Celephaïs
by H.P.
Lovecraft
In a dream Kuranes saw the city in the valley,
and the seacoast beyond,
and the snowy peak overlooking the sea,
and the gaily painted galleys that sail out
of the harbour
toward distant regions where the sea meets
the sky.
In a dream it was also that he came by his
name of Kuranes,
for when awake he was called by another name.
Perhaps it was natural for him to dream a
new name;
for he was the last of his family,
and alone among the indifferent millions of
London,
so there were not many to speak to him and
to remind him who
he had been.
His money and lands were gone,
and he did not care for the ways of the people
about him,
but preferred to dream and write of his dreams.
What he wrote was laughed at by those to whom
he showed it,
so that after a time he kept his writings
to himself,
and finally ceased to write.
The more he withdrew from the world about
him,
the more wonderful became his dreams;
and it would have been quite futile to try
to describe them on
paper.
Kuranes was not modern,
and did not think like others who wrote.
Whilst they strove to strip from life its
embroidered robes of
myth and to show in naked ugliness the foul
thing that is
reality,
Kuranes sought for beauty alone.
When truth and experience failed to reveal
it,
he sought it in fancy and illusion,
and found it on his very doorstep,
amid the nebulous memories of childhood tales
and dreams.
There are not many persons who know what wonders
are
opened to them in the stories and visions
of their youth;
for when as children we listen and dream,
we think but half-formed thoughts,
and when as men we try to remember,
we are dulled and prosaic with the poison
of life.
But some of us awake in the night with strange
phantasms of
enchanted hills and gardens,
of fountains that sing in the sun,
of golden cliffs overhanging murmuring seas,
of plains that stretch down to sleeping cities
of bronze and
stone,
and of shadowy companies of heroes that ride
caparisoned white
horses along the edges of thick forests;
and then we know that we have looked back
through the ivory
gates into that world of wonder which was
ours before we were
wise and unhappy.
Kuranes came very suddenly upon his old world
of
childhood.
He had been dreaming of the house where he
had been born;
the great stone house covered with ivy,
where thirteen generations of his ancestors
had lived,
and where he had hoped to die.
It was moonlight,
and he had stolen out into the fragrant summer
night,
through the gardens,
down the terraces,
past the great oaks of the park,
and along the long white road to the village.
The village seemed very old,
eaten away at the edge like the moon which
had commenced to
wane,
and Kuranes wondered whether the peaked roofs
of the small
houses hid sleep or death.
In the streets were spears of long grass,
and the window-panes on either side broken
or filmily staring.
Kuranes had not lingered,
but had plodded on as though summoned toward
some goal.
He dared not disobey the summons for fear
it might prove an
illusion like the urges and aspirations of
waking life,
which do not lead to any goal.
Then he had been drawn down a lane that led
off from the
village street toward the channel cliffs,
and had come to the end of things to the precipice
and the
abyss where all the village and all the world
fell abruptly
into the unechoing emptiness of infinity,
and where even the sky ahead was empty and
unlit by the
crumbling moon and the peering stars.
Faith had urged him on,
over the precipice and into the gulf,
where he had floated down,
down,
down;
past dark,
shapeless,
undreamed dreams,
faintly glowing spheres that may have been
partly dreamed
dreams,
and laughing winged things that seemed to
mock the dreamers of
all the worlds.
Then a rift seemed to open in the darkness
before him,
and he saw the city of the valley,
glistening radiantly far,
far below,
with a background of sea and sky,
and a snowcapped mountain near the shore.
Kuranes had awakened the very moment he beheld
the city,
yet he knew from his brief glance that it
was none other than
Celephaïs,
in the Valley of Ooth-Nargai beyond the Tanarian
Hills where
his spirit had dwelt all the eternity of an
hour one summer
afternoon very long ago,
when he had slipt away from his nurse and
let the warm
sea-breeze lull him to sleep as he watched
the clouds from the
cliff near the village.
He had protested then,
when they had found him,
waked him,
and carried him home,
for just as he was aroused he had been about
to sail in a
golden galley for those alluring regions where
the sea meets
the sky.
And now he was equally resentful of awaking,
for he had found his fabulous city after forty
weary years.
But three nights afterward Kuranes came again
to
Celephaïs.
