MMCM - The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

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MMCM - The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

H.P. Lovecraft; The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
(written 1926 to 1927; published 1943; Arkham House, 1943, in Beyond the Wall of Sleep, hardcover collection; posthumous publication)

Randolph Carter dreams three times of a marvellous sunset city, each time getting close enough to feel its reality before being snatched away. The loss becomes an obsession. Carter decides the city is being withheld by the gods, and he resolves to travel through the Dreamlands to reach the gods’ home in unknown Kadath and demand the city’s return.

His journey moves through a large map of dream geography. He visits towns and ports, meets cats and other dream folk, and follows hints that pull him toward higher and colder regions. Along the way he learns that the Dreamlands have their own politics. Priests warn him against arrogance, and other beings watch his persistence with interest.

Carter bargains and allies himself with dangerous companions. He travels into underworld passages and into the company of ghouls, treating them not as simple monsters but as inhabitants with their own loyalties. He endures threats from the zoogs and from the cold spaces of the plateau. The tale repeatedly shows that determination is not enough; one must also know what one is trading away.

The quest leads Carter toward the dreaded land of Leng, where the dream world feels thin and hostile. He is eventually seized by nightgaunts and carried to the presence of greater powers. The masked messenger, Nyarlathotep, appears as a guide and captor, offering explanations wrapped in mockery. Carter is brought into a cosmic court where the human sense of importance is treated as a curiosity.

The central revelation reframes the entire chase. The sunset city Carter longs for is tied to his own deep memory and to the kind of beauty that comes from home, youth, and longing, not from divine theft. The gods are not hoarding the city out of spite. Carter’s demand has been misdirected, and his own obsession has been the engine pushing him into danger.

In the end, Carter is sent back, not as a reward, but as a correction. He returns to waking life with knowledge that cannot be unlearned. The story’s power comes from the tension between wonder and mechanism: the Dreamlands are gorgeous and immense, yet they also contain traps, guides, and forces that treat human desire as a lever. Carter’s refusal to surrender wonder remains admirable, but it nearly carries him into the blind center of the universe. He survives by holding onto what is truly his, the longing itself, and the choice not to trade it away.
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A sunset city returns three times, then vanishes.
The loss becomes a wound that will not close.
I wake with gold on my tongue,
and nothing in my hands.

Randolph Carter asks the priests for the path to Kadath.
Warnings pile up.
He walks anyway.
Rats in the brush, cats in the streets,
old names spoken with care.
The air changes when he listens,
as if the world admits he is serious.

I will not trade wonder for safety.
I will not kneel to the locked door.
If the gods took my city,
I will take it back once more.

Ghouls under graves.
Black ships and cold plateaus.
Leng breathes out foul wind.
Nightgaunts lift him into thin air,
and the world turns small beneath his boots.
He bargains with hunger.
He bargains with fear.

I will not trade wonder for safety.
I will not kneel to the locked door.
If the gods took my city,
I will take it back once more.

Silver key, in the pocket of memory.
White spar, washed up after the fall.
Pole star, watching without mercy.

A voice in the dark offers help.
It smiles without warmth.
It points toward the center,
and asks for nothing out loud.

On the high empty stone, a procession arrives.
A tall mask speaks with a smiling cruelty,
Nyarlathotep offers directions and poison comfort.
The path bends toward the center of all noise,
toward Azathoth and its blind court.
The pipes begin before the light.
The pull begins before the step.

Terror too large for prayer.

I will not trade wonder for safety.
I will not kneel to the locked door.
This city was my childhood made into gold.
I wake, I shut the trap, I keep my core.
If the mask offers a crown,
I leave it in the dust.