Howard Phillips Lovecraft, born August 20, 1890, was the great horror writer of his generation. Lovecraft created the so-called Cthulhu mythos, which is even today visited liberally by imaginative writers the world over. Even one of my favorite Babylon 5 episodes, Third Space, visited Lovecraft’s chilling universe.
Lovecraft seems to have lived a depressing and lonely life. As a young man, particularly from ages 18 to 23, he had “almost no contact with anyone but his mother.” (link) In 1924 he married, though he and his wife separated a few years afterward, never to live with each other again. The divorce was never finalized.
Lovecraft was hardly a prolific writer and never wrote even a single full lengthed novel. He would have died into obscurity had it not been for the efforts of his “pen pals,” particularly August Derleth, who managed to breath life into his stories posthumously.
Not socially adept, Lovecraft’s pen pals were his real social life. He is believed to have written “nearly 100,000 letters in his lifetime.” Of which one-fifth survive. (Link) Through his correspondences he inspired numerous famous authors, including Fritz Leiber and Robert E. Howard. His stories directly inspired the current generation of horror writers, such as Stephen King. King called Lovecraft “the twentieth century’s great practitioner of the class horror tale.” (link)
Cosmic Horror: Fear of the Truth
Lovecraft invented a whole new genre of horror known today as Cosmic Horror, Cosmic Pessimism, or Cosmicism. In Lovecraft’s tales, typically the storyteller is explaining how they stumbled upon some bit of forbidden knowledge that proves to marginalize the importance of the existence of humankind. Unable to deal with the truth, said storyteller either goes insane and is locked into an asylum or commits suicide to escape the truth.
One of my favorite examples of this is the story of Shadow over Innsmouth. (Which, I might add, was creepily brought to life in the video game Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.)
In this classic tale, a visitor to the sea port town of Innsmouth becomes too curious for his own good and begins to research the strange happenings in Innsmouth. He accidentally stumbles upon the horrifying tale that the residence of Innsmouth are actually a cross breed between humans and the Spawn of Cthulhu known as The Deep Ones – an ancient advanced race of sea monsters that make humans look like mere monkeys.
Forced to spend the night in their only hotel, he soon finds that the denizens do not intend to let him leave Innsmouth alive with his knowledge. Though he manages to escape with his life, he soon discovers that he was drawn to the town because he himself is a descendent of Innsmouth stalk. He soon finds his human features dissolving day by day as he is drawn to the siren call of the Deep Ones in the sea.
This story is an apt illustration of Lovecraft’s reoccurring themes, particularly “psychic disintegration in the face of cosmic horror perceived as ‘truth’” (link), discovery of advanced races or gods hostile to humanity, and horror at discovering one’s bestial (evolutionary?) heritage.
The Religion of Lovecraft
Joyce Carol Oates suggested that Lovecraft’s “gothic tale[s] would seem to form psychic autobiography” apparently inspired by his own religious views, commonly called Maltheism where one “achieve[s] the mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality.” (link)
In a letter to Robert E. Howard, he affirmed his agnostic-atheist beliefs:
All I say is that I think it is damned unlikely that anything like a central cosmic will, a spirit world, or an eternal survival of personality exist. They are the most preposterous and unjustified of all the guesses which can be made about the universe… (link)
The Logical Conclusions of Atheism
Indeed, it is not hard to discern that Lovecraft’s horror was nothing less than an atheist worldview followed with fidelity to its logical conclusions. Lovecraft’s real gift was his ability to understand the ramifications of his own beliefs and to channel that into horror fiction.
To Lovecraft, morality was subjective and thus meaningless.
In a cosmos without absolute values we have to rely on the relative values affecting our daily sense of comfort, pleasure, & emotional satisfaction. What gives us relative painlessness & contentment we may arbitrarily call “good”, & vice versa. (link)
One person’s morality simply impacted upon another, with no hope of any sort of universal resolution, proving morality a mere illusion.
