Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown
- TV-PG
- Year:
- 2008
- 90 min
- 218 Views
the course of HP Lovecraft's life was altered by an unfortunate madness
in April of 1893, his father
a commercial traveler from the vicinity of Boston
was on business in Chicago
it was there that Winfield Scott Lovecraft
experienced the general paralysis of the insane
Winfield's violent hallucinations
were soon placed him in Butler Hospital
his troubled wife, Susan Phillips Lovecraft
was forced to return home to her family in Providence, Rhode Island
with Susie was her two-year-old son,
Howard Phillips Lovecraft
today, the man readers of weirdfiction known as HP Lovecraft
is ranked alongside America's best writers
He defined the themes and obsessions of 20th century horror
and as we chug on into the 21st century, he doesn't seem to be going away
he let drop away all the trappings of what is called "horror"
and he moved into some narrative peculiar to himself, invented his own genre really
Lovecraft tells you about the scale of man in the cosmos
and also he is really the most articulate about saying, there isn't any indifference from the ancient gods to man
Lovecraft takes that optical empty to the cosmos
If you could think of a kind of supernatural horror fiction
it's almost certain that at some point in his career
Lovecraft applied himself to it
and when he got it right that he often did, nobody could beat him
these are the unspeakable names of the Old Ones
the very heart of Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos
a loosely connected canon, which has gone on
to became one of literature's most influential creations
I don't know that Lovecraft ever set down initially and went: "I'm going to grow a grand mythos"
I think that, yes it begins
and then everything else sort of fits in it
it's a very complex sort of inbreeding of mythologies and what
essentially the pitch would be what, things much older than mankind
things much older than earth are gazing upon on us
with indifference and cruelty
those Old Ones were gone now 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
these kind of being are you know that demons coming from hell
there are these wired tentacle creatures coming from other worlds into ours
and that they have been banished and that they will return someday and regain what was once theirs
the Old Ones of the universe, the Old ones of the Cosmos
so that's force beyond us that we are incapable of controlling and that force
there is the universe that is vaster than we could ever comprehend
prior to Lovecraft, if you read horror, if you read ghost stories
you'll always have a vision of a world which is fundamentally hospitable:
"god is looking after you"god is looking after the good people"
good people will probably survive horror stories or ghost stories or whatever
Lovecraft redefined things
He took it away from the ghost story away, from the gothic and into this vision
of a malign world, this place surrounded by
evil mad horrible monstrous things always trying to get in
who frankly don't really care about us
But what lied in an old world xenophobic gentleman
to write these tales of unknown abominations and cosmic gods
where bay and tranquil river blend
and leafy hillsides rise
the spires of Providence ascend against the ancient skies
and in the narrow winding ways that climb o'er slope and crest
the magic of forgotten days may still be found to rest
I AM PROVIDENCE:
the Phillips' house at 454 Angell Street
was a vast-stage of old American values
Lovecraft's family was very well to do
and I believe they consider themselves to be of the Providence aristocracy
the Phillips line goes back very far in Providence history all the way
as early as the late 17th century
the Lovecraft side originates in England, and you could trace that all the way back to about the 15th century
there were Lovecrafts or Lovecrofts in Devon
he was a truly, almost a "Mayflower"specimen
preserved in the formaldehyde of New England you know
and he was an Anglophile that definitely did not get laid much you know
and the guy that was an alien amongst us, in the sense that he was not a very masculine child
after Winfield's death from syphilis on July 19th 1898
young Howard was all Suzie Lovecraft had left
she mothered her child incessantly
so much so, that she was known to make friends stoop when walking hand-in-hand with her son
for fear his arm would be pull from its socket
despite her over attention
Suzie Lovecraft's near puritanical views restrained any physical affections toward her son
Lovecraft would later admit to his only wife
that this form of mothering was a devastating to him
his grandfather Whipple Phillips, was a very impressive industrialist
Lovecraft remembers Whipple telling him oral ghost stories
at the age of 4 or 5
he tutored him in a number of other ways, trying to take an interest into his education
in the attic was an immense library presumably collected by his grandfather
and Lovecraft went up there as a boy with a candle secretly and started reading these old books
and fell in love with the 18th century
Lovecraft is more than a product of his time
he is a product of a couple of centuries earlier, so he was born out of time
one of the important things for the 18th century was the code of a gentleman
to live as a gentleman with dignity and honesty and integrity
he read the literature of the 18th century and the early 19th century and said
"I want to be like those people I want to be like Alexander Pope"
who wrote poetry just for the love of it"
I've always had this subconscious feeling
that, everything since the 18th century is unreal or illusory
a sort of grotesque nightmare or a caricature"
Lovecraft learned a lot in his grandfather's house
in fact that all the learning that he had I think came from there
his schooling was intermittent at best apparently he had various of
nervous melody that had kept him out of school
this was a time before education was mandatory
you didn't have to send your child to school if you didn't want to
at the age of 8 he would became filled with burning love of chemistry
shortly there after that he discovered astronomy, which I think was an even more important influence he says
it was through astronomy that he gained a sense of the boundlessness of the universe
and the insignificance of humanity within the cosmos
there's a phrase that generally I only encountered it when talking when reading or talking with people like paleontologist or geologist
the kinds of "Deep Time" which is pretty alien to most people, most people tend to
think of history and terms ofyears
"Deep Time" is that time before, before the comprehension of man
the geological time
is a way of thinking about it where you are working on a time scale where you talk about things like mountains are pushed up in row, continent shift
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