Goldenbird

Simplicissimus 22. April 1912

Simplicissimus was a satirical magazine famous for its excellent illustrators, published in Munich 1896-1944.  All the issues are available for browsing in an online archive at the Klassik-Stiftung Weimar. Yet another reason to love the internet!

Browsing the pre-WW1 issues (without a doubt the ‘golden age’ of Simpl, while the brief Weimar era could be called the ‘silver age’), I started collecting the advertisement pages for my own nefarious scrapbooking purposes and came upon this “Black Prophet” – Nyarlathotep in a turban?!

THE BLACK PROPHET!
Man of mystery! A reliable guide, learned in all secret sciences of Ancient Egyptian wisdom! Does not ask for money, nor fame! [etc…]

Interestingly, the ad claims that the prophet is a “Hindoo seer”, born in an unnamed “faraway land of mysteries”, mixing two Western stereotypes of contemporary India and ancient Egypt.

Boris Karloff as Ardeth Bey, or Imhotep

While Professor Zazra claims to work for good and noble purposes, with no desire for personal gain, the same cannot be said for the gentleman to the left, another incarnation of the demonic wisdom personified in Nyarlathotep. Written well after the discovery of Tutankhamon’s tomb in 1922, the story of The Mummy (1932 – watch it on YouTube) picks up some much older themes of pseudo-Egyptian magic in Western pop culture: immortality, reincarnation (borrowed from Hinduism?), hypnotism, mind-control (frequent in Western sci-fi since Romanticism). But Imhotep, no matter how unnaturally aged, is a mere human being. His desires are just human desires as impossibly preserved and prolonged as his lifespan. His burning gaze, drawing his long-lost lover to him, inspires fear but also pity.

Prof. Zazra, on the other hand, seems like a much more suspicious character. I quote his ‘own’ words: This is the moment when I can enter your life. Do not hesitate to capture this opportunity. Whatever can be done to help you, I will do it. Let me do it now, for I shall not walk down this path again. Rub some soot or ink on both of your thumbs, make therewith prints on white paper, send it to me with information of your birthdate (on the hour, if known) and enclose an envelope with your address. You may enclose stamps for any country to the value of 50 Pfennig for postage expenses.

Now, what kind of scam is this?…

Can’t get enough of this stuff? I have planned 26 pages, and we have reached number 9 – not bad for a slow worker like me. I certainly feel a surge in creativity, incidentally similar to the surge felt by Mr Lovecraft in the fall of 1920. In November and December that year, he wrote the prose poems Nyarlathotep and Celephais. Lovecraft scholar Chris Perridas discusses the purposeful blending of dreams and science in those poems. I’m aiming for a similar effect, although tempered by my rather mundane sense of humour. Perridas himself shows how to do it a little more seriously with a short story called A Tale Of Old Chicago. It is a wonderful concoction of romance (!), thrills and references to cultural and scientific discourse at the time of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 (which has also served as the awesome setting of the opening chapters of Thomas Pynchon’s novel Against The Day, which I’m in the process of devouring – you know a book is good when the fans have created a huge wiki about it online. That man even uses cricket as a metaphor for Cthulhu knows what).

I’ve decided to name Lou’s snittish racist seat neighbor “Mr Goodguile”, in honour of the first Lovecraft parody ever written. Ethel Miniter, a friend and fellow small press enthusiast, wrote “Falco Ossifracus: By Mr. Goodguile”, lampooning his style in the early story The Statement of Randolph Carter, and published it in her magazine The Muffin Man, April 1921. Apparently, Lovecraft liked it. (Sources: Perridas, S.T. Joshi, Joshi again) I don’t know what (or who) that “bonebreaking falcon” might be. According to Google, Falco ossifraGus is an obsolete scientific name for the Sea-eagle.

Goodguile [Hyväjuoni, Godlist?] sounds tricksy, like Lovecraft – I’ve always interpreted the “craft” in his name as the craft in “craftiness” rather than “craftmanship”. A frequent misconception among readers is that Lovecraft just keeps on piling obscure adjectives (gibbous, squamous, cyclopean) because he doesn’t know how to create a mood. I’d argue that he is too clever for his own good. Every adjective is in its place because he wants it to be there.

But why am I writing about him in the present tense?

Ah, it’s way past bedtime. Dream-time. See you in Unknown Kadath!