Re: Werewolf query
Posted by:
Gavin Callaghan (IP Logged)
Date: 14 May, 2007 06:17PM
I finally found the quote I was looking for; it was in an old, old issue of Lovecraft Studies, submitted by Peter Cannon.
Martinus Wrote:
----------------------------------
> You need to work on your arguments there.
> 1) Black is a very common colour in horror
> fiction. Why does it have to be black people that
> provided Lovecraft with the colour of the
> shoggoths?
1) True, but then one has to consider how this “blackness†of the Shoggoths is presented in Lovecraft’s fiction, that is, in conjunction with the language of slavery, trouble, and subjugation, as when Lovecraft speaks of the “occasionally stubborn volition†of the shoggoths, of how “They seem to have become peculiarly intractable toward the middle of the Permian age, perhaps one hundred and fifty million years ago, when a veritable war of resubjugation was waged upon them by the marine old Onesâ€, Shoggoths forming, Lovecraft writes, “ideal slaves to perform the heavy work of the community†--an idea which has tended to be glossed over by such critics as Fritz Leiber, who describe the Shoggoths, rather naively, as “machinesâ€. (Leiber writes: “They [the Old Ones] also created hypnotically controlled protoplasmic masses which were their chief machines. These shoggoths eventually evolved mental powers which made them extremely dangerous creatures. (Here we begin to see Lovecraft’s own evolving sympathy for his monsters; by and large he is for the Old Ones and against the shoggoths.)†(LOVECRAFT REMEMBERED 481) Indeed, there is a rather eerie resemblance between Lovecraft’s imaginary Shoggoths, and what Dr. Joel Kovel, in his book White Racism: A Psychohistory, calls the imaginary “black body†created within the symbolic matrix of aversive racism in the American North --what Robert Waugh in Lovecraft Studies 40 calls “the untransformed excremental images†of the Shoggoths at the climax of “At the Mountains of Madnessâ€.
> 2) The eyes -- I've checked every occurrence of
> the word "eye" in At the Mountains of Madness, and
> there's no connection to women anywhere. Need I
> point out that there are other things that have
> eyes as well, including men, potatoes, anteaters,
> squids, and turtles? I simply don't see the female
> connection.
2) When one considers “eyes†as representative of women, one considers not only “At the Mountains of Madnessâ€, but also the rest of Lovecraft’s fiction, in which “Panâ€, “Astarteâ€, “flutesâ€, “pipingâ€, “eyesâ€, the “moonâ€, and other interconnected and associated aspects of pagan and Hellenic myth, are inverted by Lovecraft to form --haphazardly, to be sure-- a symbolic caricature of decadence and decay. The “eye†aspect of this system is particularly complex, applying both to women and to sensuality and decadence in general, and of course it is very hard to do justice to it in one brief sentence.
As early as “Psychopomposâ€, we find the Dame du Blois causing evil “with glances weird and wild†--a power , or rather corruptive influence, which she passes to her husband (“Whilst ancient Pierre [the aged often err]/Laid all her husband‘s mystery to her.â€) In “Arthur Jermynâ€, Lovecraft describes Alfred Jermyn’s romance with a circus gorilla, writing of how, “With this gorilla Alfred Jermyn was singularly fascinated, and on many occasions the two would eye each other for long periods through the intervening bars†--an image which is parodied later in Lovecraft’s revision of “Arthur Jermynâ€, “Medusa’s Coilâ€, in which (the “negressâ€) Marceline de Russy “eyes†the equally strange-eyed decadent artist Edward Marsh --whose decadent eyes allow him to see her “true†form. In “The Horror at Red Hookâ€, Lovecraft describes a proto-shoggoth in the form of a “cloudy, semi-visible bulk of shapeless elemental things with eyesâ€, to which, predictably, Lovecraft then adds the elements of the “sea†and “nymphs†with the appearance of “LILITHâ€, whom he describes “naked phosphorescent thing which swam into sight, scrambled ashore, and climbed up to squat leeringly on a carved golden pedestal in the backgroundâ€. (This pedestal will later reappear…with Cthulhu sitting upon it.) In “The Thing on the Doorstepâ€, Lovecraft writes, “she [Asenath] would frighten her schoolmates with leers and winks of an inexplicable kindâ€; She [Asenath] eyed him continually with an almost predatory air…â€, etc., etc. Occasionally, Lovecraft uses the “eyeing†to refer to men, as when Lovecraft speaks of Herbert West’s gradual Pickman-like degeneration into a “ghoul†who “eyes†“half-covetously… any very healthy living physique†--but he does so, significantly, in the context of the notorious and decadent homosexual figure of Heliogabalus or Elagabalus, suggesting, again, that decadence which Lovecraft associates with such “eyeingâ€, as seen in his association of the eye with the decadent artist Marsh, mentioned above.
