Lovecraft and "Myth"

[Extollager]

In a recent thread on Lovecraft's fiction as "comfort food," I had occasion to refer to C. S. Lewis's valuable little book An Experiment in Criticism. Lewis argues there that we can discuss the merits of literary works by reference to the quality of the reading that they invite, require, reward.

Bad writing rewards inattentive reading. Good writing rewards attentive reading. Yet, Lewis says, there is, paradoxically perhaps, a type of writing that can be worthwhile even if it comes to us in inept forms. Myth has value "independent of its embodiment in any literary work" (41). Myth provides us (43) with an "object of contemplation [that] works upon us by its peculiar flavour or quality," and there may be little narrative element.

Lewis goes on to say (44) that in myth "Human sympathy is at a minimum. We do not project ourselves at all strongly into the characters." By contrast, much of the world's great literature does invite and require such involvement, whether we are talking about Pride and Prejudice or War and Peace. But it's not so with myth.

Myth is always "fantastic," dealing with "impossibles and preternaturals."

The experience evoked by the myth may be joyful or sad, but it is always "grave." Comic myth is impossible.

The experience is not only grave but awe-inspiring.

Lewis claims that Rider Haggard (She, King Solomon's Mines, etc.) provided myth in this sense. Lewis was making a claim for Haggard's value at a time when academic orthodoxy would have been that Haggard was a writer of trash, of boys' books. Lewis was a fellow of an Oxford college and then held the chair of medieval and Renaissance literature at Cambridge. He was really sticking his neck out.

I'm only giving a few glimpses of what he says. I'd recommend his book to those who feel that Lovecraft provides literary experience of value and yet are able and willing to confess that, in terms of many of the common criteria of literary excellence, his writing manifestly falls short.

 

[Extollager]

...To continue. The "common criteria of literary excellence" might include multi-layeredness; definitiveness; a high degree of congruence between the words used and the potential of the theme; a sense of truth to nature or experience; the capacity to quicken our awareness of ourselves, of life, etc.

By "definitiveness" I mean that a great literary work stands as the definitive achievement of the meaning, literary form, etc. that it aimed to attain. After Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, he had written a work that, aside from incidentals perhaps, could hardly be improved. It is a fully realized work. Same for Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Dante's Divine Comedy or Stevenson's Treasure Island. We may feel this to be true even of works that were not finished, such as Spenser's Faerie Queene. I don't think Lovecraft felt that any of his works was the definitive embodiment of what he had in him to do as a literary maker. Would anyone care to disagree with him and to argue that a certain Lovecraft story is "definitive"?

I think Lewis would probably say that myth provides something other than what is suggested by those "common criteria." We might say that the myth of Orpheus can be interpreted as if it possessed multiple levels of meaning: it's about the cycle of the seasons, it's about music, it's about marital faithfulness, etc. But the essence of the myth I think eludes such things and its value is not dependent on them, i.e. myths may be read allegorically but they transcend allegory.

So we may wish to discuss whether Lovecraft is a mythopoeic author. Lewis believed that Haggard was. I will attempt to express the "myth" of Haggard's greatest book, She, in a sentence:

"In a remote, ruinous city of the dead and of savages, a queen of goddess-like beauty, who has bathed in earth's secret fire, and who is thus untouched by the passage of many centuries, waits for her lover to be reborn and to come to her."

To experience that myth, many readers are quite willing to forgive Haggard's literary faults. He did not have it in him to give to Ayesha the wisdom that he would have liked her to speak. Much of the book is just rattling good adventure stuff. But wow, what a myth! And I think a key element in the myth is that Ayesha has waited so long. She could have bathed in the fire 25 years ago, which is long enough for its wondrous powers to have become obvious. But she has been waiting for her lover for two millennia.

I think that that element of dreadful, supernaturally-protracted "waiting" is important.

Perhaps readers will be interested in discussing whether Lovecraft is a mythopoeic author. One question might be: Is there one basic Lovecraftian "myth"? (If so, I hope readers will express it in their own words rather than reproducing someone else's formulation, even HPL's own, if he had one.) And: if there is a Lovecraftian "myth," is it adequately expressed in any one story?

 

[Extollager]

Sorry... I bungled that. Here is an attempt to state the myth of She in a few sentences. (Lewis shows that the Orpheus myth can likewise be stated in a few sentences.)

"In a remote, ruinous city of the dead and of savages, a queen of goddess-like beauty waited for her lover to be reborn and to come to her. She had bathed in earth's secret fires and thus was untouched by the passage of many centuries. At last her lover appeared, and she led him to the secret fires, but when she entered them ahead of him, her beauty perished dreadfully, and she fell at his feet and died."

That is the "myth."

Lewis referred to Haggard's "mythopoeic gift." Did Lovecraft possess something of the sort?