• 沒有找到結果。

從超自然哲學到後人類恐怖:H. P. 洛夫克拉夫特克蘇魯神話文化研究

N/A
N/A
Protected

Academic year: 2021

Share "從超自然哲學到後人類恐怖:H. P. 洛夫克拉夫特克蘇魯神話文化研究"

Copied!
69
0
0

加載中.... (立即查看全文)

全文

(1)國立臺灣師範大學英語學系 碩. 士. 論 文. Master Thesis Graduate Institute of English National Taiwan Normal University. 從超自然哲學到後人類恐怖: H. P. 洛夫克拉夫特克蘇魯神話文化研究. From Supernatural Philosophy to Posthuman Horror: A Cultural Study on H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. 指導教授:黃 涵 楡 博士 Advisor: Dr. Han-yu Huang 研 究 生:吳 冠 儀. 中華民國一 零 六 年 八 月 August, 2017.

(2) Wu i. 論文摘要. 本研究旨在討論二十世紀恐怖小說家 H. P. 洛夫克拉夫特「克蘇魯神話」系統之世 界觀,探尋其新的可能性,並將專注於<克蘇魯的呼喚>(“The Call of Cthulhu”)此一 短篇小說。除了故事本身的文本分析以外,本研究亦將奠基於恐怖小說此一文類的特質 與發展沿革,以及研究洛夫克拉夫特哲學觀的學者,如尤金.薩克(Eugene Thacker) 與格雷厄姆.哈曼(Graham Harman)等人的理論。本研究的主要目標在於探討後人類、 後現代以及「後洛夫克拉夫特」1的背景脈絡下,克蘇魯神話中符號、象徵與意象的變 革。次文化中的個案,如尼爾.蓋曼(Neil Gaiman) 、艾倫.摩爾(Alan Moore)的作 品,以及日本動畫,乃至於桌遊以及童書,也將涵蓋其中。本研究將從哲學本體論與後 人類主義的觀點著手,並在克蘇魯神話歷年積累之粉絲社群、學術研究以及各種再現方 式中,反思文化與歷史的影響。. 關鍵字:洛夫克拉夫特,克蘇魯神話,文化研究,後人類. 「後洛夫克拉夫特」 (“Post-Lovecraftian”)的概念由《洛夫克拉夫特的時代》 (The Age of Lovecraft, 2013)一書提出。該書的編輯闡釋了現代人之所以會生活在一個「類似洛夫克拉夫特筆下的世界」的原 因。 「後洛夫克拉夫特」的觀點強調的並不是僅是線性的時間轉變;廣義而言近代洛夫克拉夫特崇拜者可 包含任何潛意識思維上明瞭自己正活在一個隨時有可能經歷「洛夫克拉夫特式啟示錄」的人。聆聽從宇 宙的最邊緣傳來的壞消息,在生態浩劫、核能危機、恐怖行動、全球暖化,以及傳染病盛行的集體焦慮 中重新思考洛夫克拉夫特,都將重新建構一個「後洛夫克拉夫特」的現代世界觀。有形物質的恐怖並非 唯一足以為懼之事,影響深遠的層面還包含社會與政經的潛移默化。 1.

(3) Wu ii. Abstract. This research aims to seek new possibilities of opening up H. P. Lovecraft’s world of the Cthulhu Mythos, and will focus specifically on his work “The Call of Cthulhu.” Starting with a textual analysis of the story, the research develops with a background of horror genre and Lovecraftian philosophers like Eugene Thacker and Graham Harman. The core part of the project attempts to contextualize the transformation of the signs, symbols and images of Cthulhu Mythos within the postmodern, posthuman, and “Post-Lovecraftian2” context. Several subcultural cases include works of Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and even Japanese animation as well as table games and children’s books. The research involves ontological and posthuman approaches to the Cthulhu Mythos, and highlights the importance of cultural and historical factors in Cthulhu Mythos’ fandom, scholarship, and ways of representation.. Key Words: Lovecraft, Cthulhu Mythos, cultural studies, posthuman. 2. The idea of “Post-Lovecraftian” was mentioned in the book The Age of Lovecraft. The editor of the book elaborates on our lives in a seemingly Lovecraftian age. Being "Post-Lovecraftian" is not just a linear transformation. The new Lovecraftian cult involves every man living with the subconscious mindset of Lovecraftian Apocalypse. The awareness of bad omens from the rims of (un)known universe, and the reconsidering of Lovecraft in terms of anxieties like ecological catastrophe, nuclear crisis, terrorist activities, widespread pandemics and global warming constructs a “Post-Lovecraftian” context of our modern world. The horror comes not only from the material and the corporeal, but also from the sociopolitical aspects..

(4) Wu iii. Acknowledgements. Special thanks to those who have accompanied me throughout the paths of thorns. I would like to pay tributes especially to Hsin Hsieh, Sindorei Lin, Yi-chun Ho, Zachary Tsai and Shelly Wang. They have both encouraged and urged me all the way to the end. Many thanks to Professor Sun-chieh Liang, who has always had a keen observation on the project, providing constructive and resourceful advice. Finally, I would like to give all of the credits to my instructor, Professor Han-yu Huang. Without his course, Study on Posthuman, and his guidance, I would not have the chance to come across such inspirations that motivated me to finish this project..

(5) Table of Contents 論文摘要………………………………………………………………………….….….…..i Abstract………………………………………………………………….………..…………ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………….…….…..iii. Introduction………………………………………………………………….……..………...1 Literature Review ………………………………………………….............................................5 Chapter One “The Call of Cthulhu”………………………………...………………….…...16 Chapter Two The Study of Horror Philosophy, or Philosophical Horror...............................30. A. Philosophical Reading on Cthulhu Mythos ………………………………..33 B. Cthulhu Mythos and Haraway’s Cyborgs………….………………….……41 Chapter Three Case Studies:. A. Neil Gaiman’s Border-Crossing Representations of Lovecraftian deities …………………………………………………………………….47 B. Alan Moore’s Visual Representation …………………………………….49 C. “The Very Hungry Cthulhupillar” ……………………………………….51 D. “Unspeakable Words (Table Games)” ……………………………….…..53 E. “Nyaruko” ………………………………………………………….……54 Conclusion……………………………………….……………………….………….……..59 Works Cited………………………………………………………….…………………......61 Appendix ………………………………………………………….……………….............64.

(6) Wu 1. Introduction. Howard Philip Lovecraft (1890-1937), or commonly acknowledged as H. P. Lovecraft, is the father of numerous classic works of the horror genre including “The Call of Cthulhu” (1928), “The Dunwich Horror” (1929) and “The Shadow over Innsmouth” (1936). Born in Providence, New England, in the late nineteenth century, Lovecraft constantly traced back to his picturesque hometown, where he had a gloomy childhood with shadows and spectres foretelling prophecies about his even gloomier adulthood. With his heritage of Neo Classic antiquity, he was not quite embraced and appreciated during the prosperity of modernity, when Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot ruled the American literary circles. His works were considered second-graded. Never feeling part of his contemporaries, he was a stranger of his time; few admired his works, rendering them as second-grade pulp fiction. “Life is a hideous thing and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemonical hints of truth which makes it sometimes a thousand-fold more hideous” (Joshi 87), says Lovecraft in Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family (1921). He projects his world view onto his works: the universe cares not of human accounts, and the world itself is never humane, but indifferent and arbitrary to the human species. The most contradictory is that the feeling of indifference is actually another emotion of human beings. By regarding the universe as indifferent, human beings are projecting their feelings on the universe. Despite his hatred for the world and his own life, Lovecraft has an uncommon generosity for his followers, which S. T. Joshi commented on as his “correspondence.”. 3. He. never ceases to offer “tireless help and encouragement” to ambitious young writers. According to Jess Nevins, this correspondence might help foster the Lovecraftian cult even in Lovecraft’s “correspondence” indicates the considerable amount of circulated letters between Lovecraft and his coterie, in which he discussed his ideal of literary creation and his construction of fictional universe almost without any concealment. These letters, along with some fragments and notes he left posthumously, are the most precious materials passed directly down from Lovecraft for people to delve deeper into his spiritual life and intellectual world, as well as his belief and dedication considering the horror genre. 3.