> 3) Shapeshifting or amorphous creatures are also
> fairly common in horror and science fiction -- do
> all of them reflect anti-semitism? If yes, how do
> you explain Bloch's "Terror in Cut-Throat Cove"?
> If no, then why would Lovecraft's shapeshifting
> creatures be an expression of anti-semitsim when
> those of other authors aren't?
3) The anti-Semitic aspects of the shoggoth derive not from their “amorphousnessâ€, (which Lovecraft would seem to have derived instead from Machen’s story “The Great God Panâ€, and which would seem to represent certain aspects of feminity --Lovecraft later attributing Pan’s daughter, Helen Vaughn’s, shoggothian change of sex in the Machen story to the male/female Asenath Waite in “The Thing on the Doorstepâ€--) but rather from the “imitativeness†of the shoggoths, the supposed unoriginality and imitativeness of the Jews having a long history in anti-Semitic rhetoric.
These Shoggoths, recall, are wholly “imitative†in structure --capable of “self-modeling powers†“in various imitative forms implanted by past suggestion†---a description which Lovecraft makes in the context of discussing the latter-day “accidental intelligence†and independent will of the Shoggoths, which directly leads to the decay of the Old Ones who are governing them. This decay of the Old Ones’ society, detectable through their art, involves what critic Robert Waugh astutely recognizes as an anti-Semitic argument, Lovecraft associating the latter-day Old Ones’ statues --with their noticeable imitative quality and “degradation of skillâ€-- with “such hybrid things as the ungainly Palmyrene sculptures fashioned in the Oman mannerâ€, these works being no more than “degenerate murals aping and mocking the things they had superceded.†Palmyra, significantly, was a wealthy mercantile city in Syria associated with the silk trade, inhabited by a small population, mainly Jews. This supposedly “imitative“ quality of Jewish achievements is apparently a staple of anti-Semitic rhetoric, featured even in the writings of Adolph Hitler himself, who writes in Mein Kampf,
“…the most essential characteristic we must always bear in mind is that there has never been a Jewish art and accordingly there is none today either; …what they do accomplish in the field of art is either patchwork or intellectual theft… To what extent the Jew takes over foreign culture, imitating or rather ruining it, can be seen from the fact that he is mostly found in the art which seems to require least original invention, the art of acting. But even here, in reality, he is only a ‘juggler’, or rather an ape;…â€
Notice here Hitler’s association of Jews with acting, just as Lovecraft elsewhere principally associates the Shoggoths with mimicry, Hitler, significantly, further compounding this “acting†with an analogy with apes ---an analogy, too, which likewise has numerous parallels with the bestial degeneration so common throughout Lovecraft’s writings, as well as when Lovecraft speaks of the “degenerate murals aping and mocking the things they had superceded†in “At the Mountains of Madnessâ€. (The city of Palmyra, interestingly, was likewise ruled by a beautiful black queen named Zenobia, a self-prolaimed "Queen of the East" who, it is thought, killed her husband by assassination, and subsequently attempted to assert her independence from Rome [a high crime in the eyes of Lovecraft], thus leading to her removal and the triumphant Roman intervention in the city --this, along with the fact that Palmyra’s chief deity was the “moon†--likewise a symbol of degeneration in the works of Lovecraft-- showing that Palmyra easily served as a multifaceted cypher for Lovecraft’s endless and interconnected polemical antagonisms.)
>
> That's your personal interpretation, not a
> commonly agreed-upon fact.
