H.P. Lovecraft: A cosmic visions of insanity

We know that fear is one of the most intense and deep emotions of the Human Being. And the oldest and strongest fear is that linked to the Unknown. To invoke this reality very few psychologists who deny the supernatural-places stories from the most authentic and meaningful forms of literary art.

However, the extent of the spectral and the macabre is usually quite limited, as it requires of the reader a degree of imagination and considerable ability to escape from everyday life. Relatively few, indeed, individuals can free themselves from the chains enough of the daily routine as to correspond to the intimidation of the Hereafter.

There have been great writers who understood this phenomenon, leaving, with its sensitivity and intellect, sores in the soul (that only time can heal). Perhaps we can better delineate this idea own statement Howard Phillips Lovecraft, the author of the most influential twentieth-century horror: "The only proof of the genuinely supernatural is whether or raised not in the reader a profound sense of unease to contact unknown, an attitude of apprehension against the insidious advance of horror, as if he were listening to the beating of wings dark or moving reports and unimaginable creatures in remote boundaries of the known universe. "

HIS NAME IS ALIVE!

HP Lovecraft was born in 1890 in the city of Providence, Rhode Island (USA). It was the hermit, forgotten son of a father who died of tertiary syphilis after years of detention, and, by all accounts, a confusing and immature mother. Educated at the home of his maternal grandfather, Lovecraft was left to its own devices. The basis of his imaginative world were seated at a very early age: the victim of the first of many emotional crises - "near collapse" - at age eight, took formal schooling was sporadic, but the future writer dived voraciously his self-taught, particularly as relates to astronomy. About this science, several teen magazines published when he hectografiados, reaching astronomical writing columns for some newspapers in Rhode Island. He began writing stories and poems since his twenties being initially in amateur media editing them. In turn, he corresponded with several writers who had common interests, forming the so-called "Lovecraft Circle".

One of the advantages of the successful selection of stories chosen for Peter Straub anthology collection Library Of America-representing roughly half the HP Lovecraft-narrative is that, when read sequentially, allows the reader witness the maturation process as a writer. For when the above compendium is released, the author already had an advanced stage of disease that would cause death-intestinal cancer. Little could be done to treat bad: Lovecraft tried to withstand the increasingly intense pain during winter 1936-37, but was finally forced to join the Jane Brown Memorial Hospital on March 1937, where he died four days later. He was buried in the family mausoleum of Phillips in Swan Point Cemetery.

Many more collections Volumes continued to kick-Straub, and finally the work of Lovecraft was further codified in books that became available in more than a dozen languages. Their stories are widely available in annotated editions; essays, poems and letters are accessible to mainstream audiences, and many scholars have written about the depths and complexities of his thought. Much remains to be done in the study of Lovecraft, but it's safe to say that, thanks to the intrinsic merit of his pen and the perseverance and diligence of its members and friends, Lovecraft has gained a small but important place in the canon of American literature .

YOUNG hallucinated LOVECRAFT

Howard was a misanthrope child and suffered frequent illnesses, some of them apparently psychological origin, attending more than episodic fashion school Slater Avenue-but absorbing large amounts of information through their individual readings. About eight years discovered science, first chemistry, then the study of the stars. It was considered British and adored all that of the colonial past of their country. It was a somewhat antisocial person, who devoted his time to reading, astronomy and correspond with other fans of the macabre literature. Also, from very small felt a morbid aversion to the sea (according to Freud's explanation of Wandrei, attributable to fish poisoning in poor condition).

He also produced fear invertebrates, marine life together, low temperatures, obese, people of other races, suburbs, miscegenation, percussion instruments, caves, basements, old age, the great periods of time, non-Euclidean geometry monumental architecture, deserts, oceans, rats, dogs, the New England countryside, the city of New York, fungi, viscous substances, medical experiments, dreams, gummy textures, gelatinous textures, gray color, plant life, memory lapses, old books, genetics, mist, gases, whistles, whispers ... Things that had formed was not afraid probably less abundant list.

Like vampires, HP Lovecraft hated daylight. But at night relived to read, to write, to walk the streets without enemies and lonely-and, above all, to dream. Lived and their dreams. They felt "a strange sense of excitement and adventure, related to the landscape, the architecture and certain effects of clouds in the sky." This aesthetic pleasure, according to August Derleth, prevented him from committing suicide.

