Thanks Kyberean, perhaps I'll give both books a try when I get the time, as they each sound interesting enough to be worth the effort.

The "Demonian Face" is an interesting anecdote--I wasn't familiar with that one- and I suppose that would make at least "three" supranormal experiences for CAS (if we add that to the two I've mentioned). What to make of that, I wonder? It's difficult to draw conclusions about such things, but it certainly makes one think...

And correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it true that Lovecraft didn't write a single ghost story (in the traditional M.R. James sense, that is)? I understand that wasn't his "thing," but you would think he would have tried his hand at it at least once, just for the sake of having shown that he could do it.

The "White Witch" story was good.(I found it amusing that one person saw a woman walking a dog, while the others saw only nebulous lights!)It kind of makes me regret that we've lost the quaint Victorian custom of telling a ghost story on Christmas Eve. (I know, it's a year away!) In any case, our age has become too rational by half, and I second CAS when he said he hoped there was something that people like Einstein and Co. had overlooked.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 19 Jan 09 | 02:43AM by Dexterward.

Dexterward:
I would consider "The Outsider" as Lovecraft's token exercise in the typical ghost story -- though, of course, one doesn't realize this until the very end of the tale! "The Tree," as well, might count as a vengeful ghost tale.

I agree with you that these days, people are far too "rational-minded" for their own good. Ah, well, that only makes the believers in the supernatural all the more esoterically interesting!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 19 Jan 09 | 11:34AM by ArkhamMaid.

My memory is very poor, but are not things like "In the Vault" and "The Statement of Randolph Carter" ghost stories? Certainly not in the M R James mold, but still.

But clearly Lovecraft picked up the general "antiquarian" framework, if not the subject matter, of his later stories from James: The investigation of ancient manuscripts that gradually uncovers horrors.

Thanks for reminding me of "In the Vault" -- that definitely counts as a ghost story. "The Statement of Randolph Carter" might possibly be argued as more of a Cthulhu Mythos tale (due to the presence of Warren's grimoire), but "In the Vault" is in the best style of the traditional ghostly tale.

The difficulty with the concept of the "supernatural" is that one can always expand the definition of the "natural" to accommodate it. One simply re-defines the “physical” or the “material” to include new forms of “matter”, which is itself yet another concept. Modern physics does this constantly, with its “quarks”, its “ghostly neutrinos”, and its “strange attractors at a distance”. The situation quickly devolves into absurdity—with modern physics, we find ourselves already into the realm of what the Ancients would call the “metaphysical” or "supernatural"!

We should remember that, in the end, these are just human conceptual categories, with all the weaknesses that that fact implies. CAS realized this fact quite clearly, I think. That's why he largely stayed away from the "materialism" debates, and had the good sense to be as skeptical of conventional claims regarding the "supernatural" as he was of materialistic science, or any other form of human "knowledge".

Aside: It's simultaneously amusing and sad that CAS so often chooses Einstein as his whipping boy and as the representative poster child for purely materialistic, blinkered scientism. Einstein stated that "Imagination is more important than knowledge" and that "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted". I cannot imagine CAS disagreeing with either of those statements.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 19 Jan 09 | 01:18PM by Kyberean.

I agree that poor Einstein probably shouldn't have been cited quite so often -- I feel that Smith would probably have found Nietzsche a more obvious opponent, considering Nietzsche's views in "On the Genealogy of Morals" regarding poets who praise "the beyond."

Also, there is of course no contradiction in having a rationalistic world-view and writing stories of the supernatural. They are works of the imagination, asking questions like "What would it be like if there were in fact ghosts (even though we know that in reality there are not)?" In fact, Lovecraft went to considerable length (either in his essay on supernatural horror or in his correspondence; I forget) to argue that the true frisson of horror can be felt only by the materialist, since people who already believe in the existence of "God" or fairies will not be particularly perturbed by other things that also contradict reason and the evidence of the senses.

Jojo Lapin X Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Also, there is of course no contradiction in
> having a rationalistic world-view and writing
> stories of the supernatural. They are works of the
> imagination, asking questions like "What would it
> be like if there were in fact ghosts (even though
> we know that in reality there are not)?" In fact,
> Lovecraft went to considerable length (either in
> his essay on supernatural horror or in his
> correspondence; I forget) to argue that the true
> frisson of horror can be felt only by the
> materialist, since people who already believe in
> the existence of "God" or fairies will not be
> particularly perturbed by other things that also
> contradict reason and the evidence of the senses.

