I was wondering, Gavin... would you like some comments on the essay itself? I'm still working on the essay (time constraints being what they are), but I will say that, though I disagree quite strongly with you on some points, I also think it is a very thought-provoking piece, deserving of genuine consideration as a valid look at such imagery and its basis. But I don't wish to post such a response here should you not be interested.

jdworth Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I was wondering, Gavin... would you like some
> comments on the essay itself?

Very much so (in the affirmative.) Just so long as it isn't limited to: "This sucks, I won't even read this", which is what I once got in one of the HPL-website forums... To which I replied: "Why bother posting that you won't read it?; why not simply not read it?" To which he replied, "Nobody's going to read something this long", to which I repiled, "HPL is rolling over in his grave", to which he repiled, "You know, nobody's going to like you here if you're so stuck up", etc., etc., etc... (I'll try to track down the URL for this particular exchange, actually- it's pretty funny.)

The Internet: Strangers Insulting Strangers Since 1987.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 26 Oct 11 | 06:15PM by Gavin Callaghan.

I'll post it as soon as I have a chance to finish reading and formulating my response. Unfortunately, it has been a hellish week, and so this is taking much longer than I had anticipated, but I hope I can get it in to you by this weekend. For the moment, suffice to say that no, it isn't as limited as all that.... As I say, there are points where I strongly disagree with you, but even those I find of interest. On the other hand, there are several points where I think you are, if not right on the money, pretty darned close, and at the very least have argued a very strong case (not to mention making some connections I would not have made; which is, to me, one of the joys of reading such critical essays).

*** H.P. Lovecraft often acknowledged the apparent incongruity between his interest in weird-fiction on the one hand, and his concurrent rationalistic and materialistic philosophical ethic on the other: a contradiction symbolized by his interest both in the Roman Empire in terms of history, and in his interest in eighteenth-century English and colonial styles in terms of literature and architecture -eras which, (aside from the freakish rococo fads of artists like Aubrey Beardsley) are not usually associated with either the Romantic or the macabre impulse in literature. ***

Can I first introduce a bizarrely incongruent note and say 'Clark Ashton Smith'? Thanks, and apologies. In response to the HPL essay: I'm NOT a member of the recklessly masochistic community, so I didn't attempt the whole thing, but I WOULD like to teach by example and re-write that appropriately nightmarish opening line:

*** H.P. Lovecraft often acknowledged the apparent contradiction between his interest in weird fiction, on the one hand, and his rationalistic materialism, on the other: a contradiction symbolized by his interest both in Roman history and in eighteenth-century English and colonial literature and architecture. These eras, aside from the freakish rococo fads of artists like Aubrey Beardsley, are not usually associated with either Romantic or macabre literature. (67 words/457 characters vs 87 words/571 characters) ***

It still needs work, but it's much better than it was. My advice: think about what you're writing as you write it, then think again as you re-read and revise. Some specifics:

1) Don't treat 'incongruity' and 'contradiction' as interchangeable. Decide which one applies and stick to it.

2) If you're talking about a contradiction between X and Y, of course Y is 'concurrent' with X. If it weren't, there would be no contradiction. Look up the word 'tautology' and note that Passion for Polysyllables should not Preclude Logic.

3) 'The Roman Empire in terms of history' has 11 (or 10) syllables, but says no more than 'Roman history,' with 5 (or 4). Verbiage is vice, not virtue.

4) You have not co-ordinated the phrases governed by 'interest in both.'

If you don't understand what I mean by 4, you should find out. IMO, one should have a solid grasp of literary English before he starts writing about English literature, or about anything else, for that matter. But I realize that mine is an old-fashioned, elitist, racist, sexist and homophobic opinion not widely shared in modern academia.....

Hmmmm. Looks like we have a troll visitor from "Sociopath World." Please don't feed, it will only encourage him!

treycelement Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It still needs work, but it's much better than it
> was. My advice: think about what you're writing as
> you write it, then think again as you re-read and
> revise. Some specifics:
>
> 1) Don't treat 'incongruity' and 'contradiction'
> as interchangeable. Decide which one applies and
> stick to it.
>
> 2) If you're talking about a contradiction between
> X and Y, of course Y is 'concurrent' with X. If it
> weren't, there would be no contradiction. Look up
> the word 'tautology' and note that Passion for
> Polysyllables should not Preclude Logic.
>
> 3) 'The Roman Empire in terms of history' has 11
> (or 10) syllables, but says no more than 'Roman
> history,' with 5 (or 4). Verbiage is vice, not
> virtue.
>
> 4) You have not co-ordinated the phrases governed
> by 'interest in both.'
>
> If you don't understand what I mean by 4, you
> should find out. IMO, one should have a solid
> grasp of literary English before he starts writing
> about English literature, or about anything else,
> for that matter. But I realize that mine is an
> old-fashioned, elitist, racist, sexist and
> homophobic opinion not widely shared in modern
> academia.....

treycelement, short version: "I haven't read anything but your first paragraph, but here's some bullshit nitpicking on it anyway."

My advice: think about what you're going to write, then keep it to yourself. Some specifics:

1) Contradiction is a type of incongruity, and the opening moves from the more general "incongruity" to the more specific "contradiction" without any confusion.

2) It's appropriate to note right away the concurrency of Lovecraft's materialism and his interest in weird fiction, since the essay builds on that fact. It could be a contradiction also e.g. if strong materialism followed strong fantastication or vice versa. The essay tries to explain how the two existed simultaneously in Lovecraft.

3) This is a stylistic matter that doesn't affect sense or jar the reader out of the essay's flow unless that reader is a prescriptive tool.

4) Yeah, it's not coordinated by the book, but the second "in his interest" is meant to aid the reader, and it certainly incurs no confusion. If you're trying to help out, only a douchebag would construe "If you don't understand what I mean, you should find out" as helping.

BTW, if you don't understand quotation marks and ellipses, you should find out about them. I'm not trying to help.

Treycelement makes some valid points about style: in writing my essays, I gave no thought to style whatsoever. None. (A fact which caused me considerable anxiety.) I had only one aim: convey information, without error or contradiction. Treycelement made some good points, however, about redundancies in the text. At least he did not find any obvious errors, however -as per my intention.

I will add that I in no way consider tautologies a liability. Indeed, according to Ayn Rand, A=A is a reification of reality, and the whole basis of her moral/rationalistic system.

Not certain what:

"But I realize that mine is an old-fashioned, elitist, racist, sexist and homophobic opinion not widely shared in modern academia....."

-has to do with Treycelement's purely stylistic complaints, however.

Gavin -- My apologies for taking so long to get back to you with the promised comments. As I noted, it has been a hellish week, and this has played hob with my own writing, let alone everything else. However, as this also served as something of a busman's holiday at times, I thank you for giving me something of this nature to relax with.

First, I suppose I should issue a disclaimer that I tend to be rather wary of examinations such as this, for a number of reasons. One is simply that so much is theoretical; theory which is encountering challenge to various aspects (as I understand it) from more recent findings in the fields of neurology and particularly brain development and its role in various functions psychologically. Another is that, from my point of view, they tend to run the risk -- and all-too-often succumb to it -- to become too constrictive or dogmatic in their focus, with the attendant danger of at times forcing (or appearing to force) certain facts to fit a predetermined mold, rather than, at such times, positing their points tentatively, with an acceptance that other explanations may, at least in these instances, be more applicable.