(7) Wu 2. the very primary stage of Cthulhu Mythos; even decades before social media, Lovecraft has created a feedback loop between him and his contemporary “like-minders,” the “social capital” which allows anyone to take part in the development of the fictional universe.4 From Lovecraft’s letters with his correspondents, one can realize that Lovecraft was also a man of his own rules. A keen observer of literary works, especially of the horror genre and science fiction, Lovecraft’s sharp criticism of the drawbacks and his strict standards for the requisite factors of a good fictional work reflects his ideal he later would carry out throughout his writing career. Throughout his life, Lovecraft sought for the perfect weird story. He has his own philosophy on horror genre and generated a unique prospect regarding of what a good fiction should be like. These thoughts are present not only in his critic work Supernatural Horror in Literature (1927), but postulate in his circulated letters. He has made every possible endeavor to reach the goal. Although rejected by many of his contemporaries due to the atmosphere of his time; his works are considered the ones of the most original. Lovecraft gained a posthumous fame after his premature death at 46; however, through a transformation under the united fellowship of his followers, Lovecraft has quite an “after-life.” Now Lovecraft has become the spiritual leader of a cult and a pop icon of subcultures. With his “elevation” as the “progenitor of the New Weird” (Sederholm and Weinstock 10-12) one can boldly assume that he / she is witnessing the “second rising” of Lovecraft. His readers are all living in the world resembling the Lovecraftian and stepping forward to a “Post-Lovecraftian” age. This however, might be against Lovecraft’s own will that even Lovecraft himself would ironically protest. It may be because of the characteristics of hybridity that the Lovecraftian cult will prevail, and continually colonize and expand to fields of an unexpected range. This tentacle-faced, bat-winged, severely-deformed- human-being-like ugly-bugly,. Jess Nevins, review of Luckhurst’s 2013 Oxford University Press edition of Lovecraft’s stories in the Los Angeles Review of Books, see also the introduction of The Age of Lovecraft. 4.

(8) Wu 3. lurking under the deepest abyss of oceans and shrouding beyond the furthest of distant, aeon-old stars, has already been ambushing everywhere in daily life. Among the followers of his cult in the primary states, August Derleth5 is the first one to come up with the idea of “Cthulhu Mythos” after Lovecraft’s premature death. For years Lovecraft’s followers has consider the image of Cthulhu as the key figure of his Cthulhu Mythos. To complete the cosmos of the mythological system, Derleth even created two other gods of the Great Old Ones (which is also a name he created) representing the elements of fire and wind in contrast to Cthulhu, representing water. However, such design does have its own drawbacks. In Lovecraft’s original design, the castle R’lyeh, which is also the palace of Cthulhu, locked underwater, making it contradictory for a god in control of water should not be constrained by water. The ways of describing the appearances of all those “fantastically-beasty” gods and creatures are distinguishing. Lovecraft does not write with a frank, accessible measures, but with a profound philosophical endeavor. This would later be classified by Graham Harman as “object-oriented ontology”.. 6. After several deep dives into Lovecraft’s works, the nature of. peer co-operation, this “coterie” quality of the cult bewitched me, like many other mythological systems of oral traditions passing down for generations, from the earliest exchanging of letters between Lovecraft and his close friends, to the circulations and August Derleth (1909-1971) was a correspondent and friend of H. P. Lovecraft, and the inventor of the term "Cthulhu Mythos" to describe the fictional universe shared by Lovecraft and other writers in his circle. Calling himself a "posthumous collaborator," after Lovecraft’s death in 1937, Derleth and other Lovecraft’s friends tried to assemble his works and have them published. Afterwards Derleth wrote his own stories based on fragments and notes left by Lovecraft, later published in Weird Tales and printed as a book noted as collaboration with Lovecraft. However, these moves had attracted negative opinions from numerous critics. For example, S. T. Joshi refers to the "posthumous collaborations" as marking the beginning of "perhaps the most disreputable phase of Derleth's activities". Robert M. Price also points out that Derleth's tales are distinct from Lovecraft's, “Derleth was more optimistic than Lovecraft in his conception of the Mythos, but we are dealing with a difference more of degree than kind,” saying that Derleth was simply using Lovecraftian factor in service of his own Christian view. Nevertheless, Derleth also categorized Lovecraftian deities with traditional alchemy elements, and even created deities in order to fit in the categorization. 6 Rejecting the privilege of human existence over the existence of nonhuman objects, object-oriented ontology involved a school of scholars who oppose to Kant’s view that the object conform the subjective mind. The founder of this movement was Graham Harman. “Object-oriented ontology” is “the dual polarization that occurs in the world: one between the real and the sensual, and the other between objects and their quality” (Harman 4). For more information, one could refer to his previous work The Quadruple Object (2011). 5.

(9) Wu 4. transformation on the modern networks. Later, I turned to the studies of horror, where I found that the Lovecraftian motifs have gone far beyond the generic boundaries of the horror genre, and finally to its all-time evolution where its flexibility and ductility connect it with present trends, and Posthumanism, following up with more possibilities and crossing of boundaries. One might encounter with a personal confession of paradoxical feelings mixing abjection and reverence, and Lovecraft never fails to disgust but at the same time fascinate. Through his eyes and his mythic creations, an academic journey begins, but more than that: to be “Cthulhucene” is to decenter oneself and to realize “the things that fall apart” from the human species, and to find a new dwelling in a crossover of philosophical, close-to-life, boundary-evading, astonishingly universally-applicable terrains. By elaborating on the construction of Lovecraftian universe and explores the possibilities that open up new interdisciplinary borders by crossing, transgressing and integrating. The thesis also seeks to “bridge” or at least, to measure the “gaps” in his narratives and philosophies. The thesis topic “From Supernatural Philosophy to Posthuman Horror: The Evolution of H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos” deliberately re-arranges the order of “supernatural,” “horror” and mingles them with the word “philosophy” and its references, and points especially to Posthumanism. To explore the nature of boundary crossing in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, its representation and impact in a postmodern and posthuman world is a journey that delves in the darkest and eeriest of a genius’ mind. The world could be crouched with slimy green monsters or hidden with horrendous, merciless facts of the universe, yet it is also scattered with countless stars..

(10) Wu 5. Literary Review. Lovecraft’s works are usually in the category of horror in terms of its contents. It was not until nearly two decades from now that the scholarly circles started to take Lovecraft’s philosophical thought into consideration. Clearly Lovecraft’s followers have been enjoying the benefits of his “adaptive universe” far earlier than the scholars, since this has a lot to do with the debates of what can be called a “decent” text. Although the scholars several decades ago did uncover the value of Lovecraft as a great philosophical mind, it was until quite lately that Lovecraft got attention, especially after the year 2005, when Lovecraft’s works were “officially certificated” by Library of America as “classics” or “canon.” More and more young scholars, especially those who do cultural studies, are now willing to share with the academic circles what used to be “childish” and “unqualified,” like comics and video games. Many of them treat the works of Lovecraft with theoretical depth and philosophical complexity. It was under this atmosphere that the study of Lovecraft welcomes an unprecedented prosperity, among which Posthumanism is worthy of discussion in terms of the zeitgeist. More resources and information now, especially after the year 2013, are widely circulated on the internet. To distinguish between “academic” and “non-academic” becomes difficult, for a scholar who just encounters the circle is a rookie compared to those who have long been immersing themselves in discussions and derivative works requiring highly of prerequisite knowledge. Some ordinary people from the internet may understand the context and meaning far better compared to a trained researcher. The study of Lovecraft is now a combination of numerous societies, communities and media. The authorities come from everywhere rather than established institutions and certificated degree. To start with the study on Lovecraft, one can never omit the discussion on the horror genre when it comes to Lovecraft. In “The Dialectics of Fear” (1982), Franco Moretti, the author, refers to vampires as a metaphor of capitalists and monopolists. It makes perfect sense.

(11) Wu 6. in terms of expansion and accumulation. Although all the texts could only be texts themselves, it is always interesting to point out the implicit symbolic meanings hidden somewhere even the author himself is not aware. Xenophobia comes from nowhere. When the society itself comes to the crisis of “things fall apart, the center cannot hold” that the imagination of foreign threats comes to play. “The idea of nation is central because it is collective: it coordinates individual energies and enables them to resist the threat.” (Moretti 150). It is not simply a “narrative technique” of the novelist, but a unification of “interests” and “cultural paradigms.” Another interesting part is the connection between vampires and disease, sexuality, as well as degeneration of morality, all of which reflect the underlying and undermining worries since the industrialization: the notorious draining system of London, the problem of public hygiene and prostitutions and crimes of the lower class in the Victorian Era, to name a few. “The return of the repressed” haunts the Victorian culture and literature. Monsters come in disguise, using techniques like displacement and functioning as false consciousness. The “conscious pain” and the “unconscious satisfaction” always remain an ambivalent relationship in the minds of the collective (commonwealth). The libido is not merely Victorian. The era preceding the Victorian Era is the Romantic Era when new forms of horror and the newborn genre science fiction were at their dawn. With the promotion of emotionalism, folklores and instability, the Romantic horror paves the way for the future development of the horror genre. As for the “continental” genealogy of horror, a longer history awaits. As time evolves, the idea of horror evolves as well. The meaning of horror is clearly not identical between these two eras and Lovecraft’s time, so as with our own time. In Limits of Horror, Botting has brought about a very interesting idea of “Horror against Horror” (Botting 155). The sense of horror reinforces the institution and order, the social structure is preserved and prevailed due to the functioning of self-defense mechanism. The part “An-aesthetics” arouses discussions and debates within modern discourses. The.

(12) Wu 7. construction of beauty opening up in the real and defined by modern values often has the trait of theatricality. The selfie culture on social networks is only trivial, reality show of women eager to match popular standard of slenderness undergo plastic surgery, and the ideas of a subculture in games and animes called ”猟奇 (Ryouki)”7 has become a trend and drawn more followers. This is another definition. “Horror entwines spectacle and reality in an indeterminate scene of effects and affects…engage and repulses audience in the staging of often overwhelming and unbearable images” (Botting 139). The high visibility of surgery and decomposition of bodies for certain audience may indicate overexposure and sensory overload. However, when such boundary crossing becomes a necessity and a common practice, the definition of certain ethical values is blurred. Recently a prediction of the future human world has caught people’s eye. It said that in a hundred year, the hunting game between human competitors like what happened in Hunger Games may one day become real. Because of the irreversible ecological damages caused by human race, the disparity between the rich and the poor, the world will suffer with overpopulation, scarcity of resources and form a strict, distinct class structure. Today, “dark tourism” is already fashionable. Travel agencies take curious tourists to places where deaths, disasters, slaughters or holocausts happen, such as the concentration camps of World Word II, The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, or the relics of the 911 Terrorist Attacks. Once the world has come to such condition, the powerful may really carry out this with the excuse to reduce population; although it takes a total twist of moral values, but look back on human history: there are the ancient Romans’ gladiators and the tradition of public execution in many cultures. This can be too frightening and sensational, but not only excerpts studying population but also sci-fi writers with insightful views share the same thoughts, like Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy and even some scenes in 7. Literally meaning “hunting for the bizarre,” the word normally bears a negative but hinted meaning of blood thirst and uncanniness. Genres with tags of “Ryouki” generally include horror and science fiction, with special highlights on graphic descriptions..

(13) Wu 8. Star Wars, but once again this is an apocalyptic view of the future. Another thing mentioned in Botting’s world is wound culture (in Lovecraft’s sense of being a 18th century aristocrat in soul, living in a seemingly degraded time period of the modern world of hybridity and diversity): “a collective gathering around shock, trauma, and the wound” (Botting 143). People talk about scars; “The Thing” is retroactively conceived / constructed, articulated and elaborated as something innate within the life itself. The hyper-real depiction of the self is narcissistic and imaginary, thus implanting and piercing or even using prosthesis, undergoing surgeries and other exercises to the excess to maintain perfect image. The notion of cyberpunk even despises the body, treating it as the prison of flesh, and craves to surpass and transgress to another level, like in Matrix, when a posthuman future integrates the biological and the technological appears fragmented and tattered. Aside from the discussion on horror, to embark on an academic expedition in Lovecraft’s world, one cannot miss two main dimensions, the philosophical and the biographical touch on Lovecraft’s life. Michel Houellebeque’s H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life is the authoritative text of Lovecraftian studies. As the first scholar to expound upon the “negative” quality of Lovecraft and his fictional universe, Houellebeque presents his version of Lovecraft as a teenager, and brings upon Lovecraft with the notion of “anti-modernity.” For Houellebeque, Lovecraft’s hatred of real life, his philosophical denial of the world, as well as his racism connected to his profound fear of miscegenation and rejection to hybridity are all signs of his deeply pessimistic cosmic fatalism, which is the core of his writings. Compared with Houellebeque, Paul Ronald presents a milder and more objective, nearly literary-historical view of both Lovecraft’s life and several works of his in his autobiographical work The Curious Case of H. P. Lovecraft. Relatively general and legible in wording and theorizing, and lacking in allusions to notable names like Freud or Derrida, The Curious Case of H. P. Lovecraft seems to apply more to the common reading public rather than the academia, and gives more biographical references to the author’s life. However, it is.

(14) Wu 9. this quality of “far from the madding scholarship” that allows its reader to enjoy the simplicity of pure, unexhausted reading and understanding of Lovecraft’s works. One must sometimes possess this field of vision to understand how people outside of the academic circle may treat and play with the Lovecraftian motifs. Moving on from the autobiographical notes on Lovecraft to his texts and ways of interpretation, Timo Airaksinen and Donald R. Burleson engage in close reading of Lovecraft, which, unfortunately, are the rare printed resources one could possibly find in university libraries in Taiwan. Interestingly, both Airaksinen and Burleson adopt measures like deconstructing and re-evaluating within postmodern context in their reading of Lovecraft. To start with, Burleson’s Lovecraft: Disturbing the Universe provides readers with post-structuralist perspective. It seeks to re-construct Lovecraft’s tales in a linguistic way. Many of Lovecraft’s main fictional works are treated under linguistic approaches like elaborations on etymology and semantics. However, Burleson’s close reading involves overly-scrutinized analysis by delving into the word-by-word details, and fails to present the “disturbed universe” as a wholesome idea. The readers in seek of a more profound discovery in Lovecraftian universe may merely see fragmentations and long-winded inspections where no other consultations are referred to. Despite this fallacy, Burleson’s points of entry are scarce in terms of its self-referential, encapsulating ways of interpretation. Timo Airaksinen’s The Philosophy of H. P. Lovecraft: The Route to Horror discusses H. P. Lovecraft with approaches to his works presuming him “a philosopher in disguise.” Airaksinen perusals Lovecraft’s works and bestows them with a philosophical depth. Airaksinen argues that “The Lovecraftian point is that a type of unknowability exists which is inherently threating to our sanity, that is, to our personal identity” (Airaksinen 193). This expands the discussion of Lovecraft to the (anti-) humanist domain. Airaksinen starts with the definition of myths. When one perceives mythology as something to do with god, one must also be astounded to learn that Lovecraft is an atheist..

(15) Wu 10. Therefore, one may boldly assume that the Cthulhu Mythos is a mythological system of gods that manifests the nonexistence of God. The gods represent not what we have taken for granted, but something else, something “out there.” These gods are more a “negative personification” of supernatural horror that is so beyond human grasps that even the slightest contact may cause nervous breakdown. These gods are not those who create human beings and all things on earth, like in mythology all around the world. Here we come to the basic meanings and definitions of Gods. Lovecraft’s mythology is somehow classified as “anti-mythology” by David E. Schultz, for “…whereas most of the religions and mythologies in human history seek to reconcile human beings… depicting a close benign relationship between man and god, Lovecraft’s pseudomythology brutally shows that man is not the center of the universe, that the ‘gods’ care nothing for him, and that the earth and all its inhabitants are but a momentary incident in the unending cyclical chaos of the universe” (Joshi 19). Airaksinen discusses Lovecraft’s works within the frames of the “unreadable,” “unnamable,” and “unspeakable.” The language of Lovecraft’s unreliable narrators is “unreadable,” for the reading experience risks the toppling of human order, and may likely destroy any sober minds of human being. The names of Cthulhu and his palace of R’lyeh are beyond the pronunciation system of human vocal cords, therefore any addresses to the evil god falls into void of the “unnamable,” thus this representation of fear is “unspeakable.” A series of words beginning with “un-” are not just denial of language, signs and meanings. Airaksinen further expounds the notion of “negative theology”8: “In the field of religious studies, a doctrine called negative theology attempts to describe God in terms of what He is 8. “Negative theology,” or “apophatic theology,” is a type of theological thinking attempting to approach God by negation. The traditions and theories, as well as the development have a long history tracing back to the Ancient Greece. Commonly involved with mysticism, the definition of this school of thought, no matter it’s located in the Christianity or Islam, is that human beings always fail to fully understand an object, therefore also fail to judge a god’s will. A God is out of grasp of human mind, unless through the God’s revelation. Here Airaksinen is addressing such a tradition as a way to expound on Lovecraft’s world, or atmosphere-building skills..

(16) Wu 11. not” (Airaksinen 191). In regards of this advocating, Lovecraft’s technique of introducing the befalling of Cthulhu itself is again a rejection of what common senses would deem as logic and reason. Everything is drifting in nothingness and futility; any accomplishments and legacies that could be recorded and inherited become negligible in the face of this dispossession of human centrality. Airaksinen’s Lovecraftian philosophy is a philosophical pondering among itself, the philosophy per se. Many of Airaksinen’s arguments open up more discussions on boundaries issues. For Airaksinen, Lovecraft “…has no such thing as his world. He seems to construct a world, which he invites his readers to share with him” (Airaksinen 169). His awareness echoes the “coterie” traits of Cthulhu Mythos and with many other adherents of Lovecraft. He is also aware of the fact that the Lovecraftian texts always have their own ability to decompose and re-organize themselves due to the paradoxically allusiveness and untrustworthiness of the narrations and the plots; this is never a criticism but a distinguishable trait of Lovecraft’s works. The readers may even boldly suggest that Lovecraft does so in an intended way. Contradictory the style and the contents it may seem, there lies a great mind which inspires contemporary discussions on new branches of philosophical thinking. Graham Harman and Eugene Thacker are two main philosophers that unfold philosophical reading of less textual precision but of more ontological sophistication. With a current trend of studying “weird/speculative realism” in mind, Harman argues: “Reality itself is weird because reality itself is incommensurable with any attempt to represent or measure it” and that “Lovecraft is aware of this difficulty to an exemplary degree” (Harman 51). The two notions “excessive allusiveness” and “literary cubism” (Harman 238)9 he offers in texts explain why Lovecraft’s language is “enfeebled by an impossibly deep and distant In “Not Unfaithful to the Spirit of the Thing,” Graham suggests that readers more or less realize Lovecraft’s “de-literalizing” gestures and “metaphysical darkness” in his narrations. He states a “vertical” or allusive aspect of Lovecraft’s style, which is “the gap between an ungraspable thing and the vaguely relevant descriptions that the narrator is able to attempt” (Harman 24), and that a “horizontal” weirdness, which he coins as “cubist,” is displayed with elusive descriptions such like those “shifting from zoology to architecture” (Harman 26). 9.

(17) Wu 12. reality” and overloaded by a gluttonous excess of surfaces and aspects of the thing” (Harman 25) so that Lovecraft’s passages are “literally impossible to visualize” (Harman 34). Inheriting the tradition of Poe, especially in techniques and style, Lovecraft also resembles Poe in the interaction between contents and style, as well as techniques, and thus creates a weird geography where a magical landscape filling with unbearable tension, alienation and de-familiarization of domestic, common-life objects and language. Graham Harman’s “speculative realism” deals much with the problems of continental philosophy, especially on object-oriented ontology, but less on the topic of horror genre. However, Eugene Thacker’s philosophical approach takes on the pretension that horror is “philosophical” and go back down to the earth of horror genre. Eugene Thacker always has his medieval theology background and Schopenhauer in mind. He re-addresses Lovecraft’s notion of “the fear of the unknown” and defines horror as “the paradoxical thought of the unthinkable” (Thacker 9). In the Dust of This Planet thematizes the three layers concerning the involvement and dis-involvement of human activities. Thacker considers horror as “a non-philosophical attempt to think about the world-without-us philosophically” (9). He is also aware of certain gaps, only this time is not of the narrative kind, but the “fissure,” “lapses,” “lacunae” in the World and the Earth (8) which Lovecraft might also be conscious of but did not theorize. With a background of medieval theology and a tracing back to the Greek predecessors, he provides his readers with a seemingly linear yet interweaving framework where we can re-position Lovecraft’s ideas as well as human species. The Age of Lovecraft is a kaleidoscope collection of studies on Lovecraft blending the philosophical, the psychoanalytical and the textual reading. With consciousness of a person’s livelihood in a posthuman age, of human adaptations to the fact that horror is part of daily life are now normality, it lights out new directions to future Lovecraftian studies. The introduction in this collection provides a context that his new-age worshippers, who are astonishingly open-minded to hybridity and divergent ways of expressions, may pass on his.