It's ironic that Lovecraft should have thought such a patently ridiculous thing, seeing as how a great deal of his favourite weird fiction writers such as Clark Ashton Smith (who believed in the supernatural), Algernon Blackwood (a spiritualist), and Arthur Machen (a Catholic mystic) were not materialists at all.

ArkhamMaid:

Nietzsche was no metaphysician, and he hated any sort of otherworldly philosophical rationalizations, to be sure, but I actually think that CAS would have found Nietzsche an ally. I say this because each was skeptical of the very categories of human thought and the human senses to conceptualize accurately any form of reality. One of my favorite CAS quotations is, "“All human thought, all science, all religion, is the holding of a candle to the night of the universe”.

JoJo Lapin X:

You are absolutely right that there is no such contradiction, and Lovecraft himself is a perfect example of that fact. Of course, Lovecraft is also an example of someone who is much more open-minded regarding outre' phenomena than the average scientist or philosophical materialist. Lovecraft would have insisted that anomalous phenomena were material in nature, but he was very open to the likelihood that such phenomena exist, even if they are beyond our present means of detection.

I understand Lovecraft's observation regarding materialists and horror, but, as I think I argued in another long-dead thread here, Lovecraft's assertion is debatable. For instance, three of the four "modern masters" whom Lovecraft cites in his essay (M.R. James, Machen, and Blackwood) were believers in the supernatural, whereas only the fourth such "master", Dunsany, shared Lovecraft's skepticism and materialism.

Edit: ArkhamMaid, you and I were posting the same observation about Lovecraft simultaneously!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 19 Jan 09 | 02:37PM by Kyberean.

Kyberean Wrote:
> Edit: ArkhamMaid, you and I were posting the same
> observation about Lovecraft simultaneously!

No harm in making a good point twice! ;) I agree with you that when it comes to a viewpoint of ironic skepticism, Nietzsche and Smith would find themselves allied; but I still cannot help but think that Smith's viewpoints regarding the ability of fiction to actually function as a mystic means of accessing and understanding the supernatural (see "The Philosophy of the Weird Tale") would alienate him too much from Nietzsche's philosophy in general.

It would be interesting, certainly, to tally the affinities and disaffinities between Nietzsche's philosophy and CAS's. I agree that there would be differences, but one affinity I also see is that between Nietzsche's "poetry of the heights" and CAS's cosmic perspective.

Yes, but fortunately it's possible to draw much sustenance from Nietzsche, without actually being a full-fledged "Nietzschean." (How many of us really are, after about the age of twenty two?--not counting the guy from "A Fish Called Wanda"?!) At any rate, I think it's more a matter of personality type, than of superficial differences in philosophy or world-view. In that respect, I think their (i.e., Smith and Nietzsche) general similarity of temperament would have covered over a multitude of doctrinal discrepancies.


Of course, there is a whole list of "otherworldy" types on whom Nietzsche had a profound impact. Carl Jung (the Swiss medium who shared his house with a poltergeist), and Hermann Hesse come immediately to mind. In both of these cases, I think that the appeal of Nietzsche was the Dionysian/poetic aspect of his life and writing, rather than the systematic coherence of his thought. And I can't but think that Smith would have seen the matter in a similar light.

Well, in fairness to Nietzsche, I don't think that he was a "Nietzschean", either, just as Marx used to say, "I am not a Marxist". Nietzsche was as anti-systematic as they come, and anyone who reduces Nietzsche's thought to a system automatically becomes anti-Nietzsche. That flexibility of thought and lack of dogmatic certainty seem to be characteristics that CAS would have admired.

That quibble aside, I agree with you. Solitude, independence, a love of poetry, a hatred of philistinism... the similarities between CAS and Nietzsche do outweigh the differences. Despite Nietzsche's revolt against the metaphysical, the sorts of problems with which he wrestled have profound spiritual (in the non-otherworldly sense of that term) implications, and in that sense, he was a deeply spiritual individual. As you indicate, others, more open toward the "spiritual" in the conventional sense of the term, have realized this fact, as well.