D´où viennent les reptiliens? (3) : Le visage dans l´abîme

D´où viennent les reptiliens? (3) : Le visage dans l´abîme

Soumis par Antonio Dominguez Leiva le 21/03/2022

 

À la croisée d´E. R. Burroughs et de Lovecraft, le célèbre The Face in the Abyss d´Abraham Merritt, paru initialement sous forme de nouvelle dans l´Argosy All-Story Weekly (Vol 154, 8 Sept. 1923) présente deux variations majeures du thème reptilien. La première est une réécriture originale de la figure mythologique de la femme-serpent, devenue la mystérieuse « Snake Mother », au cœur du monde perdu de Yu-Atlanchi (référence atlante un peu trop évidente), continent souterrain sous la cordillère Carabaya. Irrésistiblement happé par le regard hypnotique de cette sorte de déesse, le protagoniste (l´aventurier archétypal Nicholas Graydon) la découvre dans une sorte de rêve qui relève aussi du voyage astral :

« Before him were the eyes that in this dream—if dream it were—had drawn him to this place. And as the consciousness which was he and yet had, he knew, neither visible shape nor shadow, beheld it recoiled, filled with terror of the unknown; struggled to make its way back to the body from which it had been lured; fluttered like a serpent trapped bird; at last, like the bird, gave itself up to the serpent fascination. For Graydon looked upon—the Snake Mother!” (1923: 192).

La description, héritière des codes de la littérature décadente que Merritt comme ses nombreux disciples (dont Lovecraft) contribueront à essaimer dans le circuit des paralittératures populaires, mélange un certain érotisme avec une inquiétante étrangeté:  

Her face was ageless, neither young nor old; it came to him that it was free from time forever, free from the etching acid of the years. She might have been born yesterday or a million years agone. Her eyes, set wide apart, were round and luminous; they were living jewels filled with purple fires. (…) The mouth was small, too, and heart shaped and the lips a scarlet flame. Down her narrow childlike shoulders flowed hair that gleamed like spun silver. (…) She had high little breasts, uptilted. And face and neck, shoulders and breasts were the hue of pearls suffused faintly with rose; and like rosy pearls they glistened. Below her breasts began her—coils! Mistily Graydon saw them, half buried in a nest of silken cushions—thick coils and many, circle upon circle of them, covered with great heart shaped scales; glimmering and palely gleaming; each scale as exquisitely wrought as though by elfin jeweler; each opaline, nacreous; mother-of-pearl” (id: ibid).

On songe inévitablement aux femmes fatales associées, telles des Èves perverses, aux serpents sur les toiles symbolistes et tout particulièrement à la célèbre composition de Franz Stuck, Die Sünde (Le péché, 1893) ou sa variante encore plus menaçante Die Sinnlichkeit (La sensualité, 1889) dont elle est le prolongement, voire dans la gravure troublante qui en fut tirée. Bien qu´il ne s´agisse pas à proprement parler de créatures hybrides, la fusion entre la femme et le dangereux animal (on ne peut plus phallique) y est totale[1]. De fait, le culte symboliste et décadent de la lamie semble déteindre sur toutes ces représentations :

« In the evil, bestial implications of her beauty, woman was not only tempted by the snake but was the snake herself. Among the terms to describe a woman´s appearance none were more overused during the late XIXth century than "serpentine", "sinuous" and "snake-like", écrit .. "Thus, Eve and the serpent became coextensive. As Eva Nagel Wolf explained in The International Studio in 1919, woman was "Lamia, the serpent goddess, with all the sinuous grace of the serpent and the tantalizing haunting memory of a beautiful woman"” (Bram Dijkstra, 1986: 305-6).

Toutefois, chez Merritt, cette iconographie fusionne avec la tradition initiatique de la Grande Déesse aux serpents. “The same central symbolism of fertility and regeneration governed by the moon, and bestowed by the moon itself or by forms the same in substance (magna mater, terra mater) explains the presence of snakes in the imagery and rites of the Great Goddesses of universal fertility”, écrit Mircea Eliade (1958 :169). C´est ce qui explique certains attributs de cette « Mère Serpent » (sagesse, immortalité) qui conjurent le désir et l´angoisse que provoquent les lamies :

And on that face which was neither woman’s nor serpent’s but subtly both—and more, far more than either—on that ageless face sat side by side and hand in hand a spirit of wisdom that was awesome and a spirit weary beyond thought!  Graydon forgot his terror. He paid homage to her beauty; for beautiful she was though terrible—this serpent woman with' hair of spun silver, her face and breasts of rosy pearls, her jeweled and shimmering coils, her eyes of purple fire and her lips of living flame. A lesser homage he paid her wisdom. And he pitied her for her burden of weariness. Fear of her he had none. Instantly he knew that she had read all his thought; knew, too, that he had pleased her” (1923: 193).

