Re: Lovecraft: definitive texts?
Posted by:
Gavin Callaghan (IP Logged)
Date: 21 October, 2008 05:30PM
Re.: Lovecraft and Blackwood; Blackwood, like the early/youthful Lovecraft, was a convinced pagan, but whereas for Lovecraft this early tentative Hellenism was replaced almost immediately with a cynical/satirical Roman conservatism, for Blackwood this paganism was deep, mystical, and abiding. According to Blackwood biographer Mike Ashley, Blackwood’s “The Willows†had its roots in Blackwood’s superstitious belief, expressed in his essay “The Psychology of Placesâ€, that he always found it necessary while traveling to go “through a ritual-like process when establishing camp as if to appease the godsâ€. And while Blackwood’s menacing atmosphere in “The Willows†-particularly the idea of the threatening/otherworldly aspects of foliage- will likewise pass directly into Lovecraft’s fiction (i.e., in the form of the revenge-device of the falling branch in “The Tree“, and the vampiric/seemingly-conscious foliage in “The Hound“, “The Lurking Fear“, and “The Colour Out of Space“), in Lovecraft, this idea of the alien menace and the pagan sovereignty of nature will be transformed instead into one of the inherent corruption and decadence of nature, and the related corruption of those who would, in the form of Bacchanalian/Herm/fertility rites, attempt to propitiate it.
Re.: “The Colour Out of Space“; “The Colour Out of Space†is, along with “The Shadow Out of Time†and “Dagonâ€, one of Lovecraft’s premier cosmic works, it is true. But even here you can see inverted examples of Lovecraft’s earlier Hellenism, and evidences of his overriding concern with the topics of "hybridism" or animalistic degeneration: the ostensibly “cosmic†degeneration which affects the Gardner family, for example, manifesting itself in imagery of female corruption, speechlessness, and walking “on all fours†-all aspects of Lovecraft’s “lopingâ€, semi-lycanthropic, cannibalistic ghouls- while the initial vegetative fecundity of the Gardner farm is revealed, in an inversion of pagan fertility imagery, to contain nothing but decay and corruption. It is this overriding -one might say “morbidâ€- concern with decadence and decay, which reveals the ostensibly “cosmic†Lovecraft as a direct, if unacknowledged, forerunner of such “mundane†horror writers as Robert Bloch and Stephen King.
It is interesting to note that several classical features are also found in Lovecraft’s forerunner to “The Colour Out of Spaceâ€, namely “The Green Meadowâ€, which also features a meteor coming down to earth -this meteor, however, not bringing corruption, per se, but rather a prehistoric “rock-bookâ€, written in Greek of the “purest classical qualityâ€. It is also interesting to note that Lovecraft’s “collaborator†on this tale, Winifred Jackson, was also married to a black writer, and that Lovecraft himself was, it seems, somehow involved with Jackson, whether platonically or romantically. This fact may have some bearing, one thinks, on Lovecraft’s later association of “blacks†with “women†throughout his written corpus -whether in his view of “blacks†and “women†as twin “troublesâ€, which infested/corrupted the colonies after their introduction to America (“In 1619, wives were sent out for the colonials, and in the same year the first cargo of African blacks arrived-- proving that troubles never come singly†[MW 336]); his association of the “screaming†of “women†with the “howling and praying†of “Negroes†in the context of the destruction of a Southern plantation at the hands of Northern soldiers in “The Rats in the Walls†(“The Federal soldiers shouting, the women screaming, and the Negroes howling and prayingâ€); his association of sexually-active “women“, here described, as Lovecraft was often wont, as “nymphsâ€, with “a Harlem flatâ€, in his “humorous†poem, “The Nymph’s Reply to the Modern Businessman†(1917); Lovecraft’s personification of this “blacksâ€/“women†relation in the person of the “negress†Madeleine de Russy, in his collaborative “Medusa’s Coil†-and his ultimate linkage of “blacks†with “women†in the form of the black/eye-filled (i.e. feminine) Shoggoths, which are responsible for the corruption and Palmyrean decay of the Old Ones’ civilization in Lovecraft’s parable for Western racial/societal decay, “At the Mountains of Madness.†(Lovecraft’s father, too, seems to have been overtly concerned with “blacks†and “womenâ€, cf. Lovecraft’s father Winfield’s bizarre hallucinations that “’three men-- one a Negro-- in the room above [were] trying to do violence to his wife’â€. [JOSHI 14])
Re.: “Life is a hideous thingâ€; To consider only Lovecraft’s statement,
“Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer demoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousand fold more hideous. Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species--if separate species we be-- for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world.â€
The context in which we find this statement -Lovecraft’s loathsome, extremely xenophobic/racist story of feminine/Eastern decay, “Arthur Jermynâ€- is very telling, the “shocking revelations†which Lovecraft hints at, above, not being cosmic at all, but rather mundane- being related solely to the origins of the human species, “if separate species we beâ€. Lovecraft expressed a similar idea in a 1923 letter of his to Frank Long, in which Lovecraft is discussing the “anthropological background†of Lovecraft’s cannibalistic story of feminine decay, “The Rats in the Wallsâ€:
“No line betwixt ‘human’ and ‘non-human’ organisms is possible, for all animate Nature is one-- with differences only in degree; never in kind… I know that the tendency is to give a separate classification to the Neanderthal--Piltdown-Heidelberg type-- using the flashy word ‘Eoanthropus’-- but in truth this creature was probably as much a man as a gorilla. Many anthropologists have detected both Negroid and gorilla resemblances in these ‘dawn’ skulls, and to my mind it’s a safe bet that they were exceedingly low, hairy Negroes existing perhaps 400,000 years ago and having perhaps the rudiments of a guttural language. Certainly, it is not extravagant to imagine the existence of a sort of sadistic cult amongst such beasts, which might later develop into a formal Satanism. It is all the more horrible to imagine such a thing, on account of the intimations of extra physical malignancy in such a thought. Indeed, I think that certain traits in many lower animals suggest, to the mind whose imagination is not dulled by scientific literalism, the beginnings of activities horrible to contemplate in evolved mankind….†(SL I 258)
Lovecraft’s reference to a “sadistic cult amongst such beastsâ€, is recapitulated elsewhere, viz. Lovecraft‘s “apes danced in Asia†image in “The Horror at Red Hookâ€. The phrase, meanwhile, “activities horrible to contemplate in evolved mankind…â€, in his letter to Long, above, is directly paralleled by his language in the “Arthur Jermyn†passage also quoted, where he writes of a “reserve of unguessed horrors“ -the phrases “activities horrible to contemplate†and “reserve of unguessed horrors†being equivalent to each other, and both referring, apparently, to sadistic/cannibalistic and/or sexual activities. This cannibalistic concern is reinforced by the initial words in Lovecraft’s “Arthur Jermyn†declaration itself, namely, that “Life is a hideous thing, …â€, phraseology which directly parallels that other “hideous thing†referred to in the sub-human and cannibalistic climax of “The Rats in the Wallsâ€, where it functions as a circumlocution for the degenerate de la Poer’s apparent eating of the "plump" Corporal Norrys.