Any attempt at a derivation of the word “shoggoth†must, of course, remain tentative, which is why I used the word “seems†in my earlier response. But I think “Shub-Niggurath†forms the best candidate for a source for the later “Shoggoth†contraction, because “Shub-Niggurath†already contains within it the multiple matrix of “horror†--or, if one prefers, irrational hatred-- which Lovecraft was later to compact within the black-hole of the shoggoth --i.e. the black, the Hebraic, and the feminine. One simply does not find such things associated with “Yog-Sothothâ€, who as I understand it, is apparently intended to be some sort of formless, chaotic deity, or in such similar words as “Yuggothâ€, etc., although of course one must realize that all of Lovecraft’s supposedly “cosmic†entities function to some extent as caricatures of a pagan and Hellenic pantheon whose Bacchanalian excesses and mysticism Lovecraft associated with decadence and decay.
>A Swedish scholar
> interpreted the word "shoggoths" as being inspired
> by the Goths, who was the downfall of the Roman
> civilisation in more or less the same way that the
> shoggoths caused the destruction of the
> civilisation of the Old Ones. I'd say that's just
> as valid.
An interpretation of the word “shoggoth†which finds a derivation from the Goths who destroyed the Roman empire-- and I thank you very much Martinus for bringing this to my attention-- would still tend to confirm my view of the symbolic function of the shoggoth, since as I should have noted, and as Robert Waugh notes elsewhere, the shoggoths represent a multi-faceted symbol in which Lovecraft created what was, for him, the culmination, the very apotheosis, of horror and decay. And for Lovecraft the central component of this “horror†was the undermining of what he saw as the traditional social order --whether by “rebelliousâ€, “uncontrollableâ€, or “intractable†slaves, or by barbarians such as the Goths.
> I can't see either why "Shub-Niggurath" should be
> necessarily racist. Lovecraft knew Latin -- is it
> impossible that he was directly inspired by the
> Latin word for "black"?
Of course, even if “Shub-Niggurath†does reflect a Latin origin for Lovecraft’s word, Lovecraft is still using Latin to represent the word “blackâ€, which then leads us back again to the question: why it is that Lovecraft should specifically associate a goat with blackness? --this then leading us naturally to consider the (feminine) witch cult and Lovecraft’s depiction of it, and the women associated with it, as transmitters of decadence, bestiality, and hybrid degradation, as well as Lovecraft‘s association of women with blacks throughout his fiction.
>Or that he was inspired by
> Dunsany's "Sheol-Nugganoth"?
Even if Lovecraft’s “Shub-Niggurath†can be regarding as being derived from Dunsany’s “Sheol-Nugganoth†--and, again, I thank you very much for this suggestion-- and certainly the close resemblance makes it seem likely-- even so, one is still left with the question of why Lovecraft has so altered the word to conform to his larger racial and ideological symbology of “blacknessâ€.
>Besides, if
> Shub-Niggurath is an expression of racism, and if
> racism was so important to Lovecraft -- then why
> isn't Shub-Niggurath mentioned more often?
“Shub-Niggurath†may not have been used often in Lovecraft’s canon, but one can certainly analyze it where it was used, at which point we find that it was but one small element within a larger grammar which Lovecraft used to convey his conservative ideological polemic against (what he perceived to be) racial and societal decay.
> One more thing: I can't see how a guy who was so
> devoted to his aunts as Lovecraft obviously was
> could be the misogynist you claim.
