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Acolyte, v. 3, issue 1, whole no. 9, Winter 1945
Page 20
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SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS ABOUT LOVECRAFT'S WRITINGS Fritz Leiber, Jr. -o0o- I believe that the entities of the Cthulhu Mythology, as employed by Lovecraft, are predominately malevolent, or, at best, cruelly indifferent to mankind. They are a reflection of Lovecraft's oft-avowed scientific materialism--his belief in a soul-less and goal-less cosmos, whose only meaning is that dreamed into it by frail organisms which are themselves the sport of blind chance. Any attempt to analyze the Cthulhu Mythology, as employed by Lovecraft, into balancing hierarchies of good and evil, a la Zoroastrianism, is highly misleading. The characteristic Lovecraftian flavor is thereby lost: that sense of a universe in which only the most inadequate and arbitrary barriers stand between mankind and ravening, paralyzing horror. Lovecraft's stories are at the antipodes from the traditional Christian tales of the supernatural, in which God defeats Satan off-hand, or with the assistance of a dash of holy water, from those pseudo-oriental yarns in which a Black Magician is conquered by a White, and from others of the ilk. Like James, he believed that in a satisfying horror tale the spectral phenomena should be malevolent. It is noteworthy that, as Laney points out in his Glossary, the benevolent Elder Gods, with the exception of Nodens, are never mentioned save by inference. I fancy that they were only brought into the Lovecraftian horror-cosmos to explain why the malevolent entities had not long ago overrun mankind, and to provide a source for incantations by which earthlings could to some degree defend themselves, as in The Dunwich Horror and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. However, in the majority of Lovecraft's tales it is the chance indifference of the malevolent entities that allows the hero to survive, and in some (The Dreams in the Witchouse, Drago) they plainly triumph. Furthermore, the benevolence of the Elder Gods is dubious. In The Dream-Quiet of Unknown Kadath we find the Gods of Earth to be relatively weak and feeble (symbolic of the ultimate weakness of even mankind's traditions and dreams) and the more potent "Other Gods" or "Ultimate Gods" to be "blind, voiceless, tenebrous, mindless...." Undoubtedly Azathoth is the supreme entity and embodiment of the Cthulhu Mythology. There is never any question of his being merely an alien entity from some other planet or dimension (like Cthulhu or Yog-Sothoth or the alien races of the later stories). He is unquestionably and unalterably "god". And he is the blind, idiot god, the god of the ultimate chaos---perfect personification of the purposeless, mindless, cruelly indifferent cosmos of materialistic belief. And Nyarlathotep, the crawling chaos, is is messenger---not mindless like his master, but evilly intelligent, pictured in The Dream-Quest in the form of a suave pharoah. The Nyarlathotep legend is one of Lovecraft's most interesting creations. It appears in the prose poem of that name and the XXI Fungi From Yuggoth. In a time of widespread social upheaval and nervous tension, one looking like a pharoah appears out of Egypt. He is worshipped by the fellahin, "wild beasts followed him and licked his hands". He visits many lands and gives lectures with queer pseud-scientific demonstrations, obtaining a great following--rather like Cagliostro or some similar charlatan. A progressive disintegration of man's mind and world follows. There are purposeless panics and wanderings. Nature breaks loose. There are earth- -- 20 --
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SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS ABOUT LOVECRAFT'S WRITINGS Fritz Leiber, Jr. -o0o- I believe that the entities of the Cthulhu Mythology, as employed by Lovecraft, are predominately malevolent, or, at best, cruelly indifferent to mankind. They are a reflection of Lovecraft's oft-avowed scientific materialism--his belief in a soul-less and goal-less cosmos, whose only meaning is that dreamed into it by frail organisms which are themselves the sport of blind chance. Any attempt to analyze the Cthulhu Mythology, as employed by Lovecraft, into balancing hierarchies of good and evil, a la Zoroastrianism, is highly misleading. The characteristic Lovecraftian flavor is thereby lost: that sense of a universe in which only the most inadequate and arbitrary barriers stand between mankind and ravening, paralyzing horror. Lovecraft's stories are at the antipodes from the traditional Christian tales of the supernatural, in which God defeats Satan off-hand, or with the assistance of a dash of holy water, from those pseudo-oriental yarns in which a Black Magician is conquered by a White, and from others of the ilk. Like James, he believed that in a satisfying horror tale the spectral phenomena should be malevolent. It is noteworthy that, as Laney points out in his Glossary, the benevolent Elder Gods, with the exception of Nodens, are never mentioned save by inference. I fancy that they were only brought into the Lovecraftian horror-cosmos to explain why the malevolent entities had not long ago overrun mankind, and to provide a source for incantations by which earthlings could to some degree defend themselves, as in The Dunwich Horror and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. However, in the majority of Lovecraft's tales it is the chance indifference of the malevolent entities that allows the hero to survive, and in some (The Dreams in the Witchouse, Drago) they plainly triumph. Furthermore, the benevolence of the Elder Gods is dubious. In The Dream-Quiet of Unknown Kadath we find the Gods of Earth to be relatively weak and feeble (symbolic of the ultimate weakness of even mankind's traditions and dreams) and the more potent "Other Gods" or "Ultimate Gods" to be "blind, voiceless, tenebrous, mindless...." Undoubtedly Azathoth is the supreme entity and embodiment of the Cthulhu Mythology. There is never any question of his being merely an alien entity from some other planet or dimension (like Cthulhu or Yog-Sothoth or the alien races of the later stories). He is unquestionably and unalterably "god". And he is the blind, idiot god, the god of the ultimate chaos---perfect personification of the purposeless, mindless, cruelly indifferent cosmos of materialistic belief. And Nyarlathotep, the crawling chaos, is is messenger---not mindless like his master, but evilly intelligent, pictured in The Dream-Quest in the form of a suave pharoah. The Nyarlathotep legend is one of Lovecraft's most interesting creations. It appears in the prose poem of that name and the XXI Fungi From Yuggoth. In a time of widespread social upheaval and nervous tension, one looking like a pharoah appears out of Egypt. He is worshipped by the fellahin, "wild beasts followed him and licked his hands". He visits many lands and gives lectures with queer pseud-scientific demonstrations, obtaining a great following--rather like Cagliostro or some similar charlatan. A progressive disintegration of man's mind and world follows. There are purposeless panics and wanderings. Nature breaks loose. There are earth- -- 20 --
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