← Back to Poetry
PoemPermanent catalogue Work

The Symbol

1textual state0Characters
Category
Fantastical
SectionUntitled Drafts

Opening lines

Long, long before Atlantean days in the age of the world’s black dawn,Strange were the kings and grim the deeds that the pallid moon lookedon.When the great black cities split the stars and strange prows broke the

Textual states

Shown in a practical developmental order where possible: synopsis/outline, numbered drafts, submission states, then published or posthumous states. This display order does not itself assert exact chronology or textual authority.

Untitled draftThe Symbol
Catalogue defaultExplore textual state →

Surviving manuscript evidence — exact textual state unresolved

The physical evidence below is securely associated with this Work, but the surviving source does not yet establish which exact catalogued Textual Version it represents. The evidence is therefore preserved at Work level rather than guessed. TSS numbers identify physical catalogue units; they are not story or draft IDs.

Original typescript source containing two Symbol cutsHoward typescript
CompletenessComplete

Textual-state mapping: Exact textual state unresolved

Physical extent: One catalogued TSS unit containing two complete untitled cuts of The Symbol plus another poem

TSS: 90147

Original typescript source catalogued as containing The Symbol d1 and d2 on the same physical unit, together with Only a Shadow on the Grass d1. The two Symbol cuts are real physical evidence, but the retained source does not expose enough wording to assign either cut to an exact permanent Textual Version or to justify manufacturing another Textual Version.

Manuscript details

Later catalogue annotationLegacy catalogue records two cuts of The Symbol on this source, labelled d1 and d2.

Source: Glenn Lord TSS catalogue/inventory; The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, Volume Two.

Characters in this Work

Exhaustively reviewed. Counts are across the exact Poetry textual states currently catalogued for this Work; a zero result means no qualifying individual Character/entity was found in those states.

No qualifying individual Characters or named entities were found in the catalogued textual state of this poem.

Publication appearances

Ariel #1The Morning Star PressAutumn 1976↗The "New" Howard Reader #2Joe & Mona MarekAugust 1998 | 2nd state of 1 edition also August 1998↗The Collected Poetry of Robert E. HowardREH Foundation PressJanuary 2009↗The Horror Stories of Robert E. HowardSubterranean Press2010↗The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard Volume TwoREH Foundation PressNovember 2022↗