Metal History: HP Lovecraft

For those of you new to Steff Metal, and I know there are a few, Metal History is a regular column where I talk about all sorts of people, places and events throughout history that have, in some way or another, influenced heavy metal. I used to be an archaeologist, so I love writing these articles, and they tend to be a bit long-winded, but my regular folk seem to love ‘em, so I keep writing ‘em.

If we’re going to be talking about our pal HP, it might help if you knew a little about his life, and what events and influences shaped the man who wrote the stories which terrify even today.

The Strange Adventures of HP Lovecraft

Born August 20, 1890 in Providence Rhode Island, Howard Philip was the only child of Winfred Scott Lovecraft (a travelling salesman) and Sarah Philips Lovecraft. In 1893, Winfred took a business trip to Chicago, and went psychotic in a hotel room. He returned to Providence and was admitted to Butler Hospital, where he remaind until his death in 1898, when Howard was eight years old.

Throughout his letters and writings, Lovecraft maintained his father died of paralysis brought on by exhaustion because of overwork. But the actual cause was paresis of the insane. We don’t know to what extent Lovecraft was aware of his father’s actual condition – syphilis.

Lovecraft’s two aunts and maternal grandfather moved into the family home to help Sarah raise Howard. His grandfather encouraged him with classical books – Arabian Nights, the Illiad and the Odyssy, and with made-up gothic horror tales of his own. His mother thought the stories might upset him, but Lovecraft, a prodigy, devoured them voraciously, and wrote his own poetry from the age of six.

Frequently ill, undisciplined and argumentative, Lovecraft barely attended school. He read books on chemistry and astronomy, and produced several hectographed publications, starting with The Scientific Gazette, at age nine. He suffered from night terrors – part of a rare parasomnia disorder – and drew direct inspiration for his later work from his “night gaunts”.

At age 13, he returned to public school, but, in 1904, his grandfather died, and the family moved into more modest accommodation. He contemplated suicide, suffered a breakdown in 1908, and never received his high school diploma. As he wished to study at Brown University, his failure to achieve his diploma haunted and shamed him for the rest of his life.

He lived his youth as a hermit, writing some fiction but mostly poetry. He had no contact with anyone except his mother, until one day he wrote a letter to the pulp magazine The Argosy, complaining about the insipid love stories of one of the publication’s most popular writers. Lovecraft caused a massive debate in the letters column, which caught the eye of Edward F Dass, president of the United Amateur Press Association, who invited Lovecraft to join. Over the next few years he contributed several essays and poems, and in 1917 started contributing fiction, including The Tomb and Dagon.

Arkham Library Card, HPLHS

Lovecraft began to build up a huge network of correspondents. He became one of the great letter writers of the 20th century – sending frequent missives to Robert Bloch (Psycho), Robert E. Howard (Conan the Barbarian), August Derleth and Clark Ashton Smith. He would often date his letter 200 years in the past, saying he believed the 18th and 19th centuries were “the best. The former being a period of noble grace and the latter a century of science.”

In 1919 his mother was committed to Butler Hospital – the same institution which his father had resided. She wrote frequently to her son until she died of complications following gall bladder surgery in 1921. Lovecraft took her death quite hard, poor fellow.

Lovecraft met his future wife, Sonia Greene, only a few weeks after this event, at an amateur journalist convention in Boston. Sonia was seven years older than Lovecraft, of Ukranian-Jewish ancestry. Greene owned a hat shop, and in 1924 she managed to convince Lovecraft to marry her and move to Brooklyn. Lovecraft’s aunts disapproved of the marriage – they didn’t like him being married to a “tradeswomen”.

Mr. and Mrs. Lovecraft

Sonia lost her hat shop in financial difficulties and fell into ill health. Lovecraft could not find a job that would support them both, so Sonia moved to Cleveland for work, and Lovecraft lived by himself in the infamous Red Hook neighbourhood of New York and began to detest the city with the fire of a thousand sons. His inability to find work amidst the large immigrant population of Red Hook appears to be at least partially responsible for turning his racism into outright fear. His story “The Horror at Red Hook” owes much to this period.

Howard and Sonia agreed to divorce, and Lovecraft moved back in with his aunts until his death. During this last decade he produced his most famous stories – The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Call of Cthulhu and the Shadow over Innsmouth. They were published in the popular pulp magazines of the day, such as Weird Tales, and frequently resulted in outraged letters from horrified readers. He continued his correspondence in earnest, encouraging his writer friends to borrow and extend elements of his mythos, including his invented towns of Arkham and Innsmouth, and his fictional Miskatonic University.

