Lovecraft's Library

[starblazie]

apparently I posted twice.    I did find that google translate does want to spell pinac as pnac (edit: Greek).  I am not sure that means anything....

[starblazie]

"pnak wan" appears to be a Yupik word for whetstone.  The source is a recent book and I was only able to preview a very small sliver, but the book is "Siberian Yupik Eskimo: the language and its contacts with Chukchi" by Willem Joseph de Reuse, 1994. 
If E&C is the source of Buddai, it does discuss the potential that the aborigines are at least partially derived from the Dravidians of India and apparently "pnak" does exist in the languages of India. I am probably getting ahead of myself here, but I thought it is interesting to note.

To switch topics...  I was able to find the reference source that HPL used for "Beyond the Wall of Sleep," but old book, you are probably already aware....
The books "Curiosities of the Sky," 1909; and "Astronomy with the Naked Eye," 1908, both by Garrett Putman Serviss both mention the astronomical event described in BTWOS, but it is the latter text that is the source.

Before daylight on the morning of February 22, 1901, the Rev. Doctor Anderson, of Edinburgh, an amateur astronomer, who had also been the first to see the new star in Auriga,  beheld a strange object in the constellation Perseus not far from the celebrated variable star Algol.  He recognized its character at once, and immediately telegraphed the news, which awoke the startled attention of astronomers all over the world.  When first seen the new star was no brighter than Algol (less than the second magnitude), but within twenty-four hours it was ablaze, outshining even the brilliant Capella, and far surpassing the first magnitude.  At the spot in the sky where it appeared nothing whatever was visible on the night before its coming.  This is known with certainty because a photograph had been made of that very region on February 21, and this photograph showed everything down to the twelfth magnitude, but not a trace of the stranger which burst into view between the 21st and the 22nd like the explosion of a rocket.

http://www.archive.org/details/curiositiesofthe06630gut

On February 22, 1901, a marvellous new star was discovered by Dr. Anderson, of Edinburgh, not very far from Algol. No star had been visible at that point before. Within twenty-four hours the stranger had become so bright that it outshone Capella. In a week or two it had visibly faded, and in the course of a few months it was hardly discernible with the naked eye.

http://www.archive.org/details/astronomywithna00servgoog

[old book]

Wow! Beyond the Wall of Sleep was my favorite story for a long time, but now I barely remember it. I'll have to go back and re-read it.

I cannot find the "pnak" reference in volume 11. For whatever reason the google books stuff doesn't work for me, and the volume containing volumes 11 and 12 at archive.org doesn't seem to have this. If "pnak wan" is Siberian Eskimo, there's a good chance "pnak" is actually a loanword from Chukchi. How Lovecraft would have had access to the word I cannot imagine.

I'm sure there is a Dravidan/Aborigine connection, and E&C talks about it in a sort of general way. Does "Pnakotic" even come up in Shadow Out of Time, though? Lin Carter called the library city "Pnakotus" but that was decades later.

On Norse/Inuit/Dorset contacts, the surviving sagas do mention very limited contact between the Norse in the Western Settlement in Greenland and Inuit making their way southward, probably with some contact also at Upernavik, where the Norse travelled seasonally to hunt. The sagas mention the Norse found traces of inhabitation by earlier people in SW Greenland. The Inuit stories mention a different people in East Greenland, called Taanit, who were not Norse. There are Inuit legends about giant cannibals on the east coast. Inuit from the west probably entered at different times, probably by boat to Disko Island in Disko Bay, and almost certainly in the north where the so-called Polar or Thule Inuit still live, crossing the narrow frozen straight from what is now Canada. None of that is very controversial. What is more controversial is the Norse presence in Arctic Canada. There is some evidence of iron smelting in the Canadian Arctic, I believe on Baffin but maybe a different island. There are ruins of Norse-style longhouses with flagstone foundations and megaliths strongly resembling the symbol for Thor's hammer in the Canadian Arctic. There is also the whole "blond Eskimo" controversy, now probably over 100 years old. There are also some Norse loanwords found in Greenland and Labrador, I think the word for goat is among them. Genetics studies of the Greenland Inuit show just a smidgeon of Norse blood, iirc, and the archaeology of Norse objects in the Canadian Arctic isn't very compelling, no one knows whether they were trade items, booty or owned by Norse in North America, or all of the above. There is evidence of North American items in the Norse settlements in Greenland, though, including buffalo fur and certain hardwoods. There are also luxury items from Europe at a time when settlements were supposed to be dead and gone, so I think the jury is still out and no one really knows what was going on there. Or, "those who say do not know, and those who know do not say." Why do people say that? If they say that, aren't they really saying they know something, which means they don't really? Anyway, it's interesting.

