What Did You Learn from Lovecraft?

[Extollager]

When I write of learning something from a writer, I mean something that one would hold onto even if, for some reason, one no longer read that author.

Example: I am sure that, beginning to read him at age 11, Tolkien's writings influenced my awareness of nature. Tom Shippey, the best writer on Tolkien, says in a documentary that reading Tolkien turns people into bird watchers, tree spotters, hedgerow grubbers. I'm sure that's true and that that is a good thing in the lives of many people. I would be grateful for that even if I could no longer read Tolkien. In fact, I find that as I continue to reread him, it is passages of description of "ordinary" nature, e.g. of the Withywindle Valley in The Fellowship of the Ring, that I enjoy sometimes as much or more as the definitely fantastic material.

I'm not saying that in order for us to value a writer, we must learn something from him or her.

Also, I am not saying that what we learn from an author must be what there is reason to think that author would have liked to teach. I don't know if Lovecraft felt that he had learned from Algernon Blackwood (other than maybe learning something about writing supernatural fiction, but that is not what I am getting at in asking "What did you learn?"). If he did, it probably was not what Blackwood would have liked to teach. I take it that, as a doctrinaire materialist, Lovecraft would have regarded Blackwood's ideas about spirit(s) in nature as empty romanticism, vestigial superstition, etc.

Finally -- could anyone responding to this take the trouble to respond sincerely? Just hold off on the facetious answers ("I learned that that is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die").

 

[j d worthington]

I suppose it would be quite just to say that my reading of Lovecraft was perhaps the greatest spark to my learning to enjoy history and see it as a living thing. Until then, history was for me (like so many) dry bones and dust; something done and dead and with little actual connection to our lives. (Mind you, I first read HPL when I was between 11 and 12, so....) Lovecraft's weaving of history into his stories -- as I was to later find, a mixture of very real history and that which he created, and often the stuff which sounds the most far-fetched is the genuine article! -- made it come alive for me, and gave me a sense of history not only as a process, but as something which permeates our existence, often in ways of which we are simply not aware.

Lovecraft also taught me an appreciation for various types of literature I may well have not given a chance, were it not for his comments on them. His own work predisposed me to be able to not only appreciate, for example, eighteenth-century literature, but to actually relish it, with its rich use of language and its intelligence and frequently biting wit. I also might well have not been as receptive to some of the French writers I so admire were it not for my interest first being piqued by things Lovecraft said in his essay on Supernatural Horror in Literature and, in my reading them a few years later, his letters.

A fascination with New England, a greater appreciation of the subtle impressions I receive from the natural world around me, a more acute awareness of the niceties of prose (and verse!) and how these are not simply buttons-'n'-bows, but (when done properly) the very basis of expanding the meaning, significance, and associational value of what you are reading, making the entire reading experience incredibly more profound than it already was. A much greater precision in thinking and expression, as well, is something which Lovecraft taught me... more, even, than Poe!

And, secondarily (that is, through related materials), my love of the old gent's writings led me to explore various branches of scholarship centering around them, which in turn led me to a much greater appreciation and enjoyment of literary criticism both specifically Lovecraftian and in the wider realms of literature in general.

And he has incredibly broadened my view on what constitutes "horror" or "the literature of terror"... much for the better, I might add. My debt to him here is more than I can easily say.

I'm still learning from HPL, even today, as I research his own work, those writers or artistic works which influenced him, and the branches of philosophy, science, history, and so forth, which became infused into the extremely complex individual we know as H. P. Lovecraft. Each time I read one of his tales, I find new felicities of style and eloquence (and layers) of thought, which often gives me hours, at least, of things to ponder.

 

[Extollager]

Thank you, JDW. I do hope others will consider responding, although your eloquent message probably speaks for some of them.

If reading Lovecraft didn't impart to me a new receptiveness to antiquarian impressions (notably those evoked by "old" buildings), it must, at least, have helped to make that experience a more conscious one for me. I put quotation marks around "old" because I was living in southern Oregon, where a building 70 years old was pretty old, and a building 90 years old was really old! I suppose you could say that I did the best I could!

When I was around 20 I found a copy of Selected Letters I in a second-hand book store, and reading his travelogues prompted interest in reading and writing such things.

Reading Lovecraft encouraged in alertness to what I would eventually discover was called (by Edmund Burke) the Sublime. I cam to realize that the appeal of some literary works, universally regarded as classics, is bound up with the Sublime -- although I don't think that people always realize that. For example, they might read Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" and think that they are fascinated by it as a probing presentation of colonialism; and there's truth in that -- but is that what pulls people back to read it again? (Of course I'm oversimplifying here.)

Incidentally, does anyone know if Lovecraft ever read Burke's treatise on the beautiful and the sublime? I should have thought he'd take to it with enthusiasm, not only for its content but as a noted work of the 18th century, but I don't remember ever reading that he did know it.

 

[Extollager]

Sorry: "encouraged AN alertness."