(18) Wu 13. thoughts with their own ideas and explanations of his universe, despite of the cult founder’s racism and antiquarian taste. The editor elaborates on our lives in a Lovecraftian age, and that the new Lovecraftian cult involves every man living with the subconscious mindset of Lovecraftian Apocalypse: the “awed listening” of bad omens from the rims of known universe, and the reconsidering of Lovecraft in terms of “nameless, faceless political or ideological antagonist intent on destruction” (Sederholm and Weinstock 38), the anxieties like the ecological catastrophe, the nuclear crisis (there is actually a short fiction collection called Atomic Age Cthulhu), terrorist activities, widespread pandemics and global warming. Aside from the sociopolitical aspects, bearing the Lovecraftian motifs in the deepest of their hearts, the branches in art and subcultures also blossom with prosperity. Lovecraft is “riding the zeitgeist” not only because his universe captures the modern psychology but also because of his “adaptive dynamics.”10 The images and themes of Cthulhu Mythos have postulated the subcultural genre with an unbelievable wide range, proving its slimy amoeba-like capability of evolution and adaptations. Aside from the paperback resources, due to the prospering internet databases, abundant resources circulate on the internet. Even decades before the dawn of social media, Lovecraft’s own works had already bear the traits of co-working and shared universe. Lovecraft spent much of his working time out of writing novels answering the demands of amateur writers who also devoted themselves to the Lovecraftian universe, which is, writing letters. Internet resources are now much more readable and dependable than they used to be, though any precarious reader should pick with care. One cannot be too careful in case as such, but it is also because of the freedom and anonymity given on forums and platforms on the internet that one can speak with zealot and valor without being disputed or criticized in a way. We can say that the internet is a place with energy and vitality. Many writers without 10. Clare Parody’s notion of how “the way of contemporary convergence cultures uses texts far beyond the simple ‘text-to-text’ or even text-to-multitext translations normally understood by the term ‘adaptations’” (Sederholm and Weinstock 23)..

(19) Wu 14. scholarly backgrounds provide their own insightful and unsophisticated view for the works. Indicating the “nerdiness” of the construction of Cthulhu Mythos is probably the key accomplishment of the internet. The nerd culture may be young compared to Lovecraft’s aeon-old world view, medieval aristocratic diction and 19-century “weird” or “supernatural” tradition, which could be traced all the way back to Alan Poe, Lord Dunsany, and other founding fathers of the genre, but some of the nerds identify themselves with Lovecraft, even calling him a “heroic nerd.” This is the elevation and a reversal of the old traditions and values. Nerd is, of course, a word of controversy. Often used in a comparatively negative context, now some of the “nerds” grow to feel a sense of pride in recognizing their own identity as a nerd. By calling Lovecraft—the new hot chicken of subcultural commercial productions which make tons of money and the new sweetheart of the scholarly circle—a member of the nerds, we are giving him not only the image of a tragic hero unaccepted by his contemporaries, but a revenger to the “mainstream.” In his own time, Lovecraft has rejected the erosion trends like big cities accommodating cross-breeding immigrants and the fading values of old times (though a person so sensitive as he nearly loathed everything). For him, “The basis of all true cosmic horror is always violation of the order of nature.” What nature? Of course not the real nature, but the world-for-us according to Eugene Thacker. “The Heroic Nerd” by Luc Sante gives a biographical touch of Lovecraft more detailed than many printed texts. With Lovecraft’s straightforward definition of the weird, Sante argues humorously that however didactic Lovecraft may seem, he wrote about things he was afraid of, which is nearly everything. However, out of this fear Lovecraft created a paradigm for the weird: “The one test of the really weird is simply this—whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside.

(20) Wu 15. shapes and entities on the known universe’ s utmost rim…”11 In Curt Wohleber’s “The Man Who Can Scare Stephen King,” a much more detailed background of Lovecraft is presented with precise historical facts. One may be astonished at the misery Lovecraft had experienced as a child. David Barnet’s “Lovecraft: the writer out of time,” using the same sentence structure as Lovecraft’s own work “The Colour Out of Time,” positively gives Lovecraft a historical status he deserves. Jess Nevins, another big hand in Lovecraftian studies, not only gives an elaborate view on what means to be Lovecraftian, but points to the core effect of Lovecraft on modern world; her article is even titled as “The Man Who Can Scare Stephen King.” For a scholar eager to find first-hand resources of Lovecraft with abundant references to past publications, any database on the internet may be a better place than a dead library full of paperback books uncirculated for the past decades. The following chapters discuss Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu” with textual analysis, then the works to discuss the Lovecraftian world building and philosophy, and finally, from the trajectory of Posthumanism and some modern adaptations investigate on the evolution of Cthulhu Mythos. The meaning and definition of “horror” in “The Call of Cthulhu” also evolves with the peculiar, eccentric elaboration on the unfortunate story told by a master of the genre.. 11. From Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (Arkham House, 1965)..

(21) Wu 16. Chapter One: “The Call of Cthulhu”. “The Call of Cthulhu” is one of the most prominent and crucial works of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos series, featuring the first “appearance” (or “anti-appearance”) of Cthulhu, one of the Great Old Ones. Some key philosophical notions, which Lovecraft brings upon, have extended and developed through his following years of writing. The aim of this chapter is to discuss the skills and techniques12, as well as the complexity and depth Lovecraft shows in terms of creating, piling up the feeling of horror. The detailed discussion in the following passage will also serve as a contrast for the case studies of the modern time in Chapter 3. Divided in three parts, the storyline offers the reader a track to follows the narrator, Francis Wayland Thurston, going into the dark center of horror, which traces back far beyond men’s history. Through the manuscripts left by his grand-uncle George Gammell Angell who died an obscure and bizarre death during 1926-27, three sub-plotlines intertwining and resonating each other construct a worldview of horror and hopelessness. As a linguistic professor of Brown University, Professor Angell recorded on his manuscripts an evil of the evilest cult, the “Cthulhu cult,” with information from numerus sources, each more uncanny in detail and more horrendous in depiction than the other. The narrator then uncovered the mysteries surrounding a bas-relief sculpture with a scaly creature “of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature” (“The Call of Cthulhu” 141). The bas-relief, however, was a modern piece by a young sculptor Henry Anthony Wilcox, based on his dreams of delirium. In his dreams, he visited "great Cyclopean cities of titan blocks and sky-flung monoliths" (143). The recurrent appearances of “R’lyeh” and the chant of “Cthulhu fhtagn” connect the first part with the following plots; further, Wilcox was not the only person who had such 12. Many of the skills and techniques reflect the notions and concepts Lovecraft himself has elaborated in the essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” in which his presents the good horror of his own selection in a literaryhistorical sequence as well as geographical specificity..

