(Formerly K.S.)
Daniel:
Quote:WHOA! CAS was a Huxley fan? I would have thought that Huxley was slightly too modernistic for CAS's tastes.
There are some disparaging remarks about Huxley in one of the essays in
Planets and Dimensions, as well. I suspect that Huxley's satirical bent eventually won over CAS, as they had many of the same targets. In the same letter I quoted from CAS to Sprague de Camp, above, CAS goes on to mention that his tastes are fairly eclectic, and include Fritz Leiber, Jr. and John Collier! (terrain where I definitely cannot follow him! lol)
I figured that you had in mind the "Macrocosmic Horror" quotation. I think that CAS's dismissal of Blackwood in this respect is downright silly, but CAS seems to admit that he hadn't read as much of Blackwood's work as he perhaps should have.
Regarding de la Mare, in particular: I agree that weirds are a (too) small percentage of his work as a whole, but I suppose that HPL is focusiong on cosmicism in de la Mare's weird work
per se. (In a letter, HPL also wrote that [I paraphrase], "De la Mare can be exceedingly powerful when he chooses, and I only wish that he'd choose oftener!") I'm much fonder of de la Mare's weirds than of his non-weirds, myself, but he is such an exquisite stylist that I find anything he writes to be worth reading, regardless of whether I find myself interested in his characters or his subject matter (This may sound like heresy, but that's often the way I approach Shakespeare, as well, whose extraordinary poetry is, to my mind, mostly wasted on exclusively humanistic themes and concerns. It's a tragedy of the first water, I think, that Shakespeare didn't try his hand at a
Paradise Lost, but I digress, as usual [That wouldn't have paid the bills, I realize] ).
The question of who HPL thinks is and isn't a cosmicist is a vexing one, because HPL seemed constantly to change his mind on the subject. For instance, in
Supernatural Horror in Literature, we learn that Arthur Machen is a master of cosmic fear raised to the highest pitch. In a later letter, however, HPL claims that Machen's imagination is not cosmic at all. De la Mare receives similar treatment, I think. At one point, HPL questions the cosmicism of even the revered Dunsany. The subject of HPL's idea of cosmicism, and his shifting opinions of what writers embody it, would make an excellent book-length study (does S.T. Joshi lurk in this forum? ;-) ), both for the intrinsic interest of the subject matter and the confusion and complexity of it!
Getting back to CAS: His opinions of authors certainly changed, as well. As I mentioned, I'm delighted to see his upwardly revised opinion of de la Mare, especially as they are kindred spirits in some respects, at least in verse. CAS favorably mentioned Bierce in the "Macrocosmic Horror" quotation, but then revised his opinion of him downward in a letter to Lovecraft. All this shows that we must all be careful in our assumptions regarding the tastes of our favorite authors, as their viewpoints were dynamic. Of course, one would expect no less of such individuals.