As for Lovecraft’s “auntsâ€: a man, of course, can never choose his relatives , but he can certainly choose his views. And if we study the women who, in Lovecraft’s fiction, are depicted as agents and transmitters of decay, one finds that these women are, usually, nothing like his aunts, but rather naked nymphs like those he satirized in his poems to Alfred Galpin, and who, as in “The Horror at Red Hookâ€, participate in the orgiastic, bestial Bacchanalias which Lovecraft so deplored; either that, or as aged witches whom Lovecraft invariable associates with influences of decay. (In “The Man of Stoneâ€, for example, Lovecraft attributes the transmission of witch-cult lore through Mad Dan’s family, including rites of “Shub-Niggurath! The Goat with a Thousand Young and “sacrificing the Black Goat at Hallow Eve….†[HM 207], specifically to his “mother’s side†of the family, “handed down†through the Van Kauran family since 1587â€, Lovecraft reiterating later how Mad Dan “practiced all sorts of hellish ceremonies handed down by his mother’s peopleâ€. [HM 213] Elsewhere, in Lovecraft’s “The Diary of Alonzo Typerâ€, too, this transmissible of the decadent witch tradition will be associated specifically with women, in this case “Dirck van de Heyl’s wife†from Salem, “a daughter of the unmentionable Abaddon Corey.†[HM 306]) Other women in Lovecraft’s fiction correspond to the Medusa/Gorgon/Semiramis/Zenobia mode of woman (i.e., the Near Eastern femme fatale): the Dame du Blois, Marceline deRussy, Queen Nitocris --all stand-ins, basically, for Astarte, and for that “Mother Goddess†whom Lovecraft, in “Out of the Aeonsâ€, specifically identifies with Shub-Niggurath. (HM 273) This figure of the goddess reaches its ultimate inversion and caricature in Lovecraft’s “Arthur Jermynâ€, where the “goddess†of a tribe in Africa --and the wife of Lord Jermyn-- is revealed to be nothing other than a half-human white “apeâ€. In no case is there any discernable relation to Lovecraft’s aunts, except perhaps through contrast; the closest example to Lovecraft‘s aunts, Mrs. Gardner, from “The Colour Out of Spaceâ€, ends up devolving herself, until she is “walking on all fours†(imagery associated by Lovecraft with decadence throughout his fiction) and making leering “faces†like those he associates with Lilith, Dame du Blois, and Asenath Waite.
Scott Connors wrote:
---------------------------------------
>> I've been toying with an essay on "At the Mountains of Madness" as
>>reflecting Southern fears of "servile insurrection." This
>>is not as strange as it might seem.
I would agree with Scott Connors wholeheartedly with regard to “At the Mountains of Madness†directly “reflecting Southern fears of ‘servile insurrection’â€, except that I would expand the scope of Lovecraft’s subtext even further, to reflect a lifelong polemic against what Lovecraft termed, in his racist poem “De Triumpho Naturae: The Triumph of Nature Over Northern Ignorance†(1905), the “saturnalian feast†of “the savage black, the ape-resembling beastâ€. This “Saturnalian†triumph of the “servants†at the expense of their “mastersâ€-- the Roman Saturnalia being associated, as it is during Boxing Day in England even today, with a switching of places between masters and servants-- is a constant theme (and a constant worry) throughout Lovecraft’s fiction, and often represented by the symbol of “beheading†in his works, i.e. a “dismemberment†of the natural order. And whether it be the struggle between African-American slaves and their masters, or between the Irish vs. the English, or the Indians vs. the English, etc., etc., etc. --in the struggle of masters vs. servants, Lovecraft invariably sides with the masters, as representatives of order against chaos. In this sense, the popular interpretation, starting with Fritz Leiber and others, and continuing on down to this day, of Lovecraft’s famous line “…and poor Old Ones!…Radiates, vegetables, monstrosities, star spawn--whatever they had been, they were men!â€, as reflecting some modification of Lovecraft’s attitudes toward his “monstersâ€, and perhaps even a softening of his conservative and ideological views, reflects a serious misreading of the text --Lovecraft reserving his encomium only for those creatures which, in his parable of Spenglerian decay, represent the humans and the masters of his tale --certainly not for the “bestial†Shoggoths who, through their stubbornness and intractableness (common American epithets for blacks and black slaves), bring about their decadence, hybdrism/degredation, democratic weakness and disunity, and eventual and inevitable downfall.
The only instance I have ever found of Lovecraft actually siding with an aboriginal or native people against an colonial force or oppressor, is in his early praise for the aboriginal Pelasgians of Greece, whose later absorption into the larger populations of the Greeks and the Romans he credits with the resultant and eventual greatness of Greece and Rome. (LETTERS TO GALPIN 89)
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 14 May 07 | 06:24PM by Gavin Callaghan.