R'lyeh is a fictional
lost city In the popular imagination, a lost city is a real, once-prosperous and well-populated area of human habitation that fell into terminal decline and whose location was later forgotten.
Lost City, The Lost City, or Lost Cities may also refer to:
Pl ...
that was first mentioned in the
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft (, ; August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American writer of Weird fiction, weird, Science fiction, science, fantasy, and horror fiction. He is best known for his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Born in Provi ...
short story "
The Call of Cthulhu
"The Call of Cthulhu" is a cosmic horror short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written in the summer of 1926, it was first published in the pulp magazine ''Weird Tales'' in February 1928.
The story is a founding document of the Cthul ...
", first published in ''
Weird Tales
''Weird Tales'' is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine founded by J. C. Henneberger and J. M. Lansinger in late 1922. The first issue, dated March 1923, appeared on newsstands February 18. The first editor, Edwin Baird, printe ...
'' in February 1928. R'lyeh is a sunken city in the
South Pacific and the prison of the entity called
Cthulhu
Cthulhu is a fictional cosmic entity created by writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was introduced in his short story "The Call of Cthulhu", published by the American pulp magazine ''Weird Tales'' in 1928. Considered a Great Old One within the pantheon ...
.
Description
Norwegian sailor
Gustaf Johansen, the narrator of one of the tales in the short story, describes the accidental discovery of the city: "a coast-line of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy
Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth's supreme terror—the nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh...loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours".
[H. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu" (1928)] The short story also asserts the premise that while currently trapped in R'lyeh, Cthulhu will eventually return, with worshipers often repeating the phrase ''Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn'': "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming".
Lovecraft claims R'lyeh is located at in the southern Pacific Ocean.
Writer
August Derleth
August William Derleth (February 24, 1909 – July 4, 1971) was an American writer and anthologist. He was the first book publisher of the writings of H. P. Lovecraft. He made contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos and the Lovecraftian horror, cosmi ...
, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft, placed R'lyeh at about . The latter coordinates place the city approximately from the actual island of
Pohnpei
Pohnpei (formerly known as Ponape or Ascension, from Pohnpeian: "upon (''pohn'') a stone altar (''pei'')") is an island of the Senyavin Islands which are part of the larger Caroline Islands group. It belongs to Pohnpei State, one of the fou ...
(Ponape), the location of the fictional "
Ponape Scripture". Both locations are close to the Pacific
pole of inaccessibility
In geography, a pole of inaccessibility is the farthest (or most difficult to reach) location in a given landmass, sea, or other topographical feature, starting from a given boundary, relative to a given criterion. A geographical criterion of i ...
(), the point in the ocean farthest from any land mass.
Significance and criticism
R'lyeh is characterized by bizarre architecture likened to
non-Euclidean geometry
In mathematics, non-Euclidean geometry consists of two geometries based on axioms closely related to those that specify Euclidean geometry. As Euclidean geometry lies at the intersection of metric geometry and affine geometry, non-Euclidean ge ...
that hampers exploration and escape. At one point, a crew member "climbed interminably along the grotesque stone mouldingthat is, one would call it climbing if the thing was not after all horizontaland the men wondered how any door in the universe could be so vast"
and at another, a sailor "was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn't have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse".
Mathematician Benjamin K.Tippett demonstrates that these observations are consistent with "exploring a bubble of
curved spacetime
In physics, curved spacetime is the mathematical model in which, with Einstein's theory of general relativity, gravity naturally arises, as opposed to being described as a fundamental force in Isaac Newton, Newton's static Euclidean reference fra ...
". Non-Euclidean geometry and
Einstein's theories feature in several of Lovecraft's stories as
Weird elements. Critics Paul Halpern and Michael C. Labossiere note that
Rather than having science expand its boundaries to include genuine supernatural phenomena through brand new theories, the alleged supernatural phenomena are instead accounted for in scientific terms through existing models of nature. Thus, science is not so much embracing the supernatural as reducing it to a manifestation of the natural. Lovecraft's fascinating approach to science and the supernatural is further illustrated by the fact that he reverses the usual technique for ghostly fright. Rather than breaking the laws of science with supernatural means and thus generating fear, he creates a feeling of horror by showing that the common sense views of physics and nature (that is, the old Newtonian views) are the comforting fantasy. In contrast, the counterintuitive "new physics", the true scientific reality, provides the source of horror.
Other interpretations
In
Alan Moore
Alan Moore (born 18 November 1953) is an English author known primarily for his work in comic books including ''Watchmen'', ''V for Vendetta'', ''The Ballad of Halo Jones'', Swamp Thing (comic book), ''Swamp Thing'', ''Batman: The Killing Joke' ...
's Lovecraft-derived comic book mini-series ''
Neonomicon'' and ''
Providence'' it is implied, in a fashion suiting a non-Euclidean entity such as Cthulhu, that R'lyeh and subsequently Cthulhu himself do not yet exist in a physical sense. R'lyeh and Cthulhu's "dead dreaming" are instead a metaphor for the
fetal development
Prenatal development () involves the development of the embryo and of the fetus during a viviparous animal's gestation. Prenatal development starts with fertilization, in the germinal stage of embryonic development, and continues in fetal deve ...
of Cthulhu in the womb of a female human detective-turned-cultist, impregnated by a male
Deep One while held prisoner by his followers. Similarly to the
Antichrist
In Christian eschatology, Antichrist (or in broader eschatology, Anti-Messiah) refers to a kind of entity prophesied by the Bible to oppose Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ and falsely substitute themselves as a savior in Christ's place before ...
, it is stated that Cthulhu's inevitable "return" to destroy civilization and liberate mankind from rule of law will begin with his physical birth.
Notes
References
*
*
* Definitive version.
*
*
External links
"I, Cthulhu, or, What’s A Tentacle-Faced Thing Like Me Doing In A Sunken City Like This (Latitude 47° 9′ S, Longitude 126° 43′ W)?",
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman (; born Neil Richard Gaiman; 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, audio theatre, and screenplays. His works include the comic series ''The Sandman (comic book), The Sandma ...
(1986)
''A Colder War'' Charles Stross (2000)
{{H. P. Lovecraft, state=collapsed
Cthulhu Mythos locations
Fictional islands
Fictional populated places
Fictional prisons
Fictional elements introduced in 1928