On saura par la suite qu´elle est la dernière d´une race reptilienne qui instruisit le peuple de ce monde perdu, lequel s´y est réfugié après un grand cataclysme qui s´abattit sur leur patrie d´origine :

« What are your people, Suarra?” he asked. “The ancient people,” she told him. “The most ancient. Ages upon ages ago they came down from the north where they had dwelt for other ages still. They were driven away by the great cold. One day the earth rocked and swung. It was then the great cold came down and the darkness and icy tempests and even the warm seas began to freeze. Their cities, so the legends run, are hidden now under mountains of ice. They journeyed south in their ships, bearing with them the Serpent people who had taught them most of their wisdom—and the Snake Mother is the last daughter of that people. They came to rest here. At that time the sea was close and the mountains had not yet been born. They found here hordes of the Xinli [les dinosaures rencontrés par Graydon dans son périple]. They were larger, far larger than now. My people subdued them and tamed and bred them to their uses” (1923: 217).

Le lecteur averti reconnaît là une variation singulière du mythe théosophique du berceau de l´humanité, laquelle aurait évolué progressivement à travers une série de « races racine » (les Root Races).  La théosophie situe ce mythe dans le continent disparu de la Lémurie, dans le sillage des théories du biologiste germanique Ernst Haeckel[2]. S´y associe le mythe platonicien de l´Atlantide qui n´avait cessé d´enflammer les imaginations[3]. Ces civilisations auraient précédé par des milliers d´années les débuts de l´Histoire humaine officiellement reconnus : « Our modern Geologists are now being driven into admitting the demonstrable existence of submerged continents. But to confess the existence of the continents is quite a different thing from admitting that there were men on them during the early geological periods—ay, men and civilized nations, not Paleolithic savages only; who, under the guidance of their divine Rulers, built large cities, cultivated Arts and Sciences, and knew Astronomy, Architecture, and Mathematics to perfection ”, écrivait la fondatrice du movement, Héléna Blavatsky dans la Bible de ce dernier, The Secret Doctrine (1893, II: 330-1).

Une série de races se seraient succédées dans les temps les plus reculés avant de donner naissance à l´humanité, plusieurs d´entre elles ayant cohabité avec les dinosaures et essaimant des vastes civilisations aujourd´hui disparues. “The submerged continents and landbridges of paleogeography thus provide the setting for Theosophy’s lost civilizations of humanity, enabling it to write longue durée histories of mankind that extended far back into Earth’s deep time which had been emptied of human achievement by the disenchanted material sciences”, écrit Sumathi Ramaswamy (2004: 61).

Le texte de Merritt renverra directement à ce paradigme dans sa réécriture de 1931 qui transforme symptomatiquement le sens de la migration, la faisant procéder de l´Antarctique dans le sillage des mythes sur le continent austral inaugurés par Gabriel de Foigny et ravivés par les polémiques scientifiques sur la formation des pôles:

« Graydon looked at her, struggling to hide his incredulity. (…) A people so old that their ancient cities were covered by the Antarctic ice! The latter—well, that was possible. Certainly, the South Polar continent had once basked beneath a warm sun. Its fossils of palms and other vegetation that could only have lived at tropical temperatures were proof of that. And quite as certainly what are now the poles at one time were not. Whether the change had come about from a sudden tipping of the earth's axis, or a gradual readjustment, science was not agreed. But whatever it was that had happened, it must have taken place at least a million years ago. If Suarra's story were true, if she were not merely reciting myth, it placed the origin of man back into an inconceivable antiquity. And yet... it might be... there were many mysteries... legends of lost lands and lost civilizations that must have some basis in fact... the Mother Land of Mu, Atlantis, the unknown race that ruled Asia from the Gobi when that dread desert was a green Paradise... yes, it might be” (1931: 70-1).

