“The Green Meadow” by H.P. Lovecraft
“The Green Meadow” is not one of Lovecraft’s more popular works. I think it’s for a few reasons.
The title doesn’t scream “Lovecraft”
It’s a Dreamlands story, and Yog-Sothothery is more popular, although obviously, the two are linked
No tentacles
I think it’s severely underrated and overlooked. This is one of the first stories in the Dreamlands (and thus, adjacent to Yog-Sothothery) featuring a somewhat eldritch tome. In this case, the tome’s contents aren’t unreadable (it’s been translated from Classical Greek as part of the framing narrative) and, unlike the Necronomicon, its contents aren’t necessarily occult and aren’t associated with taking a sanity loss. Instead, it’s the circumstances of the tome’s “delivery” and the composition of the material of the tome that are of particular interest — the book is found inside a meteor that is fished out of the sea in a New England town. The book is made of stone, as are its pages.
It’s one of the works where what isn’t described is what’s horrific. It’s a story that takes place in a very liminal state — a state of transition. The moving island, going between the forest and cloud. The narrator’s mindset, amnesiac but not quite fully so. There’s a stark contrast between how heavily the tome itself is described in the framing narrative and the vague contents of the story, contents that even within the framing narrative are explicitly described as vague. The framing narrative’s call to action is an imploring that anyone in the general public who can make sense of the story please do so and report their findings.
We again see some obvious classical influence here. The book-in-a-book is in Classical Greek. The narrator is stranded on an island and has lost their memory — much like Odysseus on the island of the Lotus-Eaters, although this time, the narrator is alone. “Stethelos” is clearly a name inspired by Classical Greek, bearing similarity, interestingly, to “Stethos” — breast, as in “stethoscope.” It’s rather similar to “στέλεχος” or stelechos, meaning '“stem.” It’s of course also very similar to “stylos,” as in stylus, or pen, or pillar. Apparently, Sthethelos has been adapted into Pathfinder. Please note I don’t know Greek or Latin. We’ll need Clio Aite on this one.
I picked the thumbnail because it clearly shows something akin to the setting of “The Green Meadows” — a green meadowed island in the sea, with white clouds. It’s another photo from NASA. This is what your taxpayer dollars are going towards — eldritch entities using photographs for YouTube thumbnails. My apologies.
This blog entry is late because I had to go acquire a new keyboard, my apologies!