As before,
he dreamed first of the village that was asleep
or dead,
and of the abyss down which one must float
silently;
then the rift appeared again,
and he beheld the glittering minarets of the
city,
and saw the graceful galleys riding at anchor
in the blue
harbour,
and watched the gingko trees of Mount Aran
swaying in the
sea-breeze.
But this time he was not snatched away,
and like a winged being settled gradually
over a grassy
hillside til finally his feet rested gently
on the turf.
He had indeed come back to the Valley of Ooth-Nargai
and the
splendid city of Celephaïs.
Down the hill amid scented grasses and brilliant
flowers
walked Kuranes,
over the bubbling Naraxa on the small wooden
bridge where he
had carved his name so many years ago,
and through the whispering grove to the great
stone bridge by
the city gate.
All was as of old,
nor were the marble walls discoloured,
nor the polished bronze statues upon them
tarnished.
And Kuranes saw that he need not tremble lest
the things he
knew be vanished;
for even the sentries on the ramparts were
the same,
and still as young as he remembered them.
When he entered the city,
past the bronze gates and over the onyx pavements,
the merchants and camel-drivers greeted him
as if he had never
been away;
and it was the same at the turquoise temple
of Nath-Horthath,
where the orchid-wreathed priests told him
that there is no
time in Ooth-Nargai,
but only perpetual youth.
Then Kuranes walked through the Street of
Pillars to the
seaward wall,
where gathered the traders and sailors,
and strange men from the regions where the
sea meets the sky.
There he stayed long,
gazing out over the bright harbour where the
ripples sparkled
beneath an unknown sun,
and where rode lightly the galleys from far
places over the
water.
And he gazed also upon Mount Aran rising regally
from the shore,
its lower slopes green with swaying trees
and its white summit
touching the sky.
More than ever Kuranes wished to sail in a
galley to the
far places of which he had heard so many strange
tales,
and he sought again the captain who had agreed
to carry him so
long ago.
He found the man,
Athib,
sitting on the same chest of spice he had
sat upon before,
and Athib seemed not to realize that any time
had passed.
Then the two rowed to a galley in the harbour,
and giving orders to the oarmen,
commenced to sail out into the billowy Cerenarian
Sea that
leads to the sky.
For several days they glided undulatingly
over the water,
till finally they came to the horizon,
where the sea meets the sky.
Here the galley paused not at all,
but floated easily in the blue of the sky
among fleecy clouds
tinted with rose.
And far beneath the keel Kuranes could see
strange lands and
rivers and cities of surpassing beauty,
spread indolently in the sunshine which seemed
never to lessen
or disappear.
At length Athib told him that their journey
was near its end,
and that they would soon enter the harbour
of Serannian,
the pink marble city of the clouds,
which is built on that ethereal coast where
the west wind
flows into the sky;
but as the highest of the city's carven towers
came into sight
there was a sound somewhere in space,
and Kuranes awaked in his London garret.
For many months after that Kuranes sought
the marvellous
city of Celephaïs and its sky-bound galleys
in vain;
and though his dreams carried him to many
gorgeous and
unheard-of places,
no one whom he met could tell him how to find
Ooth-Nargai
beyond the Tanarian Hills.
One night he went flying over dark mountains
where there were
faint,
lone campfires at great distances apart,
and strange,
shaggy herds with tinkling bells on the leaders,
and in the wildest part of this hilly country,
so remote that few men could ever have seen
it,
he found a hideously ancient wall or causeway
of stone
zigzagging along the ridges and valleys;
too gigantic ever to have risen by human hands,
and of such a length that neither end of it
could be seen.
Beyond that wall in the grey dawn he came
to a land of quaint
gardens and cherry trees,
and when the sun rose he beheld such beauty
of red and white
flowers,
green foliage and lawns,
white paths,
diamond brooks,
blue lakelets,
carven bridges,
and red-roofed pagodas,
that he for a moment forgot Celephaïs in
sheer delight.
But he remembered it again when he walked
down a white path
toward a red-roofed pagoda,
and would have questioned the people of this
land about it,
had he not found that there were no people
there,
but only birds and bees and butterflies.