Toutefois, Abraham Merritt apporte une modification majeure au schéma théosophique. Il transforme la vision des « races racine » en un catalogue tératologique hérité des hybridations fantasmées par Restif de la Bretonne. Blavatsky, dans le deuxième volume de La Doctrine Secrète, intitulé « Anthropogenèse », racontait une histoire alternative de l´Humanité marquée par une succession de « races » qui, sur le modèle hénochien des Néphilim, allaient des êtres purement spirituels à la « chute » dans la matière :

In Theosophy’s place-making, Lemuria was peopled by the Third Root Race, itself a successor to two others, an unnamed First Root-Race which had flourished on a continent called “The Imperishable Sacred Land,” and the Second Root-Race of Hyperborea, a “bona fide” continent of the North Pole. In contrast to the First Root-Race and to the Hyperboreans, the Lemurians were not form-less, speech-less, sight-less, or sex-less. Indeed, in the course of his evolution through seven stages (or “sub-races”), the Lemurian progressively developed a material body, began to walk erect, started to use his vision (with the help of a Third Eye), learned to speak (albeit in monosyllables), and, most importantly, took to sexual reproduction after millions of years of asexual procreation. This was a defining moment—about halfway through the Lemurian cycle, 18 million years ago precisely, when the fourth of the Lemurian sub-races evolved—for this is when Man attains humanity, by receiving “the gift of the mind.” (Ramaswamy, :59).

Ce schéma transposait de facto les préjugés du racisme dit scientifique de l´ère impérialiste dans un Grand Récit qui se voulait une réecriture du mythe de la Faute originelle qui réconcilierait les visions de diverses traditions spirituelles, tant occidentales (notamment gnostique) qu´orientales. Mais l´on voit comment l´idée de différentes étapes de l´anthropogenèse ouvrait la voie à un certain fantastique. Merritt transforme ainsi ce schéma en y intégrant la tradition millénaire des races fabuleuses et des bestiaires : les agents de l´hominisation ne sont plus les géants lémuriens ou atlantes mais un peuple d´hommes-serpents.

Contrairement à une rumeur que l´on retrouve souvent sur le Web, Blavatsky n´a jamais parlé d´une race d´ « hommes-dragons ». La source de l´erreur provient d´une citation tronquée de l´article Wikipedia consacré aux reptiliens où l´on lit « The first appearance of "serpent men" in literature was in Howard's story "The Shadow Kingdom", published in Weird Tales in August 1929. This story drew on theosophical ideas of the "lost worlds" of Atlantis and Lemuria, particularly Helena Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine written in 1888, with its reference to "'dragon-men' who once had a mighty civilization on a Lemurian continent”. La référence renvoie à un article de Garry W. Trompf et Lauren Bernauer; or il s´agit d´une fausse citation que ces auteurs attribuent à un certain « Ramasamy » qui n´apparaît même pas dans leur bibliographie (il s´agit sans doute de Sumathi Ramaswamy, autrice de l´ouvrage que nous avons déjà cité The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories, mais celui-ci date de 2004 et non de 2006 et ne fait aucune référence aux « hommes-dragons »). Par ailleurs, les auteurs constatent l´inexistence chez Blavatsky de cette référence :  

« There is also the inclusion of reptilian humanoids, or ‘serpent men’, in Howard’s stories. This has been linked to Blavatsky, as The Secret Doctrine (1888: Vol. 2, 399–400) gives notice of “ ‘[d]ragon-men’ who once had a mighty civilisation on a Lemurian continent, till their rampant use of black magic brought about the end of their civilisation, and their continent sank” (Ramasamy 2006: 5). this again is a modification, as Blavatsky does not refer to the Lemurians as reptilian, and in mainstream theosophy it is the atlanteans whose downfall was caused by sorcery (Scott-Elliot 1968: 28). Lemuria, moreover, also perished due to volcanic activity rather than submergence. Still, this shows how the ideas of theosophy became ensconced in creative literary images of Lemuria and atlantis, there adapted for narration more arrestingly than in the original speculations[4]

En fait ce que l´on trouve abondamment dans la Doctrine Secrète ce sont des références aux anciens cultes du serpent et du dragon, confusément amalgamées dans un pot-pourri souvent indigeste :

