“The Call of Cthulhu” is divided in three parts; each of them telling a mythical accident surrounding a bas-relief, which later proved to be from the “Cthulhu cult,” with the
developing of the plots, more horrendous things make their presence. The dream scape and the recurrent chant finally brings out the monster and where it dwells. However, it is the hinted darkness and the uncertainty of the telling that create a sense of horror, where the narrative “gap” appears is where the speculation starts, leaving a huge menacing horror in all the characters and the reader it influences. The fear for any human beings comes greatly from
what is unfamiliar. If a man is prepared to face something which he has certain amount of knowledge, he might know what to do, therefore the degree of horror will be reduced.
This chapter deals with the philosophical thinking and debates of Lovecraft’s work.
There will be two main parts: (1) A philosophical touring following the track of textual analysis by Donald R. Burleson and Timo Airaksinen. (2) The present trends and schools—
first Eugene Thacker, the systematical discussion on Lovecraft’s cosmic horror, and later Graham Harman, the founder of the school of object-oriented ontology.
In the story, however, the horror is enhanced through the “juxtaposition” and
“cross-fertilization” (Burleson 80) of Largesse and Webb in the notes of Professor Angell for there are riddles after riddles, each one more uncanny than another, each one wrapping another, leading to the evil cult and “the central idea of their loathsome faith” (“The Call of Cthulhu” 139). The notion of centrality and presence here may be problematic since no human’s ideas and understanding could be applied in case of Cthulhu and his city of R’lyeh, but Lovecraft’s way of presentation is a comparatively graspable way for human readers.
Same situation happens when Lovecraft draws upon how the Great Old Ones “talk” through mammal brains. The language here now becomes nihil symbols, with an imitative gesture of what seems to be like (something similar to talking but is not, something similar to being a center but is not). The signified-signifier chain is breaking down. Language fails itself in the very beginning, even though language is the only medium to keep record of what happened.
Language, however, is not completely functionless in terms of “names.” Burleson also make clear the notion of “the call”: the “call” as the topic of the story normally indicate the call of Cthulhu representing the Great Old Ones to those who are faithful or sensitive enough among the human race in their dead dreams. However, 1) for Burleson it may also be a
“transitive forced directed to Cthulhu…the calling which is also the making of Cthulhu into what is called forth” (Burleson 82. 2) For him, “[t]o have call, and to be able to do so, is both to credit and to discredit the borders across which one calls….borders become self-
destructing” (Burleson 83). The border is blurring between the calling and the called, dream and reality, or even what is certifiable, reasonable and what is not. For Burleson, calling even suggests naming, for the gestures of the calling strengthen the fact that the name is really a name, a name to be called or summoned, a name to define the meanings of the being. The Great Old Ones awake and the city of R’lyeh rise from its sunken location through this process of calling and naming.
It is also true that Cthulhu and all the other Old Ones could only be enabled through Their human devotees because
“When Cthulhu calls telepathically across the void and when human vows to call him forth in return…[h]umankind is immersed in the telepathic
presence-through-absence of Cthulhu, and Cthulhu retains the promise of liberation though human intervention. Without human devotees, Cthulhu cannot come forth, and without Cthulhu, human cultists cannot function as such…”
(Burleson 84).
There is not only the “cross-fertilization” of the texts / manuscripts, but also a sense of
“mutual benefits” between these human devotees and the Great Old Ones. This
interdepending relationship may serve also as metaphor for Capitalism, or writers and readers within the context of commercial activities and the circulation of commodities. For Burleson,
“The Call of Cthulhu” remains an “allegorical exploration of the paradoxical nature of borders, of distances, of insides and outsides, of the simultaneous necessity and impossibility of centers, of the tendency of textuality to deal in absence that is more powerful than
presence” (Burleson 85).
Airaksinen’s philosophical view for Lovecraft is “The philosophical theme of the tale asks whether we, the human race, can afford to face reality” (Airaksinen 107). According to Airaksinen, the “language madness” is postulated in the story, and the tale can never “succeed”
because “this story cannot be told, even if it does, the mind cannot correlate such contents,
even if we did, we would be mad and uncommunative” (Airaksinen 108). This is a seemingly Catch-22 statement that suggests anything related to the Cthulhu Cult is “beyond
language” … Cthulhu is infinite because his description is logically inconsistent, which entails the breakdown of language and linguistics…” (Airaksinen 110). It’s only a story of
“unreliable narrator” and “false testimony,” for its being dishonest and misleading if viewed in this way. Airaksinen’s criticism on the role of language is comparatively harsh, but the metacognitive thinking with empathy on the author’s life, as well as on the composition of the text, is remarkable.
Airaksinen is aware of Lovecraft’s disappointment at the fading of traditional virtues.
