H.P: Lovecraft
Oniricon

Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer On The Night Side is the evocative title of a famous biography of the Recluse of Providence written by his friend and disciple Frank Belknap Long. It is a very fitting title that aptly frames the legendary figure of Lovecraft, an extraordinary character whose literary output is strongly influenced by dream activity, as the writer himself repeatedly confirmed in his vast correspondence. Not by chance, in 1994, the mythical Necronomicon Press published a booklet - now unavailable - entitled The H.P. Lovecraft Dreambook edited by S.T. Joshi, Will Murray, and David E. Schulz, which featured some - 23 - of the letters where HPL spoke of his nightmares. From that idea, the great Pietro Guarriello, one of Italy's foremost experts on the "Recluse of Providence" and a compulsive collector of every book release related to him, decided to develop that idea into a much more substantial volume - titled Oniricon - published by Bietti, which includes almost double the number of letters, all drawn from the essential Selected Letters that represent something unique in the literary landscape in general.

The section dedicated to the correspondence is rich in explanatory notes and bibliographical references: it is a material of absolute interest, allowing us to "see" the genesis of some "Lovecraftian" stories such as Nyarlathotep and The Statement Of Randolph Carter, as well as 3 versions of the "Roman" nightmare - set in Spain - later incorporated by Frank Belknap Long in The Horror From The Hills. The first letter written to Rheinhart Kleiner is emblematic: it focuses on the mythical and mythological "Night Gaunts," clawed beings that haunted Lovecraft's childhood dreams. Besides the letter section, there is another dedicated to HPL's "dreamlike" stories, which are actually transcriptions of nightly nightmares, like the famous and already mentioned Nyarlathotep, written in a state of half-sleep. There are also some so-called “Dunsanian” stories like Polaris and Celephaïs. A real gem is the translation, for the first time in Italy, of the poem "Dreams of Yith" written, or rather rewritten by Lovecraft, in collaboration with Duane W. Rimel.

The volume is also complemented by a thorough introduction by Gianfranco De Turris, an article by Pietro Guarriello himself significantly titled Lovecraft Onironauta, and an interesting appendix by neuropsychiatrist Giuseppe Magnarapa. It is well known how Lovecraft considered Freud "a charlatan" and regarded psychoanalysis as some sort of bric-a-brac. However, Lovecraft remains a remarkably modern author precisely because he symbolized the terrors lurking in the Unconscious - theorized at the beginning of the 20th century by Freud - through his teratoform deities such as Cthulhu, Yog Sothoth, Shub Niggurath, Azathoth, and Shub-Niggurath. In this way, he is similar to William Hope Hodgson, who symbolized the terrors of the unconscious through his haunting swine creatures.

"Oniricon" is a volume that should not be missing from any collection of Howard Phillips Lovecraft enthusiasts.

H.P. Lovecraft "Oniricon" - Bietti - l'Archeometro - 327 pages - ISBN 9788882483890 - Euro 20 - 2017