Le officios a Geneva: Quando le scena comencia, Petro parla con Olivero Rossi, le contabile

The “Whisperer in the Darkness,” an account by Albert N. Wilmarth, an “instructor of literature at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts, and an enthusiastic amateur student of New England folklore,” is another modernist grotesque exploration of the concepts of scholarly integrity, narrative reliability, and perceptive fallibility. Like Thurston, Wilmarth attempts to investigate claims of mysterious goings- on by examining widely varying sources of information. However, “The Whisperer in the Darkness” is especially noteworthy in the discussion of alienating documentation because it has a few characteristics that are uncommon even among Lovecraft’s stories, including prominent scholarly debates that are supposedly published, accounts of non- literary secondary sources like photographs and phonographs, and intentional forgery of documents by non-human creatures. In this story, Wilmarth responds to reports of strange happenings in the hills of Vermont with the utmost of skepticism, relating

supposed eye witness accounts of strange creatures to various folklore patterns common to rural areas. He records excerpts from published letters in which he and other scholars debate the origins of certain legends of rural New England. However, over a long period of correspondence with a scholar who actually lives in the area in question, Wilmarth begins to consider the possibility that something indeed is amiss, although he still

believes that a scientific explanation or hoax will be found. Much of the story is made up of letters between Wilmarth and Vermont land owner Henry W. Akely, “the last

representative on his home soil of a long, locally distinguished line of jurists, administrators, and gentlemen-agriculturalists” as well as “a notable student of mathematics, astronomy, biology, anthropology, and folklore at the University of Vermont.” Through these letters, or, in some cases, the narrator’s recreations of the letters from memory,57 most of the information about the “Outer Ones” and their actions is revealed.

The subject of documentation is especially problematized in “The Whisperer in the Darkness,” for the physical documentation described by Wilmarth (letters,

photographs, and audio recordings depicting unusual phenomena) is reportedly tampered with, forged, or stolen by the “Outer Ones,” who seek to hide their own existence on this planet (for the sake of convenience, not fear). After several letters back and forth

between Wilmarth and Akely, beginning with a formal intellectual exchange and

escalating in strangeness as events at Akely’s property grow more unnerving, letters from

57

Lovecraft frequently drew attention to the fallibility of memory and representation by highlighting the idea that the narrator is recording events from memory with some difficulty. The focus on the fallibility contrasted with an obvious obsession of scholarly narrators to record data with absolute accuracy raises crucial questions about intention versus ability and intentionally unreliable narrators versus unintentionally unreliable narrators. The prevalence of this strategy prohibits listing all of the examples here.

both Wilmarth and Akely fail to reach their intended recipients. In addition to the apparently intercepted letters, a strange man is said by railroad personnel to have attempted to intercept a package from Wilmarth to Akely. Eventually, after receiving a few ominous letters from an apparently shaken Akely, Wilmarth receives a long

correspondence that seems to reflect a favorable attitude toward the intelligent non- human residents of the Vermont hills. This document gives a detailed account of the nature of the “Outer Ones” (also called the Mi-Go), their origin, their abilities, and their goodwill. It even claims that Akely has formed an alliance with the Mi-Go, who want to take him to explore other regions of the universe. However, Wilmarth’s sense of

confusion only deepens as he (being and English instructor) puts his professional talents to the task of analyzing the letter’s composition: “Word-choice, spelling–all were subtly different. And with my academic sensitiveness to prose style, I could trace profound divergences in his commonest reactions and rhythm-responses” (Bloodcurdling Tales 162). He compares the letter to previous ones based on various criteria, finding that it is stylistically changed, while conveying the “same old passion for infinity–the same old scholarly inquisitiveness” (Bloodcurdling Tales 162). Thus, Wilmarth’s relationship with Akely begins to transform, as his one reliable source of information in this investigation begins to show signs of instability, even transformation. Lovecraft engages the concept of the unreliability of a narrator intertextually as Wilmarth attempts to decipher clues that will help him to decide what to believe, an exercise undertaken by all trained readers of text.

The idea of non-human intelligences contacting and bargaining with members of the human scientific community adds a new dimension to the evolving relationship

between the Mi-Go and the narrator. Their claim that they occasionally select humans of exceptional intelligence, like Akely, to study other parts of the universe with them serves at least two purposes in this story. The first purpose of the letter is that it motivates Wilmarth to go to Akely’s home:

“To shake off the maddening and wearying limitations of time and space and natural law–to be linked with the vast outside–to come close to the nighted and abysmal secrets of the infinite and ultimate–surely such a thing was worth the risk of one’s life, soul, and sanity! And Akely had said there was no longer any peril– he had invited me to visit him instead of warning me away as before.”

(Bloodcurdling Tales 162)

Wilmarth’s suspicions about the letter are later confirmed as he realizes that it is a forgery created to lure him to visit Akely in the hills of Vermont. However, the Mi-Go’s forged letter serves as more than a mere plot device to drive the narrator to travel to the center of the action. The second purpose of the letter is far more significant: the

indication that the Mi-Go understand certain nuances of human psychology. The letter seems to be crafted by the “Outer Ones” with insight into the motivations, and even the intellectual and emotional weaknesses, of humans. The Mi-Go understand how to manipulate human thoughts through human language, while humans know nothing of the Mi-Go or the vast reaches of the universe that they represent. They even appeal to Wilmarth’s intellectual vanity (abundantly evident throughout the story) by emphasizing that only humans of remarkable brilliance are invited to join them. By simultaneously stimulating Wilmarth’s vanity and curiosity, his two greatest motivations, the Mi-Go demonstrate that, by reading the correspondence between the two men, they have come to gain total insight into their (comparatively simple) inner mental workings. This

that he lacks awareness and control of his own thoughts and actions. Such easy exploitation of personality flaws reflects a lack of self-awareness.

Wilmarth never faces a direct threat from the Mi-Go, but his realization that he has been communicating with an imposter of superior intellect leads him to admit that his “scientific zeal had vanished amidst fear and loathing, and I felt nothing now but a wish to escape from this net of morbidity and unnatural revelation. I knew enough now. It must indeed be true that strange cosmic linkages do exist– but such things are surely not meant for human beings to meddle with” (Bloodcurdling Tales 177). This story is not the only Lovecraft tale to incorporate complications of secondary documentation as the primary catalyst for investigation, but “The Whisperer of the Darkness” is unique in its focus on ongoing correspondence. Unlike other stories in which the alienating

documents are the writings of the dead, this tale brings a kind of immediacy to the discussion of narrator reliability by providing the main character with access to a living and cooperative correspondent, Akely, who is displaced and impersonated by the Mi-Go. Wilmarth’s attitude toward the reliability of Akely’s information goes through different phases of skepticism, consideration, belief, and utter confusion, for the long process of the establishment of credibility ends with Wilmarth’s realization that he has

communicated for part of the time with an inhuman imposter. He cannot trust any document from any source in an alienated world where folklore is based in reality and where creatures from Yuggoth write letters as men.