Dagon (short story)

"Dagon"
Author	H. P. Lovecraft
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Horror short story
Published in	The Vagrant
Publication date	November, 1919

"Dagon" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft, written in July 1917, one of the first stories he wrote as an adult. It was first published in the November 1919 edition of The Vagrant (issue #11).

Inspiration

After reading Lovecraft's juvenilia in 1917, W. Paul Cook, editor of the amateur press journal The Vagrant, encouraged Lovecraft to resume writing fiction. That summer, Lovecraft wrote two stories: "The Tomb" and "Dagon".

The story was inspired in part by a dream he had. "I dreamed that whole hideous crawl, and can yet feel the ooze sucking me down!" he later wrote.^[1]

Critic William Fulwiler indicates that Lovecraft may have been influenced by Irvin S. Cobb's "Fishhead", a story about a strange fish-like human.^[2] Fulwiler has also suggested that Lovecraft took the story's theme of "an ancient prehuman race that will someday rise to conquer humanity" from Edgar Rice Burroughs' At the Earth's Core (1914).

The story mentions the Piltdown Man, which had not been exposed by the scientific community as a fraud and hoax at the time of writing.

As to the name of the story, Lovecraft seems to be referring to the ancient Sumerian god named Dagon who is the fertility god of grains and fish, because in the story, the main character makes inquiries "....regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the Fish-God."^[3] The Sumerian deity is sometimes depicted as being part fish, or simply wearing a fish. Since Lovecraft was fond of references to actual archaeological discoveries in his writings from time to time, he may have come across this ancient god.

Synopsis

The story is the testament of a tortured, morphine-addicted man who plans to commit suicide over an incident that occurred early on in World War I when he was a merchant marine officer.

In the unnamed narrator's account, his cargo ship is captured by a German sea-raider in "one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad Pacific".^[4] He escapes on a lifeboat and drifts aimlessly across the sea "somewhat south of the equator" until he eventually finds himself inexplicably stranded on "a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see.... 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 plain." He theorizes that this area was formerly "a portion of the ocean floor..." thrown to the surface by a volcanic upheaval, "exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under unfathomable watery depths."^[5]

After waiting three days for the seafloor to dry out sufficiently to walk on, he strikes out on foot to find the sea and possible rescue. After two days of walking, he reaches his goal, a hummock that turns out to be a mound on the edge of an "immeasurable pit or canyon".^[6] Descending the slope, he sees a gigantic white stone object that he soon perceives to be a "well-shaped monolith whose massive bulk had known the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and thinking creatures."^[7]

The monolith, situated next to a channel of water in the bottom of the chasm, is covered in unfamiliar hieroglyphs "consisting for the most part of conventionalised aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopuses, crustaceans, molluscs, whales and the like."^[7] There are also "crude sculptures" depicting:

men—at least, a certain sort of men; though the creatures were shown disporting like fishes in the waters of some marine grotto, or paying homage at some monolithic shrine which appeared to be under the waves as well... [T]hey were damnably human in general outline despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other 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.^[8]

As the narrator looks on the monolith, a creature emerges from the water:

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 stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds.^[8]

Insane with fear, the mariner flees back to his stranded boat, and vaguely recalls a "great storm".^[8] His next memory is of a San Francisco hospital, where he was taken after being rescued in mid-ocean by a U.S. ship. There are no reports of any Pacific upheavals, and he does not expect anyone to believe his incredible story. He mentions one abortive attempt to gain understanding of his experience:

Once I sought out a celebrated ethnologist, and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the Fish-God; but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my inquiries.^[9]

Haunted by visions of the creature, "especially when the moon is gibbous and waning", he describes his fears for the future of humanity:

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, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses 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 sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium.^[9]

With the drug that has given him "transient surcease" running out, he declares himself ready to do himself in; the narrative is revealed to be a suicide note. The story ends with the narrator rushing to the window as he hears "a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it."^[10]

Cthulhu Mythos

"Dagon" is often not counted as one of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos stories,^[11] but it is the first of Lovecraft's stories to introduce a Cthulhu Mythos element — the sea deity Dagon itself.

The creature that appears in the story is often identified with the deity Dagon, but the creature is not identified by that name in the story "Dagon", and seems to be depicted as a typical member of his species, a worshipper rather than an object of worship. Nor is it likely that Lovecraft intends "Dagon" to be the name used by the deity's nonhuman worshippers; as Robert M. Price points out, "When Lovecraft wanted to convey something like the indigenous name of one of the Old Ones, he coined some unpronounceable jumble".^[12]

Price suggests that readers of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" may be mistaken as to the identity of the "Dagon" worshipped by that story's Deep Ones: in contrast to the Old Ones' alien-sounding names, "the name 'Dagon' is a direct borrowing from familiar sources, and implies that [Obed] Marsh and his confederates had chosen the closest biblical analogy to the real object of worship of the deep ones, namely Great Cthulhu."^[13]

Lin Carter, who thought "Dagon" an "excellent" story, remarked that it was "an interesting prefiguring of themes later to emerge in [Lovecraft's] Cthulhu stories. The volcanic upheaval that temporarily exposes long-drowned horrors above the waves, for example, reappears in "The Call of Cthulhu" (1926)".^[14] Other parallels between the two stories include a horrifying tale told by a sailor rescued at sea; a gigantic, sea-dwelling monster (compared to Polyphemus in each tale); an apocalyptic vision of humanity's destruction at the hands of ancient nonhuman intelligences; and a narrator who fears he is doomed to die because of the knowledge he has gained. S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz call the latter story "manifestly an exhaustive reworking of 'Dagon'".^[15]

In "The Call of Cthulhu", one of the newspaper clippings collected by the late Professor Angell mentions a suicide from a window that may correspond to the death of the narrator of "Dagon".