That being said, and (again, given that I am a layman) within the limits of my own understanding of such analyses, I will say that, though there are points at which I disagree or feel the above cautions apply, overall this is a fascinating and thought-provoking essay which deserves to see print (not to mention discussion), and one which I hope will eventually do so.

As for specific points, pro and con:

"Lovecraft’s fictional style may be restrained and traditional in the extreme, but the nightmares within, like bodies preserved in formaldehyde, still preserve within them the outward forms of a genuine and troubling life: even if their meaning, and their inspiration, was ultimately understandable only by Lovecraft himself."

I think this is one of the reasons why Lovecraft's work is so endlessly rereadable: the elusiveness of the underlying significance, which nonetheless is so deftly hinted at.

One thing, though... as I have said earlier in other posts, I think Lovecraft's impulses, and his vision, cannot be reduced too much; the more I read of him, the more complex and fascinating an individual he becomes. Flawed -- at times terribly so -- but nonetheless fascinating.

One point on which I would disagree with you is concerning the essay "Cats and Dogs". I agree with the classification of the essay itself to a great degree, but I would have to remind you that HPL himself notes in his letters that the piece was done more than a little tongue-in-cheek, especially when it comes to such striking contrasts between the two species of animals. While there is no doubt concerning his love for cats, he also notes elsewhere, as I recall, his generally favorable encounters with dogs... perhaps due to his friendly relation with Ms. Guiney's dog, Bronte; and that his comments on the superiority of cats was taken up to feed the controversy which spawned the essay in the first place (given that the majority of those involved were dog-lovers); and that he was fully aware that psychologists placed the two very much on a level as far as intelligence, etc.

I would also that you are stretching things more than a bit in relating the sexual and excremental; not that there isn't a valid connection there to some extent, but I would argue (again) that that "fear of the viscous" goes beyond that, into the repulsion of the amoebal, the undifferentiated, the reduction or "devolution" of "evolved mankind" into a primal substance from which life emerged and diverged. The two are connected... but not always the same; and in especial such strained relations as "sinus/anus" and "vapor/flatulence", it simply strikes me as pushing the analogy further than it will reasonably go. I will not argue entirely against the shoggoth having such a relationship; but, as I said, I think it is reductionist to see it as merely that, rather than also tying in with his obsession about degeneracy and reverse evolution (especially given his views on blacks; as well as his comments about the right to indulge in alcohol: "the 'liberty' and 'right' of a man voluntarily to transform himself to a beast, and in the end to degrade himself and his descendants permanently in the scale of evolution, is equivalent to his 'right' to rob and murder at will" (CE5.18)... all of which also ties in with such imagery as the shoggoths, the animalism, and so on. It is a matter, in my view, of the tendency of such approaches to reduce things to a far too simplistic level.

I would also argue that that "erasure of the line of demarcation" between human and animal is finding more than a little support from evolutionary biology, behavioral studies, neurology, etc., in various ways, indicating that, as many evolutionists tend to state now, there is no difference between human beings and apes; human beings are a subset of apes (or, for that matter, monkeys). Reason may not be as unique to us as we have tended to think, either; it may (or may not) be more highly developed (it is certainly more highly developed in certain regards) in us, but much of the psychological/emotional aspects which go into making up reason, creativity, etc., is present to a lesser or greater degree in a large variety of animals, if usually in somewhat different form than we see it in homo sapiens. While I would certainly not argue for a strictly literal view of the "cult" Lovecraft mentioned as part of the theoretical background for "The Rats in the Walls", there may be less of an improbability (in a wider sense) than the citations from Jones, or your essay, tend to indicate.

Again, while the "digestive trouble" may indeed be related to toilet training, given his family's tendency toward neurotic disorders, serious problems with dyspepsia, abdominal cramps, and the like, is not all that far off as a possibility, either... in fact, it is more firmly supported, I would say. (This does not, of course, mean that the two are mutually exclusive.) This also relates to your quotation concerning the origins of the night-gaunts, for the elided passages make it quite evident that the connection was more likely to his digestive troubles rather than sexual stimulation:

"When I was 6 or 7 I used to be tormented constantly with a peculiar type of recurrent nightmare in which a monstrous race of entities (called by me "Night-Gaunts" -- I don't know where I got hold of the name) used ot snatch me up by the stomach (bad digestion?) and carry me off through infinite leagues of black air over the towers of dead and horrible cities. They would finally get me into a grey void where I could see the needlelike pinnacles of enormous mountains miles below. Then they would let me drop -- and as I gained momentum in my Icarus-like plunge I wuold start awake in such a panic that I hated to think of sleeping again. The "night-gaunts" were black, lean, rubbery things with bared, barbed tails, bat-wings, and no faces at all.
Undoubtedly I derived the image from the jumbled memory of Dore's drawings (largely the illustrations to Paradise Lost) which fascinated me in waking hours. They had no voices, and their onlyh form of real torture was their habit of tickling my stomach (digestion again) before snatching me up and swooping away with me."

Though you do address this dimension later on, I feel that this may be one of the weaker aspects of the essay, as it again seems to me to occasionally force things into a pigeonhole where they may not rightly belong.

I would also be dubious about Lovecraft not making the connection between such gigantism and the concept of deity, given his reading of such works as Fiske's Myths and Myth-Makers and other explorations of the origins of beliefs and superstitions, not to mention Burke's "Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful". True, I don't know of any direct evidence he read the latter, but he did apparently read some of Burke's essays, quoted from him, Burke was one of the more notable figures of his beloved eighteenth century, and the connection of that essay with the Gothic, all make it quite likely that he did. (I also don't recall Fiske addressing such gigantism directly, but I would need to go back through the book to be certain. Burke, of course, uses such immensity as one of the keys to the sense of the sublime.)


I think you are on sounder ground with the relationship between the voluptuousness and horror of the nightmare; this seems to me a very strong element in Lovecraft's work, and many of your choices ring true. (There are, however, a couple of points I question. That "lady of the pyramid" was not Lovecraft's, but Thomas Moore's, from "Alciphron", a piece he uses both there and later in "The Nameless City" as referent and resonance; hence Lovecraft's choice of that phrase here is also likely to be for purposes of calling on the eeriness and exoticism of that poem. Also, there is no evidence whatsoever that he ever knew W. V. Jackson was having such affairs with blacks. He may have done, of course, and this may be why she suddenly disappears from his letters, essays, etc.; but so far as I know, such a conclusion is entirely speculative; hence not really "likely".)

In the passage discussing how Susie Lovecraft may have influenced HPL's love of cats, the story mentioned should, of course, be "The Colour Out of Space", not "The Dunwich Horror". (By the way, I'd like to see "Arsenic and Pale Face"; has this one seen print and, if so, where might I find it?)