 “The Ophites adopted their rites from Hermes Trismegistus, and (…) in the Gods of Stonehenge we recognize the divinities of Delphi and Babylon, and in those of the latter the Devas of the Vedic nations. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Krishna and Kâliya, Osiris and Typhon, are all one under many names—the latest of which are Michael and the Red Dragon, and St. George and his Dragon. (…) The “Dragons” [were] held throughout all antiquity as the symbols of Immortality and Wisdom, of secret Knowledge and of Eternity; and the Hierophants of Egypt, of Babylon, and India [styled] themselves generally the “Sons of the Dragon” and “Serpents”; thus corroborating the teachings of the Secret Doctrine” (II: 396-7).

Il s´agit là de la version dégradée des théories comparatistes et universalisantes alors dominantes chez les mythologues et les historiens des religions : toutes les formes religieuses renverraient malgré leur apparente diversité à un même schéma (l´on pense notamment à la « mythologie solaire » avancée par Max Müller), qui devient ici une même tradition, la « Doctrine secrète » que la Théosophie est censée synthétiser et parachever. C´est cette affinité entre les théories académiques hégémoniques et la « méthode » blavatskyenne qui les recycle de manière autodidacte et pour le moins désinvolte (le « démon de l´analogie » s´affranchissant chez elle de toute considération sur les contextes culturels spécifiques et abolissant toutes les frontières géographiques ou chronologiques[5]) qui a pu assurer l´énorme acceptation de la doctrine théosophique chez les lettrés. Et, incidemment, son influence colossale sur les littératures de l´imaginaire.

De fait c´est peut-être l´insistence blavatskyenne sur les cultes ophidiens et draconiens qui a pu provoquer la transformation chez Merritt des « adorateurs du serpent » en véritables hommes-serpents (ce qui, ironiquement, viendrait à confirmer une possible généalogie théosophique des reptiliens). Or, dans une deuxième partie plus tardive, intitulée justement « The Snake Mother » (Argosy, Oct. 25-Dec. 6, 1930), Merritt va introduire une autre variante du type reptilien, inaugurant véritablement la figure de l´homme-lézard.

Voici donc enfin exhumé le prototype de tous les hommes-lézard à venir, placés résolument du côté de l´abjection de par la dissolution des frontières entre l´animal et l´humain mais aussi entre les espèces (ils héritent de la menace dévorante du crocodile) et enfin, de manière plus troublante (pour le héros), par l´évocation de leur génitalité :

« The things stood a little over four feet high. Their leathery skins were a dirty yellow. They balanced themselves upon squat, stocky legs whose feet were like paws, flat and taloned. Their arms were short and muscular. Their hands were pads, duplicates almost of their feet, but with longer claws. It was their faces that chilled Graydon’s blood. There was no mistaking the human element in them. They were man and lizard inextricably, inexplicably, mingled (…). Beyond their narrow, pointed foreheads their heads were covered with scarlet scales which stood upright like multiple cockscombs. Their eyes were red, round and unwinking. Their noses were flat, but under them their jaws extended in a broad six-inch snout armed with yellow fangs, strong and cruel as a crocodile’s. They had no chins, and only rudiments of ears. What sickened him most was that around their loins were filthy strips of cloth” (106).

D´emblée ces creatures se présentent comme un antagoniste collectif du héros, qui les décime à coups de fusil selon le principe du roman d´aventures coloniales où les populations dites « sauvages » sont allègrement exterminés[6]. Selon le principe de monstrification croissante du genre des mondes perdus, l´antagonisme est transféré sur des créatures de plus en plus inhumaines, les réliquats d´humanité faisant souvent cause commune, malgré leurs traits littéralement primitifs, avec les héros civilisateurs. À la tératologie physique s´ajoute ici une monstruosité ontologique qui joue, comme le texte de Lovecraft[7], sur la symbolique de l´immortalité associée aux reptiles : ils ne peuvent être éliminés que si leurs cervelles sont fracassées (trait dont hériteront plus tard, ironiquement, les zombies)[8].

