Editing The Call of Cthulhu (section)

==Inspiration==
The first seed of the story's first chapter ''The Horror in Clay'' came from one of Lovecraft's own dreams he had in 1919,<ref>{{cite magazine | title=H. P. Lovecraft's Commonplace Book |  url=https://www.wired.com/2011/07/h-p-lovecrafts-commonplace-book/ | date=July 4, 2011 | author=Bruce Sterling | magazine=[[Wired (magazine)|wired.com]] | access-date=April 23, 2020}}</ref> which he described briefly in two different letters sent to his friend Rheinhart Kleiner on May 21 and December 14, 1920. In the dream, Lovecraft is visiting an antiquity museum in Providence, attempting to convince the aged curator there to buy an odd [[Relief#Low relief or bas-relief|bas-relief]] Lovecraft himself had sculpted. The curator initially scoffs at him for trying to sell something that was recently made to a museum of antique objects. Lovecraft then remembers himself answering the curator:

{{quote|Why do you say that this thing is new? The dreams of men are older than brooding Egypt or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon, and this was fashioned in my dreams.}}

This can be compared to what the character of Henry Anthony Wilcox tells the main character's uncle while showing him his sculpted bas-relief for help in reading hieroglyphs on it which came through Wilcox's own fantastical dreams:

{{quote|It is new, indeed, for I made it last night in a dream of strange cities; and dreams are older than brooding [[Tyre, Lebanon|Tyre]] or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon.}}

Lovecraft then used this for a brief synopsis of a new story outlined in his own ''[[Commonplace book#Published examples|Commonplace Book]]'' at first in August 1925, which developed organically out of the idea of what the bas-relief in the dream actually might have depicted. In a footnote for his writing down of his own dream, Lovecraft then finished with the suggestion "Add good development & describe nature of bas-relief" to himself for future reference.<ref>{{cite book | title=The H. P. Lovecraft Dream Book | author=H. P. Lovecraft | editor=S. T. Joshi | editor-link=S. T. Joshi | editor2=Will Murray | editor2-link=Will Murray | editor3=David E. Schultz | date=July 1994 | pages=14–16 | publisher=[[Necronomicon Press]] | isbn=0940884658}}</ref>

[[Cthulhu Mythos]] scholar [[Robert M. Price]] claims the irregular [[sonnet]] "[[The Kraken (poem)|The Kraken]]",<ref>[http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/kraken.html The Kraken], The Victorian Web</ref> published in 1830 by [[Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson|Alfred Tennyson]], was a major inspiration, since both reference a huge aquatic creature sleeping for an eternity at the bottom of the ocean and destined to emerge from its slumber in an apocalyptic age.<ref>Robert M. Price, "The Other Name of Azathoth", introduction to ''The Cthulhu Cycle''. Price credits Philip A. Shreffler with connecting the poem and the story.</ref>

[[S. T. Joshi]] and David E. Schultz cited other literary inspirations: [[Guy de Maupassant]]'s "[[The Horla]]" (1887), which Lovecraft described in ''[[Supernatural Horror in Literature]]'' as concerning "an invisible being who...sways the minds of others, and seems to be the vanguard of a horde of extraterrestrial organisms arrived on Earth to subjugate and overwhelm mankind"; and [[Arthur Machen]]'s "[[The Novel of the Black Seal]]" (1895), which uses the same method of piecing together of disassociated knowledge (including a random newspaper clipping) to reveal the survival of a horrific ancient being.<ref>S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, "Call of Cthulhu, The", ''An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia'', pp. 28–29.</ref>

It is also assumed he got inspiration from [[William Scott-Elliot]]'s ''The Story of Atlantis'' (1896) and ''The Lost Lemuria'' (1904), which Lovecraft read in 1926 shortly before he started to work on the story.<ref>[http://www.forteantimes.com/features/profiles/153/hp_lovecraft.html H.P. Lovecraft] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130112062333/http://www.forteantimes.com/features/profiles/153/hp_lovecraft.html |date=January 12, 2013 }}, ''Fortean Times'' magazine</ref>

Price also notes that Lovecraft admired the work of [[Lord Dunsany]], who wrote ''[[The Gods of Pegana]]'' (1905), which depicts a god constantly lulled to sleep to avoid the consequences of its reawakening. Another Dunsany work cited by Price is ''A Shop in Go-by Street'' (1919), which stated "the heaven of the gods who sleep", and "unhappy are they that hear some old god speak while he sleeps being still deep in slumber".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.dunsany.net/18th_Works.htm |title=Lord Dunsany (1878–1957) |work=Works; Short bibliography |publisher=Dunsany |date=December 2003 |access-date=2012-01-26 |archive-date=November 30, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181130122149/http://www.dunsany.net/18th_Works.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>Price, "The Other Name of Azathoth". This passage is also believed to have inspired Lovecraft's entity [[Azathoth]], hence the title of Price's essay.</ref>

The "slight earthquake" mentioned in the story is likely the [[1925 Charlevoix–Kamouraska earthquake]].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Lackey |first1=Chris |first2=Chad |last2=Fifer |first3=Andrew |last3=Leman |author3-link=Andrew Leman |date=May 12, 2010 |title=Episode 42 – The Call of Cthulhu – Part 1 |url=http://hppodcraft.com/2010/05/12/episode-42-the-call-of-cthulhu-part-1/ |work=The H. P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast |publisher=hppodcraft.com |access-date=17 August 2012 |archive-date=August 3, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210803051520/https://hppodcraft.com/2010/05/12/episode-42-the-call-of-cthulhu-part-1/ |url-status=dead }}</ref>

S.T. Joshi has also cited [[A. Merritt]]'s novella ''The Moon Pool'' (1918) which Lovecraft 'frequently rhapsodied about'. Joshi says that 'Merritt's mention of a "moon-door" that, when tilted, leads the characters into a lower region of wonder and horror seems similar to the huge door whose inadvertent opening by the sailors causes Cthulhu to emerge from R'lyeh'.<ref>Joshi, S.T. (2010) I am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft. New York: Hippocampus Press. 2 Vols. Vol II pg. 639</ref>

Edward Guimont has argued that [[H. G. Wells]]' ''[[The War of the Worlds]]'' was an influence on "The Call of Cthulhu", citing the thematic similarities of ancient, powerful, but indifferent aliens associated with deities; physical similarities between Cthulhu and the [[Martian (The War of the Worlds)|Martians]]; and the plot detail of a ship ramming an alien in a temporarily successful but ultimately futile gesture.<ref name="Guimont">{{Citation|last = Guimont|first = Edward|title = Lovecraftian Proceedings No. 3: Papers from Necronomicon Providence 2017|place = New York|publisher = [[Hippocampus Press]]|date = August 2019|chapter=At the Mountains of Mars: Viewing the Red Planet through a Lovecraftian Lens | pages = 61–63}}</ref>