Robert Bloch, author of Psycho, says of him that, although promoted his own legend, so is traveled, which was written with many people, I was always aware of philosophy, politics, and science of his time. "The image of the shy and lonely man, chasing shadows and walk the ancient burial-nights-Bloch says, is not complete."He adds: "The rarity of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, if there was such a rarity, that lived in the ivory tower was built better and was more beautiful than most of those, and inviting the world to visit and share their riches. "

CIRCLE THE MACABRE

Lovecraft was a great innovator of the scary story thanks to its unique use of narrative and atmosphere of his stories, which approached the genre of science fiction (not reached their twenties and wrote a column on astronomy for the Providence Tribune) . Relatively unknown writer in his time, while his stories had become a place in magazines such asWeird Tales, not many people stood or her name. However, in correspondence with other contemporary writers, such as Clark Ashton Smith and August Derleth, who became good friends (even without ever having met in person). This large group of writers got a posteriori fair name "Lovecraft Circle" or "School of Lovecraft" as borrowed elements of Lovecraft's stories-mysterious books with disturbing names, extraterrestrial pantheons of gods as Cthulhu and Azathoth, places like Arkham and Miskatonic-for use in their own stories (with the blessing and "complicity" of Lovecraft). It has been suggested that efforts were Lovecraft Circle-particularly-August Derleth that prevented the name and stories of Lovecraft completely disappeared in the darkness of oblivion. Most of his work appeared posthumously.

His stories, macabre and fantastic, in which the influence of Lord Dunsany, William H. Hodgson, Arthur Machen, Ambrose Bierce and Edgar Alan Poe is observed; develop the idea of ​​a legendary and primitive population of the Earth, not native to this planet, relentlessly trying to recover their lost power. These stories deal with evil spirits, psychic possessions and dream worlds where time and space are irretrievably altered; stories that shaped the Cthulhu Mythos-called basal cosmogonist stone resulting from a collective work that crystallized around a lonely man, but was chiseled with input from the School of Lovecraft: the author, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, August Derleth, Frank Belknap Long, Henry Kuttner, E. Hoffman Price and others own.

After Lovecraft's death, the spontaneous association of writers continued to contribute to his legend. August Derleth was probably the most prolific of them all: their contributions have been controversial because, while Lovecraft never considered his pantheon of alien gods rather than as part of the plot, Derleth created an entire cosmology, with a war between Archetypal Gods like Hypnos or Nodens and Primeval, as Hastur and Nyarlathotep. Moreover, associated to the four elements Primeval.

Since then, new and dark deities rose mysteriously in corners of the universe in search of their ancestral domains; fearsome know forgotten books and abominable circumstances were linked to details and creepy scenes and environments nightmare dream journeys into unknown dimensions, a set of slimy and grotesque legends capable of crazy to most sane mortals. Each was a grain of sand: all of them was feeding the newly established dogma, which eventually turned into a succession of strange seas coastline around preternatural.

ALIEN RAVE

Lovecraft suffered nightmares that he served as direct inspiration for his work.Perhaps it is this direct but your unconscious symbolic vision which explains its continued popularity and stir. In his long story "In The Mountains Eye-popping," we read: "The Ancients came down from the stars when the Earth was still young.They were beings whose substance had been guided by a strange evolution, whose powers were older than those who had ever lived on the planet. To make their prehistoric flights through cosmic space, legend, absorbed certain chemicals that almost their independence from feeding, breathing, cold and heat. "

His interests led him to appreciate especially the work of Edgar Allan Poe, who heavily influenced his early stories, gloomy atmosphere and hidden fears lurking in the dark. The discovery of the stories of Lord Dunsany Edward Plunkett and literature took Lovecraft to a new level, the fantasies taking place in the land of dreams. And it was probably the influence of Arthur Machen, with its well-constructed stories about the survival of ancient evil and faith in esoteric mysteries which lay behind reality, which ultimately inspired Lovecraft to find himself from 1923.

The art consisted exclusively produce Lovecraft horror, and this task was colossal scope. As its horrors scenario built a whole universe where time is measured in eons and furnishing others might continue indefinitely. Its horrors, with only a few exceptions, are described in such vague and diffuse suggesting a blank screen where the reader can project the shade that best conform to your imagination. So write to his colleague and friend Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian:"The basis for the true cosmic horror is always a violation of the natural order of things." Lovecraft and looked beyond the mere whims of earthly existence, seeking more vast and extraordinary horrors.