(22) Wu 17. syndromes of dreams. Professor Angell discovered a phenomenon of mass hysteria worldwide. In a 1908 academic meeting of an archeology society, detective John Raymond Legrasse asked the scholars if they could identify a bas-relief, which resembled Wilcox’s dream. In the previous year, Legrasse had led a party of police on a mission targeted on a ritual, which murdered women and children. After subduing the cultists with killing several of them, the detective learned that this cult worshipped the “Great Old Ones” and awaited Cthulhu, the great priest’s return. In the same occasion, Professor William Channing Webb from Princeton University also provided his personal experiences forty years ago during an expedition in search of lost Runic inscriptions to Greenland and Iceland, where he encountered a group of “blood-thirsty,” “degenerated Esquimaux” with similar beliefs and fetishes. The climax comes in the third part of the story, when Thurston discovered a 1925 reports from an Australian newspaper. Upon the discovery of the ship Emma, which seemed to encounter miserable events, there were only two members of the crew onboard: one was found dead, while the other, the sole survivor, second mate Gustaf Johansen, was found grasping a statuette which he described vaguely about its source. The investigators learned from Johansen that Emma was attacked by the heavily armed yacht Alert earlier during their voyage. The crew of Emma shewed fight and won the battle, killing the sailors on Alert, but lost their own ship. The remaining crew then boarded on Alert, and after continuous sailing reached an island located approximately around 47°9′S 126°43′W. Most of the crew members died there, without particular descriptions from the survivor. This did not put an end to the whole tragedy, among Thurston’s visit to Sydney and seeing Alert in person, he realized, the statuette Johansen held in his hand was identical with the two of the previous cases. Craving for the truth, Thurston then traveled to Norway for the testimony of Johansen. However, Johansen had died suddenly after encountering two Lascar sailors. Provided with his manuscripts by his widow, who clearly pointed that Johansen would not expect people to believe his words, Thurston learned what happened on that island of the incomprehensible.

(23) Wu 18. “abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent” (166) city of R’lyeh: Cthulhu Himself was made present out of the crew’s accidental behaviors. Johansen and his crew mate flee aboard the Alert, while the monster pursue. Out of unexpected bravery, Johansen rammed their yacht at Cthulhu’s head. The great ancient god exploded into green mists but then recombined, re-organized, regenerated from His injury...The Alert escaped, but the only crew mate of Johansen went insane and died shortly thereafter. Having connected Johansen’s fate with his uncle’s unnatural death, which also had to do with some “nautical-looking negroes” (140), Thurston then understood that he would be hunted by the worshippers of Cthulhu. In the story of “The Call of Cthulhu,” the narrator openly expressed the key idea of the whole fiction by the opening paragraph as follows: “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age” (139). Noted that the hinted ideas in the paragraph include: (1) Human minds are unable to grasp the full vista of the universe; we are simply living in tiny parts and the finite aspects of it. (2) Although human beings are of wisdom and ways to possess knowledge, we actually accumulate very little, therefore we can be totally omitted, ignored in the scale of the whole universe; once when the totalitarian knowledge of the universe is presented in front of human beings, no individual would be able to bear and would only result in insanity. (3) In this case, human beings may as well re-sink into the dark ages, like primitive, prehistoric or pre-civilization eras, so we would not risk madness or even a deadlock of the whole race, a.

(24) Wu 19. full devastation, maybe worse than extinction. This threatening fact comes in the aspect of psychology. This is an overthrow of the “human’s will transcend nature” and the degradation of human rationality. For human beings are lesser than crickets, ants, even germs, compared with the vastness and infinity of the universe. Through these three hinted ideas the readers may come to the conclusion that human beings are comparatively vulnerable and trivial compared to the universe and what it could bear. There is a suggested conclusion of nihilism that all the human struggles and pursuits are in vain: No matter how hard the human race try, the result will always be of little significance; therefore we may as well stop all our intentions to do something, to change something, to improve and to evolve, and accept the truth, residing back to the darkness (a word in contrary to enlightenment). Through the spreading out of the plot scroll, Lovecraft is not only telling a threefold, or three-layered story, but also constantly reinforcing the ideas of the opening paragraph. This part will be dealing with the techniques Lovecraft adopts in order to make his points, as well as how Lovecraft arranges the first appearance of Cthulhu, the great priest among Great Old Ones, throughout his literary career. The first thing a reader may notice is that the story is filled with scholarly nouns like theosophists, mineralogists (experts), geometry, math (scholarly subjects), futurism, cubism (schools), and terminology like non-Euclidean and hieroglyph. Some may be shunned by such pedant-hood, but be aware that Lovecraft has a very sharp division of literate/ illiterate, civilized/ uncivilized or of intelligence / of vulgarity in his characters in “The Call of Cthulhu,” few of these characters lie in between the spectrum of such sharp binary oppositions. Conspicuously Lovecraft himself borrows the persuasiveness from authorities of numerous fields. His narrator, no matter how unreliable he may seem, is also well-educated person at least of middle class, which the reader may distinguish from his ancestry (Professor Angell) and the circles he befriends. One will first incline to think of the somberness and.

(25) Wu 20. sanity of the narrator and of the ones he consults, and will be prepared to accept the following plots which seem insane and unbelievable enough. The diction applied by the narrator also hinted that he is erudite and learned. Throughout the story the reader embarks on a detective and academic journey with the narrator. Such unfatigued and preserving hunting, which is similar to Largesse, for the truth also implies the intrepid character lies within the narrator. The reader will easily identify with the narrator (as well as Johansen, who shows an unusual bravery), admiring his dauntlessness and sympathize him when he is faced with such horror. Although people usually tend to think of Lovecraft’s narrators as unreliable, for many of them have the inclination of madness and delirium, the building of such characters may be the only place Lovecraft accidently shows some merit of human conscience. The circumstances the narrator and his intellectual friends are facing are beyond their utmost rim of knowledge. “They have hinted at strange survivals in terms which would freeze the blood if not masked by a bland optimism” (“The Call of Cthulhu” 139). The bas-relief, which connects the thread of the story, is actually a “monstrous puzzle” that even the experts “vowed that the world held no rock like it” (163). The unveiling of such truth is a layer-upon-layer accumulation of horror, especially when the reader holds the awareness that human accomplishment is drained to its extreme boundary; even so, the horror still cannot be made into full presence, but only through the narrator’s retelling of some second-hand materials like reports and manuscripts. Lovecraft explicitly wants to include as many fields of knowledge in human history as possible to indicate the greatness of the horror itself. For example, when Professor Angell first inquired Wilcox, the young man said what appeared in his dream landscape was “new, indeed, for I made it last night in a dream of strange cities; and dreams are older than brooding Tyre, or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon” (143). Considering the profession of Angell, ancient inscriptions, one may assume that Wilcox was speaking so to intrigue the old professor, though later the reader may also learn that Wilcox’s words were.

