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Beyond the Wall of Sleep (short story)
Encyclopedia
"Beyond the Wall of Sleep" is a short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft
written in 1919
and first published in the amateur publication Pine Cones in October 1919.
. Reporting on the New York state police, the article cited a family named Slater or Slahter as representative of the backwards Catskills population.
The nova mentioned at the end of Lovecraft's story is a real star, known as GK Persei
; the quotation is from Garrett P. Serviss's Astronomy with the Naked Eye (1908).
The title of the story may have been influenced by Ambrose Bierce
's "Beyond the Wall"; Lovecraft was known to be reading Bierce in 1919. Jack London
's 1906 novel Before Adam, which concerns the concept of hereditary memory, contains the passage, "Nor...did any of my human kind ever break through the wall of my sleep."
relates his experience with Joe Slater, an inmate who died at the facility a few weeks after being confined as a criminally insane murderer. He describes Slater as a "typical denizen of the Catskill Mountain
region, who corresponds exactly with the 'white trash
' of the South", for whom "laws and morals are nonexistent" and whose "general mental status
is probably below that of any other native American
people". Although Slater's crime was exceedingly brutal and unprovoked he had an "absurd appearance of harmless stupidity" and the doctors guessed his age at about forty. During the third night of
his confinement, Slater had the first of his "attacks
". He burst from an uneasy sleep
into a frenzy so violent it took four orderlies to strait-jacket him. For nearly fifteen minutes he gave vent to an incredible rant. The words were in the voice and couched in the paltry vocabulary
of Joe Slater but the onlookers could construe from the inadequate language
a vision of:
The ranting stopped as suddenly as it had started. This was the first of what would become nightly "attacks" of a similar nature. The peripheral otherworldly images of Slater's visions were different and more fantastic with each successive night, but always there was the central theme of the blazing entity and its revenge. The doctors were perplexed with the Slater case. Where did a backward man like Slater get such visions, when surely an illiterate rustic like him would have had little if any exposure to fairy tales or fantasy
stories? Not that there were stories similar to Slater's. Why, too, was Slater dying
?
As an undergraduate, the intern had built but never tested a device for two-way telepathic
communication.
The device was designed around his principle that thought was ultimately a form of radiant energy. Heedless of any ethics
, he attached himself with Slater to the device as Slater lay near death. With the device switched
on, he received a message from a being of light whose experiences had been what were transmitted through the medium of Joe Slater. This being explained that, when not shackled to their physical bodies, all men
are light beings. The thought-message went on to explain that, as light beings within the realm of sleep, humans can experience the vistas of many planes and universe
s which remain unknown to waking awareness.
The intern understood that the light being would now become completely incorporeal, and undertake at last a final battle with its nemesis near Algol. Joe Slater died then, and there were no further transmissions. That night an enormously bright star
was discovered in the sky near Algol. Within a week it had dimmed to the luminosity of an ordinary star
and in a few months it had vanished completely.
film, also called Beyond the Wall of Sleep, directed by Barrett J. Leigh and Thom Maurer. The film's title sequence was created by Jym Davis and Kenny Jensen.
Beyond the Wall of Sleep was also adapted as a short film of the same name in 2009 by Nathan Fisher.Beyond the Wall of Sleep
"Beyond the Wall of Sleep" inspired the song "Behind the Wall of Sleep" by pioneering metal
band Black Sabbath
, included on the band's 1970
self-titled debut album
, and covered in 1994 by American heavy metal group Macabre
on its ep Behind the Wall of Sleep
. This song was also covered by Static-X on the Black Sabbath tribute CD, Nativity in Black, Vol. 2: A Tribute to Black Sabbath.
Heavy metal band Sentenced
have a song entitled "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" in their 1993 album North from Here
, the lyrics appear to have been inspired by the story. Heavy Metal band Manticora
also have a song entitled "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" based on the Lovecraft story that appears on the Roots of Eternity album.
The Dark Wave project Sopor Aeternus recorded a song entitled "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" inspired by this story; this song is available on the record "La Chambre d'Echo: Where the Dead Birds Sing" (2004).
Metallica's
"All Nightmare Long
" was also inspired by the short story.
Metal band Opeth
mentions "The wall of sleep" on the song "Pyre" from their 2011 album Heritage
, it is unclear if it´s a reference to the Lovecraft story or the Black Sabbath song, due to the albums strong 70´s influences.
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
written in 1919
1919 in literature
The year 1919 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain return to Somerville College, Oxford, to complete their education following war service.*Two paintings by E. E...
and first published in the amateur publication Pine Cones in October 1919.
Inspiration
Lovecraft said the story was inspired by an April 27, 1919 article in the New York TribuneNew York Tribune
The New York Tribune was an American newspaper, first established by Horace Greeley in 1841, which was long considered one of the leading newspapers in the United States...
