Translation: Maxime Le Dain © Éditions Bragelonne / Sans-Détour, 2012 The Dreams in the Witch-House is a unique work. We will not be indifferent to the various resurgences, starting with the name of the hero - or rather the victim: Walter Gilman, a direct reference to the "Gilman boarding house" in The Nightmare over Innsmouth (cf. #58), a story that Lovecraft had just finished writing two months earlier. But Lovecraft regulars will find some themes already interwoven throughout the stories: the rats that gallop behind the partitions (cf. #36, "The Rats in the Walls"), the evocation of Azathoth (cf. #31, "Azathoth", and of course #49, "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath"), of Nyarlathotep - whose appearance evokes the poem "Fungi of Yuggoth" (cf. #55), the brotherly friendship between two students (here Gilman and Elwood, as we find multiple male duos in #10: "The Testimony of Randolph Carter", #12: "The Tree", #30: "Hypnos", #32: "Herbert West, Reanimator", #37: "The Dog", #40: "The Unnameable" for example). More troubling themes, the fusion between reality and dream, present from #4 "Polaris" (and in a way, the "witch's house" is very reminiscent of this distant short story written in 1918), notably with this attraction towards the stars, the silent call of the gaping immensity; but also the presence of the Great Old Ones (cf. #57, "The Mountains of Madness") whose description is unambiguous - we will find in the music, in passing, the harmonies of the Great Old Ones. More marginal, but quite amusing, the permanent reference to the Polish community. From the immediate protagonists (Choynski, Dombrowski and the plaintive Mazurewicz) to the secondary characters (Doctor Malkowski, the priest Ivaniki) or even peripheral (the washerwoman Anastasia Wolejko and her companion Pete Stomacki). It is, for Lovecraft, a way of reviving ancestral beliefs - not to say superstition. Not racism, strictly speaking. Rather a scent of strangeness, of old customs and popular fables inherited from faraway Europe. Reference for reference, attentive listeners will perceive a Polish reminiscence, with a few bars of Chopin's Grande Valse Brillante (whose left hand has curiously moved towards harmonies a little less romantic than the original...) To finish, this short story - sometimes very repetitive, it is true - is above all astonishing for its visual and sensory evocations. The shift into dream worlds is always an opportunity for abstract descriptions (one has the impression that Lovecraft writes as Kandinsky paints, in a perpetual play of shapes, lines and angles that has no other explanation than itself). A way of making the journey through dimensions credible, a way of crossing worlds in all plausibility. ------- Reading, Illustration and Music of Tindalos ------- Next video: Through the doors of the silver key ------- To find the illustrations, music, and the whole universe of Tindalos https://www.tindaloslechien.com To find the stories in mp3 https://hearthis.at/tindalos To follow Tindalos on Facebook / tindalos.lechien.5 To follow and support Tindalos on Patreon, with lots of rewards / tindalos For a nice little boost by supporting Tindalos on Tipeee https://fr.tipeee.com/tindalos Want to treat yourself to an illustration of Tindalos? https://www.tindaloslechien.com/bouti... #Lovecraft #witch