On another night Kuranes walked up a damp
stone spiral
stairway endlessly,
and came to a tower window overlooking a mighty
plain and
river lit by the full moon;
and in the silent city that spread away from
the river bank he
thought he beheld some feature or arrangement
which he had
known before.
He would have descended and asked the way
to Ooth-Nargai had
not a fearsome aurora sputtered up from some
remote place
beyond the horizon,
showing the ruin and antiquity of the city,
and the stagnation of the reedy river,
and the death lying upon that land,
as it had lain since King Kynaratholis came
home from his
conquests to find the vengeance of the gods.
So Kuranes sought fruitlessly for the marvellous
city of
Celephaïs and its galleys that sail to Serannian
in the
sky,
meanwhile seeing many wonders and once barely
escaping from
the high-priest not to be described,
which wears a yellow silken mask over its
face and dwells all
alone in a prehistoric stone monastery in
the cold desert
plateau of Leng.
In time he grew so impatient of the bleak
intervals of day
that he began buying drugs in order to increase
his periods of
sleep.
Hasheesh helped a great deal,
and once sent him to a part of space where
form does not exist,
but where glowing gases study the secrets
of existence.
And a violet-coloured gas told him that this
part of space was
outside what he had called infinity.
The gas had not heard of planets and organisms
before,
but identified Kuranes merely as one from
the infinity where
matter,
energy,
and gravitation exist.
Kuranes was now very anxious to return to
minaret-studded
Celephaïs,
and increased his doses of drugs;
but eventually he had no more money left,
and could buy no drugs.
Then one summer day he was turned out of his
garret,
and wandered aimlessly through the streets,
drifting over a bridge to a place where the
houses grew
thinner and thinner.
And it was there that fulfillment came,
and he met the cortege of knights come from
Celephaïs to bear
him thither forever.
Handsome knights they were,
astride roan horses and clad in shining armour
with tabards of
|cloth-of-gold curiously emblazoned.
So numerous were they,
that Kuranes almost mistook them for an army,
but they were sent in his honour;
since it was he who had created Ooth-Nargai
in his dreams,
on which account he was now to be appointed
its chief god for
evermore.
Then they gave Kuranes a horse and placed
him at the head of
the cavalcade,
and all rode majestically through the downs
of Surrey and
onward toward the region where Kuranes and
his ancestors were
born.
It was very strange,
but as the riders went on they seemed to gallop
back through
time;
for whenever they passed through a village
in the twilight
they saw only such houses and villagers as
Chaucer or men
before him might have seen,
and sometimes they saw knights on horseback
with small
companies of retainers.
When it grew dark they travelled more swiftly,
till soon they were flying uncannily as if
in the air.
In the dim dawn they came upon the village
which Kuranes had
seen alive in his childhood,
and asleep or dead in his dreams.
It was alive now,
and early villagers curtsied as the horsemen
clattered down
the street and turned off into the lane that
ends in the abyss
of dreams.
Kuranes had previously entered that abyss
only at night,
and wondered what it would look like by day;
so he watched anxiously as the column approached
its brink.
Just as they galloped up the rising ground
to the precipice a
golden glare came somewhere out of the west
and hid all the
landscape in effulgent draperies.
The abyss was a seething chaos of roseate
and cerulean
splendour,
and invisible voices sang exultantly as the
knightly entourage
plunged over the edge and floated gracefully
down past
glittering clouds and silvery coruscations.
Endlessly down the horsemen floated,
their chargers pawing the aether] as if galloping
over golden
sands;
and then the luminous vapours spread apart
to reveal a greater
brightness,
the brightness of the city Celephaïs,
and the sea coast beyond,
and the snowy peak overlooking the sea,
and the gaily painted galleys that sail out
of the harbour
toward distant regions where the sea meets
the sky.
And Kuranes reigned thereafter over Ooth-Nargai
and all
the neighboring regions of dream,
and held his court alternately in Celephaïs
and in the
cloud-fashioned Serannian.
He reigns there still,
and will reign happily for ever,
though below the cliffs at Innsmouth the channel
tides played
mockingly with the body of a tramp who had
stumbled through
the half-deserted village at dawn;
played mockingly,
and cast it upon the rocks by ivy-covered
Trevor Towers,
where a notably fat and especially offensive
millionaire
brewer enjoys the purchased atmosphere of
extinct nobility.