Now what gives one person or race or age relative painlessness & contentment often disagrees sharply on the psychological side from what gives these same boons to another person or race or age. Therefore “good” is a relative & variable quality, depending on ancestry, chronology, geography, nationality, & individual temperament. (link)
To Lovecraft, humanity was of no significance in the cosmic scheme of things.
Now all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large. (link)
Once properly understood, the universe was a terrifying place from which our only protection was ignorance. We were a tiny bubble of illusionary order floating in a sea of universal nothingness that can and would snuff us out when it got around to it.
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. (link)
His love of science clashed with what it implied about humanity and our utter unimportance. If we really understood, madness would be the only option.
The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. (link)
Escape Into the Arms of Cthulhu
His belief in a Godless world in part drove Lovecraft to write his “weird tales”, allowing him what he called “imaginative liberation” from “the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which for ever imprison us.” (link)
So his fiction was paradoxically a simultaneous release from reality while attempting to face it head on. The horrors he wrote reflected his true horror of our place in the universe yet were somehow more satisfying in that we were not alone and were actually surrounded by the wondrous and fantastical, just out of our sight.
Even terrible gods like Cthulhu and Dagon, who cared nothing for humanity other than to breed us with their own spawn, would be a relief compared to the non-existing God that cared nothing at all.
Bruce, thanks for this look at Lovecraft. As a former agnostic/atheist, I always find it interesting to look at the writings of self-declared agnostics/atheists, and it is interesting to note that there are always religious themes there. The lack of universal morality is a childish theme — CS Lewis successfully debunked this by pointing out that everybody has an internal sense of right and wrong, at the very least when you begin taking their stuff of harming them. The whole “honor among thieves” bit. I wrote about “1984″ that even though Orwell was not religious, he unwittingly shows the power of religion in that Winston’s only hope is the internal power of personal spirituality. The reason “1984″ is so devastating is precisely because Orwell offers no hope, no future, no way of overcoming totalitarian tyranny. Well, we know that many religious people were able to survive tyranny precisely because of their faith, which is the one thing Big Brother cannot take away.
It is also worth noting that the vast majority of the atheist heroes (Marx, Freud, Lovecraft) has miserable personal lives. The lesson: be careful where your cynicism takes you.
I believe these are appropriate links:
http://www.fredvanlente.com/downloads/WhyWeHere.pdf
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=135
(slight language warning, though. Still hilarious).
The coincidences of life fascinate me. I’ve lately begun playing a board game with some friends based on the Cthulu mythos (called Arkham Horror). Furthermore, the bloggers over at By Common Consent just today began a series of posts delving into the world of depression.
The world of Lovecraft has always been extremely intriguing to me as it appeals to my dark side and love of all things in the shadows. Furthermore, while I’ve never experienced clinical depression personally, I feel an intense amount of compassion for those that have. I am currently working towards a masters degree in counseling to work with that precise population.
The common thread binding Lovecraft’s tales and depression–in my opinion–was pointed out by Geoff. The relative amount of misery or joy we experience in life is directly correlated with our understanding of the goodness of mankind, the connection to something greater than ourselves, and the hope that evil will ultimately be triumphed by good. Without these core beliefs one cannot help falling into despair, as Lovecraft’s maltheism so clearly demonstrated.
I am not claiming that clinical depression can be cured by happy thoughts; I understand the biological and genetic forces behind it well enough to contain naive and overzealous hope. However, I believe there is room in a well-rounded regimen for spiritual counseling that can help patients develop beliefs that stave off the additional suffering of nihilistic angst.
Why we’re here by HPL was hilarious!
Tristin, how do you like Arkham Horror by the way? Worth playing or buying?
I find the Cthulu business oddly interesting as well. But then I also like watching Trinity and Beyond: The A-Bomb Movie. I can’t explain the fascination.
Spot on that this is the ultimate logical conclusion of honest atheism.
One of the quotes also illustrates how hard it is, even for Lovecraft, to dismiss the notion of ultimate purpose in the universe:
Not meant by whom?
