Mr. Zarono's incredible rendition of Clark Ashton Smith, Emperor of Dreams.

The cosmic wheels have whirled and turned once more. We yet again find ourselves celebrating Klarkash-Ton Day. Its origins can be found in this previous post. I missed posting about the anniversary of Clark Ashton Smith’s death earlier this month. Let this now be a time of bacchanal and festivity. Raise a glass of Atlantean vintage—or the closest equivalent—to the memory of Clark Ashton Smith and his almost-avatar, Klarkash-Ton.

I call Klarkash-Ton an 'almost-avatar' of Clark Ashton Smith because Clark didn't actually create him. H.P. Lovecraft did. Clark's Hyperborean uber-sorcerer, Eibon, did spring from the brow of the Emperor of Dreams and seems to be much more of a self-insert than Klarkash-Ton ever was. CAS never wrote any tales or poems about Klarkash-Ton, as opposed to Eibon.

So why this fixation on 'Klarkash-Ton'? Well, because Clark Ashton Smith himself endorsed it. Even decades after Lovecraft was in his grave, CAS and his associates would use the term. In fact, we know that Smith had a special way of pronouncing it to differentiate from his own name. Check out this article from The Eldritch Dark:

Klarkash-Ton Versus 'Clark Ashton' :A Minor Issue for Controversy by Rah Hoffman and Donald Sidney-Fryer (eldritchdark.com)

This especial attention to the name indicates that Clark himself treasured it. While he might not have wholly identified with it, 'Klarkash-Ton' remained a nickname, a treasured memento, from a fellow author he respected immensely. It represented--as I have noted elsewhere--his induction into the Lovecraft Circle before anyone else. All other 'Mythos names' that HPL bestowed upon his friends and correspondents sprang from that initial weird--as in 'Weird Tales'---christening on August 31, 1928.

A Wiki rendition of Klarkash-Ton, High-Priest of Atlantis.

As Rah Hoffman and Donald Sidney-Fryer note in their article:

"Smith's correspondent H.P. Lovecraft was wont to use fanciful or humorous nicknames in his letters, such as Comte d'Erlette for August Derleth, the Satrap Pharnabazus for Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright, Two-Gun Bob for Robert E. Howard, and even Éch-Pi-El for himself."

Thus, Klarkash-Ton Day exists as a day not to commemorate Clark Ashton Smith's nativity or mortality, but a date to celebrate him and his connection to the Cthulhu Mythos, to which he made so many foundational contributions.

How those connections and contributions play out in relation to Klarkash-Ton, High-Priest of Atlantis will be the focus of a future post.

As always, I recommend The Eldritch Dark website. I sincerely wish there was something comparable for Robert E. Howard.