Translation: David Camus © Éditions Mnémos, 2013 In many ways, The Shadow out of Time stands as a sister to At the Mountains of Madness (cf. #57, • Tindalos #57 - Lovecraft: The Mountains of Madness): discovery of a city in ruins, of a past extraterrestrial civilization with description of customs and mentalities, even of the political and societal system. Here again, the appearance of man on this planet is only an accident, and his reign an anecdote – like, ultimately, the creatures discovered, certainly more evolved but just as transient. Everything is similar everywhere, except for the degree of grandeur... But we also find themes dear to Lovecraft: confusion between the world of dreams and that of reality, transfer of mind (we think of #5, Beyond the Wall of Sleep – • Tindalos #5 - Lovecraft: Beyond the... , but also more recently #62, The Monster on the Threshold – • Tindalos #62 - Lovecraft: The Monster... ), as if the fear of no longer being oneself was doubled by the fear of belonging to someone else's mind. As usual, Lovecraft weaves an impressive network of references, making nods to his friends (August Derleth through the Cult of Ghouls of the "Count of Erlette", Clark Ashton Smith thanks to the Book of Eibon, Robert Howard through the Unaussprechlichen Kulten, or Robert Bloch with the De Vermis Myteriis), but not refusing any self-citation: unsurprisingly, we come across the great Cthulhu, Professor Dyer of the Antarctic expedition as well as the "race with the starry head", and the essential Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred. Once again (we had already had a glimpse of it in Through the Gates of the Silver Key, #60 – • Tindalos #60 - Lovecraft: Through ... ), the narrator meets a large number of past or future personalities. Because the great theme of this story, beyond the transfers of mind or the (illusory) border between dream and reality, is Time experienced as a physical dimension: extensible, reversible, divisible, malleable, potentially subject to the orientations of the will. Here, the entry is provided to us: Albert Einstein, whose work aims "to reduce time to a simple dimension." A curious text, sometimes dense and complex, disconcerting, through which we believe we perceive some literary influences, such as "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" by Jules Verne, or "The Lost World" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The common point with these two great texts of the imagination lies precisely in the rooting of the fictional in the real: what we could take for an absurd fantasy is only the fruit of concrete observations, the probable appendix of a palpable and proven reality. 0:00:38 chapter 1 0:25:34 chapter 2 0:48:25 chapter 3 1:14:26 chapter 4 1:53:26 chapter 5 2:16:46 chapter 6 2:47:35 chapter 7 3:08:10 chapter 8 ------- Reading, Illustrations and Music of Tindalos ------- Next video: He who haunts the night ------- 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 #Book #1935 #Abyss #Time