"Robie" is the correct form here, at least according to the records (see, for instance, the "Ancestor Table", entry 7, in Kenneth W. Faig's "Quae Amamus Tuemur: Ancestors in Lovecraft's Life and Fiction", in The Unknown Lovecraft, p. 30).It is difficult to say when it comes to the tickling here, given HPL's other descriptions of Mrs. Phillips, which present her as something of a "grand old lady"; an image which certainly jars with the idea; yet such grandmothers have been known to "unbend" enough to play in this fashion with their grandchildren. It may, however, be more likely that his mother or -- even more likely -- aunts (as they would not be suffering from the complex addition of having a husband suffering from paresis to color their interactions with their nephew) would have been the source of the tickling, perhaps even at the period where the mourning was ongoing, since a child -- especially a nervous child such as Lovecraft became at that period -- would need, more than ever, affection, comforting, and distraction from the oppressive atmosphere. It need not have been Robie herself who did the tickling for such an association as you posit; for such to feature any female authority figure, at the same time as a mourning for the grandmother was ongoing, would be enough to enable the unconscious mind to conflate the two, as I understand it.

The connection with the Eddy collaboration, though, is problematic, as we have no way of knowing how much of this was Lovecraft's, and how much was Eddy's. Even the phraseology is not certainly HPL's, as Eddy's own writing apparently bore certain similarities. With the Price collaboration we can be certain, having the original; here, it becomes much shakier to use this in such a way.

As a technical point, Zann is not a violinist, but a viol-player; it was not the violin, but the older instrument, the viol, which he played... an instrument which, of itself (as has been pointed out elsewhere) bears some sexual significance. (It is curious to think that his own connection to the violin may have perhaps led -- again an example of deliberate archaism -- to the by-then mainly discarded viol; but one must also not forget Poe's "The City in the Sea": "the viol, the violet, and the vine", l. 23.)

By the way... I think this may be the first time I've come across someone referring to "the maternal nurse" in "The Outsider"... usually, if referred to at all, this figure is seen as male; so this bit adds another layer to a reading of Mollie Burleson's suggestion that the titular figure is a woman.

As for the question concerning "Red Hook"... one might posit that this, too, is an example of Lovecraft's inversion of typical religious iconography -- in this case, the religious doctrine learned "at our mother's knee" which he often disparaged in his letters.

I am somewhat surprised, given the focus on incest and the horrors the unconscious mind breeds from such impulses and ambivalencies, that you didn't mention that part of "A Cycle of Verse" titled "Mother Earth", especially the final lines: "I AM THE VOICE OF MOTHER EARTH, / FROM WHENCE ALL HORRORS HAVE THEIR BIRTH" (ll. 39-40). In fact, that piece itself would be a rich source for some speculations along these lines.

A problem with the later section dealing with coprolalia, etc.: The statement that the cries to the Magna Mater " eventually give way to meaningless jargon: 'Dia ad aghaidh ‘s ad aodann…’” is a bit confusing, if not outright misleading. The Gaelic used there is anything but "meaningless jargon", nor are the phrases which precede it, until we reach the (supposed) pre-human sounds. Nor are they of a coprolatic nature, but rather grounded (as St. Armand and others have demonstrated; see, in particular, chapter V of St. Armand's The Roots of Horror in the Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft) in religious or spiritual associations involving damnation, etc. Interestingly, some of this, such as the concentration on blood in one instance, would relate very well to some of your other points, as it refers back to the biblical story of Cain and Abel, which also has some possible interesting relations to what you are saying elsewhere.

In the matter of the tiqueur being a "talented actor", it might be well to bring in Lovecraft's tendency to act out (with his mother, for example) scenes from the drama, often (if my memory of de Camp is correct) with such flair that the neighbors thought they were quarreling.

I question the use of the term "onset of puberty" when dealing with such a period as 1908-09, when he was already 18-19 years of age. This strikes me as stretching things more than a little to support the point. He did, however, have earlier (as well as later) breakdowns, as I recall (and as you in fact mention); perhaps one placed very near the genuine onset of puberty (I would need to look this up to be certain). It also remains very dubious that HPL knew of the connection of sex and his father's illness. There is, at any rate, no evidence to support the idea he was aware of it, hence any such association as you draw here is, while not impossible, shaky at best. I also question the inclusion of the fire incident, as its connection here seems highly speculative, not to say attenuated.

His suicidal ideation also strikes me as much less likely to be connected to this and more likely to be the result of a severe feeling of displacement, a disorientation (as he himself notes) of the structure of his own identity and identity-formulation ("what was HPL without...."). It strikes me much more as a case of rejection of that which was supposed to "feel like" the "real thing" but was not; that which bore (at least in many ways) the facade, but the interior life of which was alien... a description which tallies very closely with his vivid memories of the experience. Infantile these feelings may have been, but I am extremely sceptical it had anything to do with the causes to which you assign it. Such, at least, certainly does not fit the sorts of emotions he connects to that period or those thoughts surrounding the ideation, with the sole exception of the sensual/sexual tone concerning his absorption into the scene: "I liked to think of the beauty of sun & blue river & green shore & distant white steeple as enfolding me at the last -- it would be as if the element of mystical cosmic beauty were dissolving me" (SLIV.358)

On the enlistment... actually, this particular issue continued to rankle him for a very long time indeed, well beyond the writing of "Polaris" a year later; even to the point of noting on his copy of the Tryout (April, 1918) containing his "The Volunteer" (written as a response to a verse by Sgt. Hayes B. Miller): "It is not my fault that my 'military service' was with pen rather than sword. I did my best to enlist in the R. I. Nat'l Guard in the spring of 1917, but could not pass the physical examination. Have been in execrable health -- nervous trouble -- since the age of two or three" (A Winter Wish, p. 171).

I particularly like your discussion of this interrelationship later on (from, say, the paragraph beginning "And while Lovecraft was able to affirm..."). This is both well-argued and strongly supported by Lovecraft's own words, as well as what we have been able to gather through various channels; yet I think you bring some interesting insights to it as well, things which I, at least, have not encountered before, nor have considered in quite the way you address here.

On the subject of HPL's writing being "therapeutic" for him... have you read Levy's H. P. Lovecraft: A Study in the Fantastic? He argues this as well, albeit from a somewhat different angle (focusing more on the ethnophobic and outright racist aspects of Lovecraft's views and writings). If you haven't read it, I would highly recommend it as a fascinating examination. In any case, I tend to agree with this idea, though I think that therapeutic function was a very complex and multilayered one.

The passage from Howard's book, it seems to me, is almost eerily reflective of Lovecraft's views (in "More Chained Lightning") concerning the effects of alcohol on the physical condition not only of the imbiber, but his or her offspring, as mentioned above....

As a side note: I can't help but wonder about certain aspects of such interpretations of these things, given Lovecraft's asexuality in general. It has now been estimated that roughly 1% of the population may be classed as genuinely "asexual"; some of these may have periods of sexuality (usually earlier in their lives), but many do not; and even those that do apparently lose any inclination toward sexuality they possessed earlier. This aspect of things is only just beginning to be accepted as a "normal" (whatever that means) part of the spectrum of human sexuality, and how it affects the development of such symbology in our psychology has yet to be examined with any degree of comprehension.

I suppose that is really all I have to offer at this point. I did enjoy the essay, and would like to see more of your work -- such as those mentioned in the body of this one -- if any have been made available (preferably via print publication). While, as I say, there are some portions where I think things are a bit shaky here and there, the whole is a very interesting and provocative view; and for me the latter portions are almost a model of how to write of such things in a way to pique a reader's interest and engage him in an analysis of the writings in question. I also think that, despite the reservations mentioned, there is a great deal of truth to many of your claims here; and this is something to keep in mind when reading Lovecraft in future (for me, at any rate).