[starblazie]

old book,
just for you I uploaded the pdf of vol. 11 in google docs here: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B59PbvOFteTSemg4UGExQndUMW1JVk0tTDRCdkp6Zw.  It's on page 291 of the pdf, but the image page number is 87.   "Pnak" appears towards the bottom of the page.

If nothing else, pm me with your email address and I would be happy to take a screen shot and send it to you.  

edit:  The Pnakotic Manuscripts are mentioned in passing in SOOT:

When a captive mind of alien origin was returned to its own body in the future, it was purged by an intricate mechanical hypnosis of all it had learned in the Great Race’s age—this because of certain troublesome consequences inherent in the general carrying forward of knowledge in large quantities. The few existing instances of clear transmission had caused, and would cause at known future times, great disasters. And it was largely in consequence of two cases of the kind (said the old myths) that mankind had learned what it had concerning the Great Race. Of all things surviving physically and directly from that aeon-distant world, there remained only certain ruins of great stones in far places and under the sea, and parts of the text of the frightful Pnakotic Manuscripts.

  

[starblazie]

I may break down and get "I am Providence", but am still thinking on it. 

I've thought of that too, but the damn thing's a hundred dollars.

I'd say one of us should buy it and lend it around but........ when I do pony up I'm holding onto that baby with both hands.

Not sure that is going to happen.  The only way I would share is if you pried it from my cold, dead hands.   

[starblazie]

I did run into another interesting find, I think.  In "The Alchemist," Charles Mauvais is Le Sorcier who has murdered the narrator's progenitors for centuries.  HPL may have based his Charles on a French historical figure,  Charles II of Navarre, who was also known as "Charles le Mauvais" or "Charles the Bad."   I was able to locate information on Charles in "The Student's France" by William Henley Jerviss, and Jerviss does indicate Charles le Mauvais intent to use poison in the attempts to assasinate Charles V.  
And...Jerviss' book is identified as a book HPL owned.  

Charles the Bad, king of Navarre, was a singular instance of the combination of great mental endowments with the worst dispositions, by which all his gifts wore perverted into instruments of evil. He had received from Nature talents of a high order; he possessed a remarkable power of eloquence, keen penetration, popular insinuating manners; but beneath this attractive exterior he concealed a malicious,  treacherous, revengeful heart, capable of the most atrocious crimes; nor was he ever known to hesitate at any sacrifice to his ambition, hatred, or other dominant passion. Such a man was not to be affronted with impunity. Moreover, independently of his personal character, his birth gave him a position of high political importance; for as the grandson, by his mother's side, of Louis X., his pretensions to the throne of France were superior to those of Edward of England, and were in fact indisputable, but for the law of female exclusion. He likewise held large feudal possessions, inherited from his father the Count of Evreux; and John had lately bestowed on him in maniage the hand of his daughter the Princess Jeanne.

And yes, I know it is wikipedia, but this is an interesting end note about the death of Charles le Mauvais, sourced to Francis Blagdon.  I was unable to find the original source in a brief (edit) search, but it is so very gothic...

Charles's horrific death became famous all over Europe, and was often cited by moralists, and sometimes illustrated in illuminated manuscript chronicles.[30] There are various contemporary versions that vary in detail: this is Francis Blagdon's English account, of 1801:
Charles the Bad, having fallen into such a state of decay that he could not make use of his limbs, consulted his physician, who ordered him to be wrapped up from head to foot, in a linen cloth impregnated with brandy, so that he might be inclosed [sic] in it to the very neck as in a sack. It was night when this remedy was administered. One of the female attendants of the palace, charged to sew up the cloth that contained the patient, having come to the neck, the fixed point where she was to finish her seam, made a knot according to custom; but as there was still remaining an end of thread, instead of cutting it as usual with scissors, she had recourse to the candle, which immediately set fire to the whole cloth. Being terrified, she ran away, and abandoned the king, who was thus burnt alive in his own palace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_Navarre

[old book]

old book,
just for you I uploaded the pdf of vol. 11 in google docs here: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B59PbvOFteTSemg4UGExQndUMW1JVk0tTDRCdkp6Zw.  It's on page 291 of the pdf, but the image page number is 87.   "Pnak" appears towards the bottom of the page.