Not many people know that during this period Lovecraft also ghostwrote several texts, including “The Mound”, “Winged Death”, “The Diary of Alonzo Typer” and “Under the Pyramids” (For Harry Houdini)

He had no money and suffered from malnutrition. He moved frequently, into ever smaller and cheaper lodgings. He suffered from cancer of the intestine and lived in constant pain until his death on March 15, 1937.

Howard was buried alongside his parents in the Phillips family monument. In 1977 a group of fans bought in a headstone in Swan Point cemetery, which gives his name, date of birth and death, and “I AM PROVIDENCE”, a line from his personal letters.

HP Lovecraft - I AM PROVIDENCE

Lovecraft’s Stories

If you’ve read any Lovecraftian fiction, you’ll immediately spot how Lovecraft’s life must have influenced his work. The pervasive lonliness of his existence, the eternal struggle against failure, the night terrors, the loss of both his parents in a psychiatric institution … it’s no wonder the mind that endured all this brought forth into the world such damnable creatures.

At the Mountains of Madness - soon to be a major motion picture

Lovecraft’s collected works deal with several common themes: among them the risks of being increasingly relient on science, fate and inherited guilt (the idea that descentants could never escape a stain on the bloodline), forbidden knowledge and the piecing together of mysterioes of the universe which, when revealed, destroy the minds of the investigator. His works show a profound racism and association of negroid races with malevolence and evil. Many of his stories deal with a fear of the destruction of civilisation at the hands of “barbarians”.

Central to Lovecraft’s work (and the work for contemporary writers like August Derleth) is the Cthuhlu Mythos – the loose framework of common elements that ran through Lovecraft’s work, and which formed the basis of a shared universe used by many other writers, often writing elements far from Lovecraft’s original conceptions.

Lovecraft scholars separate mythos material into two categories “Mythos Proper” – for material written during Lovecraft’s lifetime, and “Derleth Mythos” for material created after Lovecraft’s death, most notably by his correspondent August Derleth. Lovecraft never intended to write a canonical Mythos but instead used his creations as plot devices and background material. Lovecraft called his creation “pseudomythology” and sometimes “Yog-sothothery”.

So, what is the mythos? First, you have the “Great Old Ones”, a loathsome parthenon of ancient deities who came from space and ruled the earth. But then, sometime in the distant past, they fell into a death-like sleep. Cthulhu is one of the great old ones, lying “dead (but dreaming” in R’lyeh, the submerged city located somewhere beneath the southeast Pacific Ocean. You’ve got Nyarlathotep, who meddles in human affairs and is marked by outward and blantant malevolence for humanity, especially his own worshippers.

Mythos Proper explores the essence of the measliness of mankind, whereas August Derleth’s later additions attempted to bring it more in line with his Roman Catholic cosmology – the mythos is a war of good and evil. It was Derleth, not Lovecraft, who invented the term Elder Gods (beneign deities) and their war against the chaotic Great Old Ones. Lovecraft was an Athiest and so, many criticise Derleth for his mythos ideas.

However, without Derleth, who become a publisher of Lovecraft’s works after his death, the Cthulhu mythos and much of Lovecraft’s work would not be available to us. Lovecraft easily became discouraged and overly critical of his work, and it was actually Derleth who brought to light some of his true masterpieces. Also, Lovecraft encouraged and delighted in the shared mythos – many elements of which had been created by those authors in his correspondence.

Aside from Cthulhu the most recognisable aspect of Lovecraft’s mythos is the “Necronomicon”, an ancient book of unspeakable evil and often dubious ficticiousness. Even during his own lifetime Lovecraft had to work to convince others the Necronomicon doesn’t actually exist. I’ll be talking about the book and some of Lovecraft’s other ficticious books in an upcoming article.

Further Reading

You can find all of Lovecraft’s stories on Cthulhu Files and his early poems on Dowse Poetry.
For August Derleth, check out his stories and join the August Derleth Society.
HP Lovecraft Historical Society

If HP Lovecraft was alive today, he would

Never eat seafood
Write erotic Harry/Snape fanfiction under a humorous pseudonym.
Listen to Skepticism