Thank you for a very enjoyable and challenging time.

Jdworth: many thanks- I'm really indebted. THIS is why it's helpful to have others (especially well-informed others) look at one's work. As for the Busman's Holiday: did you ever see the Laurel and Hardy short, where they go fishing on their day off from the fish-market? Of course they end up getting shanghied by a crooked sea-captain--- I hope I have not shangied you.

I'll be quick to implement some of the suggestions you made right away: i.e., get rid of the Welsh in my example of the glossolalia in "The Outsider" and subsititute instead (what I hope is) the real glossolalia from the end.

A viol is not a violin and so I suppose I will have to jettison that example as well. Also the puberty-example "at age 18."

The idea that Jones'/Freud's ideas might be out of date worried me, too; however, I just finished reading psychoanalyst John Munder Ross's study of The Sadomasochism of Everyday Life (1997), and he still cites Freud and Mahler as authorities.

The notion that The Outsider is a woman had not occured to me -and I don't think it should have. The idea of a male nurse, especially in that time-period, strikes me as incongruous, if not physically-impossible. (I don't think I'd want to meet a male wet-nurse, or a male nanny.) I've heard of male grounds-keepers, male stablehands, male butlers -not to mention males dressing up as naughty maids for Halloween (or at other times)- but not male nurses.

This, plus the clear parallels between The Outsider's life and Lovecraft's life with his mother (cf. the clear parallel with Lovecraft's abortive attempt to join the R.I. National Guard: "Once I tried to escape from the forest, but as I went farther from the castle the shade grew denser and the air more filled with brooding fear; so that I ran frantically back lest I lose my way in a labyrinth of nighted silence") suggest a male child/female nurse dynamic -although one can also see various elements from Lovecraft's father in The Outsider as well. (Compare HPL's description of the [syphillitic?] corpse in "The Outsider", for example, with his description of the syphilitic ghost in his bawdy poem "The Pathetick History of Sir Wilful Wildrake".) And I definitely think that Lovecraft was aware of his father's condition. As a gentleman, Lovecraft obeyed certain rules in what he wrote in his letters: and some things remained "unnamable."

In a way, Lovecraft was hit by a double-whammy in life: a syphillitic father, and a repressive/incestuous relationship with his mother. Both were far beyond the pale of social probity, and either one of these would qualify for "the unnamable" which he wrote about so obsessively: hence his lifelong preoccupation with "unspeakable"/"unnamable" themes.


I will write more as I go through your response.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 30 Oct 11 | 05:47PM by Gavin Callaghan.

I had just checked my emails before going offline, and found your response. A couple of points: No, Freud and Jones aren't obsolete here, but there is, from my understanding, a distinct challenge occurring to some of these ideas. The combination of neurology (especially using such tools as MRIs and the like) and psychological testing, along with studies in brain development and the way this alters even some basics of human psychology, means there's going to be a lot of ferment in these fields for some time to come. Hence I remain sceptical about how much credence to put in them; but they do remain, for now, valid as tools for a reading of such works (just as do some of the theories of Jung). It will be interesting how this all pans out....

Actually, I wasn't thinking of a male wet-nurse and, given the actual state of the Outsider, necessity for a wet-nurse seems quite unlikely. But, given the male-dominated relationships on the surface of so much of HPL's fiction, not to mention the earlier example of Pierre from "The Alchemist", who served just such a function (the narrator's father already being dead; his mother dying at his birth, Pierre was the only one to serve as nurse there as well), I think most have tended to think of the nurse as male here, too. (Certainly this was the case with me.) However, as I say, the realization that this is an unconscious assumption which can so easily be challenged adds an interesting layer to the tale.

The puberty example doesn't, I think, need to be jettisoned; simply modified slightly. HPL himself stated that he was having his most intense interest in sex at that age, and so was likely to have encountered quite a bit of resistance, both from family and/or from his own internal censoring. Hence your basic point is sound; the only thing is it needs to be made clear that this was not, in his case, something which occurred with the onset of puberty, but rather later.

The viol, being an instrument which was, like the modern cello, played while holding it between the legs, might still be of use to you in this article; so you may want to look at some slight revision here, rather than taking it out completely.

I am curious, however, why you so firmly believe that HPL was aware of the true nature of his father's fatal illness; certainly this was unlikely to have been discussed in a Victorian home around so small a child; and his own quite strong filial feelings toward his father would quite likely have combined with this social reticence to diminish his coming to such a realization, at least consciously, until much, much later in life. Even the doctors were not certain of the connection (and still are not 100% so, though it seems the most likely), given that the Wassermann test did not come alone until after Winfield's death. (Both Susie and HPL, however, did have such a test administered, if memory serves; and in both cases there was no indication of infection.) The possibility that he knew is certainly there, but (so far as I am aware from the various things I've read, including Joshi's revised biography) there is no evidence to support this idea. To be clear, I am not attempting to refute your idea here, but rather desire information on why you are so definitive.

(By the way... have you read M. Eileen McNamara's article on Winfield Lovecraft's medical records from Butler? It is both pitiful and horrific reading, and it is also no wonder -- given how often false hope of his recovery recurred -- that the effect on Susie was a violent as it was. If you haven't read this, and would be interested, let me know how to get a copy to you; or, if you prefer, I can give you the publication information on it.)

Mostly, though, my points are minor ones for consideration, requiring (at most) some "fine-tuning" rather than heavy alteration. And, as I said, the essay as a whole is very good and your points generally well-made.

At any rate, I'm glad if my post proves of service, and certainly hope this (as well as other of your essays on the man) see print; I think they would make a valuable addition to the library of Lovecraftian criticism.

When I read such intensely interesting essays and such intelligent remarks, it makes me feel so dense. There is so much I have difficulty comprehending, and so much I have never read. So I read J. D.'s response and Gavin's remarks and they really challenge me. I find them fascinating because I so want to understand Lovecraft's mind and creative impulse and delve deeper and deeper into his fiction, and threads like this help shew me that pathway, on which I hobble.

I always thought of the Nurse in "The Outsider" as female. I can in no way think of the Outside itself as woman, because he is the creation of H. P. Lovecraft. It seems highly unlikely that HPL would have had the idea of his character as female in mind. Some have tried to say that "The Outsider" reflects Lovecraft's sense of displacement among men -- but it seems to me that the story is, first and foremost, a reflection of the influence of Poe, however unconscious Lovecraft claimed that influence of the story to be. "The Outsider" is keenly interesting because of its effect on readers -- its effect has always been potent. It is one of the most often filmed of Lovecraft's shorter tales. Lovecraft wrote the story before he considered himself a "professional" writer (which I think he did consider himself after he began to write with Weird Tales in mind as market for his work). S. T. Joshi notes that the story "makes little sense" (I AM PROVIDENCE, Volume I, pg.385), and this brings up the very wonderful idea of which of Lovecraft's horror tales may be thought of as possible "dream narratives." ("The Music of Erich Zann" is another such story.) S. T. surmises that the story was penned in ye summer of 1921. Lovecraft offered it to Cook for publication in The Recluse, but then coax'd Cook to allow HPL to submit it to Weird Tales, where it's first publication was in the April 1926 issue. Lovecraft wrote it at that time when he was writing fiction for his own amusement. I believe his mindset altered once he found himself with a perfect professional market for the first time, for which he began to write almost exclusively.