“Medieval heroes have grown old and vulnerable…” stated Airaksinen, the monster cannot be slaughtered, because it is already dead, but the meaning of death does not mean perish, for the dead is still dreaming…The contemporary world bewildered Lovecraft like the
contradiction and un-grasp-ability bewilder his narrator, which mostly result in their (half) insanity. Nevertheless, Airaksinen thinks that even Cthulhu still bears some virtues reflecting Lovecraft’s nostalgic past: “Cthulhu is dead only in the relative sense that his time has not yet come. Like and old English gentleman, like Lovecraft himself, the Beast knows the virtues of appropriate behavior, of which good timing is an essential part” (Airaksinen 111). Lovecraft has always considered himself as an old English gentleman who live in the 18th century, nostalgic of the pastoral, aristocratic past when classes are strict, but felt unaccustomed to the modern times of immigration and hybridity, and the collapse of the old nobles.
The ability of Cthulhu to “re-organize” itself is considered an important part of the text itself, and maybe a metaphor for the manuscripts, which the narrator strove to destroy. Put in a more postmodern sense, the entity of the text breaks into pieces, then once again piece together every time when a reader has an interpretive endeavor. The process of “re-organize,”
however, may not always be “falling back to the original status as it was,” but a process opens to new possibility of organizational reconstruction, thus a new boundary building. “At
this textual work has aimed at one goal, at the exorcism of its own horror and, subsequently, the death of the text…the reader destroys the text, which will self-regenerate and organize itself” (Airaksinen 114).
There always remains a tension “between the possible and the impossible, the
understandable and the incomprehensible, the contradictory and the consistent, and ultimately, the readable and the unreadable” (Airaksinen 112). For Airaksinen, the otherness is not the monster. “The otherness is horror.” “Otherness,” “deceptiveness,” and “wickedness” are what defines “The Call of Cthulhu.”
Eugene Thacker refers to Arthur Schopenhauer, Aquinas, Bodin and Dante, dragging out their spirits but following his own routes, coming up with him a grand, ineffable yet horrific picture of culturally- constructed domain where werewolves roar and giants roam, vampires giggled and bells of demonic gates jingled. The titles of his book series cannot prevent one from thinking about something really apocalyptic or related to dystopia. Thacker has also put pop culture parallel with the so-called high-culture. The dark heavy metal and the
introduction of H. P. Lovecraft and even horror manga author20, together with all the other branches of pop-cultures (some already faded away, died out of fashion) are all appealing and virgin lands without trespassing of the formers to give frames.
Eugene Thacker’s categorization of “world-for-us (World),” “world-in-itself (Earth),”
and “world-without-us (Planet)” (Thacker 4-5) is where Lovecraft’s “cosmic horror” comes into play. He states, “[h]orror is about the paradoxical thought of the unthinkable” (Thacker 9). For Thacker, “…culture is the terrain on which we find attempt to confront an impersonal and indifferent world-without-us, an irresolvable gulf between the world-for-us and the world-in-itself, with a void called the Planet that is poised between the World and Earth”
(Thacker 9). By this definition, Thacker indicates that culture, or imagination, speculation, an
20 Thacker pay special tribute to Junji Ito (伊藤潤二) in this series of philosophical studies. With notable works like Uzumaki (1998) and Gyo (2001), Ito stands a representative figure for the Japanese horror genre, gaining reputation from the interrupting, mind-blowing visual depictions.
attempt to create and to define, actually begins. The notion of “gulf” is the problem to be solved to fulfill such “gap,” culture emerges to meet the time. The void generates a sense of horror. This view is quite different from the human-privileged thinking, hinting that culture comes mainly from the need to conquer fear. In Lovecraft’s works, the narrators has the need to tell of the fear, trying to defeat what is after them through the process of writing and
confessing, although they usually fail. This fear, the “gap” which could never been filled with any human endeavor, is the dwelling of missing content and philosophy.
Graham Harman is also the one who emphasizes the importance of “gaps” in
Lovecraft’s philosophical view. By comparing Lovecraft’s works with major philosophers like Kant, Hume and Husserl, Harman is giving a brand new vista for the interpretation of Lovecraft.
His theory develops a lot upon how reality forms. Harman said that “[n]ot even Poe gives us such hesitant narrators, wavering so uncertainly as to whether their coming words can do justice to the unspeakable reality they confront” (Harman 10). The readers’ hesitation and insecurity come from the uncertainty and contradictions of the situations they are trapped in. Their narration thus becomes problematic witness’ testimony. Lovecraft is such a writer capable of manipulating the tension between style and content, making the statements of his narrators even more problematic. For Harman, reality is not made of statement. Reality has a hidden “untranslatability” (Harman 16): reality is too real to be translated without remainder into any sentence, perception, practical action, or anything else. It is mere “rhetoric.” Harman encourages us to question the narratives of the story by the suspicious narrator, and even Lovecraft himself. In every word and every depiction, Lovecraft is already undermining the story itself, giving it a shaky nature, a fluid basis. There are always gaps between the “reality”
and the statement, the eye-witnessed, the perceived, and the true being. Harman argues,
“Lovecraft unlocks a world dominated by such a gap, and this makes him the very embodiment of an anti-pulp writer” (Harman 22-25).
