Ex Oblivione

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"Ex Oblivione" is a prose poem by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, written in late 1920 or early 1921 and first published in The United Amateur in March 1921, under the pseudonym Ward Phillips.

Inspiration

An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia suggests that the theme of "Ex Oblivione"—that nothingness is preferable to life—was derived from Lovecraft's reading the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. Lovecraft expressed similar sentiments in non-fiction work at the time, writing in In Defense of Dagon, "There is nothing better than oblivion, since in oblivion there is no wish unfulfilled."^[1]

Synopsis

It is written in first person and tells of the dreams of a presumably dying man. In his dreams, the man is walking through a valley and encounters a vine-covered wall with a locked bronze gate therein. He longs to know what lies beyond the gate.

Then one night, the man dreams of the dream-city Zakarion, in which he finds a yellowed papyrus written by wise dream-sages who exist only within the dream world. The papyrus tells of the gate, with varying accounts of what lies beyond: some of the dream-sages tell of immense wonders, while other tell of horror and disappointment.

Despite this lack of unanimity, the man still wishes to see for himself, even knowing that whichever of these is true, there will be no return. Thus he reads further into the papyrus and learns of a drug which will unlock the gate.

The next night he swallows the drug and returns to the gate which is now ajar, but upon entering, he discovers that indeed both accounts within the papyrus are in a sense true: beyond is the wonderment of forever being free from the pain of the real world and the happy surprise that nothing lies beyond the gate but the infinite void that is death.

References

↑ Joshi and Schultz, p. 88.

Sources

S. T. Joshi and David Schultz, An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia, Hippocampus Press (New York), 2004.

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Ex Oblivione

v t e Works of H. P. Lovecraft

Cthulhu Mythos Dream Cycle

Novellas	The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath The Case of Charles Dexter Ward At the Mountains of Madness The Shadow Over Innsmouth The Shadow Out of Time

Short stories	"The Tomb" "Dagon" "A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson" "Polaris" "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" "Memory" "Old Bugs" "The Transition of Juan Romero" "The White Ship" "The Street" "The Doom that Came to Sarnath" "The Statement of Randolph Carter" "The Terrible Old Man" "The Tree" "The Cats of Ulthar" "The Temple" "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" "Celephaïs" "From Beyond" "Nyarlathotep" "The Picture in the House" "Ex Oblivione" "Sweet Ermengarde" "The Nameless City" "The Quest of Iranon" "The Moon-Bog" "The Outsider" "The Other Gods" "The Music of Erich Zann" "Herbert West–Reanimator" "Hypnos" "What the Moon Brings" "Azathoth "The Hound" "The Lurking Fear" "The Rats in the Walls" "The Unnamable" "The Festival" "The Shunned House" "The Horror at Red Hook" "He" "In the Vault" "Cool Air" "The Call of Cthulhu" "Pickman's Model" "The Silver Key" "The Strange High House in the Mist" "The Colour Out of Space" "The Descendant" "History of the Necronomicon" "The Very Old Folk" "Ibid" "The Dunwich Horror" "The Whisperer in Darkness" "The Dreams in the Witch House" "The Thing on the Doorstep" "The Evil Clergyman" "The Book" "The Haunter of the Dark"

Collaborations	"The Green Meadow" "Poetry and the Gods" "The Crawling Chaos" "The Horror at Martin's Beach" "Under the Pyramids" "Two Black Bottles" "The Last Test" "The Curse of Yig" "The Electric Executioner" "The Mound" "Medusa's Coil" "The Trap" "The Man of Stone" "The Horror in the Museum" "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" "Winged Death" "Out of the Aeons" "The Horror in the Burying-Ground" "The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast" "The Slaying of the Monster" "The Tree on the Hill" "The Battle that Ended the Century" "Till A’the Seas" "Collapsing Cosmoses" "The Challenge from Beyond" "The Disinterment" "The Diary of Alonzo Typer" "In the Walls of Eryx" "The Night Ocean"

Juvenilia	"The Little Glass Bottle" "The Secret Cave" "The Mystery of the Grave-Yard" "The Mysterious Ship" "The Beast in the Cave" "The Alchemist"

See also "Fungi from Yuggoth" (poem) "Supernatural Horror in Literature" (essay) "The Thing in the Moonlight" (short story)

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