La Bête dans la Caverne: La collection HP Lovecraft

Écrit par H. P. Lovecraft

Raconté par Patrick Blandin

Un homme visitant la vaste grotte de Mammoth se sépare de son guide et se perd. Sa torche expire et il abandonne tout espoir de trouver une issue dans le noir absolu lorsqu'il entend d'étranges pas non humains s'approcher de lui. Pensant qu'il s'agit d'un lion de montagne perdu ou d'une autre bête semblable, il ramasse une pierre et la jette vers la source du son. La bête est touchée et s'effondre sur le sol. Le guide trouve le protagoniste et, ensemble, ils examinent la créature déchue avec la torche du guide. La créature marmonne dans ses derniers souffles et ils voient son visage. Ils découvrent un humain pâle et déformé, qui s'était également perdu dans la grotte il y a de nombreuses années.

• Langue: Français
• Éditeur: Compagnie Du Savoir
• Date de sortie: 9 sept. 2022
• ISBN: 9782821188013

H. P. Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was an American author of science fiction and horror stories. Born in Providence, Rhode Island to a wealthy family, he suffered the loss of his father at a young age. Raised with his mother’s family, he was doted upon throughout his youth and found a paternal figure in his grandfather Whipple, who encouraged his literary interests. He began writing stories and poems inspired by the classics and by Whipple’s spirited retellings of Gothic tales of terror. In 1902, he began publishing a periodical on astronomy, a source of intellectual fascination for the young Lovecraft. Over the next several years, he would suffer from a series of illnesses that made it nearly impossible to attend school. Exacerbated by the decline of his family’s financial stability, this decade would prove formative to Lovecraft’s worldview and writing style, both of which depict humanity as cosmologically insignificant. Supported by his mother Susie in his attempts to study organic chemistry, Lovecraft eventually devoted himself to writing poems and stories for such pulp and weird-fiction magazines as Argosy, where he gained a cult following of readers. Early stories of note include “The Alchemist” (1916), “The Tomb” (1917), and “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” (1919). “The Call of Cthulu,” originally published in pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928, is considered by many scholars and fellow writers to be his finest, most complex work of fiction. Inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and Lord Dunsany, Lovecraft became one of the century’s leading horror writers whose influence remains essential to the genre.