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"The Hound" is a short story written by H. P. Lovecraft in September 1922 and published in the February 1924 issue of ''Weird Tales''. It contains the first mention of Lovecraft's fictional text the ''Necronomicon.'' ==Inspiration== On September 16, 1922, Lovecraft toured the Flatbush Reformed Church in Brooklyn with his friend Rheinhart Kleiner, writing about the visit in a letter: :Around the old pile is a hoary churchyard, with dating from around 1730 to the middle of the nineteenth century.... From one of the crumbling gravestones--dated 1747--I chipped a small piece to carry away. It lies before me as I write--and ought to suggest some sort of horror-story. I must place it beneath my pillow as I sleep... who can say what thing might not come out of the centuried earth to exact vengeance for his desecrated tomb? And should it come, who can say what it might not resemble?〔Lovecraft, ''Selected Letters'', Vol. I p. 98; quoted in Steven J. Mariconda, "'The Hound'--a Dead Dog?" in ''The Horror of It All'', Robert M. Price, ed., p. 49.〕 Lovecraft wrote "The Hound" shortly afterwards, using as the name of one of the main characters his nickname for his companion Kleinhart, "St. John".〔Mariconda, p. 49.〕 The grave that is fatefully robbed in the story is in a "terrible Holland churchyard"—perhaps a reference to Flatbush church being part of the Dutch Reformed Church (although the story is actually set in the Netherlands, as well as in England). Critic Steven J. Mariconda suggests that the story is a tribute to the Decadent literary movement in general and in particular Joris-Karl Huysmans' ''A rebours'', an 1884 novel that Lovecraft greatly admired. (Huysmans is mentioned by name in the story, along with Baudelaire.) Like "The Hound"'s protagonists, victims of a "devastating ennui", the main character of ''A rebours'' suffers from an "overpowering tedium" that leads him to "imagine and then indulge in unnatural love-affairs and perverse pleasures."〔Mariconda, p. 50.〕 Mariconda also points to the heavy debt the story owes to Edgar Allan Poe, an influence acknowledged by several borrowed phrases: :The "oblong box" exumed, the mysterious "knock on my chamber door", and the "red death" brought by the Hound all echo Poe's phraseology.〔Mariconda, p. 51.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Hound」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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