A similar, and closely related, confounding of the cosmic and the mundane, can be found in Lovecraft’s earlier story of mundane cannibalistic devolution/decay, “The Lurking Fearâ€, in which Lovecraft refers, however incongruously, to “demon scratchings we sometimes hear on the farthest rim of space, yet from which our own finite vision has given us merciful immunity†-language which prefigures both the “ratâ€/“scratching†language of Lovecraft’s cannibalistic Atys/Cybele story, “The Rats in the Wallsâ€, as well as the much-celebrated and supposedly “cosmic†introduction to Lovecraft’s (xenophobic/racist) “The Call of Cthulhu“, where Lovecraft writes,
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day 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.â€
Indeed, whereas as a child I had always been inclined to think of Lovecraft’s “Call of Cthulhu†as the summit of cosmicism, I was shocked upon rereading it as an adult to find less of cosmicism than I remembered, the story instead being more in the vein of a paranoid/xenophobic/racist rant, a Conservative apocalypse, an aristocratic lament for Western and racial decay. And it is a striking aspect of Lovecraft’s fiction that his earlier work “Dagon†-which in many ways is a forerunner in several respects of “Call of Cthulhuâ€- is also far more cosmic than its successor; and this is due, primarily, to the absence of Lovecraft’s distracting socio-racial conservative/white supremacist polemic from the narrative.
Cthulhu himself -although ostensibly a cosmic entity, he apparently has a gender- has his origins in Lovecraft’s earlier story of cannibalistic, rural decay, “The Picture in the House†-more specifically, in Thomas Huxley’s erroneous description of Pigafetta’s Regnum Congo, which Lovecraft himself had never seen, Huxley describing a “winged, two legged, crocodile-headed dragon†in the woodcut illustrations, language which parallels Lovecraft’s later description of Cthulhu himself, as being bi-pedal (a â€human caricature“ with “vaguely anthropoid outline“), with “rudimentary wings†or with “long, narrow wings behind“. Significantly, as in Huxley’s original description and in Lovecraft’s later redaction, where they both speak, respectively, about “the imagination†of the cannibalistic plate’s illustrators, Lovecraft will likewise, in “The Call of Cthulhuâ€, call attention to the “somewhat extravagant imagination†of the narrator in his description of Cthulhu. Noteworthy, too, is the presence of this “proto-Cthulhu†sysygy in relation to the White/Black/Indian-like men and half-man/half-monkey-like creatures in the cannibalistic woodcuts -all images, again, which will be recapitulated in the hybrid/syzygies symbolic of human devolution/decay found throughout the Lovecraftian canon.
Cthulhu’s “hybrid†nature (Cthulhu being described as being akin to “an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricatureâ€, possessing “vaguely anthropoid outlineâ€) functions both as a caricature and projection of his equally “hybridâ€/“mongrel†orgiastic/Bacchanalian/ animalistic followers -as well as a reflection of the traditionalist Lovecraft’s favoring of the Roman, the ordered and the Classical to the chaotic modernism of the early 20th century -Lovecraft using the word “autochthonous†in 1935, in his essay “Heritage or Modernism: Common Sense in Art Forms†(MW 194), to describe the “error†made by modernists in supposing that the “ordered†art of past ages was an artificial construct produced by the genius of each age from modern materials, Lovecraft contrasting modern forms, unrooted in tradition (i.e., “autochthonousâ€), with Greek art, which “possessed root in Cretan, Egyptian, Persian, and Mesopotamian art.†For Lovecraft, in other words, unrooted, untraditional, and autochthonous art was symbolic of Western modernism and therefore decay.
The “rectangular block or pedestalâ€, meanwhile, upon which the hybrid/caricatural/ chaotic syzygy Cthulhu “squatted evilly†in “The Call of Cthulhu“, is earlier found, too -this time in a firmly Classical, feminine, and cannibalistic context - in the form of the “carved golden pedestal†upon which the nude sea-nymph Lilith likewise and similarly “squats†in “The Horror at Red Hook†(Cf. “..naked phosphorescent thing which swam into sight, scrambled ashore, and climbed up to squat leeringly on a carved golden pedestal in the background…â€; and Cf. “by the abominable naked phosphorescent thing that had squatted on the carved golden throne, and that now strode insolently,….†). Predictably, Lovecraft has this Lilith -the female prototype for those feminine and corruptive “witches†who carry on her traditions- preside over an cannibalistic ceremony of “Dionysiac fury†involving the slaying of the corpulent occult scholar Suydham -a counterpart to the sacrifice of the "corpulent" Cpl. Norrys in “The Rats in the Wallsâ€, and the killing of the fat cook by Cybele in “The Moon Bogâ€. Needless to say (although I do try to, at length, in my Dark Arcadia), the xenophobic nature of Lovecraft’s narrative in “The Horror at Red Hook†is as implicit and central to Lilith’s Bacchanalia, as it is to Cthulhu’s “hybrid†orgy in the later “Call of Cthulhuâ€. Lovecraft has simply learned to better disguise the polemical and caricatural origins of his Cthulhu “pantheon†in the latter narrative.