I love this thread, and keep returning to it. Thanks to all for your intriguing and intelligent comments!

"I'm a little girl."
--H. P. Lovecraft, Esq.

I must admit that I have trouble picturing the Outsider as a woman, but Mollie Burleson's essay makes a strong case for such a reading. At the very least, she makes several pertinnt points on how the character's feeling of alienation fit the disenfranchised woman of so much of history in various ways, and I think there is much to be gathered from reading her essay.

Thank you for the kind remarks, Wilum. It is interesting to think I may be in the minority of my view concerning the character's nurse in that tale. And, as William Fulwiler and others have pointed out, the story does work very well as a dream-narrative, while the epigraph for the story (from Keats' "The Eve of St. Agnes"), combined with the fact it was written in the centennial year of Keats' death, may point to a tribute to one of Lovecraft's favorite poets, while the tale itself may be seen as an expanded look inside the Baron's dream....

On a further point on why I view the hypothetical nurse in "The Outsider" as male, consider the following:

"Beings must have cared for my needs, yet I cannot recall any person except myself; or anything alive but the noiseless rats and bats and spiders. I think that whoever nursed me must have been shockingly aged, since my first conception of a living person was that of something mockingly like myself, yet distorted, shrivelled, and decaying like the castle."

Now note that the narrator is himself dubious about the existence of or interaction with any other being, but draws the apparently logical inference that, at a young age (which he also does not not remember) someone "must have cared for [his] needs" (emphasis mine), but he(?) has no evidence for it, save a very vague memory of "something mockingly like myself, yet distorted, shrivelled, and decaying like the castle". Now, that "something mockingly like myself" can, of course, be read as the "other" of a woman, but it is at best rather ambivalent, I think. And I doubt that, even unconsciously, Lovecraft would have had his mother in mind with someone(thing) he would describe as "distorted, shrivelled, and decaying"... especially given the period this was written, which was apparently very near the time of her death, within a few months at the most. Possible, yes, but unlikely, in my view.

Still, it is an idea worth pondering, and perhaps Gavin or someone else could provide something to give it more support textually, or in some other fashion?

Jdworth wrote: >>’But, given the male-dominated relationships on the surface of so much of HPL's fiction, not to mention the earlier example of Pierre from "The Alchemist", who served just such a function […], I think most have tended to think of the nurse as male here, too.’

The analogy you suggest is interesting, and had not occurred to me. In my HPL & Theseus essay, I divide Lovecraft’s representations of the parental figures in his stories into maternal and paternal figures, and then divide these in turn into benevolent, malevolent, and ambivalent.

The benevolent paternal figures generally correspond to HPL’s grandfather and uncles, and include such figures as Pierre in “The Alchemist”; the Senior Ward and Dr. Willett in Charles Dexter Ward; the father and the unnamed doctor in “The Tomb”; the “paternal” (D 31) “old doctor Fenton” (D 31) who advises Lovecraft’s protagonist to just relax in “Beyond the Wall of Sleep”; the “very old man” (MM 327) in Unknown Kadath, who shows Randolph Carter “a crude picture” of the Elder Gods of dreamland, and then imparts to him legends which “The old tavern-keeper’s great-grandfather had heard from his great-grandfather…..” (MM 327), etc., etc., etc...

Against these, Lovecraft frequently juxtaposes such malevolent figures as the old man with the “patriarchal” beard (a word used in the original printing of this story in 1919) in “The Picture in the House” (who, like the old man in Unknown Kadath, also shows his protagonist “a crude picture”); the cannibalistic/sadistic Joe Slater in “Beyond the Wall of Sleep”, referred to as the “head” (D 29) of his family; the cannibalistic father in “The Rats in the Walls”; the malevolent unseen father, Yog-Sothoth, in “The Dunwich Horror”; what Lovecraft calls the “fabled father” (MM 336)/“archaic father of all the shantak-birds” (MM 363) in Unknown Kadath; and Cthulhu himself -whom I classify as being, like The Outsider, basically a patriarchal revenant/undead vampire, of the kind discussed by Ernest Jones. Unfortunately, the discussion is too involved to get into here!

On the other hand, I included The Outsider’s “nurse” amongst the nurses also seen in “The Thing on the Doorstep” (DH 277), “Celephais” (D 85), and Charles Dexter Ward (MM 113), as basically a benevolent maternal figure.

Jdworth >>’ Again, while the "digestive trouble" may indeed be related to toilet training, […] the elided passages make it quite evident that the connection was more likely to his digestive troubles rather than sexual stimulation…’

I made a real mistake with those elisions- while reading L. Sprague de Camp’s biography of HPL, I simply assumed that de Camp had added the comments (since they were in brackets), and edited them out! But if HPL wrote them, I’ll put them back in.

Jdworth >>’…I think it is reductionist to see it [the shoggoths] as merely that, rather than also tying in with his obsession about degeneracy and reverse evolution […] It is a matter, in my view, of the tendency of such approaches to reduce things to a far too simplistic level…’

You are right, the Shoggoths are much more complex. I had a problem in my essays, in that I was writing 12 essays simultaneously. (I’m all done now, except with #13.) My idea was that I would follow each essay to its logical conclusion, regardless of any incongruities which appeared between them. Afterward, when each essay appeared alongside each other, the totality would form a sort of crystalline image of the various superimpositions overlapping within Lovecraft’s mind at the time that he was writing. The theory is that ALL of these ideas would have been a factor simultaneously at the moment of inspiration. So in this essay, the Shoggoths are basically excremental creatures representing the relaxed moral atmosphere of the dream-state. But in my HPL & the Feminine essay, however, the Shoggoths are Jewish/Black/Feminine conglomerations. In one essay, the Innsmouth-disease is representative of venereal disease; but in another essay, the Innsmouth-disease symbolizes the TB which killed HPL’s beloved Phillips Gamwell. My introduction to the essays, meanwhile, was intended to explain the rationale between these supposed discrepancies. But nobody nowadays wants to publish a 2,000+ page book of literary criticism, it seems! So now each essay, alone, simply seems overly dogmatic, which wasn’t the intent.

I realize this seems like a cop-out: kind of like saying “batteries not included”, or “see Volume 2 for an explanation”, but there it is….

Jdworth >>’ I am curious, however, why you so firmly believe that HPL was aware of the true nature of his father's fatal illness; […] To be clear, I am not attempting to refute your idea here, but rather desire information on why you are so definitive.’

