Andrei Vasilachi's Reviews > The Temple

"Though I knew that death was near, my curiosity was consuming"

What a harrowing and claustrophobic tale! No doubt one of my favorites from Lovecraft. It's a story of a WWI German submarine crew "going mad" during one of their surveys. The story is a manuscript written by a lieutenant-commander in the Imperial German Navy, who encounters some paranormal events ("an aural delusion") in the depths of the North Atlantic Ocean:

"Moreover, for the first time in my life I experienced the emotion of dread. I began to realise how some of poor Klenze's moods had arisen, for as the temple drew me more and more, I feared its aqueous abysses with a blind and mounting terror. Returning to the submarine, I turned off the lights and sat thinking in the dark."

Yet even in the midst of apparent madness, he tries to be rational and scientific (in an attempt to detach from his fear of the unknown?):

"Psychologically my case is most interesting, and I regret that it cannot be observed scientifically by a competent German authority. Upon opening my eyes my first sensation was an overmastering desire to visit the rock temple; a desire which grew every instant, yet which I automatically sought to resist through some emotion of fear which operated in the reverse direction. Next there came to me the impression of light amidst the darkness of dead batteries, and I seemed to see a sort of phosphorescent glow in the water through the porthole which opened toward the temple. This arouses my curiosity, for I knew of no deep-sea organism capable of emitting such luminosity. But before I could investigate there came a third impression which because of its irrationality caused me to doubt the objectivity of anything my senses might record. It was an aural delusion; a sensation of rhythmic, melodic sound as of some wild yet beautiful chant or choral hymn, coming from the outside through the absolutely sound-proof hull of the U-29."

In the end, even when he seems to have lost his mind, he still tries to explain the paranormal:

"This daemoniac laughter which I hear as I write comes only from my own weakening brain."

Beautifully written and an instant short-story classic.