. Reporting on the New York state police, the article cited a family named Slater or Slahter as representative of the backwards Catskills population.
The nova mentioned at the end of Lovecraft's story is a real star, known as GK Persei
GK Persei
GK Persei was a bright nova occurring in 1901. It reached a maximum magnitude of 0.2, the brightest nova of modern times until Nova Aquilae 1918...
; the quotation is from Garrett P. Serviss's Astronomy with the Naked Eye (1908).
The title of the story may have been influenced by Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist...
's "Beyond the Wall"; Lovecraft was known to be reading Bierce in 1919. Jack London
Jack London
John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
's 1906 novel Before Adam, which concerns the concept of hereditary memory, contains the passage, "Nor...did any of my human kind ever break through the wall of my sleep."
Plot summary
An intern in a mental hospitalMental Hospital
Mental hospital may refer to:*Psychiatric hospital*hospital in Nepal named Mental Hospital...
relates his experience with Joe Slater, an inmate who died at the facility a few weeks after being confined as a criminally insane murderer. He describes Slater as a "typical denizen of the Catskill Mountain
Catskill Mountains
The Catskill Mountains, an area in New York State northwest of New York City and southwest of Albany, are a mature dissected plateau, an uplifted region that was subsequently eroded into sharp relief. They are an eastward continuation, and the highest representation, of the Allegheny Plateau...
region, who corresponds exactly with the 'white trash
White trash
White trash is an American English pejorative term referring to poor white people in the United States, suggesting lower social class and degraded living standards...
' of the South", for whom "laws and morals are nonexistent" and whose "general mental status
Intelligence
Intelligence has been defined in different ways, including the abilities for abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning, learning, planning, emotional intelligence and problem solving....
is probably below that of any other native American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
people". Although Slater's crime was exceedingly brutal and unprovoked he had an "absurd appearance of harmless stupidity" and the doctors guessed his age at about forty. During the third night of
his confinement, Slater had the first of his "attacks
Fugue state
A fugue state, formally dissociative fugue or psychogenic fugue , is a rare psychiatric disorder characterized by reversible amnesia for personal identity, including the memories, personality and other identifying characteristics of individuality...
". He burst from an uneasy sleep
Sleep
Sleep is a naturally recurring state characterized by reduced or absent consciousness, relatively suspended sensory activity, and inactivity of nearly all voluntary muscles. It is distinguished from quiet wakefulness by a decreased ability to react to stimuli, and is more easily reversible than...
into a frenzy so violent it took four orderlies to strait-jacket him. For nearly fifteen minutes he gave vent to an incredible rant. The words were in the voice and couched in the paltry vocabulary
Vocabulary
A person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...
of Joe Slater but the onlookers could construe from the inadequate language
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
a vision of:
- green edifices of light, oceans of space, strange musicMusicMusic is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, and shadowy mountains and valleys. But most of all did he dwell upon some mysterious blazing entity that shook and laughed and mocked at him. This vast, vague personality seemed to have done him a terrible wrong and to kill it in triumphant revenge was his paramount desire. In order to reach it...he would soar through abysses of emptiness 'burning' every obstacle that stood in his way.
The ranting stopped as suddenly as it had started. This was the first of what would become nightly "attacks" of a similar nature. The peripheral otherworldly images of Slater's visions were different and more fantastic with each successive night, but always there was the central theme of the blazing entity and its revenge. The doctors were perplexed with the Slater case. Where did a backward man like Slater get such visions, when surely an illiterate rustic like him would have had little if any exposure to fairy tales or fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
stories? Not that there were stories similar to Slater's. Why, too, was Slater dying
Death
Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include old age, predation, malnutrition, disease, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury....
?
As an undergraduate, the intern had built but never tested a device for two-way telepathic
Telepathy
Telepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...
communication.
The device was designed around his principle that thought was ultimately a form of radiant energy. Heedless of any ethics
Medical ethics
Medical ethics is a system of moral principles that apply values and judgments to the practice of medicine. As a scholarly discipline, medical ethics encompasses its practical application in clinical settings as well as work on its history, philosophy, theology, and sociology.-History:Historically,...
, he attached himself with Slater to the device as Slater lay near death. With the device switched
on, he received a message from a being of light whose experiences had been what were transmitted through the medium of Joe Slater. This being explained that, when not shackled to their physical bodies, all men
Human
Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...
are light beings. The thought-message went on to explain that, as light beings within the realm of sleep, humans can experience the vistas of many planes and universe
Universe
The Universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space. Definitions and usage vary and similar terms include the cosmos, the world and nature...
s which remain unknown to waking awareness.