That’s a good question. Perhaps I should not have been so definite, but my feeling (yes, feeling) is the cumulative result of so many things: the young Comte’s frustration at old Pierre’s “manifest reluctance […] to discuss with me my paternal ancestry” (D 330) in “The Alchemist”, for example: after which, however, “I was able to piece together disconnected fragments of discourse, let slip from the unwilling tongue which had begun to falter in approaching senility, …” (D 330)

Then there are the hints of syphilitic symptoms in HPL’s description of The Outsider’s body, which mirror the description of the diseased ghost in “Sir Wilful Wildrake”; the “pockmarked“ (D 248) and “sin-pitted faces” (D 248) which Lovecraft associates with “the obscure vice” (248) perpetrated by the (Mary Magdalene-like) Lilith in “Red Hook”; the “slow ravages” (DH 366) of the Innsmouth-plague in “The Shadow Over Innsmouth" -which is actually first described as a disease, is first inculcated (symbolically) by Captain Obed Marsh’s marriage with a female Deep One, and is later perpetuated by sexual intercourse with the Deep Ones. Then there is the corruption of the Sieur de Blois in “Psychopompos”, a corruption which Lovecraft traces specifically to his wife. (AT 31)

Add to this Lovecraft’s overriding concern with the issue of the unnamable (and STD’s were a great unnamable during this period), as well as his related concern, throughout his weird-oeuvre, with the issue of rumors and whispers (which suggests to me some sensitivity in this area -rumors about his father?); his antipathy to Oscar Wilde (which, I theorize, stemmed from a perceived similarity of Wilde's disgrace to his father's own unnamable symptoms) -plus the fact that Lovecraft was very smart (and had a physician in the family)… True, ultimately it’s just a feeling, but…

Haven’t read M. Eileen McNamara’s article, but will try to track it down. Will also seek out some of the others you mention: Levy, for instance.

Jdworth >>’"Robie" is the correct form here, at least according to the records (see, for instance, the "Ancestor Table", entry 7, in Kenneth W. Faig's "Quae Amamus Tuemur: Ancestors in Lovecraft's Life and Fiction", in The Unknown Lovecraft, p. 30).’

Bizarre. Which spelling should I use? And why would HPL misspell his own grandmother’s name? I can understand HPL’s letter possibly being mistranscribed by Arkham House -but that wouldn’t explain the spelling in “The Shunned House” -unless that was a misprint, too.

Jworth>>’ I agree with the classification of the essay itself to a great degree, but I would have to remind you that HPL himself notes in his letters that the piece was done more than a little tongue-in-cheek, …’

“Cats and Dogs” may have started out as a joke -and it’s true I had not considered that fact- but as Kleiner and Joshi observe, it eventually became far more: constituting a central statement of Lovecraft‘s aristocratic/fascistic socio-political worldview (and, as I argue, his lingering maternal devotion.)

Jdworth >>’His suicidal ideation also strikes me as much less likely to be connected to this and more likely to be the result of a severe feeling of displacement, […] Such, at least, certainly does not fit the sorts of emotions he connects to that period or those thoughts surrounding the ideation, with the sole exception of the sensual/sexual tone concerning his absorption into the scene: "I liked to think of the beauty of sun & blue river & green shore & distant white steeple as enfolding me at the last -- it would be as if the element of mystical cosmic beauty were dissolving me" (SLIV.358)’

It’s a weird coincidence, but as I said before I just finished reading John Munder Ross’s The Sadomasochism of Everyday Life, in which he deals with the primal, sadomasochistic desire for death or Thanatos -which Ross identifies as an incestuous attempt “to plunge back into the boundless beginning” (ROSS 142), in the process making oneself “permeable, open, utterly vulnerable, unbounded, unprotected, unmodulated -like a helpless infant melting into its mother’s breast.” (142) Language very similar to Lovecraft’s “dissolving” and being “enfolded” in the world of (mother) nature! Lovecraft would later describe much the same joining-with his mother in the coda to “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”, in which his protagonist joins with his grandmother/great-grandmother in a (suicidal) immortality beneath the waves; an immortality akin to the apotheosis of the various drowning victims in Greek myth.

Jdworth >>‘I would also be dubious about Lovecraft not making the connection between such gigantism and the concept of deity, given his reading of such works as Fiske's Myths and Myth-Makers and other explorations of the origins of beliefs and superstitions, not to mention Burke's "Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful".’

I used to think the same way once, too -and in fact way back in the 1990’s I half-fantasized about writing an essay connecting HPL & the Sublime, in which I would have argued that HPL’s cosmicism was primarily a matter of scale. After reading Ernest Jones' On the Nightmare, however, and Jones’ association of giganticism in dreams with infantile perceptions of parental hugeness, my view completely changed. In my HPL & Theseus essay, I go in-depth into this issue, as well as HPL’s trademarked “Elder Ones”/”Old Ones” language with regard to his cosmic entities, and attempt to show that both are basically parental/paternal conceptions. One is constantly finding “old”/”elder” and “gigantic” language being combined in odd and suggestive ways in HPL’s weird-fiction -cf. what Lovecraft calls “Budai, the gigantic old man” [emphasis mine] (DH 404) of the Australian aborigines, “who lies asleep for ages underground with his head on his arm, and who will some day awake and eat up the world” (DH 404) (just another version of Cthulhu and the patriarchal Shantak-Bird, and those vampiric revenants which Ernest Jones associates with one’s dead parents.) But the examples are far too numerous to go into here!

JDworth >>’(By the way, I'd like to see "Arsenic and Pale Face"; has this one seen print and, if so, where might I find it?)’

It’s probably sitting somewhere on a pile on S.T. Joshi’s desk! Actually, it’s a very interesting essay: in it, I connect the arsenic complexion-wafers which HPL’s mother used to consume, to HPL’s weird-fiction. It turns out that the language in the advertisements for the patent-medicine wafers –describing yellow, scabby, and rough skin- is almost precisely the same language Lovecraft later used to describe things like the Innsmouth batrachians and the squamous, piebald Wilber Whately. I go on from there to suggest the relationship between HPL’s mother and HPL’s own personal aesthetic (HPL being “ashamed” of a coat of tan, etc.) But I’m not happy with the rest of the essay, although it makes a few good points. I quote from Byrd’s personal diaries, for instance: the same Byrd whom HPL praised in his southern travelogues as a great “gentleman”, etc. Byrd’s diaries have entries like, “Whipped a slave today”; “Put hot tongs on the young slave girl today”, etc. (Paraphrased from memory.) Lovecraft’s version of a gentleman. yeah, I know, "times were different then", but...

Jdworth: >>’And I doubt that, even unconsciously, Lovecraft would have had his mother in mind with someone(thing) he would describe as "distorted, shrivelled, and decaying"...’

Lovecraft’s attribution of great age to the Outsider-nurse is quite typical of HPL, and consistent with the infantile perception of one’s “elders”/“old ones” as being very old. One sees a similar process in his description of the bearded/apparently immortal old man in “The Picture in the House”, or the ancient “bearded man” (D 282) in “The Strange High House in the Mist” -culminating in Lovecraft’s immemorially-ancient Old Ones and Elder Gods themselves.

Jdworth >>’The passage from Howard's book, it seems to me, is almost eerily reflective of Lovecraft's views (in "More Chained Lightning") concerning the effects of alcohol on the physical condition not only of the imbiber, but his or her offspring, as mentioned above....’

Yeah! The irony: advice like Dr. Howard’s could very easily have caused Winfield Lovecraft’s illness, if Winfield was seeking extramaritial companionship while he wife was with child… Unfortunately, the dates probably don’t tally with the incubation-period for syphilis, but one could very easily picture Dr. Howard’s wacky advice having adverse results.

Jdworth >>’As a side note: I can't help but wonder about certain aspects of such interpretations of these things, given Lovecraft's asexuality in general….’

You bring up (yet another) good point: how much of HPL’s anti-sexuality was organic, and how much moral/neurotic? I’m not qualified to say, and at this late date… I tend to think HPL was physically normal, especially given his wife’s testimony, the evidence of his nightmares (which suggest a normal, if repressed, libido), etc.; but on the other hand: given HPL’s odd body-temperature, his marked aversion to cold, the swelling in his legs and vomiting, etc., it may be that his metabolism was organically different in some way.

