THE DEEP ONES: "The Sealed Casket" by Richard F. Searight

"The Sealed Casket" by Richard F. Searight.

Discussion begins August 16, 2017.

First published in the March 1935 issue of Weird Tales.



ONLINE VERSIONS

https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tales_v25n03_1935-03_AT-sas

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?86912

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

100 Wild Little Weird Tales
The Yith Cycle: Lovecratian Tales of the Great Race and Time Travel

MISCELLANY

http://tinyurl.com/yaqu66wh
http://lovecraft.wikia.com/wiki/Eltdown_Shards
http://tinyurl.com/yd382l97
https://www.yog-sothoth.com/wiki/index.php/The_Eltdown_Shards
http://tinyurl.com/y75pusr5

I'll be reading this out of The Yith Cycle and it has a epigraph from the Eltdown Shards at the beginning. I'll try to type it up tomorrow and put it here.

Robert Price's introductory notes says Lovecraft found the epigraph the most captivating part of the story. Farnsworth Wright axed it for some unknown reason.

>4 elenchus:

Excellent :)

>4 elenchus: Lovecraft found the epigraph the most captivating part of the story.

Foreshadowing!

And here's the epigraph:

. . . And it is recorded that in the Elder Time, Om Oris, mightiest of the wizards, laid crafty for the demon, Avaloth, and pitted dark magic against him; for Avaloth plagued the earth with a strange growth of ice and snow that crept as if alive, ever southward, and swallowed up the forest and the mountains. And the outcome of the contest with the demon is not known; but wizards of that day maintained that Avaloth, who was not easily discernible, could not be destroyed save by a great heat, the means whereof was not then known, although certain of the wizards foresaw that one day it should be. Yet, at this time the ice fields began to shrink and dwindle and finally vanished; and the earth bloomed forth afresh. – Fragment from the Eltdown Shards.

>7 elenchus:

Thanks :)

The epigraph is interesting in being so separate from the story. I can see why Wright could think it wasn't necessary, though I don't agree with his decision to omit it.

I wonder, too, if HPL was taken specifically with the epigraph when taken alone, or rather with the dimension it opens up when paired with the story. The latter certainly is what I find especially intriguing. The two taken together are so much more than the sum of parts.

I presume I was far from alone in quickly guessing that the casket would prove to contain the older man's posthumous vengeance. Nevertheless, I found it a pleasant read.

The epigraph was much more unexpected. I guess we're to conclude the creature in the casket was an ice demon, possibly Avaloth itself, imprisoned there by Om Oris? If so, the chilling possibility presents itself that Martucci was happy to condemn posterity to a new ice age for the sake of revenge on Clark ...

It's interesting to contemplate that such powers as Avaloth could be manipulated for human ends, too. I don't mean Om Oris, but Martucci in this case, contrasting with HPL's approach in which the very idea of using or tapping into a cosmic power usually visits destruction on the person so intending.

Of course, here Martucci succeeds not by manipulating or besting Avaloth, but manipulating another human into his own peril. It's a very clever take, really.

>9 elenchus:

Absolutely agree. Without the epigraph, the story is a conventional exercise in running through the Schmuck Bait/Genre Blindness/Don't Touch That Button, You Idiot! tropes (as per TV Tropes). The epigraph gives it the deep time and secret history that is one of the attractions of the Weird Tale (Lovecraft, with the ancient past influencing the present, Howard writing about a lost period of prehistory, Smith doing the same, and looking to the far future as well).

Is the reader to presume that whatever was in the casket was destroyed in the house fire?

I don't recall exactly why (and the online version is unreadable on my phone), but I got the impression it escaped, possibly to wreck havoc on the wider world.

>13 elenchus:

I was basing my assumption on, firstly, the epigraph setting up Avaloth's achilles heel ("could not be destroyed save by a great heat"), and then "the flames had gutted the old house"..."agonised whistling"..."belching clouds of foul-smelling smoke".

But if Searight had ever wanted to write a sequel, I suppose he hadn't made it impossible to assert that the demon was still alive, and on the loose.

For some reasons, our pointers to specific posts appear to have been mangled. It's common for one person in a thread to get the post number wrong by mistake, but not for so many, so close together. I suspect something went awry when Talk was updated earlier this year.

>13 elenchus:

What's an example? Is it worth reporting to the LT Bugs/Fixes group?

Both >3 AndreasJ: and >4 elenchus: above refer to >4 elenchus:, yet clearly are meant to respond to >2 RandyStafford:. In fact, I'm referring to the very post I'm typing in >4 elenchus: -- now, I've done that before, but it's odd that the prior post does the same thing (when my post wasn't even around at the time).

And then similar issue with >6 AndreasJ:, referring to the next post when from context it's clearly meant to respond to the previous post.

And then again with >12 housefulofpaper:, which refers to the next post, again not extant at time of posting. A pattern.

But not a pattern I've seen in any other thread, so I'm waiting to open a bug about it. Or for that matter, search and see if a bug is already open.

>15 elenchus:

(responding to elenchus' post 15, if anything weird happens) - I noticed that this whole thread was showing as unread for me, but obviously I have read it, and contributed. Possibly connected to the bug?

I have a vague recollection that what’s now post #3 was my 2nd contribution to this thread, so I suspect two posts have somehow gotten deleted.

>17 AndreasJ:

Good thought: it would account for the issues we've identified, and LT staff should be able to confirm or disconfirm that fairly easily. I'll open a bug for it.

Here's the bug report:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/330454

>18 elenchus:

Thanks for opening a case for this. Will track. Good info, all.