The intern understood that the light being would now become completely incorporeal, and undertake at last a final battle with its nemesis near Algol. Joe Slater died then, and there were no further transmissions. That night an enormously bright star
Nova
A nova is a cataclysmic nuclear explosion in a star caused by the accretion of hydrogen on to the surface of a white dwarf star, which ignites and starts nuclear fusion in a runaway manner...
was discovered in the sky near Algol. Within a week it had dimmed to the luminosity of an ordinary star
Star
A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...
and in a few months it had vanished completely.
Other media
The story was adapted into a 20062006 in film
- Highest-grossing films :Please note that following the tradition of the English-language film industry, these are the top-grossing films that were first released in the United States in 2006...
film, also called Beyond the Wall of Sleep, directed by Barrett J. Leigh and Thom Maurer. The film's title sequence was created by Jym Davis and Kenny Jensen.
Beyond the Wall of Sleep was also adapted as a short film of the same name in 2009 by Nathan Fisher.Beyond the Wall of Sleep
"Beyond the Wall of Sleep" inspired the song "Behind the Wall of Sleep" by pioneering metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
band Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath are an English heavy metal band, formed in Aston, Birmingham in 1969 by Ozzy Osbourne , Tony Iommi , Geezer Butler , and Bill Ward . The band has since experienced multiple line-up changes, with Tony Iommi the only constant presence in the band through the years. A total of 22...
, included on the band's 1970
1970 in music
- Events :*January 3**Davy Jones announces he is leaving the Monkees**Former Pink Floyd frontman Syd Barrett releases his first solo album The Madcap Laughs....
self-titled debut album
Black Sabbath (album)
Black Sabbath is the debut studio album by English heavy metal band Black Sabbath. Released on 13 February 1970 in the United Kingdom, and later on 1 June 1970 in the United States, the album reached number eight on the UK Albums Chart and has been recognised as the first main album to be credited...
, and covered in 1994 by American heavy metal group Macabre
Macabre (band)
Macabre is an extreme metal band from Illinois. They were formed in 1985 in Chicago, Illinois, and have never had a line-up change. They blend thrash metal, death metal, and grindcore to form their own unique style dubbed murder metal...
on its ep Behind the Wall of Sleep
Behind the Wall of Sleep
Behind the Wall of Sleep is an EP by Macabre released in 1994 by Nuclear Blast Records. It contains three new tracks and one cover of Black Sabbath's song "Behind the Wall of Sleep" from their 1970 debut album Black Sabbath....
. This song was also covered by Static-X on the Black Sabbath tribute CD, Nativity in Black, Vol. 2: A Tribute to Black Sabbath.
Heavy metal band Sentenced
Sentenced
Sentenced was a Finnish heavy metal band that played melodic death metal in their early years. The band formed in 1989, in the town of Muhos, Finland, and broke up in 2005.-Early years :...
have a song entitled "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" in their 1993 album North from Here
North from Here
North from Here is the second album by the Finnish heavy metal band Sentenced. Lyrics of the album deal with Sentenced's typical melancholy, but some also deal with the mythology and history of Finnish warfare and the national romantic epic of Kalevala...
, the lyrics appear to have been inspired by the story. Heavy Metal band Manticora
Manticora
Manticora is a Heavy metal band from Hvidovre, Denmark formed in 1996 by Lars and Kristian Larsen. Their current label is Locomotive Music. Their lyrical content typically consists of literature, fantasy, and science fiction. Although they are considered to be a progressive power metal band, they...
also have a song entitled "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" based on the Lovecraft story that appears on the Roots of Eternity album.
The Dark Wave project Sopor Aeternus recorded a song entitled "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" inspired by this story; this song is available on the record "La Chambre d'Echo: Where the Dead Birds Sing" (2004).
Metallica's
Metallica
Metallica is an American heavy metal band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1981 when James Hetfield responded to an advertisement that drummer Lars Ulrich had posted in a local newspaper. The current line-up features long-time lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo ...
"All Nightmare Long
All Nightmare Long
"All Nightmare Long" is a song by American heavy metal band Metallica, the song is released as their fifth single from their ninth album Death Magnetic, and their forty-fourth single overall. The single was released on December 15, 2008...
" was also inspired by the short story.
Metal band Opeth
Opeth
Opeth is a Swedish heavy metal band from Stockholm, formed in 1990. Though the group has been through several personnel changes, singer, guitarist, and songwriter Mikael Åkerfeldt has remained Opeth's driving force throughout the years...
mentions "The wall of sleep" on the song "Pyre" from their 2011 album Heritage
Heritage
Heritage refers to something inherited from the past. The word has several different senses, including:* Natural heritage, an inheritance of fauna and flora, geology, landscape and landforms, and other natural resources...
, it is unclear if it´s a reference to the Lovecraft story or the Black Sabbath song, due to the albums strong 70´s influences.