Under the Influence: H. P. Lovecraft

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

-- H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

 

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was never well-known during his lifetime, and indeed died nearly completely destitute, having gone from a comfortable middle-to-upper-class upbringing to poverty. But following his death, the stories he had written for the various "pulp" magazines began to recirculate and gain recognition, a movement that gained power and legitimacy until, some decades later, Lovecraft was recognized as one of the premier masters of horror fiction – a man whose writing, and influence on his contemporaries and protégés, transformed American horror completely.

This was no small feat, as Lovecraft's writing circle included such luminaries as Frank Belknap Long, Robert Bloch, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard of Conan fame. Virtually all supernatural horror authors of the late 20^th century acknowledged Lovecraft's prominence, and often his influence on their own works, including the most famous horror writer of modern times, Stephen King.

Lovecraft's unique contribution to horror stemmed from a focus on the horrific as being based, not merely in the unknown, but the unknowable, and not the supernatural per se; in many of his tales, the strange and monstrous creatures and beings are not depicted as mystical so much as simply alien – things from outside our space and time who are, from their point of view, no more peculiar than we are to each other, but which are to human eyes incomprehensible to the point of being mind-shattering. While he did not avoid the words and phrases associated with the supernatural, his descriptions of the research and approach was often tinged with the scientific, implying that the "magic" or supernatural forces were merely an aspect of the sciences humanity did not, and perhaps could not, grasp.

It is well-known now that Lovecraft had many prejudices that shaped and affected his perceptions; he was a known anti-Semite and racist against the "colored" peoples, as well as obviously ascribing to various aspects of social Darwinism in his distaste for the people inhabiting "backwater" areas of even his own states, let alone those living in distant lands very different from New England.

These fears and pressures were channeled into his writing, and I have no doubt that some of the intensity of Lovecraft's writing comes from him essentially distilling his fears and prejudices and extending them outward, to the huge, uncaring universe. In Lovecraft's universes, most of the powerful beings are uncaring as to humanity's fate, and in fact may not notice us at all; some others are malevolent. The few that may be benevolent still do not fully understand humanity, and are often weaker than the others.

I first encountered Lovecraft's work in my mid-teens, at about 15, in what I think was a Ballantine edition titled Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. The atmospheric and antiquated language drew me in with a strange power. I recognized a kinship between this and the Conan novels when I began to read the latter, and indeed Robert Howard took some of Lovecraft's elements and incorporated them (although Lovecraftian entities seemed to have a rougher time dealing with Cimmerian barbarians than with 20^th century types).

Lovecraft is best known for Cthulhu, the dead-yet-dreaming priest of the Great Old Ones who lies entombed in the sunken city of R'lyeh, and for the other terrifying and enigmatic entities that exist in that cosmos – Hastur the Unspeakable, the blind idiot god Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, nightgaunts, Shub-Niggurath, Yog-Sothoth, and many others. This is a universe filled with terrors that could, and would, destroy a man just for happening to see them, and Lovecraft was a master of painting the slow progression to madness of those foolish enough to try to delve into those secrets.

Lovecraft may not have invented, but he most certainly codified and popularized, the trope of the "book of forbidden lore" – an ancient tome written by some sorceror, alchemist, or other sage of bygone days that contains blasphemous and terrible secrets of lore about the Great Old Ones or other monstrous beings – how to summon them or derive power from them, and so on. While he and his circle mentioned many such – De Vermis Mysteriis, The Book of Eibon, the Pnakotic Manuscripts – one of these transcended the stories and became its own legend: The Necronomicon, "The Book of Dead Names", supposedly written by the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred.

The Call of Cthulhu is probably his best-known single story, in which the narrator investigates tales of the titular entity and the facts behind the tales, but while it is good, I don't consider it to be the best of Lovecraft's work. That title I would give to one of three works: At The Mountains of Madness, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and The Colour Out of Space.

Of these three, one of them bears the distinction of being one of only two stories to scare me and give me the creeps long after I'd put the book down: The Colour Out of Space. This tale of a meteoroid that somehow contaminates a farm with a colour that corrupts and destroys everything with a slowly increasing monstrousness is told in a strangely lurid yet matter-of-fact manner by the narrator, until the climax brings us face-to-face with something alien and untouchable, perhaps literally impossible to fight. (As a side note, the only other story to really scare me was John W. Campbell's masterpiece Who Goes There?)

At the Mountains of Madness is the tale of a scientific expedition to a remote site in Antarctica which seems to fit a description of a location in the Necronomicon (at least in the view of the narrator). A simple excavation becomes stranger and stranger until the protagonists find themselves following traces of an alien creature into the titular mountains. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward tells the story of an evil man who finds a way to transcend time and mortality by careful arrangement and manipulation of his own descendants; it is a frightening and tragic tale.

Futility is one of Lovecraft's common themes – not surprising, given his life experiences. However, he was not incapable of writing a story that ended with a reasonably unambiguous victory for humanity, despite his reputation to the contrary. The Shunned House is one example; while the protagonist's uncle is killed, the two of them do succeed in challenging, and eventually destroying, the monstrous creature lurking in the house, and at the end of the story the house has become harmless and safe.

I do not, of course, tend to write stories so filled with bleak despair and futility as Lovecraft; yet his influence remains in the imagery and the mythology of horror that he crafted. The itrichel in Phoenix in Shadow certainly partakes of Lovecraftian elements, as does the corrupted forest surrounding Kaizatenzei; to an extent, the Demons themselves are associated with some Lovecraftian imagery, and there are certainly directly Chthulhoid entities present in Zarathan as a whole. If I write anything intending to evoke horror and fear, you can be sure that Lovecraft's work is never far from my mind.

Despite age and some unfortunate elements from Lovecraft's personal ideas and preferences, Lovecraft's work remains powerful and, to me at least, atmospherically readable in a way few other authors manage. For those who are fans of the horror genre, it is almost necessary to read at least some Lovecraft, just so that one can recognize where some of the common elements of modern horror came from.

Many modern popular works such as Hellboy, Babylon 5, the works of H. R. Giger, and others are strongly influenced by his words and images, and undoubtedly his influence will continue for at least several generations more. If you have never tried any of Lovecraft's work, I strongly recommend that you do.