Harman also makes clear what Lovecraft himself is highly aware of: “the banality of pulp,” even kitsch: “the lowbrow imitation that offers a tasteless execution of high art’s hard-earned technique.” He quoted what Lovecraft himself had on science fiction of his contemporaries:
Pulp horror and science fiction will consist of the arbitrary postulation of new monsters and planets, each equipped with amazing qualitative features to designed to stun the reader with the novelty of their content, while merely adopting the banality of the established framework of the genre…Insincerity, conventionality, triteness, artificiality, false emotion, and puerile extravagance reign triumphant throughout this overcrowded genre, so that none but its rarest products can possibly claim a true adult status” (Harman 20).
From these harsh, probing criticisms, Lovecraft shows his stands and ambition. Harman argues that “…the true banality of most interplanetary fiction is the idea that simple novelty of content is enough to produce genuine innovation…” Harman also agrees with the
Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s point of view that “the medium is the message,”
for “the content or message of any particular medium has about as much importance as the stenciling on the casing of an atomic bomb” (Harman 22).21 For Lovecraft, not only the medium but also the content is important. “[I]nstead of the mild, tame, quickly-passed-over emotions prescribed by cheap popular convention,” he would rather do something with “[a]
cheap novelty of ‘unprecedented content’” (Harman 22), namely, creating a philosophical universe. Lovecraft’s works take the form of fiction, and his contents are so unprecedented that they invite numerous discussions and participations of all forms in the following generations. The following paragraphs discuss the contents of his works in terms of his writing styles and measures.
For Harman, there are several methods for Lovecraft to adopt, first is to “belittle,” or
21 From “The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan,” Playboy, March 1969.
“trivialization” for things.” By dwindling down the human achievements and history by comparing them to the vastness of the universe, an author can easily show the vain of human endeavors. The “historical bulk” (Harman 56-57) of Lovecraft’s works also “lend[s]
historical credence” to the tale. Harman is also aware of the innate “comic and tragic
intentionality”22 of Lovecraft’s woks. His acts of the characters’ mentality are always aimed at objects.
For the style, there are two aspects of Lovecraft’s works: the “vertical” and the
“horizontal.” The first being the “allusive,” and the later “cubist,” by creating a cubic dimension of his depictions, a “multi-faceted surfaces” of things” come with effects like (1) Real objects are locked in impossible tension with the crippled descriptive powers of
language, and (2) Visible objects display unbearable seismic torsion with their own qualities (Harman 24-25).
For Harman, “Lovecraft writes stories about the essence of philosophy. Lovecraft is the model writer of ontography, with its multiple polarizations in the heart of real and sensual objects” (Harman 26). In Lovecraft’s woks “a sensual object is in tension with its real
qualities”…features are withdrawn from scrutiny. There are “dark allusions to real properties”
and “metaphor succeeds by transferring sensual qualities from a sensual object to a real one.”
However, Lovecraft’s “sincerity” and “involvement” (Harman 44) still “exhibit a genuine inner life of its own”. Lovecraft’s narrators are “absorbed in his intellectual sincerities, and expend his entire being in pursuing them” (Harman 72). “The work of philosophy is to unearth the hidden background conditions of all visibly accessible entities, just as the function of rhetoric is to make use of this background to persuade its listeners in a way that literal argument cannot” (Harman 71).
On time, space and essence, Harman also invented the idea of “Fusion and Fission.” For
22 Harman quoted Aristotle in the last part of the book, “Comic aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life” (Harman 260). For Harman, Lovecraft has both adopted the comic and the tragic in his writing.
Harman, qualities are “fused with an object that we do not normally associate with them…this result is “an object that feels real, simply because it is too difficult to register vividly as a normal sensual object…gives the imagination an excellent workout to try to envision…the fusion requires a prior fission, since these qualities were not there beforehand just floating in the ether” (Harman 252). However, all fusion requires “a prior fission,” and that “all fission leads to a new form of fusion” (Harman 243).
In Harman’s conclusion, Lovecraft is not simply a pulp writer, but one who keeps pulp at a distance though two separate fissures that obstruct the power of literal language: (1) Lovecraft “alludes” to realities that are impossible to describe. (2) The pioneering adopting of
“literary cubism.” (3) Both the object and its features resist all description. (4) A known and perfectly accessible object…is found to have unintelligible but real features. Harman argues that Lovecraft “prefers metaphors in which one of the terms is completely and deliberately unknown, defied not at all by ay of the social preconceptions linked with it, but solely by its gravitational work of bending the qualities that form the only testimony to its
existence…’black hole’…” (Harman 239). The metaphor of black hole reflects perfectly on the twisting of time and space, and the endless cycle of rejecting and alluding.