The City of Many-Columned Iram and Abdullah Son of Abi Kalabah (Trans. Richard F. Burton)
"Then again—how many young Arabs have the Arabian Nights bred! I ought to know, since at the age of 5 I was one of them. I had not then encountered Graeco-Roman myth, but found in Lang's Arabian Nights a gateway to glittering vistas of wonder and freedom. It was then that I invented for myself the name of Abdul Alhazred, and made my mother take me to the Oriental curio shops and fit me up an Arabian corner in my room." —H. P. Lovecraft, letter to Robert E. Howard, Jan 16, 1932 [FN#1]
The legendary Irem (or Iram), City of Pillars, caught Lovecraft's imagination enough to be mentioned several times in his stories. However, oddly enough, it is not to be found in the Andrew Lang edition of the Arabian Nights that Lovecraft read as a child. It does occur in Richard F. Burton's multi-volume translation, but I don't know if Lovecraft ever had access to that version. There were no editions of the Arabian Nights in Lovecraft's personal library when he died.[FN#2]
[FN#1] H. P. Lovecraft (ed. August Derleth and James Turner), Selected Letters 1932-1934; Sauk City, WI: Arkham House Publishers, Inc., 1976; page 8.
[FN#2] S. T. Joshi, Lovecraft's Library: A Catalogue (second edition, revised and enlarged). New York: Hippocampus Press, 2002.
The book image is adapted from Wikimedia Commons: "Andrew lang, the arabian nights entertainments, longman green & co., londra 1898 (gabinetto vieusseux).jpg". The year 1898 is too late to be the version that HPL read as a small child, but it is at least from that general era. |
