The Quest of Iranon

"The Quest of Iranon"
Author	H.P. Lovecraft
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Short story
Published in	Galleon
Publication date	July/August 1935

"The Quest of Iranon" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft. It was written on February 28, 1921,^[1] and was first published in the July/August 1935 issue of the magazine Galleon.^[2] It was later reprinted in Weird Tales in 1939.

Plot summary

The story is about a golden-haired youth who wanders into the city of Teloth, telling tales of the great city of Aira, where he was prince. While Iranon enjoys singing and telling his tales of wonder, few appreciate it. A city solon even orders Iranon to cease his singing & music, and become apprenticed to the cobbler - or leave the city by sunset. When a disenfranchised boy named Romnod suggests leaving Teloth to go to the famed city of Oonai (which he thinks may be Aira, now under a different name), Iranon takes him up on his offer.

Iranon and Romnod spend years on their journey to Oonai. Along the way, Romnod grows up while Iranon remains exactly the same. Eventually they reach Oonai, which Iranon is disappointed (although not surprised) to discover is not Aira. Iranon is loved by the people in Oonai, however, so he stays there even though he still desires to return to Aira. As the years pass, people appreciate him less and less, and he is eventually upstaged by dancers from the desert. By this point, Romnod has grown old and has become a drunkard. After Romnod's death, Iranon decides to leave Oonai and continue his search for Aira.

Eventually Iranon comes across an old shepherd and asks him if he knows of Aira. The shepherd tells him that he has indeed heard of it, for in his youth there was a beggar's boy who had always talked about it. The boy, who thought he was a prince, was laughed at by everyone and ran away.

With the truth revealed, that Aira was merely a figment of his imagination, Iranon loses his eternal youth. Now aged significantly, Iranon wanders into the quicksands to his death.

Connections to other Lovecraft stories

At one point Iranon says that he has "dwelt long in Olathoe in the land of Lomar",^[3] a reference to the setting of Lovecraft's short story "Polaris". This suggests that "The Quest of Iranon" takes place in the same world and era as "Polaris", that is, in a prehistoric Earth c. 24,000 BC.^[4] Iranon also declared "I...have gazed on the marsh where Sarnath once stood," a reference to "The Doom that Came to Sarnath".

Critical reaction

An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia calls "Iranon" "among the best of HPL's Dunsanian imitations."^[5]

Notes

↑ "Lovecraft's Fiction (chronological order)", The H. P. Lovecraft Archive.
↑ "H. P. Lovecraft's 'The Quest for Iranon'", The H. P. Lovecraft Archive.
↑ H. P. Lovecraft, "The Quest of Iranon", Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, p. 114.
↑ S. T. Joshi, "The Real World and the Dream World in Lovecraft", The Horror of It All, p. 18-31.
↑ Joshi and Schultz, p. 220.

References

Lovecraft, Howard P. [1921] (1986). "The Quest of Iranon". In S. T. Joshi (ed.). Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (9th corrected printing ed.). Sauk City, WI: Arkham House. ISBN 0-87054-039-4. Definitive version.
S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia.

External links

Works related to The Quest of Iranon at Wikisource

Works by H. P. Lovecraft

Cthulhu Mythos Dream Cycle

Novellas	The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath The Case of Charles Dexter Ward The Whisperer in Darkness 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 Dreams in the Witch House" "The Thing on the Doorstep" "The Evil Clergyman" "The Book" "The Haunter of the Dark"

Collaborations	"The Green Meadow" "The Crawling Chaos" "The Horror at Martin's Beach" "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" "The Curse of Yig" "The Mound" "Medusa's Coil" "The Horror in the Museum" "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" "Out of the Aeons" "The Tree on the Hill" "Till A’the Seas" "In the Walls of Eryx" "The Thing in the Moonlight"

Juvenilia	"The Mystery of the Grave-Yard" "The Beast in the Cave" "The Alchemist"

Poetry	Fungi from Yuggoth

Essays	"Supernatural Horror in Literature" To Quebec and the Stars The Cancer of Superstition Autobiography: Some Notes on a Nonentity

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