Capturé, Graydon sera emmené dans le monde souterrain de ces créatures chtoniennes (ce qui restera un trait constant jusqu´aux spéculations paranoïaques de David Icke)[9]. Dans un sens, Merritt semble ici prolonger la nouvelle de Lovecraft, mais le volontarisme héroïque de ses fictions s´oppose au pessimisme cosmique du Maître de Providence : le héros ne disparaîtra pas englouti mais saura rejaillir de cette épreuve initiatique aux allures de catabase infernale[10].  Les reptiliens l´emnènent face à l´autel où trône leur maître, véritable incarnation de l´Ombre junguienne (« the Shadow of Nimir ») et transfiguration du Diable traditionnel en « Seigneur du Mal » qui a sans doute influencé Tolkien pour la création de Sauron[11]. Comme dans les contes populaires dont la Fantasy ne cessera de s´inspirer, le héros réussit à déjouer l´Ombre, à laquelle le relie une complicité particulière (signe de la dynamique de l´individuation selon les lectures junguiennes des contes[12]).

Comme chez Lovecraft, l´on retrouve aussi le motif des fresques qui détaillent « l´histoire de tout un monde perdu », contenant « l´archive picturale d'une époque perdue de l'histoire de la Terre » (1931 : 197). Partiellement oblitérées, ces images, comme la « chambre peinte » abandonnée qui les contient (“What had this chamber been? Why abandoned? »), gardent tout leur mystère. Elles évoquent le passé du peuple-serpent, à la fois du point de vue de leur phylogenèse[13] et de leur Histoire, des mystérieux combats avec des créatures ailées nous rappellent les Mahars burroughiens[14] à l´exode du paradis atlante dont le Yu-Atlanchi souterrain n´est qu´un triste simulacre[15].

C´est alors que l´origine des hommes-lézards, ainsi que des autres hybrides monstrueux de ce monde enfoui, est enfin dévoilée : « He wandered with her through the vast place at will, beholding strange and often disquieting things, experiments of the serpent-people and the ancient Yu-Atlanchans in the reshaping of life, experiments of which the spider-folk and the lizard-folk had been results; grotesque and terrifying shapes; androgynous monstrosities; hybrid prodigies — some of them of bizarre beauty” (1931: 254).

Les hommes-serpents se sont donc livrés (inversant le schéma inauguré par Restif) à des expériences d´hybridations eugéniques qui ont produit divers monstres composites (des hommes-lézards aux hommes-araignés), dans une « phantasmagorie » qui relie l´anthropogenèse aux fantasmes biopolitiques de l´époque[16]. C´est à la croisée de la tradition occultiste des « races racine » et du rêve de la « biocratie » (M. Meurger, 1992) médico-disciplinaire que se situe la nouvelle monstruosité avancée par Merritt:

« Had not all life on earth a common origin? Divergent now and myriad formed—man and beast, fish and serpent, lizard and bird, ant and bee and spider—all had once been in those little specks of jelly adrift in the shallow littorals of seas of an earth still warm and pulsating with the first throbs of life. (…) Could the germs of all those shapes that he had worn in his progress to humanity be dormant in man? Waiting for some master hand of science to awaken them, and having awakened, blend them with the shape of man? (…) Might it not be then that in Yu-Atlanchi dwelt those who knew so well the secrets of evolution that in the laboratories of birth they could create men and women things of any shape desired? (…) Suddenly Graydon seemed to look into a whole new world of appalling grotesquerie (…). Phantasmagoria of humanity twinned with Nature’s perfect machines while still plastic in the egg!” (1923: 211)[17].

À la monstruosité des hybridations eugéniques s´ajoute celle de l´hybridation sexuelle, menace toujours présente dans l´imaginaire des pulps. Ainsi dans le chapitre intitulé, à l´instar des futurs films de série B, « Bride of the Lizard-Man » (XXIV), l´amoureuse du héros est-elle promise à la hiérogamie abjecte contenue dans le titre. Nous sommes ici en plein orientalisme, reprenant le motif érotique du sultan dans son harem[18], combiné à celui du sacrifice de la vierge à la Bête monstrueuse[19]. Ce que le héros s´empressera d´empêcher à coups de fusil ; l´on remarquera que l´écriture de la violence délaisse, dans cette deuxième partie, le registre de la Décadence pour celui, contemporain, du « hard-boiled », tournant stylistique imprimé par Howard dont on sent peut-être ici l´influence –le disciple inspirant le maître[20].