(26) Wu 21. no exaggeration, but terrified of its being just one of the merest descriptions. Compared with the ancient civilization, which might be the lifelong quest of the old professor, and many other devoted and learned ones, what comes with the dreamscape is something that surpasses. Later the story reaches the conclusion that “[m]ankind was not absolutely alone among the conscious things of earth, for shapes came out of the dark to visit the faithful few” (154). These few keen ones among human beings which were dubbed as “psychically hypersensitive,” normally young ones, had dreamed about a similar landscape and settings, where “come a voice that was not a voice; a chaotic sensation which only fancy could transmute into sound, but which he attempted to render by the almost unpronounceable jumble of letters, ‘Cthulhu fhtagn’” (143). Their syndromes, including “alternations of unconsciousness and delirium” and a manifestation of suggestive fever with a temperature not above normal, all happened during a peculiar time span always between March 23rd and April 2nd , beginning with an earthquake and ending with a storm. Strange events also happen, contingently from London, California, Africa, to the Philippines…insane asylums, suggesting a global phenomenon very much like an epidemic. Professor Angell started to collect the records on the dreams of the “psychically hypersensitive” ones, among which artists and poets, connecting to the later narration in Part II of Largesse’s investigation that “[o]nly poetry or madness could do justice to the noises heard” (142), echoing to Shakespeare’s lines of “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet / Are of imagination all compact”13. The horrification is that this is no imagination, but a dream scape of a “cyclopean city whose geometry, he oddly said, was all wrong” (158). Dreamers of far distance and wild range have dreamed about something peculiarly common, giving the dream scape a credibility. The similar dream scape is not the only thing that connects the three parts of the story, the other two things are the bas-relief and the cult surrounding it, and the chant of “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn” (“In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming”). 13. William Shakespeare, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1..

(27) Wu 22. The bas-relief is described differently as more evidences are given through the unfolding of the plots, first “for although the vagaries of cubism and futurism are many and wild, they do not often reproduce that cryptic regularity which lurks in prehistoric writing” (141), implying a notably difference compared to what lies on earth and within human grasps, concluding that it “belonged to something horribly remote and distinct from mankind as we know it; something frightfully suggestive of old and unhallowed cycles of life in which our world and our conceptions have no part” (149). The material of the bas-relief itself, as mentioned above, is also something that one could never find on earth, in other words, of alien origin. Alien-ness is always where horror comes from, because of unfamiliarity, or feelings of unaccustomed and uncomfortable. Lovecraft’s xenophobia, or one can say, racism, becomes visible in how he describes those who seem “lower” among his own kin. In the first part the reader came to know the death of Professor Angell with the presence of a negro sailor with “evil and unclean inclination.” In the second part where Detective Legrasse traced back to his memories, repetitive impressions given by words like: (1) Depictions of the evil rituals: “blackest of the African voodoo circles,” saying that “[it] was voodoo, apparently, but voodoo of a more terrible sort than they had ever know” (150). Here the color of black clearly has a pun effect: one is for the color of these hateful people, the other is the darkness and evil their rituals represent. (2) The racial groups of the rituals: They “all proved to be men of a very low, mixed-blooded, and mentally aberrant type. Most were seamen, and a sprinkling of negroes and mulattoes, largely West Indians or Brava Portuguese from the Cape Verde Islands, gave a colouring of voodooism to the heterogeneous cult” (153). Once again these words resonate the complexity of the group’s composition. Lovecraft, in the disguise of the narrator, pointed out that “mix-blooded” connects to “low,” “mentally aberrant.” He named a few races which are labeled problematic in his, or at least the narrator’s point of view. The word “sprinkling” indicate a casual, even spontaneous posture. It seems that these races just cross-breed.

(28) Wu 23. capriciously and randomly with any possible object, so Lovecraft uses the word usually appearing when one is putting dressing on the salad, or adding olive oil as a flavor to a half-finished dish. It does not seem decent and proper to use this word when it comes to producing heir. The whole paragraph ends emphasizing the word “heterogeneous,” manifesting once again his detesting of hybridity, and his overt suspicion for diversity. (3) Finally he reaches to the conclusion that “[i]t became manifest that something far deeper and older than negro fetishism was involved. Degraded and ignorant as they were, the creatures held with surprising consistency to the central idea of their loathsome faith” (153). The central idea of the cult is undoubtedly Cthulhu. “Degraded” and “ignorant” may lead to chaos and disorder in behaviors, namely the group may act like a bunch of headless flies, yet the complicated of these people converged to the same flow directing to a single fountainhead. They did have a highest guiding principle, resulting in a “surprising consistency.” Despite Lovecraft’s derogatory depiction, this seemingly paradoxical arrangement reinforces the universality of the Cthulhu cult, which partakes a similar role as Wilcox’s delirious dream and the mass hysteria worldwide in the previous part of the story. Similar situation happens when Professor Webb recalls his encounter with the degenerated “Esquimaux” whose “devil-worship…chilled him with its deliberate bloodthirstiness and repulsiveness” (149). To indicate that where the evil rituals take place is another Lovecraft’s manipulation of prejudice. The region which Detective Legrasse and his subordinates enter “was one of traditionally evil repute, substantially unknown and untraversed by white men” and that was just “on the merest fringe of this abhorred area, but that location was bad enough” (151). Graham Harman has also argued that if the “merest fringe” is already evil enough, it will give the readers a sense that the center is even more evil. This is a common method of Lovecraft’s indirect allusion. Lovecraft does not stop his pen from manifesting loath and despise for some non-English races even in Part Three, especially when he depicts the sailors that “[t]here was.

(29) Wu 24. some peculiarly abominable quality about them which made their destruction seem almost a duty, and Johansen shews ingenuous wonder at the charge of ruthlessness brought against his party during the proceedings of the court of inquiry” (164-65). Even Johansen, who proved to be the “dragon-slayer” and one of the keepers of the truth, would kill them without any hesitation. By “silently assenting to a negative judgement”, Lovecraft invents several “Straw Devil” (straw man) (Harman 63) to invite the readers to go deeper into the core of darkness. Other measures he takes include stereotypes for nationality, like “an excitable Spaniard” (152) in Part II. He seems to also possess a sense of the westerner’s fascination and romantic imagination for the mysterious east, for Old Castro gets the information of the Cyclopean city and its telos from “the deathless Chinamen” (154), which his readers from the Eastern cultures may easily connect with Taoism or alchemy. These stereotypes14, though might be criticized by those who embrace minority discourse and the benefits of hybridity in the modern era, help foster Lovecraft’s worldview as a whole. One may say that this stereotyping is a way for Lovecraft to “take sides” when depicting things, especially when his allusive and contradictory exposition on things alien to the world are confusing enough. Stereotyping is a way of simplification, offering a binary opposition of high / low, civilized / barbaric, noble / vulgar. Lovecraft clearly has no intention in keeping other part of his works complicated, for the main plots of the stories are already tricky. The coming of the Great Old Ones and their hidden orders were the most poetic parts of the story. In the paragraphs of the mass hysteria, the dreams of the artists and poets were also the “pertinent answer” for Professor Angell’s investigative questions. The way Old Castro described them was very close to divine revelation, with a prophetical tone: “They all died vast epochs of time before men came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, According to Michel Houellebeque, this “ethnic stereotyping” functions as “[o]ne of the major features of Lovecraft’s narrators is their tendency to explain away all of the most bizarre incidents they encounter….it’s a deeply effective technique for luring his readers into believing more than he explicitly ask them to believe.” 14.

