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Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 6, Spring 1945
Page 109
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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 109 V The writer hopes that this discussion will provoke plenty of thought, discussion and controversy; certainly everyone should think for himself on all of the aspects involved. Hence, no attempt will be made at too exhaustive an analysis of any one phase: many of the confirmed Lovecraftians who may have the patience to read this article will have decidedly different opinions, and that is all to the good. If these words can help only in suggesting some new lines of thought on the subject of Lovecraft's genius its purpose will have been nobly fulfilled. Let us now consider how rational and scientific an aura surrounds much of the apparently wild and fantastic events in his works; and let us note precisely why his stories satisfy our intuitive love of the supernatural, yet do little violence, in their fictional medium, to our scientific background of knowledge. In "Dagon" we have the most concise and perhaps the best expression of the whole Lovecraftian credo. The account is factual and circumstantial; the idea of a submarine upheaval in the ocean's floor is plausible. That such an event might produce evidence of a lost race does not seem impossible. Our credulity is strained, of course, when we get intimations that the "people" must have been a pre-human race of aquatic men who worshipped a fish-god, but by then the story's spell has captured us. Over it all hangs the awareness of the terrible and acknowledged antiquity of the earth and man's tenuous sinecure thereon. The final horror (if it is not really the narrator's own madness) is certainly little enough license to allow the writer of such a splendid tale. The whole comment might with even greater certitude be made on that key-stone of the whole mythos: the longer, more definitive, and among the greatest of Lovecraft's stories, "The Call of Cthulhu." Here, a complete city is heaved up from the ocean's floor; unholy and eon-cursed R'yleh wherein lie great Cthulhu and his minions, lord of the waters and his cohorts---perhaps only hibernating for the nonce. In this same story we learn the details from varied sources of the ancient and shocking cult of Cthulhu which has existed in obscure corners of the world since earliest pre-human ages. Since we do know vaguely of mysterious cults that have lurked in the background of human history since earliest antiquity, the evidence as it is unfolded has a certain air of verisimilitude, Cthulhu and his followers are material beings (of a very peculiar sort, it may be granted) and they do not seem to be all-powerful, else they would not remain dreaming in their slimy prison. The air of bland factuality and cosmic horror is nicely balanced; the tale cannot but impress the critical reader. We hear more of Dagon in "The Shadow over Innsmouth." Clearly, Dagon, one of Cthulhu's entourage, was worshipped by the degenerate aquatic-human hybrids who infested and ruled accused Innsmouth. The tremendous adventures of Randolph Carter as detailed in the splendid episodic novel---"The Silver Key," "Through the Gates of the Silver Key," and "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath"---are fine conceptions of events in other dimensions of space and time which are surely not too basic an improbability as fiction in the light of our present-day speculation on relativity and serial time. In a tale almost as detailed and circumstantial as the works of Defoe, "The Whisperer in Darkness," we have one of Lovecraft's supreme horror stories which yet has a certain amount of quasi-scientific background---enough for fictional purposes it would seem. The photograph on the opposite page is that of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, taken at the age of 6 1/2 years. It is in that superb creation, "The Shadow out of Time," however, that Lovecraft really rose to the heights. Here we have the finest exposition of our planet's terrifying age; we have a rational discourse on relativity; the time-displacement angle is handled in a masterly fashion; and above all we have almost the ultimate zenith in physical terror and psychical horror. This tale is far from being the most popular among readers,
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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 109 V The writer hopes that this discussion will provoke plenty of thought, discussion and controversy; certainly everyone should think for himself on all of the aspects involved. Hence, no attempt will be made at too exhaustive an analysis of any one phase: many of the confirmed Lovecraftians who may have the patience to read this article will have decidedly different opinions, and that is all to the good. If these words can help only in suggesting some new lines of thought on the subject of Lovecraft's genius its purpose will have been nobly fulfilled. Let us now consider how rational and scientific an aura surrounds much of the apparently wild and fantastic events in his works; and let us note precisely why his stories satisfy our intuitive love of the supernatural, yet do little violence, in their fictional medium, to our scientific background of knowledge. In "Dagon" we have the most concise and perhaps the best expression of the whole Lovecraftian credo. The account is factual and circumstantial; the idea of a submarine upheaval in the ocean's floor is plausible. That such an event might produce evidence of a lost race does not seem impossible. Our credulity is strained, of course, when we get intimations that the "people" must have been a pre-human race of aquatic men who worshipped a fish-god, but by then the story's spell has captured us. Over it all hangs the awareness of the terrible and acknowledged antiquity of the earth and man's tenuous sinecure thereon. The final horror (if it is not really the narrator's own madness) is certainly little enough license to allow the writer of such a splendid tale. The whole comment might with even greater certitude be made on that key-stone of the whole mythos: the longer, more definitive, and among the greatest of Lovecraft's stories, "The Call of Cthulhu." Here, a complete city is heaved up from the ocean's floor; unholy and eon-cursed R'yleh wherein lie great Cthulhu and his minions, lord of the waters and his cohorts---perhaps only hibernating for the nonce. In this same story we learn the details from varied sources of the ancient and shocking cult of Cthulhu which has existed in obscure corners of the world since earliest pre-human ages. Since we do know vaguely of mysterious cults that have lurked in the background of human history since earliest antiquity, the evidence as it is unfolded has a certain air of verisimilitude, Cthulhu and his followers are material beings (of a very peculiar sort, it may be granted) and they do not seem to be all-powerful, else they would not remain dreaming in their slimy prison. The air of bland factuality and cosmic horror is nicely balanced; the tale cannot but impress the critical reader. We hear more of Dagon in "The Shadow over Innsmouth." Clearly, Dagon, one of Cthulhu's entourage, was worshipped by the degenerate aquatic-human hybrids who infested and ruled accused Innsmouth. The tremendous adventures of Randolph Carter as detailed in the splendid episodic novel---"The Silver Key," "Through the Gates of the Silver Key," and "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath"---are fine conceptions of events in other dimensions of space and time which are surely not too basic an improbability as fiction in the light of our present-day speculation on relativity and serial time. In a tale almost as detailed and circumstantial as the works of Defoe, "The Whisperer in Darkness," we have one of Lovecraft's supreme horror stories which yet has a certain amount of quasi-scientific background---enough for fictional purposes it would seem. The photograph on the opposite page is that of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, taken at the age of 6 1/2 years. It is in that superb creation, "The Shadow out of Time," however, that Lovecraft really rose to the heights. Here we have the finest exposition of our planet's terrifying age; we have a rational discourse on relativity; the time-displacement angle is handled in a masterly fashion; and above all we have almost the ultimate zenith in physical terror and psychical horror. This tale is far from being the most popular among readers,
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