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

before the finish and while the tension is still mounting. It also necessitated a very careful structure, with everything building from the first word to the last.
Lovecraft reinforced this structure with what may be called symphonic prose --- sentences that are repeated with a constant addition of more introduced by a single woodwind is at last thundered by the whole orchestra. The Statement of Randolph Carter provides one of the simplest examples. In it, in order, the following phrases occur concerning the moonlight: "...waning crescent moon was high in the vaporous heavens ... wan, waning crescent moon peered through the noisome vapors .... pallid, peering crescent moon... amorphous, necrophagous shadows dance beneath an accursed waning moon.... amorphous, necrophagous shadows dance  beneath an accursed waning moon..." Subtler and more complex examples can undoubtadly be found in the longer stories.
In a letter reprinted in The Acolyte (Summer-1944) Anthony Boucher states that Lovecraft, like Poe, achieved horror by overstatement rather than understatement. This points the way for another interesting critical study. Or for several --- at least, it suggests several things: 1. Lovecraft's use of a detailed description and history of feared entities, as in At the Moutains of Madness, as opposed to the more sketchy and shadowy demoniac entities of M. R. James and others; this of course involves the difference in their subject-matter, particularly Lovecraft's use of science-fiction material. 2. Lovecraft's Machenesque mentioning of pieces of forbidden knowledge known to the narrator but too terrible to be revealed to the reader, involving references to the unmentionable, the nameless, and so on. 3. (and in this regard Lovecraft employs anything but overstatement) His practice in some stories of having no actual visible horror, but letting everything rest on inference. For example, he begings The Whisperer in Darkness with the statement, "Bear in mind closely that I did not see any actual visible  horror at the end". And he sticks to it, for what has the narrator Wilmarth seen at the end? Photographs of odd stones and footprints-- and even those might have been doctored. A bizarre dictaphone record ---which could have been faked. The written and verbal statements of Akeley --- all of them possibly lies. Some queer machines, some actual footprints, some sonfused alien voices --- all susceptible to faking. And finally a head and hands that might have been wax models. None of these things are horrible in themselves, none of the evidence is incontrovertible --- everything depends on the inferences that the narrator and reader make. In this story, in one sense, Lovecraft makes a greater use of understatement than James, whose narrators generally physically sense, at least for a moment, something monstrous and super naturally horrible.
This brief essay omits many phases of Lovecraft's work worth study. For example, the use of several balancing sources of horror (see especially The Dreams in the Witchhouse) and a shifting of the focus of horror, so that the feared entities gradually become the fearing entities, as in The Shadow Out of Time and At the Mountains of Madness (where the reader, at first dreading the Old Ones, comes to sympathize with them in their dread of the Shuggoths.)
But if it calls out additions, disagreements, and corrections --- and especially if it stimulates the present enhusiasm for Lovecraft into crystalizing in fedinite appraisals and summing-up, as in the Derleth-Wandrei prefaces and the Laney glossary --- so much the better. 
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GUTETO. An amateur magazine devoted to Esperanto. The current issue contains an 8-page descriptive bibliography of scientifiction and fantasy books published in this language of the future. 5c postpaid. Morojo, Box 6475, Metro Station, Los Angeles 55, California. (paid adv.)

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before the finish and while the tension is still mounting. It also necessitated a very careful structure, with everything building from the first word to the last. Lovecraft reinforced this structure with what may be called symphonic prose --- sentences that are repeated with a constant addition of more introduced by a single woodwind is at last thundered by the whole orchestra. The Statement of Randolph Carter provides one of the simplest examples. In it, in order, the following phrases occur concerning the moonlight: "...waning crescent moon was high in the vaporous heavens ... wan, waning crescent moon peered through the noisome vapors .... pallid, peering crescent moon... amorphous, necrophagous shadows dance beneath an accursed waning moon.... amorphous, necrophagous shadows dance beneath an accursed waning moon..." Subtler and more complex examples can undoubtadly be found in the longer stories. In a letter reprinted in The Acolyte (Summer-1944) Anthony Boucher states that Lovecraft, like Poe, achieved horror by overstatement rather than understatement. This points the way for another interesting critical study. Or for several --- at least, it suggests several things: 1. Lovecraft's use of a detailed description and history of feared entities, as in At the Moutains of Madness, as opposed to the more sketchy and shadowy demoniac entities of M. R. James and others; this of course involves the difference in their subject-matter, particularly Lovecraft's use of science-fiction material. 2. Lovecraft's Machenesque mentioning of pieces of forbidden knowledge known to the narrator but too terrible to be revealed to the reader, involving references to the unmentionable, the nameless, and so on. 3. (and in this regard Lovecraft employs anything but overstatement) His practice in some stories of having no actual visible horror, but letting everything rest on inference. For example, he begings The Whisperer in Darkness with the statement, "Bear in mind closely that I did not see any actual visible horror at the end". And he sticks to it, for what has the narrator Wilmarth seen at the end? Photographs of odd stones and footprints-- and even those might have been doctored. A bizarre dictaphone record ---which could have been faked. The written and verbal statements of Akeley --- all of them possibly lies. Some queer machines, some actual footprints, some sonfused alien voices --- all susceptible to faking. And finally a head and hands that might have been wax models. None of these things are horrible in themselves, none of the evidence is incontrovertible --- everything depends on the inferences that the narrator and reader make. In this story, in one sense, Lovecraft makes a greater use of understatement than James, whose narrators generally physically sense, at least for a moment, something monstrous and super naturally horrible. This brief essay omits many phases of Lovecraft's work worth study. For example, the use of several balancing sources of horror (see especially The Dreams in the Witchhouse) and a shifting of the focus of horror, so that the feared entities gradually become the fearing entities, as in The Shadow Out of Time and At the Mountains of Madness (where the reader, at first dreading the Old Ones, comes to sympathize with them in their dread of the Shuggoths.) But if it calls out additions, disagreements, and corrections --- and especially if it stimulates the present enhusiasm for Lovecraft into crystalizing in fedinite appraisals and summing-up, as in the Derleth-Wandrei prefaces and the Laney glossary --- so much the better. ********************************************** GUTETO. An amateur magazine devoted to Esperanto. The current issue contains an 8-page descriptive bibliography of scientifiction and fantasy books published in this language of the future. 5c postpaid. Morojo, Box 6475, Metro Station, Los Angeles 55, California. (paid adv.)