Хребты безумия

HOWARD PHILLIPS  
LOVECRAFT
AT THE MOUNTAINS 
OF MADNESS

УДК 372.8
ББК  81.2 Англ 
Л13

ISBN 978-5-9925-1322-6

Лавкрафт, Говард Филлипс.
Л13  
Хребты безумия : книга для чтения на английском языке / Г. Ф. Лавкрафт — Санкт-Петербург : 
КАРО, 2018. — 192 с. — (Modern Prose).

ISBN 978-5-9925-1322-6.

Роман Говарда Филлипса Лавкрафта «Хребты безумия» (1931) — 
одно из центральных произведений цикла «мифы Ктулху», в котором поразительным образом сочетается научная фантастика, мистика и хоррор.
В книге повествуется о драматичных событиях, произошедших 
во время экспедиции в Антарктику. Вместе с группой исследователей читатель столкнется с фантасмагорическим миром древнего 
ужаса, лишь на шаг отстоящим от нашей реальности.
В книге приводится полный неадаптированный текст романа.
УДК 372.8
ББК 81.2 Англ

© КАРО, 2018 
Все права защищены

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS

I.

am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice 
without knowing why. It is altogether 
against my will that I tell my reasons for 
opposing this contemplated invasion of the antarctic — with its vast fossil hunt and its wholesale boring 
and melting of the ancient ice caps. And I am the more 
reluctant because my warning may be in vain.
Doubt of the real facts, as I must reveal them, is 
inevitable; yet, if I suppressed what will seem extravagant and incredible, there would be nothing left. The 
hitherto withheld photographs, both ordinary and 
aerial, will count in my favor, for they are damnably 
vivid and graphic. Still, they will be doubted because 
of the great lengths to which clever fakery can be carried. The ink drawings, of course, will be jeered at as 
obvious impostures, notwithstanding a strangeness 
of technique which art experts ought to remark and 
puzzle over.
In the end I must rely on the judgment and standing of the few scientific leaders who have, on the one 
hand, sufficient independence of thought to weigh my 
data on its own hideously convincing merits or in the 
light of certain primordial and highly baffling mythcycles; and on the other hand, sufficient influence to 

Howard Phillips LOVECRAFT
4

deter the exploring world in general from any rash 
and over-ambitious program in the region of those 
mountains of madness. It is an unfortunate fact that 
relatively obscure men like myself and my associates, 
connected only with a small university, have little 
chance of making an impression where matters of a 
wildly bizarre or highly controversial nature are concerned.
It is further against us that we are not, in the 
strictest sense, specialists in the fields which came 
primarily to be concerned. As a geologist, my object 
in leading the Miskatonic University Expedition was 
wholly that of securing deep-level specimens of rock 
and soil from various parts of the antarctic continent, 
aided by the remarkable drill devised by Professor 
Frank H. Pabodie of our engineering department. I had 
no wish to be a pioneer in any other field than this, 
but I did hope that the use of this new mechanical appliance at different points along previously explored 
paths would bring to light materials of a sort hitherto 
unreached by the ordinary methods of collection.
Pabodie’s drilling apparatus, as the public already 
knows from our reports, was unique and radical in 
its lightness, portability, and capacity to combine the 
ordinary artesian drill principle with the principle of 
the small circular rock drill in such a way as to cope 

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS

quickly with strata of varying hardness. Steel head, 
jointed rods, gasoline motor, collapsible wooden derrick, dynamiting paraphernalia, cording, rubbish-removal auger, and sectional piping for bores five inches 
wide and up to one thousand feet deep all formed, 
with needed accessories, no greater load than three 
seven-dog sledges could carry. This was made possible by the clever aluminum alloy of which most of 
the metal objects were fashioned. Four large Dornier 
aeroplanes, designed especially for the tremendous 
altitude flying necessary on the antarctic plateau and 
with added fuel-warming and quick-starting devices 
worked out by Pabodie, could transport our entire expedition from a base at the edge of the great ice barrier to various suitable inland points, and from these 
points a sufficient quota of dogs would serve us.
We planned to cover as great an area as one antarctic season — or longer, if absolutely necessary — 
would permit, operating mostly in the mountain 
ranges and on the plateau south of Ross Sea; regions 
explored in varying degree by Shackleton, Amundsen, 
Scott, and Byrd. With frequent changes of camp, made 
by aeroplane and involving distances great enough to 
be of geological significance, we expected to unearth a 
quite unprecedented amount of material — especially 
in the pre-Cambrian strata of which so narrow a range 

Howard Phillips LOVECRAFT
6

of antarctic specimens had previously been secured. 
We wished also to obtain as great as possible a variety 
of the upper fossiliferous rocks, since the primal life 
history of this bleak realm of ice and death is of the 
highest importance to our knowledge of the earth’s 
past. That the antarctic continent was once temperate 
and even tropical, with a teeming vegetable and animal life of which the lichens, marine fauna, arachnida, 
and penguins of the northern edge are the only survivals, is a matter of common information; and we hoped 
to expand that information in variety, accuracy, and 
detail. When a simple boring revealed fossiliferous 
signs, we would enlarge the aperture by blasting, in 
order to get specimens of suitable size and condition.
Our borings, of varying depth according to the 
promise held out by the upper soil or rock, were to 
be confined to exposed, or nearly exposed, land surfaces — these inevitably being slopes and ridges because of the mile or two-mile thickness of solid ice 
overlying the lower levels. We could not afford to 
waste drilling the depth of any considerable amount 
of mere glaciation, though Pabodie had worked out a 
plan for sinking copper electrodes in thick clusters of 
borings and melting off limited areas of ice with current from a gasoline-driven dynamo. It is this plan — 
which we could not put into effect except experimen