If nothing else, pm me with your email address and I would be happy to take a screen shot and send it to you.  

edit:  The Pnakotic Manuscripts are mentioned in passing in SOOT:

When a captive mind of alien origin was returned to its own body in the future, it was purged by an intricate mechanical hypnosis of all it had learned in the Great Race’s age—this because of certain troublesome consequences inherent in the general carrying forward of knowledge in large quantities. The few existing instances of clear transmission had caused, and would cause at known future times, great disasters. And it was largely in consequence of two cases of the kind (said the old myths) that mankind had learned what it had concerning the Great Race. Of all things surviving physically and directly from that aeon-distant world, there remained only certain ruins of great stones in far places and under the sea, and parts of the text of the frightful Pnakotic Manuscripts.

  

Thank you! I THINK I've got it. google gives me endless heartache, but it appeared to download. Thanks again!

[starblazie]

Thank you! I THINK I've got it. google gives me endless heartache, but it appeared to download. Thanks again!

Oh wow, google appears to be your Nyarlathotep.   

Glad I could help.  If I need to do that again for another volume you would like to access, let me know and I will happily do so.

[old book]

Your kindness is noted and appreciated. btw are you under 40? Just thought I'd ask.

[starblazie]

no, but not by much.  

edit:
What is your source for Olaus?  I did a search for Wormskiold & Wormskioldii and came up with zilch, nada, nothing.   I am not really working on anything, but was doing some random searches to help fill out the gaps in my knowledge....

edit #2:
never mind I found him. 

[old book]

There was one work in particular with Wormskiold in the footnotes about the Eastern and Western settlements in Greenland, but the title is forgotten. I will take a look and see if it's handy on the hard disk somewhere. I'm sure I found it on archive.org by searching "Greenland" or that it came from sacred-texts.org in the Norse or Iceland section but not at their link from their Necronomicon section to Olaus Wormius, that's a different work by Wormskiold.

[starblazie]

I found a reference to him in good ol' Britannica.  Apparently he did go by and was known by the Latinized version of his Olaus Wormius; although many books simply refer to him as Ole Worm (wow, just wow).
I loaded the volume of Britannica to google docs here:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B59PbvOFteTSYWoycUY1TDBRZGloaDFkcG5uRkdpZw
I found a decent, but short biographical sketch of him here:
http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2008/05/danicorum-monumentorum.html

[old book]

Hmm, google won't give EB to old book.

On Pnak in the southern region of the western region of Eskimo speech, I did finally find that reference in the book starblazie provided. It LOOKS like that dialect used pnak for mountain because they used a related word for rock, stone. Not sure if this is Yupik innovation, a borrowing from a local, adjacent or assimilated language, or what. The list of words provided for comparison in that volume seemed to indicate it wasn't Chukchi in origin.

PNAKOTIC TICKOPAN PICKOTAN NICKOPAT TAPIOCANK CANT IPOK TIPOCKAN I CAN TOP K ICON TAP K ATIK PONC CAT PONIK

ROBLPUHD <- PNAKOTIC -> OMZJNSHB

If it's one of those word-games, I'd have to go with CAT PONIK. Or is it series of abbreviations? PN + AK + OT + IC... or is it of a kind with K'nyaan<-Canyon? I still don't see it. DAKOTA -> PNAKOTA? Then it would be PNAKOTAN manuscript. KOPTIC PNA looks good, I'm sure there is the PNA combination in Coptic, at least in the written language, sort of like PTAH. PNA might be one of those Coptic early Christian abbreviations for a longer word, PNEUMA, spirit, borrowed from Greek. Poe used Coptic in his Narrative of Gordon Pym, in the back section. But I'm not really convinced, just thinking aloud.

[starblazie]

Hmm, google won't give EB to old book.

Figures, I am going to start using Mendeley to manage these books since it is also a research tool (and free), but I can also share documents with colleagues if I am so inclined.   I can send you the screen print or if you have an alternative....  

edit:  You can get the 11th edition (1910) for free through amazon.com for the kindle.   I love me some kindle! 

On Pnak in the southern region of the western region of Eskimo speech, I did finally find that reference in the book starblazie provided. It LOOKS like that dialect used pnak for mountain because they used a related word for rock, stone. Not sure if this is Yupik innovation, a borrowing from a local, adjacent or assimilated language, or what. The list of words provided for comparison in that volume seemed to indicate it wasn't Chukchi in origin.