Dès lors, le roman va combiner le registre du merveilleux et de l´épique selon la formule que Howard décline au même moment dans ce que l´on appellera l´« heroic fantasy ». Les hommes-lézards (aussi appelés les « Urd » dans la diégèse) sont ainsi embrigadés dans des affrontements de plus en plus colossaux jusqu´à la bataille finale qui tient à la fois des « peplums » cinématographiques des années 20 (que l´on pense au Ben-Hur de Fred Niblo, 1925), des romans historiques martiaux à la Harold Lamb et des titanomachies anciennes[21]. Ce combat fantastique et parfaitement anachronique où se mêlent dinosaures, serpents ailés, hommes-araignées, hommes-lézards, hommes des cavernes et fusils à répétition résume tout à fait la dissolution du monde perdu en « monde secondaire » de Fantasy (et l´on sent aisément quelle influence ces pages exerceront sur le genre, de l´epos tolkiennien au steampunk[22]).

Les hommes-lézards seront finalement décimés dans ce « Ragnarok » composite, mais leur souvenir restera durable et leur figure sans cesse reprise. Merritt léguera ainsi au continent pulp et à la culture pop qui en est largement redevable un nouveau paradigme fantastique, dont les reptiliens contemporains sont encore en partie héritiers.

 

 

Bibliographie principale citée:

B. Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity. Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-siècle Culture, Oxford University Press, New York, 1986

M. Eliade, Patterns in comparative religion, World Publishing Company, 1958

M. Meurger, "L´homme en chantier", Études lovecraftiennes, 12, mai 1992, pp. 151-163

Lovecraft et la SF, 2, Encrage, 1994

Alien Abduction, Encrage, 1995

S. Ramaswamy, The Lost Land of Lemuria. Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories, UCP, 2004

 




[1] "Franz von Stuck explored the snake theme with maniacal intensity. The German painter variously portrayed Eve, the personification of sin, as wearing a gigantic snake over her shoulder or between her legs, or having a horizontal tête-à-tête (or, rather, torse-à-torse) with a snake (...). Von Stuck also liked to depict the horrific effects of woman´s serpentine lubricity upon the future of man, placing men, women and snakes, tightly packed, into the devil´s dugout, thus giving his audience a convenient intimation of that netherworld in which a man might expect to end his days if he allowed himself to be dragged to "the edge of the abyss" (Bram Dijkstra, 1986: 311)

 

[2] « The Indian Ocean formed a continent which extended from the Sunda Islands along the southern coast of Asia to the east coast of Africa. This large continent of former times Sclater, an Englishman, has called Lemuria, from the monkey-like animals which inhabited it, and it is at the same time of great importance from [sic] being the probable cradle of the human race, which in all likelihood here first developed out of anthropoid apes” (E. Haeckel, The History of Creation, 1876: 361)

[3]The Atlantic portion of Lemuria was the geological basis of what is generally known as Atlantis, but which must be regarded rather as a development of the Atlantic prolongation of Lemuria than as an entirely new mass of land upheaved to meet the special requirements of the Fourth Root-Race. Just as in the case of Race evolution, so in that of the shifting and re-shifting of Continental masses, no hard and fast line can be drawn as to where a new order ends and another begins. Continuity in natural processes is never broken. Thus the Fourth-Race Atlanteans were developed from a nucleus of Northern Lemurian Third-Race Men, centered, roughly speaking, toward a point of land in what is now the mid-Atlantic Ocean” (H. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, 1893: 348)

[4] G. W. Trompf, Garry, L. Bernauer, "Producing Lost Civilisations: Theosophical Concepts in Literature, Visual Media and Popular Culture". In Cusack, Carole; Norman, Alex (eds.). Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Production. Leiden: Brill, 2012: 114

[5] Ainsi, parmi une multitude d´exemples: “The Druids of the Celto-Britannic regions also called themselves Snakes. “I am a Serpent, I am a Druid,” they exclaimed. The Egyptian Karnak is twin brother to the Carnac of Bretagne, the latter Carnac meaning the Serpent's Mount. The Dracontia once covered the surface of the globe, and these temples were sacred to the Dragon.(…)  De Bourbourg hints that the chiefs of the name of Votan, the Quetzo-Cohuatl, or Serpent deity of the Mexicans, are the descendants of Ham and Canaan. “I am Hivim,” they say. “Being a Hivim, I am of the great race of the Dragon (Snake). I am a Snake myself, for I am a Hivim.” (II: 396-7)

