Лавкрафту 130 (En)

“My own rule is that no weird story can truly produce terror unless it is devised with all the care & verisimilitude of an actual hoax. The author must forget all about “short story technique”, & build up a stark, simple account, full of homely corroborative details, just as if he were actually trying to “put across” a deception in real life—a deception clever enough to make adults believe it.”HP Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 17 October 1930

This day marks the 130th anniversary of H.P. Lovecraft, the main master of horror and Weird Fiction who ever lived, the Old Gent of Providence and one of those who built contemporary literature, philosophy, and the contiguous arts in a way we all know it. He is also the one who changed my professional life completely a few years ago. And this post is my modest tale of appreciation.

While thinking of HPL during all the last days before his birthday, I am returning—again and again—to those early months of 2015 when something (Providence?) gave me a hint to finally read his compendium in English (at first, I did it online, by the way, and on my Kindle a bit later: soon enough I was purchasing all the books of his I could possibly get, just because it became my obsession; nothing has changed since then: I still do it). I knew, of course, who he was, but either the translations I had access to before weren’t that great, or the stars weren’t right (I think the first: no shame to the group of translators, they tried their best, and I can only imagine how insanely hard it was for them to re-arrange all HPL’s enchantments and spells to another language, but still: it wasn’t satisfactory), I didn’t feel any particular connections to either the plots or to the whole Weird tropes. Until I read them in the original.

I was stunned. Bewildered, enchanted, you can insert any particularly powerful verb about building the strongest engagement (including some of those from the Lovecraftian vocabulary, for sure), and you wouldn’t be wrong: it all could describe my current state of affairs perfectly. “But how,” I said to myself, “but how.” Why haven’t I discovered it earlier in my life whilst I needed all that so desperately? As a philologist, I find it difficult to fall in love with a book, or a narrative (not to mention the author: my archival past gave me a strong resistance towards any type of idolisation of any of them), or a peculiar philosophy that transpires through the plot— simply because it’s always been a significant part of my job to re-structure and to analyse it. In case with Lovecraft, for the first time in many years, I felt that I can give myself a go and not exactly bother (at least, while reading) with “how it was made” or “what are the allusions and reminiscences” (funnily enough, it will come later, of course: after all, noblesse oblige). I was just enjoying his short novellas so naturally, intuitively foreseeing that it might become much more later that this experience taken on its own, which can already be regarded as precious.

Lovecraftian writings are tense. They also are heavy, and superfluous, and flooded with archaic cadences, and tropes— that is why it’s so easy to mock him with all those endless “eldritch,” “unnameable,” “indescribable,” “inter-dimensional” etc. But mockery is one of the most notorious examples of flattery, isn’t it? Readers can laugh at HPL’s characters and their constant state of fear as much as they please, but it doesn’t prevent them from returning to his world again and again. And this is the main miracle of his style and composition: being very far from those neat, much more accurate and, shall we say, predictable narratives, his constant (and legendary) pauses at the most dramatic moments (when the character has finally faced the inevitable chthonic monstrosity in the darkness) is not a flaw, but a gift. The reader doesn’t need to go into the gruesome details of someone’s dramatic downfall, simply because HPL as a writer (and a genius) gives us the choice to imagine all the details, if we need them, on our own.

And that is why Lovecraft’s concept of good storytelling is so flawless and modern: you don’t need to see Cthulhu for the pure confirmation of his existence. HPL made it for you, and now the Old Ones will live their own lives in the universe you enter on your own terms. And you will, of course, because he is Providence, after all.

Happy Birthday, HPL. I will be wandering in the streets of Providence all day, thinking of the awesome grandeur, as you put it, of cosmic entities, who are alive, thanks to you.