PNAKOTIC TICKOPAN PICKOTAN NICKOPAT TAPIOCANK CANT IPOK TIPOCKAN I CAN TOP K ICON TAP K ATIK PONC CAT PONIK

ROBLPUHD <- PNAKOTIC -> OMZJNSHB

If it's one of those word-games, I'd have to go with CAT PONIK. Or is it series of abbreviations? PN + AK + OT + IC... or is it of a kind with K'nyaan<-Canyon? I still don't see it. DAKOTA -> PNAKOTA? Then it would be PNAKOTAN manuscript. KOPTIC PNA looks good, I'm sure there is the PNA combination in Coptic, at least in the written language, sort of like PTAH. PNA might be one of those Coptic early Christian abbreviations for a longer word, PNEUMA, spirit, borrowed from Greek. Poe used Coptic in his Narrative of Gordon Pym, in the back section. But I'm not really convinced, just thinking aloud.

Lovecraft came up with the term early in his career.  Especially early on, I am not sure there was much methodology in the creation of what would become his mythos.  Also, from what I am able to determine, he didn't have much interest in languages other than Latin and possibly German and/or French.  I can see him coming across Pnak as a happy accident and adapting it to make it sound more ancient, more unique.  It's just as plausible that he came up with it on his own, but "Polaris" is the first story that makes use of "Pnakotic;" with the Inutos and the "esquimaux" being mentioned as well.  I think we both agree that Inutos appears to be taken from "Inuit."  

[old book]

Thank you for finding the first appearance of Pnakotic manuscripts, starblazie. I went and re-read Polaris at hplovecraft.com and I think you're right, this isn't cyperhing or word-play as I was thinking. The word does come up in connection with mountains, but only peripherally. The "mythos" words in Polaris seem to be Olatho'e, a district in Lomar, located in the saddle between two mountain peaks, Pnakotic, a few more. I'd guess HP either took Lomar from Bob Howard (were they corresponding as early ar 1918?) or made it up. Olathoe MIGHT be related to Thule of Graeco-Roman lore, composed of Ola plus Tho'e put for Thule. Alos and the other names in the story do seem to point to a fascination with Greek forms. I think it's important though that the first form is Pnakotic, not Pnak, and that this is elder lore inherited from what was that name? Zlobna? From the land that gave birth to Lomar but disappeared under the advancing ice sheet. The Inutos HAVE to be related to the "Esquimaux" later in the story, but HPL is winking at us and saying, "Yes, I know, the Aeons are all askew in the Heavens," because the 26,000 years for the precession of the equinox for Polaris to return to its former position and start over is all wrong for the known facts in the settlement of Greenland: the Norse came BEFORE the Inuit proper before AD 1000 (probably more like AD 968) and while they did detect former habitations, they put the "Skraelings" to the west and south initially, until they started showing up in Upernavik and south toward the Western Settlement on the coast end of the fjords a while later.

The first known inhabitants of Greenland would've been there after 4000 BC at the earliest, so HPL is consciously treating us to a fantasy of an earlier contest between European and Asian in Greenland 26,000 years before 1918 that he knew was fantastic, and is admitting as much, but he nonetheless has the information on good authority, from Polaris. This style, a sort of meditation upon a star, a point in space, or a mundane object even--inferring a great deal from very little--, seems to share something both with Oskar Wladyslaw de Lubicz Milosz's exegetic notes to his "Arcana," specifically, verse 81, "The Tool Bag" (pg. 368-373, "Noble Traveller," Lindisfarne Press 1985), and with the Ainu folk-tales which end with the elder female storyteller focusing upon single point, usually of needlework (see Songs of Gods and Men).

It's difficult to tie "Pnakotic" directly with the two mountains between which Olatho'e sits; the narrator strives to remember certain sky lore contained in the manuscripts, not mountain lore. Because it is the heritage of the earlier abondoned civilization of Zlobna (?), it wouldn't seem like likely that PNAKOT would be an Inuto word here. If memory serves, Olatho'e is associated with Nir in DQ/UK.

There is an interesting Christian/Gnostic element in the story of Polaris. The protagonist in the dream is drawn out of the world, the political world, and the protagonist in the house next to the swamp is likewise drawn out of his world, and the daemon-voices the two protagonists hear on the bridge between these worlds is that neither is real. Daemon can mean teacher in old Greek. Also, the protagonist 26,000 years ago has a dream, a dream within a dream as it were, were the daemons tell him as much. A Dream Within a Dream is a very impressive poem by Poe which could shed some light on the effect at which HPL was aiming.