[6] "Graydon emptied his rifle into the creatures. He rapidly reloaded his magazine. Then, as he began dropping them, they broke from their stupor, leaped for the walls, and like true lizards swarmed up the sheer faces of the cliffs. Hissing and screeching, they darted into the black mouths of the caves. They vanished into their dark depths" (1931: 106)

[7] “La cité sans nom”, étudiée dans l´article précédent

[8] « He stopped for a moment to look more closely at the creatures his bullets had dropped. He saw that only those whose skulls had been pierced by the high power bullets lay there. And the limbs of these drew up and down spasmodically as though they still lived. One of them had been shot straight through the heart. But still that heart beat on. He could see the leathery yellow chest throb with its pulsations. Only those whose skulls had been crushed by the clubs seemed quite dead. (…) He was aware of the first Indian beside him. He saluted again, and methodically began to crush with his club the heads of those Graydon had shot. “This,” he said in the Aymara, “so they cannot live again. It is the only way.” (1931: 107)

[9] Le chromatisme accrocheur, à l´image de celui des couvertures des pulps, est une des caractéristiques de la prose de Merritt et de ses disciples, souvent désignée justement par le terme « purple prose » : “All around him were the lizard-men, a hundred or more. He was being borne upon the heads of eight of the creatures, raised upon the pads of their forearms. Under that weird light their leathery skins were dull orange; the cockscombs of scarlet scales cresting their reptilian skulls were turned by it into a poisonous purple. They padded, hissing to each other, over the yellow sand” (1931: 169-170)

[10]He faced a horde of the lizard-people. There were hundreds of them, grouped in orderly ranks, and at about the same distance away from him as the black throne. They stood silent, red eyes intent upon him. They were so close together that their scarlet crests seemed to form a huge, fantastically tufted carpet. Among them were lizard-women and children. He stared at them, small things like baby demons, little needled yellow fangs glistening between the pointed jaws, small eyes glittering upon him like goblin lanterns” (1931: 171). L´utilisation du terme “baby demons” renvoie à la foi au contexte infernal et à sa transfiguration (que prolonge l´association aux « goblins » féeriques)
[11]Within the throne sat the shadow of a man. Faceless, featureless, cloudy hands gripping the arms of the throne, woven of the black atoms within the crepuscular rust — a man’s shadow! The faceless head leaned forward. It had no eyes, yet Graydon felt its eyes upon him. It had no lips, yet its lips began to whisper. He heard the voice of the Dark One! The whispering of the Shadow of Nimir, Lord of Evil!” (1931: 174) 

 

[12] cf. notamment le classique de Marie-Louise von Franz, Individuation in Fairy Tales (1977) ou, pour ce qui est de l´Ombre, son Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales (1974). Le problème de ce type d´interprétations très schématiques reste leur indifférence aux détails concrets et aux contextes culturels des contes, toujours pris comme simple matière malléable à souhait pour légitimer le bien-fondé de la théorie employée.

[13] "There was something peculiar about the pictures of the serpent-people. They lacked that human quality, so marked and so weird, of the Mother. Their heads were longer, flatter, reptilian. Their bodies above their coils were plainly development of the saurian; unmistakably evolved from a reptilian stem. He could accept them as realities — since in varying environments the evolution of almost any kind of intelligent creature is possible. He realized that it was the abrupt transition from serpent to woman that made the Serpent-woman incomprehensible unreal " (1931: 196)

[14]He looked long at the painting of a vast swamp in which monstrous bodies floundered; from its mud hideous heads peered, and over it great winged lizards flapped on leathery batlike wings. He stared even longer at the next. It was the same swamp; in the foreground was a group of the serpent-people. They lay coiled behind what appeared to be an immense crystal disk. The disk seemed to be swiftly revolving. And all over the morass, battling with the monsters, were winged shapes of flame”(1931: 197).

[15]And there was another city... (…) It came to him that this was the Yu-Atlanchi of the immemorial past, from which the serpent-people and those they had fostered had fled before the flood of ice whose creeping progress all their arts could not check.... He saw a fleet of strange ships, one of them fighting off the attack of a group of gigantic sea-saurians whose heads reared high above its masts…” (id: ibid).

