Lovecraft, H P - The Outsider

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The Outsider

by H. P. Lovecraft

Written 1921

Published April 1926 in Weird Tales, Vol. 7, No. 4, p. 449-53.

Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness.

Wretched is he who looks back upon lone hours in vast and dismal chambers with brown

hangings and maddening rows of antique books, or upon awed watches in twilight groves

of grotesque, gigantic, and vine-encumbered trees that silently wave twisted branches far

aloft. Such a lot the gods gave to me - to me, the dazed, the disappointed; the barren, the

broken. And yet I am strangely content and cling desperately to those sere memories,

when my mind momentarily threatens to reach beyond to the other.

I know not where I was born, save that the castle was infinitely old and infinitely

horrible, full of dark passages and having high ceilings where the eye could find only

cobwebs and shadows. The stones in the crumbling corridors seemed always hideously

damp, and there was an accursed smell everywhere, as of the piled-up corpses of dead

generations. It was never light, so that I used sometimes to light candles and gaze steadily

at them for relief, nor was there any sun outdoors, since the terrible trees grew high above

the topmost accessible tower. There was one black tower which reached above the trees

into the unknown outer sky, but that was partly ruined and could not be ascended save by

a well-nigh impossible climb up the sheer wall, stone by stone.

I must have lived years in this place, but I cannot measure the time. Beings must have

cared for my needs, yet I cannot recall any person except myself, or anything alive but

the noiseless rats and bats and spiders. I think that whoever nursed me must have been

shockingly aged, since my first conception of a living person was that of somebody

mockingly like myself, yet distorted, shrivelled, and decaying like the castle. To me there

was nothing grotesque in the bones and skeletons that strewed some of the stone crypts

deep down among the foundations. I fantastically associated these things with everyday

events, and thought them more natural than the coloured pictures of living beings which I

found in many of the mouldy books. From such books I learned all that I know. No

teacher urged or guided me, and I do not recall hearing any human voice in all those

years - not even my own; for although I had read of speech, I had never thought to try to

speak aloud. My aspect was a matter equally unthought of, for there were no mirrors in

the castle, and I merely regarded myself by instinct as akin to the youthful figures I saw

drawn and painted in the books. I felt conscious of youth because I remembered so little.

Outside, across the putrid moat and under the dark mute trees, I would often lie and

dream for hours about what I read in the books; and would longingly picture myself

amidst gay crowds in the sunny world beyond the endless forests. Once I tried to escape

from the forest, but as I went farther from the castle the shade grew denser and the air

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Lovecraft, H P - The Outsider

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