Here again we find ourselves studying a man who happens to have an ironic name. A last name the likes of Hatecraft, Fearcraft, or Terrorcrafterson would all be much more inline with the character of Lovecraft's life. But this is life, and life likes to hand us spoons of irony from time to time.
Lovecraft's fame appears to be on the rise here in the 21st century at a much swifter pace than it ever was during his lifetime or the subsequent decades after his death. My main hypothesis for this: Mr. Lovecraft created a coherent universe throughout his writings. Nowadays, everywhere one looks there's another "franchise" bursting onto the scene. This is, in my summation, a logical progression from that which I'll call 'sequelism'. If a story is wonderful, then naturally the audience will want to return to that place with those people. The most base way to bring people back is to create a sequel; another story dealing with the exact characters. But therein lies a problem; the characters we use grow weary over time. Familiarity breeds (a sort of) contempt. Therefore, things like Star Wars and Star Trek can be so infinite because they exist beyonds the edges of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo's lives. They are multi-dimensional places... places to sit down and rest in. Mr. Lovecraft, it would appear, composed a terrifying and complex universe in his writings that the good people of the 21st century are only now beginning to fall victim to.
For those not in the know, H.P. Lovecraft lived from 1890-1937. He was an American who pretended to be an Englishman. He made his living writing short fiction for various magazines. He never made much money, and more or less died just above the poverty line. He remains, however, one of the architects of modern horror; a precursor to the likes of Stephen King and John Carpenter.
But dear friends, there are near endless tides of conversations and debates we could sift through concerning Lovecraft's work and legacy. There are already hundreds of books dedicated to parsing out the essence de Lovecraft. I don't much care to guesstulate about his Mommy issues or rant about his rampant racism. All I care about is what I perceive Lovecraft to be. This then being my blog, I heretofore loft us into that specific conversation about which I design to have. High-ho Silver!
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Over and over again, Lovecraft's characters find themselves discovering some dark secret. Typically, this dark secret relates to a creature who landed on Earth in the distant past, and is hideous in its incomprehensibleness and unimaginable power. The vastness of that newly discovered enemy is beyond understanding. You don't fight these creatures. You don't have a prayer. They destroy you.
More than typically, knowledge of such a reality leads the protagonist to utter insanity. You cannot visit the unfathomable without losing your grasp on the fabric of reality. A brief summary of three of Lovecraft's stories will suffice to make the point:
The Call of Cthulhu: Anthropologists discover a primitive culture wherein a giant octopus creature is worshipped. A quote:
"They worshipped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men...and...formed a cult which had never died...hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R'lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him."At the Mountains of Madness: A group of explorers find the remnants of a vast ancient civilization shrouded deep in the mountains of Antartica. They discover that great races of aliens descended on Earth long years ago and fought horrific wars. Here too, the Old Ones are waiting to rise again.
The Colour out of Space: A small asteroid hits a farm. Over the course of the following year, the family who works the land goes mad. The crops tastes putrid, the animals are disintegrating, and the family members who go mad first start whispering some horrible sounding foreign tongue. This is my favorite Lovecraft work as it doesn't try to give an explanation -- it just painstakingly let's us watch a series of strange events unfold.
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As one collects Lovecraftian stories, the importance of staying in the dark is applauded.
In his preface to the Call of Cthulhu, Lovecraft wrote,
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 deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
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| An artist's take on the monster Cthulhu |
From my vantage point, (I, being one who loves and worships Jesus Christ as God) I can find a deep resonance of truth behind Lovecraft's theology of fear.
I just got through a study of the book of Luke, and this go-round, what really bore out of the pages as a major theme of Christ's ministry was that of hypocrisy. God is not a fan of hypocrisy. In the church we must always be on guard of pharisee-ism. The tricky part of hypocrisy is that it often strikes us without ever revealing is ugly face.
In this way, when I enter into conversations with people outside my faith, I search for hypocritical leanings. If the hypocrisy slaps me in the face, I'll quickly let go of any logical discussion of Christianity. It feels like a fruitless effort. BUT! On the flipside, if there's a person who stands firm on (from my worldview) their heresy and remains true to that, I feel a kinship with that person... and I feel like fruitful discussion can follow.
For all of Lovecraft's weirdnesses and wrongs, at least he comes off as consistent. If you are not in community with God, if you don't know who he is, then it makes perfect sense to hide from him. If you don't understand God as a spectacular dude who loves you, then there is only room enough for fear.
As for me, I see Lovecraftian writings as bearing two right ideas about the world with exemplary vision. These ideas, I think, are almost nowhere else in the world depicted as meticulously clear as Lovecraft performs them.
IDEA ONE
God(s) are worthy of our fear. We like to depict God as the old guy in white robes with a long white beard. That's a pretty innocuous vision. Rather, God is so unspeakably powerful that merely looking on him should mean death for us. Or, to take "the gods" view, we can almost say the same things of demons.
When the Carthaginians worshipped their god Ba'al, they constructed a gigantic thirty foot high statue. The statue had long arms outstretched that, by a pulley system, could be dropped at any moment. Below the statue, a pit of hot, burning coals steamed. The Carthaginians would put their first born children into the outstretched arms of this god, and then have the arms dropped. Carthaginian children would pass through fire into the next life.
That is terrifying.
IDEA TWO
In The Colour Out of Space, after a group experiences an absurd aberration, Lovecraft writes that they were, "Too awed to present theories." AWE.
We need awe.
In this, our scientific age, awe is a dying virtue. We are slowly marching up the arm of knowledge, believing ourselves to be champions and conquerors over nature. A small pill that wards off disturbing thoughts gives us comfort and counsel. We need not become overwhelmed by the scope of the universe. Nothing is impossible, right? We will overcome. Lovecraft reminds us that we're wrong.
We have not yet even uncovered one percent of the vastness of the universe. It remains an enigma to us. Anyone who says otherwise is ignorant of their utter ignorance.
Lovecraft's fear gives us reason to pause, and reflect on the bigness of the cosmos. We are but ants.
Awe is a powerful idea that, I think, the great cathedral architects understood much better than we do today. We like things small. We prefer things that can fit in our hands. It is a fortunate thought to dwell on just how small we are.
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Lovecraft's advice/warning is for us to, flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
Get that?
Flee to the dark.
We know the dark. There are no terrors there in that place of solitude. Juxtapose that with some of the opening words of John's gospel:
In him (Jesus) was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it... The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming in the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him... But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God... And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.
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