Lovecraft is an author who writes horror novels. Those novels revolve around gods but there is a common theme among those novels. Particularly that
“some things aren’t supposed to be questioned (or known), and you should not question the answers you are given.”
Characters discovering creatures like Cthulu, Yog-Sohoth, and other entities usually end up going insane or having their lives negatively affected by the impact.
What do you think about this?
Same thing I think whenever anyone makes an unevidenced assertion, and an absolute claim, I have no reason to believe it has any merit.
I don’t know how Lovecraft put it, but I think the truth lies more legitimately along the lines of “don’t arrogantly mess with powers you think you understand, but don’t”.
Although we don’t encounter all-powerful beings slumbering in our underworld, there are some practical applications. Marie Curie IIRC succumbed to over-exposure to Radium, and the early market exuberance around X-Rays had them over-used for diagnostic purposes even to the point of people putting their hands in fluoroscopes for public amusement purposes, all of which probably caused more than a few unwanted cancers.
Lovecraft’s purpose was more to tap into deep subconscious fears in the shared cultural zeitgeist. He was a master at it. Possibly those subconscious terrors are rooted in religious threats of eternal retribution by an all-powerful wrathful deity, IDK – just guessing. It would have been even worse before, say, the 19th century, when more common folk were willing to attribute tragedy and mishap to displeased gods or insufficiently restrained demonic forces.
As a theme for horror, fantasy, and science fiction that taps into feelings of the mysterious to establish a tone, it’s great stuff.
As an idea that equates ignorance with safety and posits the assumption that avoiding information prevents consequences, it’s also great stuff.
have you read about the guy’s works?
I read Lovecraft back in a time when I had hair…and it was brown… The best explanation I found for Lovecraft’s themes was the times in which he grew up.
He saw the world go through the end of the Victorian era, through the changes the Great War left on the world through the Depression. His father was institutionally committed and he saw the illusion of the family fortune evaporate at the death of his grandfather.
Yeah, I can understand where that imagination springs from…
Haven’t read anything by Lovecraft, so I’m pretty clueless about his authorship. So I take the following statement at face value, and ignore any other underlying context or information:
I reject that premise, and ask “Why?” Who decides what’s not “supposed to be” questioned or known? And who gives them that authority?
Nope. I was commenting on the idea put forward here.
I’d categorize Lovecraft’s fiction as extreme xenophobia. A particularly good (or perhaps bad) example would be: The Horror at Red Hook.
No argument here. He was a study in xenophobia.
Isn’t “unwanted” redundant here, or are there cancers that are wanted?
This is the same message that Mary Shelly delivered in her famous novel Frankenstein, or a Modern Prometheus that was written about 100 years before Lovecraft.
Lovecraft was of the generation that produced Crowley and Gardner, a generation fascinated by the occult.
I dislike Lovecrafts style and themes, not because they are dated ( which they were in the 30s) but that the quality of his prose is execrable.
Sadly there are whole clubs of genx and fan fiction sites revolving around Lovecrafts drug addled creations.
I cant take anything he wrote or thought seriously.
Lovecraft wasn’t on drugs, he was overdosing on fear. He suffered from childhood night terrors that didn’t stop in childhood.
Love taft was too scared to use drugs or alcohol.
But many of his creations were drug addled. It was a recurring theme
Maybe I should have made that more clear.
what’s so bad about drug-addled prose? it’s not like it’s actual drugs people sniff. i bet the novels you like contain their own drug-addled craziness because no author in the world wants to publish something milquetoast and bland.
If anyone is going to claim there are things we shouldn’t know, then my main problem with that claim is how would we be able to pursue any knowledge, if we don’t know beforehand what to avoid, and if we knew that wouldn’t this be achieving the very thing they are claiming we should avoid?
One could perhaps argue in retrospect that certain knowledge has dangers for us and the planet, but without specifics can anyone really argue that ignorance is preferable to pursuing knowledge. If so then that is the argument this claim is lacking.
Is not something I said. But hey, Lovecraft had several protagonists who were drug addled. His prose was tedious and dated even for his time.
I’m not opposed to a plot device where the moral is that there are things that should be left unknown, but I don’t think it works as a guide for real life. There are dangers all around us and the more we know, but more prepared we can be.
H.P. Lovecraft’s stories and poems definitely reside in the dark side of the human psyche, but I wouldn’t expect anything less from an author whose childhood was as messed up as his was. He was a lifelong atheist who detested organized religion, and who considered humankind to be utterly insignificant in the universe. His stories covered themes like witchcraft, haunted locations, dreaming landscapes, science fiction, incest, and his Cthulhu Mythos stories that detailed the existence of beings/gods who predated even the universe. Weird Fiction was the perfect name for the type of horror stories that he created, and if he hadn’t died of stomach cancer alone and destitute at the age of 47 who knows what other stories he might have created?