Jdworth >>’ It need not have been Robie herself who did the tickling for such an association as you posit; for such to feature any female authority figure, at the same time as a mourning for the grandmother was ongoing, would be enough to enable the unconscious mind to conflate the two, as I understand it.’

My thoughts exactly: tho I was not able to clearly express them in so straightforward a fashion as yourself... We should work together on an essay. You’ll be Marx, I’ll be Engels. I get the chicks, you get the notoriety. Your beard would be optional (but encouraged.) I’m just being silly here….

Wilumpugmire >>’ When I read such intensely interesting essays and such intelligent remarks, it makes me feel so dense. …’

You’re telling me. Jdworth’s comments have more floored –he knows his stuff, and pointed me in the right direction. (Treycelement had me floored too, but for a different reason.) But you know your stuff, too.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 31 Oct 11 | 05:51PM by Gavin Callaghan.

Thank you both, gentlemen, for the kind words. And yes, Gavin, Wilum does indeed know his stuff. I have seen some very good insights on HPL from him, both in speculations of a critical nature, and things he explores in his own fiction.

Gavin -- thank you for clarifying on the issue of the shoggoths. I recall your earlier postings on that, but was unaware (or had forgotten) that that was part of a larger essay. I very much like the idea of such a series of essays looking at different facets, providing different readings for the symbology and significance of these works. It might well be that it would have to be presented a bit at a time, and then collected together later; I just hope this can be done. I, for one, would be very interested in reading such a work!

The divisions in such parental/paternal figures you mention has become one of the themes which fascinates me, both on the level of the symbolic meanings of such figures, and in connection with the works which influenced him, both weird fiction and otherwise (including, of course, those he knew personally, such as his very aged amateur collaegue, Jonathan E. Hoag, who apparently provided some of the characteristics of such figures).

Gavin Callaghan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> and Cthulhu himself -whom I classify as being, like The Outsider,
> basically a patriarchal revenant/undead vampire,
> of the kind discussed by Ernest Jones.

This is one of those links you've made which I, personally, find quite exciting... yet, oddly, it is also one of those things which, in retrospect, seems so obvious that I feel, to use Heinlein's phrase, like an idiot studying to be a moron and failing the course, for not making the connection before! And, again, I would very much like to see what you have to say on this subject at some point....

On the "digestive trouble" quotes from his letter... if this has proved helpful to you, I am more than happy to have been of service.


> Jdworth >>’ I am curious, however, why you so
> firmly believe that HPL was aware of the true
> nature of his father's fatal illness; […] To be
> clear, I am not attempting to refute your idea
> here, but rather desire information on why you are
> so definitive.’
>
> That’s a good question. Perhaps I should not
> have been so definite, but my feeling (yes,
> feeling) is the cumulative result of so many
> things: the young Comte’s frustration at old
> Pierre’s “manifest reluctance […] to discuss
> with me my paternal ancestry” (D 330) in “The
> Alchemist”, for example: after which, however,
> “I was able to piece together disconnected
> fragments of discourse, let slip from the
> unwilling tongue which had begun to falter in
> approaching senility, …” (D 330)
>
> Then there are the hints of syphilitic symptoms in
> HPL’s description of The Outsider’s body,
> which mirror the description of the diseased ghost
> in “Sir Wilful Wildrake”; the “pockmarked“
> (D 248) and “sin-pitted faces” (D 248) which
> Lovecraft associates with “the obscure vice”
> (248) perpetrated by the (Mary Magdalene-like)
> Lilith in “Red Hook”; the “slow ravages”
> (DH 366) of the Innsmouth-plague in “The Shadow
> Over Innsmouth" -which is actually first described
> as a disease, is first inculcated (symbolically)
> by Captain Obed Marsh’s marriage with a female
> Deep One, and is later perpetuated by sexual
> intercourse with the Deep Ones. Then there is the
> corruption of the Sieur de Blois in
> “Psychopompos”, a corruption which Lovecraft
> traces specifically to his wife. (AT 31)
>
> Add to this Lovecraft’s overriding concern with
> the issue of the unnamable (and STD’s were a
> great unnamable during this period), as well as
> his related concern, throughout his weird-oeuvre,
> with the issue of rumors and whispers (which
> suggests to me some sensitivity in this area
> -rumors about his father?); his antipathy to Oscar
> Wilde (which, I theorize, stemmed from a perceived
> similarity of Wilde's disgrace to his father's own
> unnamable symptoms) -plus the fact that Lovecraft
> was very smart (and had a physician in the
> family)… True, ultimately it’s just a
> feeling, but…
>
> Haven’t read M. Eileen McNamara’s article, but
> will try to track it down. Will also seek out
> some of the others you mention: Levy, for
> instance.

Thank you for the response. I remain unconvinced, but you have given me quite a lot to think about. Who knows? I may come around to agreeing with you on this. (Such has happened before... Levy being one such example.) You can find the two articles by Dr. McNamara ("Winfield Scott Lovecraft's Final Illness" and "Medical Record of Winfield Scott Lovecraft") in issue 24 of Lovecraft Studies, pp. 14-17. It is a pity we don't have Susie's records any longer, but at least Winfield Townley Scott wrote a fair amount on the subject....


> Jdworth >>’"Robie" is the correct form here, at
> least according to the records (see, for instance,
> the "Ancestor Table", entry 7, in Kenneth W.
> Faig's "Quae Amamus Tuemur: Ancestors in
> Lovecraft's Life and Fiction", in The Unknown
> Lovecraft, p. 30).’
>
> Bizarre. Which spelling should I use? And why
> would HPL misspell his own grandmother’s name?
> I can understand HPL’s letter possibly being
> mistranscribed by Arkham House -but that
> wouldn’t explain the spelling in “The Shunned
> House” -unless that was a misprint, too.

I am not certain on this, by any means, but I think (the exact memory on this is too vague for me to point out the source, I'm afraid) that this was, like "Aunt 'Rushy" for "Jarusha", something of a dialectical, or even familial, variant in speech and informal writings. However, HPL himself may have seen it written this way someplace, such as a family bible, or one of the amateur efforts at tracing his family tree, either not being aware of the "official" spelling, or perhaps even feeling that this was in error.


> Jworth>>’ I agree with the classification of the
> essay itself to a great degree, but I would have
> to remind you that HPL himself notes in his
> letters that the piece was done more than a little
> tongue-in-cheek, …’
>
> “Cats and Dogs” may have started out as a joke
> -and it’s true I had not considered that fact-
> but as Kleiner and Joshi observe, it eventually
> became far more: constituting a central statement
> of Lovecraft‘s aristocratic/fascistic
> socio-political worldview (and, as I argue, his
> lingering maternal devotion.)

I fully grant this point -- the same can be said of various other essays he wrote, not to mention various passages in his letters, which began in one spirit and drifted into another -- but the point I was drawing in particular was the deliberate overkill when it came to his mock-classification concerning dogs and their "plebeian" status. While he certainly preferred cats, many of his statements in the essay concerning canines should be taken with, not a grain, but a couple of teaspoons, of salt.... The point here being the degree of his repulsion when it comes to the physical affection of such animals is open to debate, just as his comments about children ("canst picture your aged grandpa trying to ride herd on a roomful of incipient gangsters?") don't match up with his interactions with them, including (if memory serves) offering no demurrer when the younger of the Cole children perched on his lap, even expressing considerable fondness for the tykes. This, it seems to me, makes use of his language here concerning dogs somewhat problematic in supporting the particular point made.


