H. P. Lovecraft - The Man that created Modern Horror

Today, I would like to talk about my biggest inspiration, my favourite author and one of the most famous horror writer of the modern ( modern? ) age.

Hovard Phillips Lovecraft ( 1890 - 1937 ) - American novelist, writer, critic and amateur journalist. He was born in the city of Providence, New England. He is known as the creator of a completely new genre of horror, called “cosmic horror” or “Lovecraftian horror”. He established the incredibly famous “Cthulhu Mythos” and he is author of several “weird fiction” that changed the way how the horror genre looks like.

From the very birth, his life was the streak of terrible tragedies. His father, Winfield Scott Lovecraft became acutely psychotic. His next caretaker, Whipple Van Buren Phillips died when he was fourteen. H. P. Lovecraft was a very sickly and weak child, he had to abandon school because of constantly getting ill. He was however a mad genius himself and he didn’t need any education. He learned Latin at the age of 6 and at the same time he started writing his first pieces of poetry. At the age of 16 he was writing a lot of scientific articles for newspapers ( mostly about astronomy ). He tried to come back to the formal education, but he failed. In the end, he didn’t finished High School, neither university.

In 1917 H. P. Lovecraft wrote his first major story, the opening to the Cthulhu Mythos. The short, weird story was called “Dagon”.

I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more.

H. P. Lovecraft completely changed the way of writing the horror stories. The best way to describe it, would be a quatege from the “Supernatural Horror in the Literature”, a short essay written by Lovecraft.

The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain--a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.

Besides that, what we can expect from Lovecraft’s works?

- Anti-anthropocentrism, misanthropy in general. Lovecraft's works tend not to focus on characterization of humans, in line with his view of humanity's insignificant place in the universe, and the general Modernist trend of literature at the time of his writings.
- Preoccupation with viscerate texture. The horror features of Lovecraft's stories tend to involve semi-gelatinous substances, such as slime, as opposed to standard horror elements such as blood, bones, or corpses.
- Antiquarian writing style. Even when dealing with up-to-date technology, Lovecraft tended to use anachronisms as well as old-fashioned words when dealing with such things. For example, he used the term "man of science" rather than the modern word, "scientist" and often spelled "show" as "shew" and "lantern" as "lanthorne”. He loved using weird words, like for example “Eldritch”.
- Detachment. Lovecraftian heroes (both in original writings and in more modern adaptations) tend to be isolated individuals, usually with an academic or scholarly bent.
- Helplessness and hopelessness. Although Lovecraftian heroes may occasionally deal a "setback" to malignant forces, their victories are temporary, and they usually pay a price for it. Otherwise, subjects often find themselves completely unable to simply run away, instead driven by some other force to their desperate end.
- Unanswered questions. Characters in Lovecraft's stories rarely if ever fully understand what is happening to them, and often go insane if they try.
- Sanity's fragility and vulnerability. Characters in many of Lovecraft's stories are unable to mentally cope with the extraordinary and almost unreasonable truths they witness or hear. The strain of trying to cope, as Lovecraft often illustrates, is too impossible to bear and insanity takes hold.
- Questionable parentage. Relatives of characters are typically depicted as paranormal or abnormal, whereas intimate relations in general are often represented as foreboding and sinister.
- A first-person perspective.

It looks pretty obvious for the today’s readers. But at this time ( 1917 - 1937 ) it was a revolution. Still, H. P Lovecraft’s works were incredibly unpopular and during his entire life, H. P. Lovecraft published only one story in book form ( Shadows over Innsmouth ) which sold in astonishing number of 500 copies. Rest of them were like todays fanfiction, some of them were never published, rest of them were published in really low popular magazines like “Weird Tales” or “Astounding Stories”. All of his works were published after his death in 1937, and most of them became popular around 60’ and 70’.

Still, H. P. Lovecraft didn’t give up. In 1926, Lovecraft came back to his homecity of Providence. It was the beggining of large amount of new weird tales, like for example “Call of Cthulhu”, containing probably the most famous quotes of 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. 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 light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.

The thing that should be noted about H. P. Lovecraft, is that there is hardly a difference between todays fanfiction writers and him. Besides writing, Lovecraft was also a pre-reader and proof-reader for many works of other writers like Derleth, Clark Ashton, Arthur Machen, Robert E. Hovard and many others. The entire society of “weird tales” writers pretty much looks similar to our today scene of fanfiction. H. P. Lovecraft and other writers were creating the same universe, they were reffering to each other. For example, the priest from “Whisperer in the Darkness” Klarkash-Ton is the reference to Clark Ashton, count D’erlette from “Shadow out of Time” and “Whisperer in the Darkness” is reference to August Derleth. There are so many references in their works, that enlisting them would take another blog post.

Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his lifetime, his reputation has grown over the decades, and he is now regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th century. According to Joyce Carol Oates, an award-winning author, Lovecraft—as with Edgar Allan Poe in the 19th century—has exerted "an incalculable influence on succeeding generations of writers of horror fiction". Science fiction and fantasy author Stephen King called Lovecraft "the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale." King has made it clear in his semi-autobiographical non-fiction book Danse Macabre that Lovecraft was responsible for King's own fascination with horror and the macabre, and was the single largest figure to influence his fiction writing.

He inspirated not only writers. His influence can be spotted everywhere. The works of H. P. Lovecraft gave birth to “Four Gods of Chaos” from Warhammer, the design of “Alien”, the entire section in Dungeons&Dragons and Pathfinder, a lot of video games ( for example : “Quake”, “Call of Cthulhu”, “Shadow of the Comet”, “Prisoner of Ice”, “Penumba” and all well known “Amnesia: The Dark Descent” ). Because I don’t want this blog post to became a wall of text, I suggest you to check “here” and “here” for more of Lovecraft’s influence in the modern days.

Downfall, is my tribute to him. I tried as hard as possible to copy his unique XVIII century style of writing. It contains similar themes and it even has some quotes from his works. 2986 Steps is not exactly a “Lovecraftian” story, but it has several references ( like the “Messiah” theme ) so I guess that Lovecraft is pretty much alive in this story ( literally ). To me, H. P. Lovecraft is undoubtfuly a genius, a man of incredible imagination, an author that simply inspired me to create these stories.

Cthulhu fhtagn

- Verlax