This nude Lilith with her pedestal, is probably another variation on “Shub-Niggurathâ€, who Lovecraft describes, I think in “The Moundâ€, as “the All-Mother and wife of the Not-to-Be-Named†-i.e., a consort of Cthulhu -this “Not-to-Be Named†terminology being yet another variation, it would seem, on Lovecraft’s “unnamable†or “hideous thing†terminology used in relation to cannibalistic/Bacchanalian rites. Analogous examples of this male/female consort relation can be found throughout the Lovecraft canon in relation to Bacchanalian/cannibalistic rites, whether the Pharaoh Kephren and his Ghoul Queen Nitocris, the Atys/Cybele myth in “The Rats in the Wallsâ€, the female witches and masculine ghouls of Arkham, the pairing of the Black Man of Arkham with the female witch Keziah Mason, etc., etc., etc. Significantly, Lovecraft, in “The Moundâ€, refers to Shub-Niggurath as “a kind of sophisticated Astarteâ€, whose worship, Lovecraft goes on, consists of “subtle orgiastic rites†-i.e. the same cannibalistic/sexual Bacchanalia which we find in "Call of Cthulhu".
Ultimately, then, Lovecraft’s ostensibly “cosmic†entities are less cosmic than caricatural, rooted in the teetotaler/White supremacist Lovecraft’s conservative/anti-Bacchanalian socio-/racial polemic. Earlier and similar examples of such attempts at caricatural transformation -by which Lovecraft attempted to elevate mundane, lycanthropic, or cannibalistic horror to a cosmic/trans-dimensional form- can be found in the early stories “The Shunned House†and “The Unnamableâ€, stories which reveal the caricatural/ polemical origins of his Cthulhu “pantheon.†The “unnamable†entities in “The Unnamableâ€, for example, are actually “psychic projections†of hybrid/“sub-human†individuals, described as “apparitions of gigantic bestial forms sometimes visible and sometimes only tangible.†This psychic projection of the horned, cloven-hoofed creature in “The Unnamableâ€, is doubly significant, since the creature is a clear caricature/inversion of the Hellenic Pan -a caricature which Lovecraft will build upon via Wilbur Whately in “The Dunwich Horrorâ€. Lovecraft is slowly learning, here, in "The Unnamableâ€, finding his true idiom of horror in an inversion of his previously beloved Bacchanalian/sensuous Hellenic deities. ( I go ad nauseum into the slow degrees by which he completed this process of polemical/ symbolic inversion in my [in progress] essay, Dark Arcadia: From Arcadia to Arkham.)
I think it is a testimony to Lovecraft’s power as a writer that he was able to communicate his own xenophobic fears and paranoia so seamlessly to the reader without the reader even being aware, and that he was able to elevate that mundane horror which he felt at foreigners and so-called “mongrelsâ€/"hybrids" etc. to a seemingly cosmic level. Indeed, some readers (Anton La Vey, Darrick Dishaw, the Cult of Cthulhu, et al.) have even found themselves able to create an actual “religion†from Lovecraft’s caricatures. But simply because Lovecraft was able to transform his obsession with cannibalism and his Puritan teetotalerism to the rim of infinity, does not mean that they belong there.
Edited 26 time(s). Last edit at 21 Oct 08 | 06:12PM by Gavin Callaghan.