10 August 2010

Lovecraft: Against the World

“But success and happiness were not to be. Garish daylight showed only squalor and alienage and the noxious elephantiasis of climbing, spreading stone where the moon had hinted of loveliness and elder magic; and the throngs of people that seethed through the flumelike streets were squat, swarthy strangers with hardened faces and narrow eyes, shrewd strangers without dreams and without kinship to the scenes about them, who could never mean aught to a blue-eyed man of the old folk, with the love of fair green lanes and white New England village steeples in his heart.”

He, H.P. Lovecraft (1926)
Posted by Laguna Beach Fogey at 16:58

6 comments:

NCJack said...

And the fog enveloped legend-haunted Arkham...

10 August, 2010 20:03
v. Braun. said...

One of my favourite stories is 'The Horror At Red Hook' that HPL also wrote in reflection to his experiences in that City.

11 August, 2010 10:53
v. Braun. said...

He didn't hold it as less true that the Teutonic Race, the Aryan race was the 'cream of humanity', and that he himself had the rare privilege of belonging to it. He declared himself essentially a 'Teuton and a babarian', a Nordic son of Odin, brother of Hengist and Horsa, ready to drink the blood of his enemies in the freshly hollowed out skull of a Celt.

"Gawd knows what they are -- ... -- a bastard mess of stewing mongrel flesh without intellect, repellent to the eye, nose, and imagination would to heaven a kindly gust of cyanogen could asphyxiate the whole gigantic abortion, end the misery, and clean out the place."

11 August, 2010 17:55
Lord Bassington-Bassington said...

I never really understood Houellebecq's book about Lovecraft. I find the idea of Lovecraft as someone who hates not only the world, but life itself, somewhat strange. Surely a man who spent most of what little cash he had travelling, and loved ice cream eating contests with his friends, was someone with an appreciation of the world and of life? Ultimately, the book is more about Houellebecq than about Lovecraft, I suspect. Personally, I look forward to the new edition of Joshi's biography.

12 August, 2010 01:18
Anonymous said...

v.Braun: I challenge you to a duel, Celts are Nordic, and Teutons are there brothers in blood!

13 August, 2010 12:06
v. Braun. said...

Tabitha: I actually think so, too. I for example-being Austrian- do believe that I also have Celtic blood in me; also I do like such Celtic nations as the 'Irish' and Scots and always have felt a great familiarity and closeness to them.

The phrase about the Celts was actually a quote from a letter by Lovecraft from 1926, the first paragraph as a whole was taken from: Maurice Lévy: Lovecraft: A Study in the Fantastic, p.30. (recommendable!), the second one is from a letter from May 1922.

I justed jotted that down quickly and didn't give the sources due to the relaxed, laid-back nature of the format here...sorry 'bout that, my friends! :)

16 August, 2010 10:43

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