Les montagnes de l’Antarctique — NASA/Michael Studinger · Public domain · Commons
Rapport
8 œuvres sur 222, 16 occurrences — 65ᵉ entité la plus citée du wiki sur 139. Parutions transcrites de 1929 (L’Abomination de Dunwich) à 1943 (La Quête onirique de Kadath l’inconnue), sur 7 œuvres datées. (dates des numéros transcrits, posthumes comprises.) Le foyer est La Quête onirique de Kadath l’inconnue : 5 occurrences, 31 % du total. Densité : 1,1 occurrence pour 10 000 mots dans les œuvres concernées. Voisine surtout Yuggoth : 3 rapprochements dans un même passage. 6 fiches du wiki y renvoient.
Les Anciens — corps en tonneau, cinq crêtes, ailes membraneuses — ont bâti en Antarctique une cité dont les bas-reliefs racontent leur propre histoire aux explorateurs qui la découvrent.
Le geste décisif du récit est l’identification : Dyer finit par les reconnaître comme des scientifiques, des explorateurs, des semblables. « Ils étaient des hommes ! » Le monstre cesse d’être monstre au moment où l’on comprend sa civilisation — et c’est alors qu’apparaît le vrai monstre, le shoggoth qu’ils ont fabriqué.
Attestations dans le corpus
| Œuvre | Année | Occurrences | Part |
|---|---|---|---|
| La Quête onirique de Kadath l’inconnue | 1943 | 5 | 31 % |
| L’Étrange Maison haute dans la brume | 1931 | 4 | 25 % |
| L’Abomination de Dunwich | 1929 | 2 | 12 % |
| Fungi de Yuggoth | 1930 | 1 | 6 % |
| La Chevelure de Méduse | — | 1 | 6 % |
| Hors du temps | 1933 | 1 | 6 % |
| Le Cauchemar d’Innsmouth | 1936 | 1 | 6 % |
| Celui qui chuchotait dans les ténèbres | 1931 | 1 | 6 % |
| Total | 16 |
Ce que le corpus en dit
Une phrase par œuvre, prise à l’endroit de la première occurrence.
Carter, the cats being somewhat dispersed by the half-seen Zoogs, picked his way directly to the modest Temple of the Elder Ones where the priests and old records were said to be; and once within that venerable circular tower of ivied stone—which crowns Ulthar’s highest hill—he sought out the patriarch Atal, who had been up the forbidden peak Hatheg-Kla in the stony desert and had come down again alive.
— La Quête onirique de Kadath l’inconnue, 5 occurrences
When tales fly thick in the grottoes of tritons, and conchs in seaweed cities blow wild tunes learned from the Elder Ones, then great eager mists flock to heaven laden with lore, and oceanward eyes on tile rocks see only a mystic whiteness, as if the cliff’s rim were the rim of all earth, and the solemn bells of buoys tolled free in the aether of faery.
— L’Étrange Maison haute dans la brume, 4 occurrences
His wilder wanderings were very startling indeed, including frantic appeals that something in a boarded-up farmhouse be destroyed, and fantastic references to some plan for the extirpation of the entire human race and all animal and vegetable life from the earth by some terrible elder race of beings from another dimension.
— L’Abomination de Dunwich, 2 occurrences
Hither no living earth-shapes take their courses, And only pale auroras and faint suns Glow on that pitted rock, whose primal sources Are guessed at dimly by the Elder Ones.
The minute I saw it I understood what—she—was, and what part she played in the frightful secret that has come down from the days of Cthulhu and the Elder Ones—the secret that was nearly wiped out when Atlantis sank, but that kept half alive in hidden traditions and allegorical myths and furtive, midnight cult-practices.
So T’yog wrote his protective formula on a scroll of pthagon membrane (according to von Junzt, the inner skin of the extinct ya-kith-lizard) and enclosed it in a carven cylinder of lagh metal—the metal brought by the Elder Ones from Yuggoth, and found in no mine of earth.
Rencontres dans le texte
Entités dont une occurrence figure à moins de 320 signes de celle-ci — même phrase ou phrase voisine.
The black rivers of pitch that flow under those mysterious cyclopean bridges—things built by some elder race extinct and forgotten before the beings came to Yuggoth from the ultimate voids—ought to be enough to make any man a Dante or Poe if he can keep sane long enough to tell what he has seen.
And when tales fly thick in the grottoes of tritons, and conchs in seaweed cities blow wild tunes learned from the Elder Ones, then great eager vapors flock to heaven laden with lore; and Kingsport, nestling uneasy in its lesser cliffs below that awesome hanging sentinel of rock, sees oceanward only a mystic whiteness, as if the cliff’s rim were the rim of all earth, and the solemn bells of the buoys tolled free in the aether of faery.
The violet gas S’ngac had told him terrible things of the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep, and had warned him never to approach the central void where the daemon sultan Azathoth gnaws hungrily in the dark. Altogether, it was not well to meddle with the Elder Ones; and if they persistently denied all access to the marvellous sunset city, it were better not to seek that city.
Croisements
Entités qui partagent ses œuvres, les plus spécifiques d’abord ; entre parenthèses, le nombre d’œuvres communes.
Personnages — Albert N. Wilmarth (1), Henry Wentworth Akeley (1), Henry Armitage (1), Lavinia Whateley (1)
Divinités — Nodens (2), Les Autres Dieux (3), Shub-Niggurath (4), Yig (2), Cthulhu (4), Nyarlathotep (3), Ghatanothoa (1)
Créatures — Les Mi-Go (2), Les Maigres Bêtes de la nuit (2), Les Bêtes lunaires (1), Les Gugs (1), Les Polypes volants (1), Les Zoogs (1)
Lieux — Kadath l’inconnue (3), Le plateau de Leng (4), Yuggoth (4), Arkham (6), R’lyeh (3), Université Miskatonic (4), Boston (5), Kingsport (3)
Objets — Les cylindres des Mi-Go (1)
Thématiques — La conscience emprisonnée (2)
Cycles — Le mythe de Cthulhu (3)
Dans les revues
L’Abomination de Dunwich — Weird Tales, 1929 (numéro de l’année, pas forcément celui-ci)
Fiches qui renvoient ici
L’Antarctique · Les âges préhumains · Le temps profond · Les Grands Anciens · Les Shoggoths · William Dyer