Whooo! Some very good posts this time 'round! I'll try to give my own responses:
Thanks for giving my rather vague thoughts such serious consideration! I’m afraid that I’ve concentrated on the Cthulhu Mythos stories because they’re the ones I know best, the ones most stereotypically “Lovecraftian” (lots of tentacles!) and, to my mind, some of his best.
I think this is the view most readers who haven't actually sat down and studied Lovecraft tend to have -- it even shows up in Luckhurst's Oxford edition, where he makes repeated references to the "tentacular horrors" as stereotypical Lovecraft. Like Poe and horror tales, there is some truth to this, but it is often exaggerated. Poe's horror (or even horror and detective tales, which often had horrific elements) were only a small portion of his fictional or poetic ouput, yet that is what most people know of Poe. So with Lovecraft, where the tentacle horrors actually occur in relatively few stories. Not that there is anything wrong with such, but I think it tends to limit an appreciation of what the man was doing, nonetheless.
As I was reading this thread, I was reminded of Orwell’s attack on Salvador Dali in “Benefit of Clergy”. Orwell, to put it simply, accepts that Dali is a good painter whilst finding him entirely revolting. The thing that Orwell seems to find the most repellent is Dali’s “perversity” – ie his morbid streak, his aesthetism, his snobbery, his lack of interest in normal human relations and his lack of the healthy salt-of-the-earth stuff that Orwell would be expected to like. It struck me that he would probably say exactly the same thing about Lovecraft. (This says a lot about Orwell’s hang-ups, too. Nobody seems to have noticed his strong interest in sex outdoors, for instance). I think all these charges can be laid at Lovecraft, and in a way, they stick. Lovecraft’s world isn’t a hearty one, but why should it be? You can’t kill Cthulhu the way you can defeat a member of the Thought Police. The evils in Lovecraft’s work are much deeper and subtler than human nastiness. I get the feeling that, if the Old Ones won, mankind would be swatted aside or devoured rather than tormented.
And, of course, the implication is that, being cosmic entities which are not limited by either space or time as are we, eventually they will win; and, yes, that will likely mean our extermination simply because we are nuisances, like mosquitoes or lice. And certainly in Lovecraft's fiction (with rare exceptions) his vision was a very dark one, as befits an attempt at addressing terror and similar emotions. But, as Dale mentions, there is also a sense of wonder at work there simultaneously -- something Lovecraft noted as a necessary ingredient for a worthy weird tale (see
Supernatural Horror in Literature), and to which he was always susceptible.
Anyway, I should explain what I meant about “depravity”. I was thinking of depravity by elites – those with power and money, like the Waites or the Marshes – rather than yokels inbreeding and the like. Some of Lovecraft’s human villains seem like twisted intellectuals – Charles Dexter Ward, say – who are decadent not in seeking pleasure, but in not having the sense not to summon horrors from Beyond. Their decadence is really a lack of morals (which, interestingly, the “mob” has). I agree that there’s actually not all that much about yokels worshipping the devil, or not as much as you might expect. They are, as you say, more likely to be afraid than collaborating (in a couple of cases, the frightened-but-not-evil yokels are explicitly not white, for what it’s worth). Am I right in thinking that the Martense family were upper-class before they slid downhill?
That clarifies a bit, and I think on that ground you may be right (Crawford Tillinghast; Joseph Curwen; Robert Suydam). I would take issue, however, that Ward is a "twisted intellectual"; naïve, most certainly; but his intent was never evil, but rather the seeking of knowledge; and having found a source which had had personal contact with the wisdom of the ages "from the horse's mouth", as it were (Curwen), his attempts to revive his ancestor and learn from him to pass on such wisdom for the benefit of humanity is more a noble goal than otherwise. The problem is that he was dealing with someone who had no regard for humanity, nor anything else save his own selfish goals; and it cost poor Charles his life. And yes, the Martenses were decidedly one of the great armigerous families of the region before they isolated themselves into degenerative inbreeding -- either through incest or through the limited number of menials about.
Which brings me to a slightly tricky point, perhaps no more than a nuance, about bigotry. While Lovecraft is never going to be an advert for tolerance or social inclusivity, his sort of bigotry seems to be that of an earlier age, rather than the violent cruelty that came out of Europe and Japan in the 1930s. I can’t help feel that while he was a neurotic, he wasn’t a downright evil person. He seems like a man from an earlier time – and I think wanted to be – with all the good and bad that that entailed. My suspicion is that he looked back to some sort of golden age, when society had been better put-together and people occupied a set place (and stayed there). The problem is that, to us, the conditions of a lot of people in that age would be pretty much intolerable. The other slightly uncomfortable question is whether, had he been less neurotic, Lovecraft would have come up with concepts as powerful as the Deep Ones or the de la Poers. I rather doubt it.
I don't think he would, no. In fact, I'd say this (uncomfortable as it may be for some to admit it) is one of the driving forces of his fiction, and what powers some of his greatest works, linked as it is with Lovecraft's views (not uncommon for his day) concerning evolution and the possibility of descending that ladder under the right (wrong) conditions -- cf. "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family", "The Beast in the Cave", "The Rats in the Walls", "The Lurking Fear", etc., etc., etc.)
