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Acolyte, v. 2, issue 4, whole no. 8, Fall 1944

THE WORKS OF H.P. LOVECRAFT: SUGGESTIONS FOR A CRITICAL APPRAISAL
by Fritz Leiber, Jr.

In his Appreciation of H. P. Lovecraft, W. Paul Cook wrote: "He was quite alone in the dreams which he apread on paper... His work owes not even an atmosphere to anyone save himself. Since his advent weird fiction has owed more to Lovecraft than Lovecraft owes to all the body of preceding writers."
Few will disagree with this evaluation of Lovecraft as an innovator. But it naturally brings up the question: Just what, especifically, does weird fiction owe to Lovecraft? What new materials and methods did he contribute to the literature of supernatural terror? Thoughtful and scholarly attempts to answer this question are in order, not so much to honor Lovecraft as to provide weird fiction with the critical and realistic comments that are essential for the healthy growth of any branch of art.
The following paragraphs are a modest attempt to point the way for such answers, to single out some of the phases of Lovecraft's work and style worthy of much more extend treatment. They may contain errors of emphasis and omission. But if they give rise to more carefully planned efforts, their purpose will have been accomplished.
Perhaps Lovecraft's most important single contribution was the adaption of science-fiction material to the purpose of supernatural terror. The decline of at least naive belief in Christian theology, resulting in an immense loss of prestige for Satan and his hosts, left the emotion of supernatural fear swinging around loose, without any well-recognized object. Lovecraft took up this loose end and tied it to the unknown but possible denizens of other planets and regions beyound the space-time continuum. This adaptation was subtly gradual. At first he mingled science-fiction material with traditional soroery. For example, in The Dunwich Horror, the hybrid other-dimensional entity is exorcised by recitation of a magic formula, and magical ritual plays a considerable part in the story. But in The Whisperer in Darkness, The Shadow Out of Time, and At the Mountains of Madness, supernatural terror is evoked almost entirely by recital of the doings of alien cosmic entities, and the books of sorcerous ritual have become merely the distorted, but realistic, histories of such entities, especially with regard to their past and future sojourns on Earth. There are, of course exceptions to this trend of development. In The Dreams in the Witch House, for instance, he tries a somewhat different tack: the combining of traditional witchoraft with modern multi-dimensional geometry. But as a general trend it seems to hold good.
It would be interesting to see this trend traced in detail, to know the degree to which other writers pointed out the way for Lovecraft, and to have some well-documented opinions as to the extent to which Lovecraft succeeded in his purpose.
The Cthulhu Mythology and the Arkham-Alhazred background constitute a very interesting problem. In this sense: Lovecraft asks us to accept, for the purpose of most of his stories, a world in which there is not only an Innsmouth and an Arkham and a Miskatonic University, but also a great body of forbidden knowledge well-known to a considerable number of sober and reputable scholars. In other words, he does not set his stories in the real world, but in the slightly, but significantly, different Arkham-Alhazred word; and since his characters

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THE WORKS OF H.P. LOVECRAFT: SUGGESTIONS FOR A CRITICAL APPRAISAL by Fritz Leiber, Jr. In his Appreciation of H. P. Lovecraft, W. Paul Cook wrote: "He was quite alone in the dreams which he apread on paper... His work owes not even an atmosphere to anyone save himself. Since his advent weird fiction has owed more to Lovecraft than Lovecraft owes to all the body of preceding writers." Few will disagree with this evaluation of Lovecraft as an innovator. But it naturally brings up the question: Just what, especifically, does weird fiction owe to Lovecraft? What new materials and methods did he contribute to the literature of supernatural terror? Thoughtful and scholarly attempts to answer this question are in order, not so much to honor Lovecraft as to provide weird fiction with the critical and realistic comments that are essential for the healthy growth of any branch of art. The following paragraphs are a modest attempt to point the way for such answers, to single out some of the phases of Lovecraft's work and style worthy of much more extend treatment. They may contain errors of emphasis and omission. But if they give rise to more carefully planned efforts, their purpose will have been accomplished. Perhaps Lovecraft's most important single contribution was the adaption of science-fiction material to the purpose of supernatural terror. The decline of at least naive belief in Christian theology, resulting in an immense loss of prestige for Satan and his hosts, left the emotion of supernatural fear swinging around loose, without any well-recognized object. Lovecraft took up this loose end and tied it to the unknown but possible denizens of other planets and regions beyound the space-time continuum. This adaptation was subtly gradual. At first he mingled science-fiction material with traditional soroery. For example, in The Dunwich Horror, the hybrid other-dimensional entity is exorcised by recitation of a magic formula, and magical ritual plays a considerable part in the story. But in The Whisperer in Darkness, The Shadow Out of Time, and At the Mountains of Madness, supernatural terror is evoked almost entirely by recital of the doings of alien cosmic entities, and the books of sorcerous ritual have become merely the distorted, but realistic, histories of such entities, especially with regard to their past and future sojourns on Earth. There are, of course exceptions to this trend of development. In The Dreams in the Witch House, for instance, he tries a somewhat different tack: the combining of traditional witchoraft with modern multi-dimensional geometry. But as a general trend it seems to hold good. It would be interesting to see this trend traced in detail, to know the degree to which other writers pointed out the way for Lovecraft, and to have some well-documented opinions as to the extent to which Lovecraft succeeded in his purpose. The Cthulhu Mythology and the Arkham-Alhazred background constitute a very interesting problem. In this sense: Lovecraft asks us to accept, for the purpose of most of his stories, a world in which there is not only an Innsmouth and an Arkham and a Miskatonic University, but also a great body of forbidden knowledge well-known to a considerable number of sober and reputable scholars. In other words, he does not set his stories in the real world, but in the slightly, but significantly, different Arkham-Alhazred word; and since his characters