A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H. P. Lovecraft (Classics of Lovecraft Criticism Book 3) by S. T. Joshi

Author:S. T. Joshi [Joshi, S. T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, History & Criticism, Genres & Styles, Horror & Supernatural, Criticism & Theory
Amazon: B01AS4ZFAM
Publisher: Hippocampus Press
Published: 2016-01-16T23:00:00+00:00

VI. The Major Fiction: Second Phase (1931–1935)

The end of 1930 is in one sense a good place to pause in our discussion of the fiction of Lovecraft’s final decade; for it was at the beginning of 1931 that he made one of his most prescient and provocative statements on the nature of weird fiction, and specifically of the type of weird fiction he himself was attempting to write. I have cited this statement in an earlier chapter, but it now requires more detailed analysis. The letter (to Frank Belknap Long, 27 February 1931) in which it is imbedded is one of the greatest documents of his entire literary career (it occupies more than fifty pages in the Selected Letters, and at that is clearly abridged), and at its core is the need to revitalise art in light of modern science, in particular the sciences of physics, biology, and psychology, which have fundamentally altered our attitude to ourselves and to the universe. Many formerly accepted beliefs—the belief that human beings are at the centre of the cosmos; the belief that our mental and emotional processes are essentially straightforward and easily recoverable—have been irrevocably shaken in the light of Einstein, Planck, Freud, and others; so that art must now reshape itself to take cognisance of these new realities. Much of Lovecraft’s thinking here was influenced by Joseph Wood Krutch’s revolutionary book, The Modern Temper (1929), which laid bare the hollowness of previous attitudes toward art and life. In many ways Lovecraft anticipated Krutch’s findings, and it was precisely because he and Krutch saw things so similarly that the book so affected him. The answer, for Lovecraft the writer of weird fiction, was to bring the weird tale “up to date” by abandoning any features that were definitely outmoded in light of present-day science. This meant much more than merely the abandonment of such things as the vampire (which had already been extensively modified and updated in “The Shunned House”), the ghost (which Lovecraft never used), and other such conventional myths:

The time has come when the normal revolt against time, space, & matter must assume a form not overtly incompatible with what is known of reality—when it must be gratified by images forming supplements rather than contradictions of the visible & mensurable universe. And what, if not a form of non-supernatural cosmic art, is to pacify this sense of revolt—as well as gratify the cognate sense of curiosity? (SL 3.295–96)

This may be the most important utterance Lovecraft ever made: the renunciation of the supernatural, as well as the need to offer supplements rather than contradictions to known phenomena, make it transparently clear that Lovecraft was now consciously moving toward a union of weird fiction and science fiction (although perhaps not the science fiction largely published in the pulp magazines of this time). Indeed, in formal terms nearly all Lovecraft’ s work since “The Call of Cthulhu” is science fiction, if by that we mean that it supplies a scientific justification (although in some

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