|
|
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown"
Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature
Since
many, and far better pages and sites than this have been dedicated
to the late Howard Phillips Lovecraft and his works, making HPL one of the
most recurrent figures on the Web, what follows will not
be a detailed history of the man's life, nor an in-depth analysis of his
opus.
This in simply a brief collection of facts and notes, to stimulate the interests of the curious and to give thanks for the work of a truly remarkable human being.
Born on August the 20th 1890
in Providence, R.I., the only son of Winifred
Scott Lovecraft and Sarah Susan Phillips, H.P. Lovecraft's was a precocious
child that soon started raiding his grandfather's collection of books: he
could read fluently at the age of four, developed an interest for classic
mithology and fantastic tales, and stated writing stories at
the age
of six.
His interests later shifted to poetry, a field of the
lovecraftian production that has been so far largely overlooked by the weird
fiction aficionados. Lovecraft also directed his creative energies at writing
articles and pamphlets, often championing a conservative point of
view, and sometimes taking some downright embarassing stances.
While the forbidding
image of The Recluse from Providence might have been a bit overdone
by latter, sometimes unsimpathetic biographers, in truth Lovecraft kept contact
with his wide and varied circle of friends chiefly through the mail. He wrote
thousands of pages in the form of postal exchanges, often including in his
posts both verses and fiction. The letters of HPL have been later
collected in a series of volumes, and shed a different light on the
character.
Despite
his
long involvement
with the American Amateur Press movement,
through which he circulated his essays and many first drafts of his stories,
H.P. Lovecraft first came to prominence when he started publishing his
supernatural fiction in Weird Tales, a pulp magazine catering for the tastes
of those of the macabre/unusual inclination. The Weird Tales sales, plus
his revisions and ghostwriting job (for such "stars" as Houdini) gave Lovecraft
his basic income for much of his life.
A pulp magazine perpetually
on the verge of bancrupcy, Weird Tales featured
stories and
verses by many authors considered today as masters in the field: Robert E.
Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, Henry Kuttner & C.L. Moore,
and artwork by the likes of Virgil Finlay and Margaret Burrage. Through Weird
Tales not only did
H.P. Lovecraft was able to reach a wider audience, but also established himself
as a master in the field, influencing all of the writers mentioned above
and many others. Sadly, by throwing his lot with the pulps, for many years
Lovecraft alienated the consideration of the "serious" literary establishment,
that often dismissed his achievements and only recently has come to regard
him as a great writer, not just a popular entertainer.
Nor were the pulps kinder to Lovecraft. Despite the respect
of his colleagues and the affection of some fans (that soon became part of
his mailing circle) rarely did his stories feature a cover on the magazine,
that usually portrayed instead the much more popular (but far less original)
concotions of authors such as Seabury Quinn, a specialist in cheap thrills.
Only after Lovecraft's death, when reprints of his stories or "premieres"
of newly discovered fragments helped the hailing magazine to survive was
Lovecraft given more space and cover art dignity.
H.P. Lovecraft's impact in
the field of Supernatural Horror has been nicely
summed up by Fritz Leiber in his essay 'H.
P. Lovecraft - A Literary
Copernicus':
the author's main achievement was putting Man in a subordinate position in
a vast, hostile Universe, ruled by impersonal laws that are not readily
comprehensible.To achieve this end, HPL used
many science-fiction conventions, incorporating them in a more or less
traditional horror background and generating a sort of classificative ambiguity
that has long been argument for discussion between supporters of 'HPL the
Gothic Writher' and those who favour a 'HPL the Science Fiction Writer'.
The fact that by some people
a further
avatara of the writer, 'HPL the Conspiracy
Theorist', has been added to the discussion, will not be covered here nor
anywhere else on this site.
We love his stories, we like the character
despite his many rough angles, and we take seriously many of
his subtler philosophical positions, but we're not going to bomb
Innsmouth.
Not again.
After his death in 1937,
Lovecraft slowly became a cult figure, earning
first the respect of countless readers and later the consideration of mainstream
critics.
In this the work of publisher August Derleth with Arkham House was
instrumental if sometimes less that enlightened. Lovecraftian studies are
today a serious literary pursuit,
and have produced some remarkable works, including S.T. Joshi's 'H.P.
Lovecraft - A Life', a book that taking advantage of the monumental output
of letters produced by HPL through his life, maps the writer's life almost
day by day. A heartily suggested reading.
The printing history of
H.P. Lovecraft's work in our home-country is discontinue and varied. For
the collectors, the completists and the plain curious out there, our
Lovecraft in Italy annotated bibliography
is just one click away.
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live in 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."
H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)
This Mythos site owned by Davide and Alessandro Mana.
|
[
Previous
|
Next
|
Random Site
|
List
Sites
]
Want to join the Mythos?
Updated October 15
1998
