The mountains of madness

at the mountains of madness film

Joshi further cites one of Lovecraft’s most famous literary sources, Edgar Allan Poe’s novel The Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, the conclusion of which is set in Antarctica. Lovecraft twice cites that enigmatic and disturbing story in his own history, and explicitly borrows the mysterious phrase “Tekeli-li” from Poe’s work. In a letter to August Derleth, Lovecraft wrote that he was trying to achieve an ending that would have an effect similar to that achieved by Poe with Pym.
As for the details of Antarctica, the author’s description of some of the landscapes is inspired by the paintings of Nicholas Roerich and the illustrations of Gustave Doré which are referred to on several occasions during the narrative.

the last lovecraft: at the mountains of madness

The novel details the events of a disastrous expedition to Antarctica in September 1930, and what a group of explorers led by geologist and narrator of the story Dr. William Dyer found. During the story Dyer details a series of events previously concealed with the aim of deterring any further groups of explorers from attempting to return to the continent.[3] Dyer’s work is a tribute to a woman who was a member of the Antarctic Expedition and a member of the Antarctic Expedition.
The work is an homage to one of Lovecraft’s main influences, Edgar Allan Poe, specifically to the unfinished novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, evoked in numerous passages of the story, most notably in the cry, “Tekeli-li!”[4] The group was made up of four university professors from the University of California, New York, and the University of New York.
The party consisted of four university professors – Pabodie, Lake of the biology faculty, Atwood of the physics faculty and also a meteorologist, and the geologist and nominal head of the expedition, plus sixteen assistants: seven graduate students from Miskatonic University (including Danfort and Gedney) and nine skilled mechanics.
Subsequently, Lake insisted on a trip to the northwest because he had been struck by a thirty-centimeter triangular mark on some rocks obtained during a deep exploration that he saw corresponded to a very ancient geologic epoch.

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Delving further into lexical issues, the author uses all what are understood as beginner’s errors (profusion of adjectives and adverbs, use of archaic or stilted synonyms, etc.), which he makes his own and raises as a banner. This gives the text the character of a meticulous dissection, rather than description. For Lovecraft the temples are not big, nor enormous, but cyclopean and megalithic. This translates into a sort of anachrony and unreality that affects the reader’s mood as the story progresses.

The mountains of madness del momento

Lovecraft immerses us in his universe of primogenitors through his detailed descriptions, and he does it in such a way that we “live” in first person the whole story (especially the escape from the caves that seems that we are there).
Great story, perhaps the best representative of Lovecraftian cosmicism (above even The Call of Cthulhu) for being the most “scientific”: the anatomical descriptions of the Ancients enter fully into the field of biology, strengthening the materialistic vision that Lovecraft has on the nature of the universe. It also ties in with the literature of adventure and discovery, such as that of H. R. Haggard, stimulating the imagination and making one think of possible lost civilizations and places unknown on maps and in history. However, Lovecraft’s discoveries are in the key of horror, since they are totally inconceivable to the human mind, and that horror builds a dense atmosphere that ends up exploding in the monstrous ending, which manages to leave a very bad body.

Eduardo José Cazorla