Re: Lovecraft and Smith sharing drafts
Posted by:
jdworth (IP Logged)
Date: 24 July, 2017 10:49AM
On mention of these ideas surfacing in HPL's fiction, I would also cite such examples as portions of "The Mound" and "At the Mountains of Madness" as well; but I think that, in a less obvious way, this is a common thread throughout much of his fiction, and indeed one of the prime reasons for its creation. "Celephais", for instance (not to mention "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath"), as well as the fragment "Azathoth", would likely either not exist or be quite different were it not for the idea that modernity, with all its attendant ills, is sterile and destructive of fulfilling human emotional needs. (By "Kadath", of course, he had learned a method of compromise by having traditional attachments be the center of one's life, but it was a tenuous thing nonetheless, easily disturbed or damaged.) And, of course, the entire thrust of the opening paragraph of "The Call of Cthulhu" is wholly on the idea of how advancing knowledge is likely to be the destroyer of our species, or at least of our sanity and any feeling of security or place in the universe: "The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but someday the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
Thematically, this idea can be seen as emerging in at least nascent form as early as "Dagon", and it would last throughout his career.