But yes, I think he did hold to ethnic views which were (largely) of an older day, but which were still generally unquestioned in his own. I wouldn't say he didn't have his outbursts against ethnics in print, for they do crop up now and again in his early amateur journalist writings (particularly in his own
The Conservative), but he never made any effort to put these rants into political action so far as I know; and this aspect of it tapered off a good deal over the years. It certainly never went away, and at times of stress could be quite virulent; but in general he mellowed in his views more than one might expect. This may be why, in later writings, we see a bit more sympathy for ethnics than we tend to get in the earlier ones. Not always much, but certainly lacking the vituperation of his earliest efforts.
Toby, we've had discussion of this point before, here at Chrons, and you might like to take a look at it, if you didn't do so the first time.
http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/528635-failure-of-lovecrafts-project-1-of-3-a.html#post1421962
The mere facts of the incommensurable size of the universe and of its age (quantity of light-years, billions of years) don't include our emotional responses to those facts, and the emotion of cringing terror before them is only one possible response.
I think, however, that here we get into the Burkean sublime, which invariably involves "terror" and "awe" as intermingled and closely related responses (same as Lovecraft's "ecstatic fear" from "The Rats in the Walls"); consider Burke's list of tremendous things which evoke such a response. Lovecraft, here, is simply extending such to the larger scale of the universe itself rather than simply to mountains, ancient and gigantic structures, etc. And, as I note above, there is always an intermixture of both terror, awe, wonder, and fascination in these things, which blending is one of the hallmarks of Lovecraft's work in both prose and verse.
Moreover, in any event, the ancient West, at least, did know that the earth is tiny relative to the rest of the universe -- see the fourth of five statements here:
Starry Messenger: Copernicus, Ptolemy, and Cosmology
What Lovecraft did with the enhancement (not discovery) of knowledge regarding the immensity of the universe relates to his poetic imagination.
Which brings me to mention something I've been thinking about for at least the past week or two as we've been discussing Lovecraft. What often gets
discussed is his ideas as garnered from passages in his stories, his essays, and his letters; but I suspect that much of what brings people back to a number of his major stories is what we casually describe as the sense of wonder. That's where the "poetic imagination" I just mentioned comes in.
[FONT=Arial,Sans-Serif][SIZE=-1][FONT=Arial,Sans-Serif][SIZE=-1]I have whirl’d with the earth at the dawning,
When the sky was a vaporous flame;
I have seen the dark universe yawning,
Where the black planets roll without aim;
Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name.
from "Nemesis"
That happens to be from a poem, but I see a "poetic imagination" in some of his prose too.
But this does seem to be something that's less susceptible to critical discussion than some other topics that, to me at least, seem somewhat beside the point if the point is to talk about what prompts one to reread him. But not everyone gets that from HPL, it seems. The sense of wonder may be stirred, for some, much more by a description of, say, wild flowers in a Thoreau passage.
My own thought would be something like this: having experienced both, I wouldn't want to have been without those experiences. But I can't assume that a good reader who tries HPL will experience a sense of wonder (nor that a Thoreau passage will prompt it in someone who's never read that before).
Then also, it does seem that, for the sense of wonder to occur, it often helps if someone reads a thing in adolescence. As he gets older he may return to the literary work repeatedly and still feel that stir, even while he may become aware of literary failings that he didn't perceive when he was 14.
But my main point is that, if we want to talk about the sense of wonder as part of Lovecraft's excellence, we seem to have something that is more subjective than some other qualities relating to literary achievement.
I'll leave it to others to decide whether a discussion of "sense of wonder" belongs here (Lovecraft's Themes) or at the related thread on his excellence. If folk decided to discuss the topic over there, perhaps a link could be made at this thread.
So: what can we do, as regards the sense of wonder, other than just point to a given literary work and say: "That moves my sense of wonder. How about yours?"
And: is it even a good idea to talk about the sense of wonder? If we start analyzing it, might we injure our experience of it?
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I do not think examining that sense of wonder in any way damages it; from my experience, it tends to enhance it, even make it stronger, for such a discussion also involves broadening an appreciation for the things which stir that wonder, and hone the poetic sensibility toward it.
When it comes to Lovecraft's, one of my personal favorites is his poem "Continuity", from the Fungi from Yuggoth sequence:
There is in certain ancient things a trace
Of some dim essence—more than form or weight;
A tenuous aether, indeterminate,
Yet linked with all the laws of time and space.
A faint, veiled sign of continuities
That outward eyes can never quite descry;
Of locked dimensions harbouring years gone by,
And out of reach except for hidden keys.
It moves me most when slanting sunbeams glow
On old farm buildings set against a hill,
And paint with life the shapes which linger still
From centuries less a dream than this we know.
In that strange light I feel I am not far
From the fixt mass whose sides the ages are.
Or "Nostalgia":
I never can be tied to raw, new things,
For I first saw the light in an old town,
Where from my window huddled roofs sloped down
To a quaint harbour rich with visionings.
Streets with carved doorways where the sunset beams
Flooded old fanlights and small window-panes,
And Georgian steeples topped with gilded vanes—
These were the sights that shaped my childhood dreams.
