aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopi,
crustacean mollusks, whales, and the like. Several characters obviously represented
(09:57):
marine things which are unknown to the modern world, but
whose decomposing forms I had observed on the ocean risen plain.
It was the pictorial carving, however, that did the most
to hold me spell bound, plainly visible across the intervening
water on account of their enormous size, where an array
(10:18):
of base reliefs whose subjects would have excited the envy
of Dora. I think that these things were supposed to
depict men, at least a certain sort of men. Though
the creatures were shown disporting like fishes in waters of
some maring grotto or paying homage at some monolithic shrine
which appeared to be under the waves. As well of
(10:40):
their faces and forms, I dare not speak in detail,
for the mere remembrance makes me grow faint grotesque. Beyond
the imagination of a poe or a bulwer, they were
damnably human in general outline, despite webbed hands and feet,
shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other
(11:01):
features less pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, they seemed to
have been chiseled badly out of proportion with their scenic background.
For one of the creatures was shown in the act
of killing a whale, represented as but little larger than himself.
I remarked, as I say, their grotesqueness and strange size,
but in a moment decided that they were merely the
(11:22):
imaginary gods of some primitive fishing or seafaring tribe, some
tribe whose last descendant had perished Eiris before the first
ancestor of the pit down or Neanderthal Man was born.
Awe struck at this unexpected glimpse into a past beyond
the conception of the most daring anthropologist. I stood musing
whilst the moon cast queer reflections on the silent channel
(11:45):
before me. Then suddenly I saw it, with only a
slight churning to mark its rise to the surface. The
thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, polyphemus
like and loathsome it darted like a stoop pendous monster
of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its
gigantic scaly arms. The while it bowed its hideous head
(12:08):
and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I
went mad then, of my frantic ascent of the slope
and cliff, and of my delirious journey back to the
stranded boat. I remembered little. I believe I sang a
great deal, and laughed oddly when I was unable to sing.
I have the distinct recollections of a great storm some
(12:29):
time after I reached the boat. At any rate, I
know that I heard peals of thunder and other tones
which nature utters only in her wildest moods. When I
came out of the shadows. I was in a San
Francisco hospital, brought thither by the captain of the American
ship which had picked up my boat in mid ocean.
(12:49):
In my delirium, I had said much, but found that
my words had been given scant attention of any land
upheaval in the Pacific. My rescuers knew nothing, nor did
I dem it necessary to insist upon a thing which
I knew they could not believe. Once I sought out
a celebrated ethnologist and amused him with my peculiar questions
(13:10):
regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon the fish god,
but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did
not press my inquiries. It is at night, especially when
the moon is gibbus in waning, that I see the thing.
I tried morphine, but the drug has given only transience
or cease, and has drawn me into its clutches as
(13:32):
a hopeless slave. So now I am about to end
it all, having written a full account for the information
or the contemptuous amusement of my fellow men. Often I
asked myself if could not all have been a pure phantasm,
a mere freak, or fever as I lay sun stricken
(13:52):
and raving in the open boat after my escape from
the German man of war. This, I asked myself, But
ever does there come before me a hideously vivid vision?
In reply, I cannot think of the deep sea without
shuddering at the nameless things that may, at this very
moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshiping
(14:16):
their ancient stone idols, and carving their own detestable likeness
on submarine obelisks of water soaked granite. I dream of
a day when they may rise above the billows to
drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny
war exhausted mankind, of a day when the land shall
(14:38):
sink and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium.
The end is near. I hear a noise at the door,
as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It
shall not find me, God, that hand window, the window
(15:04):
end of Dagon
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