 

[j d worthington]

I don't recall coming across anything which confirmed his reading of Burke's essay, but given the fact he did read several studies of the Gothic which themselves mention the work as so influential on the school, and his enthusiasm for the eighteenth century, not to mention his political conservatism (and Burke's being considered one of the lights of the conservative movement), I would think it highly likely he read it at some time. While he would disagree with the overtly Christian tone of some of it, I think he would find himself very much in accord with a great deal of what Burke had to say.

I mentioned that essay in another post, assuming you had read it (and suggesting that if you had not, you should); glad to find someone else who has. It's a wonderful work, and one with which any lovers of the beauty and awe which the best weird literature can invoke should familiarize themselves. I would also suggest reading it with his essay "On Taste" taken as a foreword. For those so interested:

Burke, Edmund. 1909–14. On Taste. Vol. 24, Part 1. The Harvard Classics

Burke, Edmund. 1909–14. On the Sublime and Beautiful. Vol. 24, Part 2. The Harvard Classics

 

[Extollager]

I'm sorry -- I must have missed your previous reference to Burke's essay.

If I were going to teach a class on the Sublime portions, and wanted students to refer to an extended work of fiction that battened on Burke's "sources of the sublime," I think I would have them read Rider Haggard's She! HPL read that, surely -- ?

 

[j d worthington]

Yes, though he came to it rather late -- in the latter part of 1926, while working on Supernatural Horror in Literature. If I recall correctly, he was aware of Haggard's writing before then, but had not read it.

As for She specifically, what he said in his essay was quite brief, and in a more general comment about the weird romance:

The romantic, semi-Gohic, quasi-moral tradition here represented was carried far down the nineteenth century by such authors as Joseph Sheridan LeFanu, Thomas Presktt Prest with his famous Varney, the Vampyre (1847), Wilkie Collins, the late Sir H. Rider Haggard (whose She is reall remarkably good), Sir A. Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, and Robert Louis Stevenson[....]

He had a bit more to say in his correspondence with Derleth:

I've recently begun reading the work of Sir H. Rider Haggard for the first time. "She" is very good, & if the others are at all commensurate, I have quite a treat ahead. I suppose you've seen most of these -- or doesn't the younger generation follow Haggard as he was followed of yore?

-- letter to August Derleth, 31 Oct. 1926, in Essential Solitude, pp. 46-47​

Nonetheless by 1931, though he apparently never revised his opinion of She, he spoke of Haggard rather less favorably:

The main trouble with [Clark Ashton Smith's] "The Venus of Azombeii" -- which as a weird tale I liked better than [Henry S. Whitehead's] "Hill Drums" -- is that it follows a pattern of deadly hackneyedness .... the old H. Rider Haggard formula.

-- letter to August Derleth, 17 June 1931, in Essential Solitude, p. 349​

By the way, if you (or anyone else reading this) is interested, this is an interesting little online source for information on which issues of WT (and other periodicals) contained certain stories:

WT in particular:

Miskatonic University library Periodical Reading Room - Weird Tales

Magazines in general:

Miskatonic University Library Periodical Reading Room

I would add that, though I still have an enormous amount of Haggard left to read (he was rather prolific), even in his earlier works, which were not avowedly fantastical, there are hints of this sort of thing, such as you see very subtly woven into Dawn or The Witch's Head; so subtly, in fact, that it is quite easy to miss the fact that they are there at all....

Oh, and the post about Burke I referred to was this:

http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/1421157-post17.html

 

[Extollager]

JDW, thank you for posting the link to your message that mentioned Burke. I had missed it -- and would not have wanted to!

 

[Extollager]

Now, about Haggard... I'm impressed, JDW! You mention Dawn and The Witch's Head. I have read about 25 of his books, but neitgher of those!

As for HPL on Haggard: he started with the best one, didn't he? I don't think Haggard reaches the heights of She anywhere else, although some of his other books have given me pleasure. Not to digress from HPL for too long, but perhaps I may mention that Tolkien liked Haggard. Have you read Haggard's Montezuma's Daughter? I don't know if Tolkien read this one, but you might think so given the climax of Haggard's novel. One man has doggedly pursued another to the edge of an active volcano. Their final duel is about to begin, when suddenly the hero watches aghast, as the villain struggles with an invisible enemy, then screams and falls into the volcano. One is reminded of Samwise watching Gollum struggle with the invisible Frodo, then wailing and falling to his death in the lava.

 

[j d worthington]

I was aware of its existence, but have not yet read it (though I am attempting to slowly make my way through Haggard's work, it has been rather sporadic for a while now). I also was completely unaware of such a climactic scene, though I knew Tolkien liked Haggard. Quite interesting, that, though I would come down on the side of such being, at most, an unconscious influence, given that the ending of Lord of the Rings was pretty much inevitable, considering Tolkien's leanings....

For those interested, many of Haggard's works can also be found online. The listing at Wikipedia provides links to quite a number:

H. Rider Haggard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia