LOVECRAFT- “The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.”

By Néstor Fabricio Paz

NECRONOMICON LOVECRAFT

“The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.”

Horror novels and everything surrounding the world of the macabre would not be the same without the creator of Cthulhu, Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Born at 9 a.m. on August 20, 1890, at his family home on Angell Street in Providence, Rhode Island. His mother was Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft and his father was Winfield Scott Lovecraft.

 As a boy Lovecraft was in a way lonely and suffered from frequent illnesses, many of them apparently psychological. His attendance to the Slater Avenue School was short, but Lovecraft dedicated his time to independent reading.

     After his father deceased the little five year old Lovecraft was left upon his mother, his two aunts, and his grandfather who saw the very early birth of his talent reciting poetry at the age of two, reading at three, and writing at six or seven.

He showed an early enthusiasm for the Arabian Nights, that he read by the age of five; next thing on his list, he adopted the pseudonym of “Abdul Alhazred,” to become the author of the mythical Necronomicon. Nonetheless he was later influenced by the Greek Mythology and produced “The Poem of Ulysses” in 1897, which is in essence a childish version of The Odyssey.

 Lovecraft discovered weird fiction sort of at the same time, and his first story, “The Noble Eavesdropper,” may date to 1896. His interest in the weird was encouraged by his grandfather, who used to amuse the little boy with weird tales in the Gothic mode, and was the first approach of his weird fiction literary approach.

In 1904 Lovecraft’s grandfathers passing, and the following disarrangement of his property and affairs, put Lovecraft’s family into financial difficulties. Lovecraft and his mother were forced to move out of their lavish Victorian home to Angell Street. During the years of 1908 to 1913 Lovecraft turned into a hermit, doing little save pursuing his astronomical interests and his poetry writing.  

       It was after that he reentered the writing of fiction, which he had abandoned in 1908. Lovecraft wrote “The Tomb” and “Dagon” one shortly after the other in the summer of 1917.

      Lovecraft returned to Providence on April 17, 1926, settling at 10 Barnes Street north of Brown University, to spend the last ten years of his life and gift humanity with greatest moment, both as a writer and as a human being. He wrote some of the world’s best known fiction works, “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926) At the Mountains of Madness (1931) “The Shadow out of Time” (1934–35);  He was part of the careers of many young writers now known for their success on the field (August Derleth, Donald Wandrei, Robert Bloch, Fritz Leiber).

One of his most famous books The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, shows in a very brief narration what a mastermind of weird fiction he was, developing personality in the characters, increasing momentum and not allowing the reader to take his eyes of the paper, he provides in those pages with a case of supernatural events following the witchcraft incidents of Salem 3 centuries earlier.

      His later stories did not see the light of great success and by the intestine cancer that caused his death had advanced and was finally commanded to enter Jane Brown Memorial Hospital on March 10, 1937, where he past away five days later. He was buried on March 18 at the Phillips family plot at Swan Point Cemetery. Lovecraft never had a true book published in his lifetime, it was not until times after his passing that his works became widely available and translated into a dozen of different languages.

            “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”. 

            The quote cited before is one of the best ways to describe Lovecraft’s approach of literature.

            One of his most famous books The Case Of Dexter Ward, shows in a very brief narration what a mastermind of weird fiction he was, developing personality in the characters, increasing momentum and not allowing the reader to take his eyes of the paper, he provides in those pages with a case of supernatural events following the witchcraft incidents of Salem 3 centuries earlier.

References:

·         Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Autobiography

·         The Lovecraft File

·         The Call of Cthulhu

·         The Case of Charles Dexter Ward