[16] On pense évidemment à L´île du dr Moreau d´H.G. Wells (1896), mais comme le montre M. Meurger (1992) le thème de « L´homme en chantier » n´a de cesse de nourrir la littéraure populaire à l´ère des pulps. Il cite notamment un texte contemporain de Merrit, Les États-Unis d´aujourd´hui d´André Siegfried qui donne ce conseil à son lecteur : « si vous partez pour les États-unis, prenez une Bible, mais n´oubliez pas non plus un traité d´eugénique » (1927 : 104). Et il ajoute : « l´éugénisme doit être considéré comme l´un des mouvements typiques de l´Amérique actuelle, car il représente une préoccupation avertie, sinon toujours intelligente de l´avenir physique de la race. Contre elle, l´individu ne tiendra guère, vraisemblablement, car une sorte de mystique eexalte, aux États-Unis, les droits suprêmes de la communauté. (…) Entre les mains d´un peuple conscient de sa supériorité, qui stériliserait, sans remords (…) les « inférieurs » dont nous serions peut-être, l´eugénisme intégral relèguerait éventuellement à l´état de souvenir cette conquête que sont les « droits de l´homme » (id : 113).

[17] La version de 1931 présente quelques modifications: « All life on earth had a common origin. Divergent now and Protean shaped, still man and beast, fish and serpent, lizard and bird, ant and bee and spider, all had come from those once similar specks of jelly, adrift millions upon millions of years ago in the shallow littorals of the first seas.(…) Were the germs of all those shapes man had worn in his slow upward climb still dormant in him ? (…) Might it not well be, then, that in Yu-Atlanchi dwelt those to whom the crucible of birth held no secrets; who could dip within it and mold from its contents what they would ? (…) Suddenly Graydon seemed to behold a whole new world of appalling grotesquerie (…) a phantasmagoria of humanity, monstrously twinned with Nature’s perfect machine, while still plastic in the womb! (53-5)

[18]At the far end of the room, half-risen, one knee upon the couch, a hand caressing the hair of a woman lying there, was Lantlu” (1931: 290)

[19] La depravation libertine du “Seigneur du Mal” frôle ici la caricature, annonçant encore une fois les dialogues des villains de série B : “The bride is becomingly disturbed at the approach of the bridegroom,” spoke Lantlu, suavely, sonorously, like a mocking showman. “It is fitting. It is the traditional attitude. Her virginity is alarmed. Shyness overcomes her. But soon — ah, soon — Ho, ho, ho! ” laughed Lantlu. From all the room a chorus of malicious laughter answered him. Suarra’s head drooped lower” (id-ibid).

[20]  “Christ! ” groaned Graydon — and shot through the curtains. The leap of the lizard-man was checked as though by a sledge blow. He spun in mid-air. He dropped with the top of his head blown off. Graydon vaulted over the low sill of the oval window. He fired again, with half-raised rifle, at Lantlu. As the shot rang out, the master of the dinosaurs dropped behind the couch, but Graydon knew that he had missed him. All right, he’d get him later! Now for the Emers. He raised his gun — the Emers were down!” (id: 292)

[21]The shore was encrusted with the lizard-men! They surged there by the hundreds, by the thousands, it seemed to him; their ranks moving slowly forward as others joined them, wading up from the waters. And now he saw that the Urd horde was streaming across the lake from the caverns, that the surface was streaked from side to side with the swimming horde. And that along the front of those who had landed rode a half dozen of Lantlu’s nobles upon the black dinosaurs, whipping them into order with huge lashes shaped like sjamboks. (…) On they padded in the wake of the black saurians, their red eyes glittering, their heads thrust forward, talons outstretched” (id: 313-4).

[22]Among the lizard-men began a maelstrom milling. Squalling and hissing they leaped and hopped, striking with their chisel-edged talons; bringing some of the Messengers down, tearing at them with fang and claw, as movements here and there plainly showed. But the Urd themselves were falling by the hundred, pierced through heart and brain by the rapier beaks. From the backs of the dinosaurs half the riders were gone. And the monsters were faring badly. Graydon saw them whirling frantically upon their heavy hind legs, hissing in rage, hitting out with their absurdly small forelegs, striking viciously with their snake-like necks. One pivoted, then another and another. They went crashing back through the lizard-men. The Indians had halted, and now as the saurians tore through the Urd they wavered, broke formation, fled out of their paths.” (1931: 316)