Interesting point, Vader. I didn’t notice that.
twice upon a time’s comic link WAS funny.
So, now I’m totally clear on why I can’t get into Lovecraft’s novels. Between this and Adam’s post on the appeal of fantasy writing.
While there’s no doubt Lovecraft was a highly depressed nihilist his stories are pretty interesting on numerous levels. For one it’s not just atheism he’s embracing but the loss of certainty that 19th century atheism (or extreme liberal Christianity) could provide. This is especially seen in his treatment of science. I don’t know how much science he actually knew, but his invoking of the changes in physics due to quantum theory and the non-Euclidian geometry of relativity are pretty profound. Often the scientists in his stories end up mad because of such things. Now why Lovecraft thought this sort of uncertainty or non-intuitive physics was nihilistic escapes me – but he did capture a certain geistzeist of the era in an unexpected way. (His Witch House story is my favorite dealing as it does with a dimensional traveling physics grad student unable to deal with the meaning non-Euclidean geometry)
The other thing that has been oft noted is how much his texts are profuse with Platonism and even Renaissance forms of platonism such as the received forms of Kabbalism. (I suspect his Cryptonomicom is probably inspired by such “secret” mystic texts) Part of the madness of his characters isn’t just that the world is different, but that it is different in a strong Idealist way. But not idealism of the sort Kant or even Berkeley held to but something more like a radicalized neoPlatonism where words are more real than material.
Clark, excellent analysis. I’m impressed. You should have written then instead of a dabbler like me. Actualy, you still should.
I love his stories. Probably the only horror writer I can stand. (I like some of King’s books, but just a few and almost always when he’s not writing horror)
The one thing about Lovecraft that does bother me a lot is his racism and xenophobia. He clearly is terrified by immigrants. Not out of line for the era in which he lived in which any non-white Protestant was distrusted. But still it ends up being as disturbing as the purported things he fears. I also find his love of 19th century architecture and fear or 20th century architecture a kind of funny element in some stories. But old building simultaneously have their own fears as well. So there’s this weird double movement regarding buildings in his stories.
I was going to do another post sometime and highlight the inconsistency of his disbelieving in morality and also being racist. It’s really only one of many differences between what he believe and what he believed he believed.
I concur. Good point Vader! The very point that HPL had such archain views of race (in his time or not), and his cyniscm toward Kantian moral philosophy, shows his own immaturity of thought as well as his own depressing ignorance. How can anyone achieve “placidity” through that worldview? The truth is, one can not. I believe all people with the abitlity to think, have an innate sence of right and wrong. If this is true, does that not war against HPL’s childish assumption of human spiritual ignorance? In other words, if I as an “average” human have the ability to think, do I not have the ability to make choices upon what I then percieve to be “known”? And if I can “know” something can I not be trusted to make a choice for myself without being “roboticly” ignorant as HPL assumes? Or is it more plausable that HPL’s own hubris was showing that (he) understood more of life and eternal existence than the “average” human? My faith is confirmed, deepened and made “placid” by my “growth” of knowledge. This is a blanket statement I understand, but many atheists I have been in contact with throughout my life are the most arrogant and ignorant people I know. Their attempts at “proving” there is no God have become almost a blind religion in and of itself. More like the “blind leading the blind” if you asked me.
All (I believe), is acceptable in fiction for entertainment purposes. Have fun! But when fictional thought becomes confused with reality, that is when hard analysis of what is said and/or believed must begin. This is where I believe HPL goes off the deep end and his “opinions” fall by lack of truth and merit.
I agree with Geoff B, that there is a one to one correlation between lack of belief and morality, and living one’s life bound and shackled by the reprobation of that “choice”. Just look at the misery of HPL’s life… Ick! If that is an example of what “living” is all about, I’ll choose to live my life in “ignorance” every time!!!
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Well I’d like to think lots of people are cynical towards Kantian moral philosophy without being immature. I sure am. (Cynical that is, not immature)