Another inspiration came from an unexpected source: the scientific advances in areas such as biology, astronomy, geology and physics, which reduced the human being to something insignificant, powerless, and doomed in a mechanical and materialistic universe-a tiny point in the infinite vastness of the macrocosm. These ideas contributed decisively to a movement called cosmicismo, and Lovecraft gave him reasons for his atheism. This led him to a dark throne with the creation of the corpus of what is now commonly called the Cthulhu Mythos: shed extradimensional alien deities and horrors that feed on humanity and having traces of ancient myths and legends. Their stories, too, created one of the most influential elements in the genre of horror: the Necronomicon, the secret manuscript insane Arab Abdul Alhazred.

The impact and strength of the concept of this myth have led some to conclude that Lovecraft based his work on pre-existing legends and mystical beliefs. Unusually, apocryphal but not least the dreaded Necronomicon revered editions have also been published through the years.

The conclusions he reaches are Lovecraft harm than good the same as contemporary science fiction assumes:

1) Ones who created life on Earth, come from space and are endowed with great powers of mind and matter.

2) Humanity is more than just a race that inhabited the Earth was created by those superior beings from the stars, and not the last.

3) successive Rare species created simply for your own benefit: the shoggoths was a slave race aimed at delivering high physical toughness, while animals, apes and humans were cattle-for food or entertainment for your leisure- .

4) Geological seizures represented a radical change in historical events, as the Primeval flowed slowly, and life went on in the evolutionary process free of artificial restrictions.

5) The human qualities that call just came in the image of our creators, others resulted from evolutionary processes inherent in biology.

It is also possible that, beyond the personal aspect, the repulsive creatures of Lovecraft are visionary expression of some essential truths of humanity, those truths which belong to the areas of the shadows and could be traced back to primitive man. Despite its flaws and its rhetorical extravagances, that quivering vision may be an accurate description of the phylogenetic and old demons, those demons that frighten us from past experiences that are common in some privileged spokespersons of the uncanny. Be swept away by the cosmic horror and feel the thrill of stalking her, the noxious smell of a threatening presence, amorphous gelatinous texture of something that makes noises, grunts and snorts, something that chanting the song of a coven in an indecipherable language. They are already here and there is no escape.

Jorge Antonio Buckingham

(UNNECESSARY?) CODA:

Cthulhu fhtagn, Cthulhu fhtagn!

How could it be otherwise, the impact of Lovecraft's work have not been relegated to strictly literary field. There are reports of at least three groups of rock that were born marked by its mark. The first and oldest was the psychedelic quartet HP Lovecraft, who worked in Chicago from 1967 to 1969, and whose meager recorded legacy was compiled Dreams In The Witch House: The Complete Philips Recordings(Rev-Ola, 2005). The name refers directly to a CD paralyzing tale of the author.

The second group was Necronomicon, powerful German combo between psychedelic and krautrocker: his only son, Super Tips Zum Selbstmord (must be translated as "advice to commit suicide"), was released in 1972 through the Best Prehodi team.And the third was Shub-Niggurath (in theology Lovecraft, an infernal god of fertility), French ensemble that throbbed between 1983 and 1991, drinking prog rock, kraut, of concrete music and even jazz. C'étaient Très Grands Vents (Musea, 1991) is his definitive work. This apart, bands latitudes, ahem, South American, and Chilean Acid Rain or God Ennui our countrymen, have relied on his lyrics memory more freak of Providence.

Also, the cinematographic art has echoed the Lovecraftian directly and indirectly nightmares luckiest in the second than in the first approach. Undeniably influenced by Lovecraft in films like Evil Dead saga of Sam Raimi, The Thing (1982, set in desolate Antarctica) or In The Mouth Of Madness (1995, which uses a violent twist to confuse and finally mix of horror literature and reality). The last two films, by the way, are John Carpenter. None of these three focuses specifically on Lovecraft, true, but they all turn to the body of his gruesome world.

Unfortunately, those efforts have addressed celluloid more directly Lovecraft results have only harvested between evil and most regularones. Two random examples: by 1970, it was released on the big screen The Dunwich Horror, a certain Daniel Haller, fiasco that even remotely be interpreted as a successful adaptation of the homonymous Lovecraftian tale. Better luck ran HP Lovecraft's Re-Animator (1985, Stuart Gordon), but also leaves room to get too excited.

On the other hand, some seasoned fans of Lovecraft have used the YouTube platform to present short stories based on the hideous (some of them made in animation). Most of the times have not changed from pale echoes the power of suggestion in this world to show the master of horror. A healthy exception to the rule is the short A Lovecraft Dream, we hang here:
Other signs that deserve public scorn (both credited to Demon Skull Studios), are:

Hakim of Merv