Re: The "Cthulhu Mythose" Stories That Matter
Posted by:
Platypus (IP Logged)
Date: 2 April, 2019 01:56PM
Dale Nelson Wrote:
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> Platypus, my article took as its starting-point
> the musing of Glen Goodknight around 1969, that
> the Mythopoeic Society might concern itself not
> only with Tolkien, Lewis, Williams, &c, but even
> with Lovecraft.*
The Inklings were indebted to G.K. Chesterton, not so much because Chesterton was a great fantasist, but rather because Chesterton vigorously defended fantasy, and escapism, and mythmaking, as valuable and valid forms of art.
Chesterton did not view escapism as a solipsistic exercise. As he saw it, a person who indulged in escapism was analogous to a person trying to escape a prison, in search of something ultimately greater and more real than the prison walls in which he was trapped. It was not about the self-worship of the human imagination. That way, he would have said, lay madness. It was about reaching outside of oneself for something greater than oneself. He of course presented these ideas in the context of his Christian belief, which the Inklings shared. To him, fantasy was not or should not be a rejection of reality, but was fundamentally loyal to reality. Chesterton thought that it was everyone's duty to be a patriot, loyal to "the Flag of the World."
We see such ideas, for instance, in C.S. Lewis' The Silver Chair, in the debate between Puddleglum et al. and the Emerald Queen. This debate can be read on many levels, but on one level, it is a debate about "escapism" between a jailer and her prisoners. This core idea -- this "joke" -- is one that Lewis took directly from Chesterton.
HPL and Chesterton were contemporaries. I doubt HPL read much Chesterton, and the one time I recall him mentioning Chesterton, he dismisses him with a sneer.
HPL was, in his own way, very much preoccupied with escapism. However, he was unable to put these ideas in the context of a Christian framework. For him, the lure for escapism, though perhaps healthy by itself, was also, under his materialist philosophy, logically, a lure towards solipsism. And of course, that way lies madness. HPL struggled with these contradictions in his fiction,, without, I suppose, ever fully resolving them. But one does see certain curious developments.
One of the most solipsitic of HPL's works is an early piece called "Celephais" (1922), wherein the hero, Kuranes, retreats from dreary reality into the world of dreams. This is, however, quickly followed by "Hypnos" (1923) where a retreat into dreams leads to horror and madness.
Similar (sort of) to Celephais, is "The Silver Key" (written 1926, published 1929), where Randolph Carter, the hero, retreats from dreary adulthood into the world of his boyish imagination. But HLP's later exploration of this issue suggest that, this too, is a dead end.
> My article was addressed to people versed in
> Tolkien and interested in the Inklings, and who
> might be interested in an assessment of Lovecraft
> as a creator of a "legendarium" somewhat as
> Tolkien was, though of much less scope and depth.
> It seemed to me that, in the four stories I
> identified, Lovecraft presented almost everything
> that matters for making the claim for him as a
> "mythopoeic" or "myth-making" author.
HPL was definitely infected, to some extent, with the world-building bug. He certainly did not carry it to Tolkien's extreme, but, on the other hand, I don't know why one would want to limit its scope by keeping it to four narrow works.
HPL was more inclined to expand his world-building, by incorporating by reference other works he liked, such as certain tales of R.E. Howard or Clark Ashton Smith or Robert Chambers. This was one way of rejecting the solipsism implied by "Celephais". He wanted his imaginary world to be something that was ultimately bigger than himself.
> And they
> are "mature" fictions" in the sense, on one hand,
> of showing him at the height of his powers as a
> maker of a "secondary world," and, on the other
> hand, of being less constrained by pulp horror
> fiction conventions or other limitations than he
> is in many of his stories.
HPL was never "restrained" by pulp fiction conventions. He might have been influenced, however, by the sort of stuff he enjoyed reading as a boy.
> I'm afraid that I found myself unable to complete
> a second reading of The Dream-Quest of Unknown
> Kadath a few years ago (the first having been when
> I was a teenager and would read anything by
> Lovecraft).
"The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" is ultimately a rejection the solipsism of "Celephais" and "The Silver Key". For one, the dream world is made so vast, that is is hard for the reader to imagine that it is all in Randolph Carter's head. One can suspend disbelief in this mystical realm, in a way one cannot do with the disappointing "Celephais".
During his quest, Carter meets Kuranes in his city of Celephais, and we learn that things have not worked out that well for Kuranes. This is a direct rejection of the implied solipsistic message of "Celephais".
Finally, the dream-quest leads Randolph to the brink of hell and madness. Carter ultimately saves himself by hurling himself off the Shantak, and falling to the green earth of New England below. Thus does Carter (and HPL) declare his allegiance to "the Flag of the World", as Chesterton might put it.
This reminded me strongly of a similar scene in Chesterton's "The Ball and the Cross", where a hero saves himself by leaping from Prof. Lucifer's flying machine, as it heads for the dark mad stars. I don't think HPL was influenced by the earlier book. But I still find the analogy striking.
> My impression is that few readers
> would contend for its being a "mature" work (or
> that Lovecraft would have).
"Dream Quest" certainly has transitional aspects to it, as far as his approach to "escapism" is concerned. IIRC it was the last thing he wrote in the "dream cycle", until E. Hoffman Price nudged him into writing a sequel to "The Silver Key". But the sequel, "Through the Gates of the Silver Key", also sends Carter to hell and madness, and ends with him, perhaps unsuccessfully this time, trying to return to the green earth of New England.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2 Apr 19 | 02:03PM by Platypus.