> It’s a weird coincidence, but as I said before I
> just finished reading John Munder Ross’s The
> Sadomasochism of Everyday Life, in which he deals
> with the primal, sadomasochistic desire for death
> or Thanatos -which Ross identifies as an
> incestuous attempt “to plunge back into the
> boundless beginning” (ROSS 142), in the process
> making oneself “permeable, open, utterly
> vulnerable, unbounded, unprotected, unmodulated
> -like a helpless infant melting into its
> mother’s breast.” (142) Language very similar
> to Lovecraft’s “dissolving” and being
> “enfolded” in the world of (mother) nature!
> Lovecraft would later describe much the same
> joining-with his mother in the coda to “The
> Shadow Over Innsmouth”, in which his protagonist
> joins with his grandmother/great-grandmother in a
> (suicidal) immortality beneath the waves; an
> immortality akin to the apotheosis of the various
> drowning victims in Greek myth.

A good rebuttal, that; and I especially like the point about the Greek myth figures. That would certainly have appealed to HPL... and even possibly (as with his other thoughts of suicide, including "good Roman precedent") influencing his choice, either consciously or otherwise. As with the shoggoth issue, though, I think there is a great deal more going on there, as it really did seem to be an almost shattering blow to his sense of identity when he lost his birthplace... and that may be (I wish to stress the "may" here, as this is entirely speculative on my part) one of the reasons why he retained the following passage from Price's "The Lord of Illusion" when revising this into "Through the Gates of the Silver Key": "Randolph Carter now felt a supreme horror such as had not been hinted even at the height of that dreadful evening when two had ventured into a tomb, and but one had emerged. No death, no doom, no anguish, can arouse the surpassing despair aroused by a loss of identity. Merging with nothingness is peaceful oblivion; but to exist, to be aware of existence and yet to know that one no longer retains an identity that will serve as a distinction from every other entity; to know that one no longer has a self --"; only slightly paraphrasing it, and adding (significantly, I think): "that is the nameless summit of agony and dread".

> Jdworth >>‘I would also be dubious about
> Lovecraft not making the connection between such
> gigantism and the concept of deity, given his
> reading of such works as Fiske's Myths and
> Myth-Makers and other explorations of the origins
> of beliefs and superstitions, not to mention
> Burke's "Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of
> Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful".’
>
> I used to think the same way once, too -and in
> fact way back in the 1990’s I half-fantasized
> about writing an essay connecting HPL & the
> Sublime, in which I would have argued that HPL’s
> cosmicism was primarily a matter of scale. After
> reading Ernest Jones' On the Nightmare, however,
> and Jones’ association of giganticism in dreams
> with infantile perceptions of parental hugeness,
> my view completely changed. In my HPL & Theseus
> essay, I go in-depth into this issue, as well as
> HPL’s trademarked “Elder Ones”/”Old
> Ones” language with regard to his cosmic
> entities, and attempt to show that both are
> basically parental/paternal conceptions. One is
> constantly finding “old”/”elder” and
> “gigantic” language being combined in odd and
> suggestive ways in HPL’s weird-fiction -cf. what
> Lovecraft calls “Budai, the gigantic old man”
> (DH 404) of the Australian aborigines, “who lies
> asleep for ages underground with his head on his
> arm, and who will some day awake and eat up the
> world” (DH 404) (just another version of Cthulhu
> and the patriarchal Shantak-Bird, and those
> vampiric revenants which Ernest Jones associates
> with one’s dead parents.) But the examples are
> far too numerous to go into here!

I should have been clearer here: I was not taking issue with the significance you relate to such imagery, but rather with the doubt that HPL himself made such a connection. Personally, I think, given his readings of this nature, and his interest in the symbolic nature of such things, it is quite likely that he had pondered this aspect of things; whether he agreed with it as factual or not is another thing (he may well have), but it would not at all surprise me to find he had at least considered the matter.

If "Arsenic and Pale Face" does see print, I would appreciate a note to that effect. While I will certainly be getting each issue of the Lovecraft Annual anyway, knowing it is to be included there gives me even more to look forward to; whereas if it ends up being published elsewhere, I would like to be able to track down a copy....

> Jdworth: >>’And I doubt that, even
> unconsciously, Lovecraft would have had his mother
> in mind with someone(thing) he would describe as
> "distorted, shrivelled, and decaying"...’
>
> Lovecraft’s attribution of great age to the
> Outsider-nurse is quite typical of HPL, and
> consistent with the infantile perception of
> one’s “elders”/“old ones” as being very
> old. One sees a similar process in his
> description of the bearded/apparently immortal old
> man in “The Picture in the House”, or the
> ancient “bearded man” (D 282) in “The
> Strange High House in the Mist” -culminating in
> Lovecraft’s immemorially-ancient Old Ones and
> Elder Gods themselves.

There are some good points here, but I remain dubious about the possibility of his referring to his mother in this manner, especially (as I noted earlier) at this time, so soon after her death. (Then again, given the therapeutic aspect, it could be that this would act as a type of releasing mechanism for him, especially if the connection were entirely unconscious....)

I hadn't made any possible connection between Howard's book and Winfield's illness, but it would be interesting (not to mention horrifying) were such a source to surface, be it Howard's work of that of another.

> Jdworth >>’As a side note: I can't help but
> wonder about certain aspects of such
> interpretations of these things, given Lovecraft's
> asexuality in general….’
>
> You bring up (yet another) good point: how much of
> HPL’s anti-sexuality was organic, and how much
> moral/neurotic? I’m not qualified to say, and
> at this late date… I tend to think HPL was
> physically normal, especially given his wife’s
> testimony, the evidence of his nightmares (which
> suggest a normal, if repressed, libido), etc.; but
> on the other hand: given HPL’s odd
> body-temperature, his marked aversion to cold, the
> swelling in his legs and vomiting, etc., it may be
> that his metabolism was organically different in
> some way.

This was a thought which occurred to me, too. Given that his fall when playing at the building site has been posited as playing a part in some of his physical abnormalities such as you mention, I wonder if it may have had a gradually increasing effect on this aspect of his development as well. Of course, there is no way to know for certain at this late date, but perhaps someone with the proper medical knowledge could shed some light on how probable such a connection may be.


> Jdworth >>’ It need not have been Robie herself
> who did the tickling for such an association as
> you posit; for such to feature any female
> authority figure, at the same time as a mourning
> for the grandmother was ongoing, would be enough
> to enable the unconscious mind to conflate the
> two, as I understand it.’
>
> My thoughts exactly: tho I was not able to clearly
> express them in so straightforward a fashion as
> yourself... We should work together on an essay.
> You’ll be Marx, I’ll be Engels. I get the
> chicks, you get the notoriety. Your beard would
> be optional (but encouraged.) I’m just being
> silly here….

Hmmm. I used to have a beard, but.... As for the notoriety... I'm a quiet sort of chap, really... until you catch me on one of my hobby-horses; and then... well, remember Teddy from Arsenic and Old Lace....?

Once again, thank you for a stimulating and enjoyable discussion!