Smith's Most Well-Known Creation

Artwork by Clark Ashton Smith

I've already touched on the fact that, compared to his contemporaries, H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, the overt influence of Clark Ashton Smith on later writers is minimal and I stand by that assessment. I would, however, like to point out an obvious exception to this: the deity Tsathoggua. Unlike nearly everything else CAS created in his weird tales, Tsathoggua not only reappeared multiple times within his own story cycles but was also used by some of his colleagues in theirs. Indeed, the first time the name Tsathoggua appears in print is not in one of Smith's stories but in Lovecraft's "The Whisperer in Darkness."

In that story, Tsathoggua is mentioned three times, mostly in passing, as part of a litany of other ancient beings, like Cthulhu and Shub-Niggurath. However, one of these mentions not only describes him but associates him with CAS:

It’s from N’kai that frightful Tsathoggua came – you know, the amorphous, toad-like god-creature mentioned in the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomicon and the Commoriom myth-cycle preserved by the Atlantean high-priest Klarkash-Ton.

Klarkash-Ton is, obviously, Smith and "the Commoriom myth-cycle" is then-unpublished "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros," which had been written in 1929 but not published until a few months after "The Whisperer in Darkness." We must remember that the writers in the Weird Tales circle regularly discussed and shared drafts of their work with one another, which is how HPL beat Smith to the punch when it came to introducing his own creation.

When "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" was published, Smith talks a bit more about Tsathoggua by reference to one of his idols:

He was very squat and pot-bellied, his head was more like a monstrous toad than a deity, and his whole body was covered with an imitation of short fur, giving somehow a vague sensation of both the bat and the sloth. His sleepy lids were half-lowered over his globular eyes; the tip of a queer tongue issued from his fat mouth.

Smith would go on mention Tsathoggua several more times in his Hyperborean stories, as well as in his Averoigne stories, where the god appears under the variant name Sodagui. From these other stories, we learn that Tsathoggua – also known as Zhothaqquah – once dwelled on the planet Cykranosh, which we call Saturn, where "some of [his] relatives were still resident ... and were worshipped by its peoples." His relatives include his "uncle," having the unpronounceable name of Hziulquoigmnzhah, about which I'll have a little more to say in an upcoming post.

From "The Seven Geases," we find out that, after having from Saturn "in years immediately foIlowing the Earth's creation," Tsathoggua slept in a secret cave beneath Mount Voormithadreth. That story describes him as having "great girth and his batlike furriness and the look of a sleepy black toad." This particular story is interesting, because Tsathoggua not only appears in the flesh but actually speaks, carrying on a brief conversation with its unfortunate protagonist, Ralibar Vooz. We also learn that the god enjoys blood sacrifices offered to him by his worshipers.

I can't help but wonder why it was that Tsathoggua, of all of Smith's creations, should be the one that Lovecraft (and, apparently, Robert E. Howard, though the story in question was never completed during his lifetime) should find compelling enough to include in his own stories, if only by reference. I don't really have any theories to offer, since, as fond as I am of Tsathoggua, he's nothing truly notable about him. Perhaps Lovecraft and others simply liked the sound of his name. Whatever the reason, I think it's unquestionably the case that Tsathoggua is Smith's most well-known creation.