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS

tally on an expedition such as ours — that the coming 
Starkweather-Moore Expedition proposes to follow, 
despite the warnings I have issued since our return 
from the antarctic.
The public knows of the Miskatonic Expedition 
through our frequent wireless reports to the Arkham 
Advertiser and Associated Press, and through the later 
articles of Pabodie and myself. We consisted of four 
men from the University — Pabodie, Lake of the biology department, Atwood of the physics department — 
also a meteorologist — and myself, representing geology and having nominal command — besides sixteen 
assistants: seven graduate students from Miskatonic 
and nine skilled mechanics. Of these sixteen, twelve 
were qualified aeroplane pilots, all but two of whom 
were competent wireless operators. Eight of them 
understood navigation with compass and sextant, as 
did Pabodie, Atwood, and I. In addition, of course, our 
two ships — wooden ex-whalers, reinforced for ice 
conditions and having auxiliary steam — were fully 
manned.
The Nathaniel Derby Pickman Foundation, aided 
by a few special contributions, financed the expedition; hence our preparations were extremely thorough, despite the absence of great publicity. The dogs, 
sledges, machines, camp materials, and unassembled 

Howard Phillips LOVECRAFT
8

parts of our five planes were delivered in Boston, and 
there our ships were loaded. We were marvelously 
well-equipped for our specific purposes, and in all 
matters pertaining to supplies, regimen, transportation, and camp construction we profited by the excellent example of our many recent and exceptionally 
brilliant predecessors. It was the unusual number 
and fame of these predecessors which made our own 
expedition — ample though it was — so little noticed 
by the world at large.
As the newspapers told, we sailed from Boston 
Harbor on September 2nd, 1930, taking a leisurely 
course down the coast and through the Panama Canal, and stopping at Samoa and Hobart, Tasmania, at 
which latter place we took on final supplies. None of 
our exploring party had ever been in the polar regions 
before, hence we all relied greatly on our ship captains — J. B. Douglas, commanding the brig Arkham, 
and serving as commander of the sea party, and Georg 
Thorfinnssen, commanding the barque Miskatonic — 
both veteran whalers in antarctic waters.
As we left the inhabited world behind, the sun 
sank lower and lower in the north, and stayed longer 
and longer above the horizon each day. At about 62° 
South Latitude we sighted our first icebergs — tablelike objects with vertical sides — and just before 

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS

reaching the antarctic circle, which we crossed on 
October 20th with appropriately quaint ceremonies, 
we were considerably troubled with field ice. The falling temperature bothered me considerably after our 
long voyage through the tropics, but I tried to brace 
up for the worse rigors to come. On many occasions 
the curious atmospheric effects enchanted me vastly; 
these including a strikingly vivid mirage — the first I 
had ever seen — in which distant bergs became the 
battlements of unimaginable cosmic castles.
Pushing through the ice, which was fortunately 
neither extensive nor thickly packed, we regained 
open water at South Latitude 67°, East Longitude 
175° On the morning of October 26th a strong land 
blink appeared on the south, and before noon we all 
felt a thrill of excitement at beholding a vast, lofty, 
and snow-clad mountain chain which opened out 
and covered the whole vista ahead. At last we had 
encountered an outpost of the great unknown continent and its cryptic world of frozen death. These 
peaks were obviously the Admiralty Range discovered by Ross, and it would now be our task to round 
Cape Adare and sail down the east coast of Victoria 
Land to our contemplated base on the shore of McMurdo Sound, at the foot of the volcano Erebus in 
South Latitude 77° 9’.

Howard Phillips LOVECRAFT
10

The last lap of the voyage was vivid and fancystirring. Great barren peaks of mystery loomed up 
constantly against the west as the low northern sun 
of noon or the still lower horizon-grazing southern 
sun of midnight poured its hazy reddish rays over the 
white snow, bluish ice and water lanes, and black bits 
of exposed granite slope. Through the desolate summits swept raging, intermittent gusts of the terrible 
antarctic wind; whose cadences sometimes held vague 
suggestions of a wild and half-sentient musical piping, 
with notes extending over a wide range, and which for 
some subconscious mnemonic reason seemed to me 
disquieting and even dimly terrible. Something about 
the scene reminded me of the strange and disturbing 
Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich, and of the still 
stranger and more disturbing descriptions of the evilly fabled plateau of Leng which occur in the dreaded 
Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. I was 
rather sorry, later on, that I had ever looked into that 
monstrous book at the college library.
On the 7th of November, sight of the westward 
range having been temporarily lost, we passed Franklin Island; and the next day descried the cones of Mts. 
Erebus and Terror on Ross Island ahead, with the 
long line of the Parry Mountains beyond. There now 
stretched off to the east the low, white line of the great