The Alchemist

The Lovecraft Project:

Howard Phillips Lovecraft is the father of cosmic horror – the genre constructed around the notion that we humans are just a tiny, insignificant part of the universe, which holds much bigger, ancient, more powerful beings. We are nothing compared to what lies out there, beyond our reach and understanding.

The plan is to write a few paragraphs – a small review – on each of H.P. Lovecraft’s short stories and novellas, following a chronological order – as they are structured in the Barnes & Noble edition of H.P. Lovecraft The Complete Fiction. The point is to analyze how Lovecraft crafted his tales of horror, the narrative devices he used, the patterns in his writing, the common themes present in his work, and – of course – the blatant racism that permeates some of his stories.

There will be spoilers, of course.

—> You can read or listen to The Alchemist for free here.

The Alchemist

As with The Beast in the Cave, H.P. Lovecraft’s second story, The Alchemist, is also narrated in first-person by a man who feels trapped and haplessly lost.  It begins with a so-called “tale of fallen grandeur” as the narrator describes how his family’s castle, once grand and formidable, now lies in ruins with “toppling towers,” “sagging floors,” “faded tapestries,” and “worm-eaten wainscots.”

Just in the first two paragraphs, Lovecraft succeeds in crafting this remarkable gothic setting, contrasting its past glories with its present decayed state.  And by the third paragraph, the theme of the short story is already plainly laid out: the narrator – who is ninety years old – talks about a family curse, and how death looms prematurely over each one of his ancestors, striking them at the age of thirty-two. Since the narrator has already revealed his age, a mystery surrounding his survival is formed and becomes the element that drives the narrative forward.

It’s interesting to note how the narrator’s aristocratic status is also considered a curse by the character: he blames it for his many ills, claiming that it caused the family’s ruin – by forbidding them “the pursuit of commercial life” – and is the reason for his isolation. Since he couldn’t associate with “low plebeians”, he ended up growing up melancholic and alone inside his castle, and – having access to a gothic library filled with ancient tomes about the occult –  his mind quickly turned into dark subject matters.

The reason for the family curse is thoroughly detailed – involving an unjust murder and the consequent need for revenge – while alchemy is painted in dark colors, being associated with dealings with demons and the Devil.

The story ends up following a similar structure to the previous one: there’s a time frame for the protagonist to save himself and as it closes in he discovers a being so horrible that it shocks him to the core, paralyzing him on the spot. Here, of course, the “monster” is the alchemist, who the protagonist finds living in a hidden and secluded part of his family’s castle: a man who has “the proportions of a skeleton,” eyes that were “twin caves of abysmal blackness,” and a rumbling voice that chills the narrator with its “dull hollowness and latent malevolence.”

The discovery that there’s an actual person behind everything will hardly shock the reader as the narrator himself thought about the possibility of the curse being carried out by a human being before. Its value actually comes from leading us to behold the strength of the Alchemist’s will, who survived all these centuries – looking more like a corpse than a human being, which is fitting since his purpose in life became to bring death to others – just to kill every single member of the narrator’s family at the appointed time. It reveals a desire for revenge so strong that it makes the character manage to overcome death itself at the same time that it transforms him into a being so distorted and macabre that, paradoxically, makes him look like he’s actually dead: the Alchemist didn’t really overcome death, but became one with it. As is typical with gothic narratives, the monster – the Alchemist – symbolizes the phantasmagorical return of the past, haunting the protagonist for the sins of his ancestors.

Sadly, Lovecraft continues to italicize the most impactful sentences in the narrative – which needed no reinforcement – and to end the story by putting its twist in ALL CAPS, which makes anything sound silly. At least, there’s just one exclamation point this time around.

With The Alchemist, Lovecraft crafts a by-the-books gothic story that eventually ends up in an anticlimax, with the author making the same mistake of The Beast in the Cave, finishing the story at the precise moment of the final twist, leaving it no room to breathe.

December 11, 2024.