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Acolyte, v. 3, issue 1, whole no. 9, Winter 1945
Page 21
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quakes, weedy cities are revealed by receding seas, an ultimate putrescence and disintegration sets in. Earth ends. Just what does Nyarlathotep "mean"? That is, what meanings can most suitably be read into him, granting that, by him, Lovecraft may not have "meant" anything. Man's self-destructive intellectuality---his knowing too much for his own good? The spirit of the blatantly commercial, advertising, and acquisitive world that Lovecraft loathed? (Nyarlathotep always has that aura of the charlatan, that brash contemptuousness.) The mockery of a universe man can never really understand or master? It is interesting to speculate. ----oo0oo---- Great natural catastrophes seem to have fascinated Lovecraft, as might be expected in one who chose cosmic horror for his theme. It is possible that reports of such catastrophes caused some of his stories to crystalize, or were the nucleus around which they crystalized. The Vermont floods of 1927 and The Whisperer in Darkness. Reports of oceanic earthquakes and upheavals and Dagon and The Call of Cthulhu. The inundation of acres of woodlands by a manmade reservoir and The Colour Out of Space. Regional degeneration and The Dunwich Horror, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and The Lurking Fear. It has always seemed to me a particular pity that Lovecraft did not live to experience the terrific and unparalleled New England hurricane of Autumn, 1938. I was in Chicago at the time, when, partly crowded out of the headlines by the Munich Conference, the alarming reports came in, including word that the downtown heart of Providence had been invaded by the sea, to the accompaniment of terrific wind and downpour. My first thought was, "What a story this would eventually have gotten out of him!" ----oo0oo---- Lovecraft's great poetry--Fungi From yuggoth--was written within a week, December 27, 1929-January 4, 1930. I wonder just why that creative burst came. I note that, of his tales, The Dunwich Horror was written in 1928 and The Whisperer in Darkness in 1930, with nothing intervening. The poem Brick Row is dated December 7, 1929. Perhaps this excellent poem, inspired by a demolition-threat to old warehouses in South Water Street, Providence, was the harbringer of the sonnets. This leaves completely unexplained why he suddenly shifted to the sonnet form after years of heroic couplets and Poe-esque rhyme schemes. Now if it could be proved that The Messenger, a sonnet form reply to a newspaper challenge, had been written at about the same time.... At any rate, the peaks of his prose and poetic creativity coincided. ----oo0oo----- I disagree with many, including Lovecraft himself, who rate The Music of Erich Zann as one of his two or three most excellent tales. Of course, this business of choosing "bests" is just a literary pastime, but it strikes me that Zann is uncharacteristic--an experiment in the genre of E. T. Hoffmann. The same applies to The Outsider, his most Poe-like tale. I would look for his best among those stories that are, in style and subject matter, most wholly his own, in the main current of his creativity. They include Dagon, The Statement of Randolph Carter, The Temple, The Festival, The Shunned House, Pickman's Model, The Haunter of the Dark, The Dreams in the Witch-House, The Thing on the Doorstep, The Call of Cthulhu, The Colour Out of Space (a good choice for his "best", as many agree), The Dunwich Horror, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Shadow Out of Time, and At the Mountains of Madness. My personal favorites are The Shadow Out of Time and, especially, The Whisperer in Darkness. -- 21 --
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quakes, weedy cities are revealed by receding seas, an ultimate putrescence and disintegration sets in. Earth ends. Just what does Nyarlathotep "mean"? That is, what meanings can most suitably be read into him, granting that, by him, Lovecraft may not have "meant" anything. Man's self-destructive intellectuality---his knowing too much for his own good? The spirit of the blatantly commercial, advertising, and acquisitive world that Lovecraft loathed? (Nyarlathotep always has that aura of the charlatan, that brash contemptuousness.) The mockery of a universe man can never really understand or master? It is interesting to speculate. ----oo0oo---- Great natural catastrophes seem to have fascinated Lovecraft, as might be expected in one who chose cosmic horror for his theme. It is possible that reports of such catastrophes caused some of his stories to crystalize, or were the nucleus around which they crystalized. The Vermont floods of 1927 and The Whisperer in Darkness. Reports of oceanic earthquakes and upheavals and Dagon and The Call of Cthulhu. The inundation of acres of woodlands by a manmade reservoir and The Colour Out of Space. Regional degeneration and The Dunwich Horror, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and The Lurking Fear. It has always seemed to me a particular pity that Lovecraft did not live to experience the terrific and unparalleled New England hurricane of Autumn, 1938. I was in Chicago at the time, when, partly crowded out of the headlines by the Munich Conference, the alarming reports came in, including word that the downtown heart of Providence had been invaded by the sea, to the accompaniment of terrific wind and downpour. My first thought was, "What a story this would eventually have gotten out of him!" ----oo0oo---- Lovecraft's great poetry--Fungi From yuggoth--was written within a week, December 27, 1929-January 4, 1930. I wonder just why that creative burst came. I note that, of his tales, The Dunwich Horror was written in 1928 and The Whisperer in Darkness in 1930, with nothing intervening. The poem Brick Row is dated December 7, 1929. Perhaps this excellent poem, inspired by a demolition-threat to old warehouses in South Water Street, Providence, was the harbringer of the sonnets. This leaves completely unexplained why he suddenly shifted to the sonnet form after years of heroic couplets and Poe-esque rhyme schemes. Now if it could be proved that The Messenger, a sonnet form reply to a newspaper challenge, had been written at about the same time.... At any rate, the peaks of his prose and poetic creativity coincided. ----oo0oo----- I disagree with many, including Lovecraft himself, who rate The Music of Erich Zann as one of his two or three most excellent tales. Of course, this business of choosing "bests" is just a literary pastime, but it strikes me that Zann is uncharacteristic--an experiment in the genre of E. T. Hoffmann. The same applies to The Outsider, his most Poe-like tale. I would look for his best among those stories that are, in style and subject matter, most wholly his own, in the main current of his creativity. They include Dagon, The Statement of Randolph Carter, The Temple, The Festival, The Shunned House, Pickman's Model, The Haunter of the Dark, The Dreams in the Witch-House, The Thing on the Doorstep, The Call of Cthulhu, The Colour Out of Space (a good choice for his "best", as many agree), The Dunwich Horror, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Shadow Out of Time, and At the Mountains of Madness. My personal favorites are The Shadow Out of Time and, especially, The Whisperer in Darkness. -- 21 --
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