Nyarlathotep

In his first appearance in “Nyarlathotep” (1920), he is described as a “tall, swarthy man” who resembles an ancient Egyptian pharaoh. In this story he wanders the Earth, seemingly gathering legions of followers, the narrator of the story among them, through his demonstrations of strange and seemingly magical instruments. These followers lose awareness of the world around them, and through the narrator’s increasingly unreliable accounts, the reader gets an impression of the world’s collapse. Fritz Leiber proposes three interpretations of the character based on this appearance: the universe’s mockery of man’s attempts to understand it; a negative view of the commercial world, represented by Nyarlathotep’s self-promotion and contemptuous attitude; and man’s self-destructive rationality. Nyarlathotep subsequently appears as a major character in The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (1926/27), in which he again manifests in the form of an Egyptian pharaoh when he confronts protagonist Randolph Carter. Leiber describes Nyarlathotep as “evilly intelligent” in this story, in contrast to the mindless Azathoth, his master. The 21st sonnet of Lovecraft’s poem-cycle Fungi from Yuggoth (1929/30) is essentially a retelling of the original prose poem. In “The Dreams in the Witch House” (1933), Nyarlathotep appears to Walter Gilman and witch Keziah Mason (who has made a pact with the entity) in the form of “the ‘Black Man’ of the witch-cult”, a black-skinned avatar of the Devil described by witch hunters. Although inhuman, some characters mistake him as a human of African descent, though his facial features are described as Caucasian. Finally, in “The Haunter of the Dark” (1936), the nocturnal, tentacled, bat-winged monster dwelling in the steeple of the Starry Wisdom sect’s church is identified as another manifestation of Nyarlathotep. This avatar cannot tolerate light. Lovecraft suggests that the fake Henry Akeley that appears at the end of “The Whisperer in Darkness” (1930) is also Nyarlathotep. In the story, the Mi-Go chant his name in reverential tones, stating “To Nyarlathotep, Mighty Messenger, must all things be told. And he shall put on the semblance of man, the waxen mask and the robes that hide, and come down from the world of Seven Suns to mock.” At the end of “The Whisperer in Darkness”, the main character, to his horror, discovers a loose dressing gown and the dismembered head and arms of Akeley lying on the couch, presumed in the story to have been a Mi-Go in disguise. But due to the mention in the chant to Nyarlathotep wearing the “waxen mask and the robes that hide”, S. T. Joshi writes that “this seems a clear allusion to Nyarlathotep disguised with Akeley’s face and hands; but if so, it means that at this time Nyarlathotep is, in bodily form, one of the fungi — especially if, as seems likely, Nyarlathotep is one of the two buzzing voices Albert Wilmarth overhears at the end.” Joshi notes this is problematic, because “if Nyarlathotep is (as critics have termed it) a ‘shapeshifter’, why would he have to don the face and hands of Akeley instead of merely reshaping himself as Akeley?” Though Nyarlathotep appears as a character in only four stories and two sonnets, his name is mentioned frequently in other works. In “The Rats in the Walls” (1924), Nyarlathotep is mentioned as a faceless god in the caverns of Earth’s center. In “The Shadow Out of Time” (1936), the “hideous secret of Nyarlathotep” is revealed to the protagonist by Khephnes during their imprisonment by the Great Race of Yith.