Adaptations

• Director Stuart Gordon and screenwriter Dennis Paoli, who worked together on Re-Animator, made a movie called Dagon in 2001. Though the film credits both Lovecraft's "Dagon" and his "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," much more of the plot is (loosely) adapted from the latter story.
• The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society released an audio adaptation of "Dagon" in 2015, as part of their Dark Adventure Radio Theatre series. Titled Dagon: War of Worlds, the audio drama is an original drama which both adapts "Dagon" and serves as a sequel to their earlier adaptation of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", as well as included characters from their film version of The Whisperer in Darkness and parodies of the 1938 The War of the Worlds broadcast.

Other appearances

• A reference to Dagon appears again in Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" (1936), one of Lovecraft's best-known stories. The tale concerns a town in Massachusetts that has been taken over by the Deep Ones, a race of water-breathing humanoids. A center of the Deep Ones' power in Innsmouth is the Esoteric Order of Dagon, ostensibly a Masonic-style fraternal order. Other Cthulhu Mythos stories refer to the creature as Father Dagon, depicting him as having a similar being, Mother Hydra, as a mate.
• Fred Chappell, considered a literary writer, wrote a novel called Dagon, which attempted to tell a Cthulhu Mythos story as a psychologically realistic Southern Gothic novel. The novel was awarded the Best Foreign Novel Prize by the French Academy in 1972.
• In Mahou Sentai Magiranger, the leader of The Infershia Pantheon Gods is named Dagon, who is based on the Lovecraft character and the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
• In the roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons, Dagon is the name shared by both a demon prince of the Abyss and an outcast devil. The former maintains a similar flavor to the Lovecraftian version.
• A song by symphonic metal band Therion, "Call of Dagon", includes the lyric "Call of Dagon!/The Deep One is calling you".
• In Terry Pratchett's humorous science fiction novel The Dark Side of the Sun, the Dagon are large, aquatic bivalve-like creatures which are the focus of a rural fishing industry.
• Terry Pratchett's Discworld series have recurring references to an unexplained and disturbing incident that took place at Mr Hong's fish shop on Dagon Street. This is particularly linked to 'Dagon' in the novel Jingo which concerns the sudden resurfacing of the long-sunken and Cyclopean ruins of alien Leshp.
• The experimental industrial group Dead Man's Hill released a CD in 2005 entitled Esoterica Orde De Dagon.
• In 2008, Marvel Comics revived the horror series Haunt of Horror, this time focusing on the works of H.P. Lovecraft. The first issue presented an illustrated version of "Dagon", as well as a reproduction of the original text. The adaptation was written and illustrated by Richard Corben.^[16]
• Karl Sanders of the death metal band Nile released a solo album entitled Saurian Meditation which uses a quote from the fictional Unaussprechlichen Kulten on the back cover which is a reworking of the final sentences of Dagon.
• Death metal band Nile have mentioned Dagon in their album Those Whom the Gods Detest, with the title track entitled, "4th Arra of Dagon."
• In The Illuminatus! Trilogy, Lovecraft (as character in the novel) says that he wrote the story after doing research on Dagon at the Miskatonic University library. The publishing of the story leads to him being drawn to the attention of the Illuminati.
• The 32nd issue of The Brave and the Bold is heavily based on the works of Lovecraft, and features a scene where a shipwrecked sailor finds refuge upon a black mire similar to the one depicted in "Dagon".
• In the video game Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth Dagon appears from the depth of the sea while the main protagonist, Jack Walters, is travelling with the coast guard on USS Urania. The ship is wrecked by Dagon and as it sinks, Jack Walters is washed ashore on a reef close by (referred to in-game as the Devil's Reef). A tunnel rests near this reef, leading down to the underwater city Y'ha-nthlei, where Walters also stumbles upon the Temple of Dagon itself. The overall story of the game seems heavily influenced by the original "Dagon" short story, as well as The Shadow Over Innsmouth and "The Call of Cthulhu".

Notes

1. H. P. Lovecraft, "In Defence of Dagon", Miscellaneous Writings, p. 150; cited in S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, "Dagon", An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia, p. 58.
2. Joshi and Schultz, p. 58.
3. http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/d.aspx
4. H. P. Lovecraft, "Dagon", Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, p. 14.
5. Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 15.
6. Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 16.
7. Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 17.
8. Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 18.
9. Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 19.
10. Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 19. There's some dispute over what actually happens at the end of the story; Joshi and Schultz in the H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia (p. 58) describe as "preposterous" the interpretation that an undersea creature has actually arrived at the narrator's room to finish him off. They note that Lovecraft described the story as "involving hallucinations of the most hideous sort" in an August 27, 1917 letter to Reinhart Kleiner.
11. Of four lists of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos stories cited by Lin Carter — including his own and August Derleth's — none include "Dagon". Lin Carter, Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos, pp. 25-26, 191.
12. Robert M. Price, The Innsmouth Cycle, p. ix.
13. Price, p. ix.
14. Carter, p. 10.
15. Joshi and Schultz, "Call of Cthulhu, The", p. 29.
16. Richard Corben, "Haunt of Horror: Lovecraft" #1, Marvel Comics Group, 2008

References

• Lovecraft, Howard P. [1923] (1986). "Dagon". In S. T. Joshi (ed.). Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (9th corrected printing ed.). Sauk City, WI: Arkham House. ISBN 0-87054-039-4. delete character in |first= at position 11 (help) Definitive version.

External links

• "H. P. Lovecraft's 'Dagon'", The H. P. Lovecraft Archive; publication history.
• "Dagon" at the Marvel Database Project, Marvel Comics adaptation
• Dagon public domain audiobook at LibriVox