(30) Wu 25. come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them” (154). The paragraph explains partly of why the bas-relief did not come from the Earth. The word “image” here remains unclear in terms of whose image it is, however, with the knowledge of Christian belief, one can connect to the story that God made human according to his own image. Despite that, this thought may seem blasphemous to any pious Christian. One may grasp the idea that something much greater and unfathomable is lying there beyond Cthulhu himself, that Cthulhu may only be the priest or simply a bad omen of a series of human beings’ worst nightmares. Lovecraft may not have the intention of creating a hierarchical system, but this paragraph has wonderfully played its role of extending the scales of the narrative, that the “hideous legend” even “paled the speculations of theosophists” and “made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed” (154). The coming of the Great Old Ones remind the readers of other terrifying stories, like the rumor of the coming of the world’s ends brought by “the great King from Angoumois” in 1999 foretold by Nostradamus. Strangely enough, the Old Ones’ revival rely a lot on the fulfillment of particular conditions, for example, the positions of stars. However omniscient they may be, and even though living or dying does not mean much to them, they remain in their dying dreams if the condition fails: When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die…They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, but Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs…after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by moulding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals” (155). As for the ways of their communication with human beings, it is as if they were.

(31) Wu 26. speaking directly to “the chosen ones.” They are “talking,” but not in a way recognizable for human beings. Some great gods of human history also choose to speak through the prophets, like Jesus for the Christian God and Muhammed for the Islamic Alah. However, those who were chose by the Great Old Ones share syndromes of delirium, and Their worshippers were of low birth and bad blood. It forms a system of mythology of what usually expects not of any “decent” religions or beliefs. The poetic eulogizing and the chants serves not for something sacred, but something revolutionarily profane and grimy. This also unveils the answer to the mass hysteria of delirious dreams that “their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first men. “Provided with the right conditions, like the germination of seeds requiring sun, water and soil, “[s]ome day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him” (153-54). For Lovecraft, however, to liberate Cthulhu may also indicate liberation for human being. Earlier in the second part when he describes the voodoo rituals as “Bacchanal,” such carnivalesque15, subversive, overthrowing word should present in Lovecraft’s word, the reason behind it is worthy of discussion. Even in the earliest stage, Lovecraft’s works already bear a nature of boundary crossing, not only in geometry and reason, but in psychology, morality, law, and common sense: “The time would be easy to know, for them mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling in joy…and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom” (155). This is the scene where a “Dionysian orgy”16 happens. Transcending all common norms, Lovecraft presents to us not only a carnival, but a scene beyond any frame of human society, 15. The term “Carnivalesque” is brought upon by Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin. Being “carnivalesque” usually means to subvert and liberate, overthrowing the dominant styles, forms and even ideology in ways of humor, chaos, and maybe the grotesque and by doing so combining the sacred and the profane. 16 This term first appeared in Robert M. Price’s “The Old Ones’ Promise of Eternal Life,” published in The Azathoth Cycle: Tales of the Blind Idiot God, with Price himself as the editor. As the title, this book discusses mainly about Azathoth, the blind idiot god of chaos, playing the "the thin, monotonous piping of an unseen flute" mindlessly. Although the main focus of this project is on the Great Old One Cthulhu, many of the modern representations also include giving Azathoth a new image..

(32) Wu 27. deconstructing all the set standard of what it needs to construct a so-called harmony. Although a constructor of binary oppositions, Lovecraft surprisingly seems to embrace the blurring of boundaries, for there seems to be more of an encouraging tone rather than solemnly resisting. Despite of the violence and sanguinary of the paragraph, there is also a sense of carousing, revelry and delight. To the readers’ disappointment, maybe, the appearance of the main demon king seems a lot like something from the B-rated horror movies. Two main descriptions of the Great Cthulhu are as follows:. (1) “It lumbered slobbering into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness…” (167) (2) …there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled… (167). The Great Old Ones here is depicted no more of the “unspeakable,” “unnamable” and “unthinkable.” It was right just before you and me. Though still not easy to be pictured with sober minds, one can scan through these lines and get an impression of “greenish,” “slimy,” and even “bulky.” Although the narrator has striven hard on elaborating the failing of language and “cosmic order,” the depictions here sound pale and exhausted. Interestingly, the word “eldritch” appears. According to the critics, in many of Lovecraft’s early works, this is the word used with high frequency. The towering of adjectives is not a good writing skill, especially when the adjective is hard to be pictured with a sufficient chain of signifier and signified. Lovecraft does have comparatively “more impressive” of depiction, like “an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse” or “whose geometry, he oddly said,.

(33) Wu 28. was all wrong,” but one may feel suspicious of why such a brilliant fiction writers seem to “dwindle down” the portrayal of Cthulhu intentionally. Finally, when all the truth was almost revealed, what was left to the narrator alone is the horror. There is constant mentioning of Thurston’s fear even when he hadn’t figured the manuscripts of Johansen: “Was I tottering on the brink of cosmic horrors beyond man’s power to bear? If so, they must be horrors of the mind alone…put a stop to whatever monstrous menace had begun its siege of mankind’s soul” (162). Thurston clearly understood that the true horror comes from the mind. Later when Thurston forced himself to face the truth told by Johansen’s manuscripts, he said, “When I think of the extent of all that may be brooding down there I almost wish to kill myself forthwith” (165). He didn’t kill himself, but as a man of letter, such exaggeration is the only place throughout the story that sound hyperbolic, even amusing in a way. After all the deduction and inference are done, he confessed that, “I now felt gnawing at my vitals that dark terror which will never leave me” (164), hinting that Cthulhu didn’t terrify him the most, but the terror menacing his life afterwards. Death is not fearful, but a dangling death is. What’s even horrific is that there might be something worse than death, for “[w]hat has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men” (169). For a learned man like Thurston, who might consider himself as seekers of truth and guards of reason before his encounter of these manuscripts, Thurston concludes with “cities of men,” and the source of horror is unclear, for “loathsomeness” and “decay” are ambiguous. One may as well interpret these lines as “in the darkest dreams of human beings there lie the true disgusting, abominable and hateful” and that “with the development of human civilization, there will be an inevitable corruption that erode the roots; the fundament of society becomes shaky, which might lead to a collapse.” These statements may serve as a warning for future people from Lovecraft, or simply Lovecraft’s pessimistic worldview. The images of rising and sinking also correspond.

(34) Wu 29. to the rise and fall, the mutable and ever-changing nature of human world, with a board historical view. Lovecraft’s philosophical thinking is of numerous aspects, a divergent system inviting interpretations and possibilities with a postmodern virtue. The following chapter will deal with more of this dimension..

參考文獻

相關文件

Wang, Solving pseudomonotone variational inequalities and pseudocon- vex optimization problems using the projection neural network, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks 17

volume suppressed mass: (TeV) 2 /M P ∼ 10 −4 eV → mm range can be experimentally tested for any number of extra dimensions - Light U(1) gauge bosons: no derivative couplings. =>

We explicitly saw the dimensional reason for the occurrence of the magnetic catalysis on the basis of the scaling argument. However, the precise form of gap depends

Define instead the imaginary.. potential, magnetic field, lattice…) Dirac-BdG Hamiltonian:. with small, and matrix

incapable to extract any quantities from QCD, nor to tackle the most interesting physics, namely, the spontaneously chiral symmetry breaking and the color confinement.. 

• Formation of massive primordial stars as origin of objects in the early universe. • Supernova explosions might be visible to the most

Miroslav Fiedler, Praha, Algebraic connectivity of graphs, Czechoslovak Mathematical Journal 23 (98) 1973,

Akira Hirakawa, A History of Indian Buddhism: From Śākyamuni to Early Mahāyāna, translated by Paul Groner, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990. Dhivan Jones, “The Five