Such treasures, left from times of cautious leaven,
Cannot but loose the hold of flimsier wraiths
That flit with shifting ways and muddled faiths
Across the changeless walls of earth and heaven.
They cut the moment’s thongs and leave me free
To stand alone before eternity.
This, you will see, also includes that antiquarian sense which is, as you so rightly point out, such a vital part of the Lovecraftian experience.
From what I've seen, a growing number are getting this aspect of Lovecraft, and realizing that this is a good part of what keeps pulling them back to him over the years. Nor do I think it necessary someone read these pieces when young to respond to them when older -- though I think analogous writings, which emphasize the sense of wonder, awe, mystery, illusive impressions of greatness, majesty, etc., are probably necessary, if they don't already have that tendency in large portion to begin with. For example, without reading such things when I was a very young child, would I respond as well to the final lines of Poe's "Spirits of the Dead"?
The breeze -- the breath of God -- is still --
And the mist upon the hill
Shadowy -- shadowy -- yet unbroken,
Is a symbol and a token --
How it hangs upon the trees,
A mystery of mysteries! --
Even as an atheist and completely lacking a belief in the supernatural, I find this to be wonderfully evocative and beautiful, full of the intimations of something far beyond what the scene itself paints when taken literally (if one can take such a description literally). And I find tons of this in Lovecraft's work and, in fact, find more of it now than I did when I was young -- or, at least, recognize it as such on a conscious level more than I did then. And, as indicated by the responses of such as Harman (see above) I don't think reading Lovecraft at such an early age is at all necessary to respond to this element in his work... an element which Harman discusses at some length in his book.
I think part of the problem, as I've indicated before, is the frame of reference with which we view Lovecraft. If we come to him expecting a take of horror, or terror, with monsters and gore and all that goes with them, then that is likely to be what we will get out of it. But if we approach Lovecraft without such preconceptions, we leave ourselves open to the various levels at which he works, and a "sense of wonder" is most decidedly a notable quality there, which runs throughout the bulk of his fiction. Take, for instance, several passages in "The Whisperer in Darkness" -- a flawed story, in my opinion, while nonetheless remaining one of his most important and, in some ways, one of his best. Here the "wonder" isn't so much the cosmic element itself, but rather the intimations of its presence within the Vermont landscape, and the near(?) sentience of that landscape itself.
As for it being subjective -- well, yes. Just as color-blindness prevents a person from seeing the spectrum, so some are blind to this quality, or are intermittently blind to it; just as Lovecraft lamented the blindness to the "cosmic" element which was so important to him yet which so few he either knew or read seemed aware of. All one can do in such cases is to point out passages which evoke that for oneself (and others), and hope that some portion of it may register with the person in question.
Certainly a major theme for much of Lovecraft's writing (nonfiction and poetry as well as his best-known fiction) is the
antiquarian theme. It's one of the most attractive elements in his writings, so far as this reader is concerned, and one that contributes enormously to the "Lovecraft" reading experience. It was a central element of his personality and gives him some affinity with, say, the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton.
The High Cost of Ignoring Beauty — The American Magazine
Just as I am grateful to Tolkien for, among other things, his contribution to my youthful imaginative and sensory response to nature, I am grateful to Lovecraft for his quickening in me a receptiveness to the charm of relatively old brick walls, board fences, etc., preferably down a brambly alley. I have always lived in places settled (by European-derived people) in the 1800s, much more recently than the colonial-period Providence HPL loved, but all the same I think I owe him something. I liked the antiquarianism of M. R. James too.
This is something that can be distinguished from Lovecraft's eruption-of-menace-from-the-past theme already mentioned.
And once again, I would agree. This fear of the corruption, contamination, or outright dissolution of that which he valued from the past, was very important to Lovecraft and, along with that theme of the "alien", drove much of his work. Yet one cannot entirely distinguish this from his "eruption-of-menace-from-the-past" theme, either, as the two are often closely linked; again, that complex blending of emotional opposites which is such a large part of the fascination of Lovecraft's work, which is often very complex psychologically. Think, for instance, of the gamut of emotions, and of emotion-combinations, which are at work in At the Mountains of Madness, where one set of emotional responses often is modified or gives way to another as more information is added (e.g., the shifting of view of the Old Ones from terrifying menace to objects of sympathy and pity
while still retaining large traces of the older response), and the even greater shift from what would seem to be the supreme terror (the shoggoths and what they represent) to something considerably more nebulous and yet more terrifying (the unspecified sight Danforth sees beyond those further mountains, and what is implied by those allusive references taken in conjunction with the intertextual references to other Lovecraftian writings, as well as Poe's
Pym); yet even here with a mingling of awe, wonder, curiosity, fascination (after all, doesn't Lovecraft leave us all wanting to
know, to
see, what Danforth saw? Even given the impact of that experience as evidenced by what has happened to Danforth?)... and even beauty.
All of this emerges from Lovecraft's fascination with antiquity, with the past, and with that "conflict with Time" which was so vital to the fulfillment of his aesthetic sense. A rich salmagundi indeed....
