Salutations all!
This time, another article about one of my favourite authors; a certain HP Lovecraft, whose influences can be found in a great number of medias from John Carpenter films to Batman. He was quite revolutionary - for what some consider to be a 'hack author' - and had many of his dreams influence him with his sci-fi/horror, of which he was probably one of the first to write. It was only after his death that when his editor friend published his work and much later, when his extensive portfolio of letters came to the public eye, that he started to reach his current popularity.
Well any who, this article is a piece of writing that I've found to be very canny. It's written by a Mr John A DeLaughter for the Lovecraft eZine and covers many of the aspects of his life - both behavioural and psychological - that brought on many of his plots and worries. I even suspect that there are a number of authors - probably my self included - and other creative types that follow similar lines to be able to produce their craft.
Well, I hope you all enjoy and find the article edifying. Good health to you all a success!
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| HP Lovecraft |
H.P. Lovecraft: Dreams of an Accidental Shaman
“Dream
Weaver:
I’ve
just closed my eyes again
Climbed aboard the adream weaver train
Driver take away my worries of today
And leave tomorrow behind
Ooh
dream weaver
I believe you can get me through the night
Ooh dream weaver
I believe we can reach the morning light
Fly
me high through the starry skies
Maybe to an astral plane
Cross the highways of fantasy
Help me to forget todays pain
the dawn may be coming soon
There still may be some time
Fly me away to the bright side of the moon
And meet me on the other side”
Gary
Wright’s classic hit, Dream Weaver, spoke to a generation. That group
sought more from life, more than what the prosaic world offered them.
Strangely, Wright’s phrase, “…fly me high through the starry skies, maybe to an
astral plane…” was hauntingly similar to H.P. Lovecraft’s report of his own
dreams:
“…Verily, I have traveled to
strange places which are not upon the earth or any known planet. I have been a
rider of comets, & a brother to the nebulae…”
Lovecraft’s dreams played an
important place in his fiction. HPL turned several dreams into stories. For
example, The Statement of Randolph Carter retold one of HPL’s dreams. In
that dream, he played the part of Randolph Carter, while his friend, Samuel
Loveman, played the part of Harley Warren.
Upon Lovecraft’s death, the cry
for Lovecraft fiction was so great that Bernard Austin Dwyer, a disciple of
HPL, published one of the author’s dream accounts as The Evil Clergyman.
Besides
the stories that were purported to be dreams, they also figured prominently as
plot devices in HPL’s narratives.
Sometimes Howard placed his
dream within a story. In other instances, the recounted dream was a retelling
of the outline of an actual dream in a tale. For example in The Call of
Cthulhu, the dream of Henry Anthony Wilcox with fresh clay bas-relief taken
to a University Professor for interpretation, represented in substance, if not
in specifics, a portion of a Lovecraft dream.
However, one should not jump to
the conclusion that all of Lovecraft’s fiction came from his dreams. As
Lovecraftian Author, W.H. Pugmire noted:
“Lovecraft’s was such a world as
merged readily with the many worlds of his dreams and fancies, but his dreams
were not, contrary to a belief which has spread among his readers, very often
translatable into fiction”.
No matter how fantastic HPL’s
dream imagery was, they were hard to assemble into a coherent storyline with a
climax.
In this article, we will explore
three questions that surround Lovecraft’s dream-lore:
1)
Did Lovecraft’s fantastic dreams prove, as some occultists claim, that he was a
closet cultist?
2) What factors allowed HPL to access fabulous dreamscapes, not available to
common sleepers?
3) What did Timothy Leary, Native American Medicine People and Lovecraft’s
Dreams have in common?
Lovecraft’s
Fantastic Dream-life and Claims of Occultism.
Based on Lovecraft’s fabulous
dream life and his use of the fabled Necronomicon, some occult
enthusiasts paint Lovecraft as a closet cultist or secretive sorcerer.
Nevertheless, Howard’s lifelong
beliefs argue against the acceptance of magic and supernaturalism.
H.P.
Lovecraft’s atheism and materialism have been thoroughly documented. For
example, Lovecraft proclaimed:
“All I say is that I think it is
damned unlikely that anything like a central cosmic will, a spirit world, or an
eternal survival of personality exist. They are the most preposterous and
unjustified of all the guesses which can be made about the universe, and I am
not enough of a hair-splitter to pretend that I don’t regard them as arrant and
negligible moonshine. In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of
radical evidence I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an
atheist”.
Despite Lovecraft’s avowed
atheism, some occultists still imply that Howard lived a double-life – the
hidden side being that of a Magic Practitioner.
Granted, some of Lovecraft’s
opinions evolved over time. For instance, HPL’s relationships with Jews — his
marriage to Sonia Greene and his lifelong friendship with Samuel Loveman –
challenged elements of his racial bias. That softening might be reflected in
the different manner he viewed aliens, in his empathetic description of the
Elder Things, in At the Mountains of Madness (1931):
“They had not been even
savages—for what indeed had they done? That awful awakening in the cold of an
unknown epoch—perhaps an attack by the furry, frantically barking quadrupeds,
and a dazed defence against them and the equally frantic white simians with the
queer wrappings and paraphernalia . . . poor Lake, poor Gedney . . . and poor
Old Ones! Scientists to the last—what had they done that we would not have done
in their place? God, what intelligence and persistence! What a facing of the
incredible, just as those carven kinsmen and forbears had faced things only a
little less incredible! Radiates, vegetables, monstrosities, star-spawn—whatever
they had been, they were men!”.
The question arises: “Over the
years, did Lovecraft’s steadfast atheism moderate in the same way?”
Did
Lovecraft’s use of the Necronomicon prove his Occultism?
One urban legend suggests that
Lovecraft’s esoteric initiation came through his wife, Sonia Greene.
Mrs.
Greene supposedly had an earlier affair with the notorious Wizard, Aleister
Crowley:
“In 1918 Crowley was in New
York. As always, he was trying to establish his literary reputation, and was
contributing to The International and Vanity Fair. Sonia Greene was an
energetic and ambitious Jewish émigré with literary ambitions, and she had
joined a dinner and lecture club called ‘Walker’s Sunrise Club’; it was there
that she first encountered Crowley, who had been invited to give a talk on
modern poetry… Crowley did not waste time as far as women were concerned; they
met on an irregular basis for some months”
Out
of the supposed Greene-Crowley connection, Lovecraft acquired knowledge of the
dreaded Book.
Some
cybernaut occultists, who believe, “if it is on the internet, it must true,”
have run with the notion.
Later,
the source of the Crowley-Greene-Lovecraft-Necronomicon legend recanted
the story:
“Despite many attempts to show
that the Necronomicon is nothing more than Lovecraft’s literary
invention, a group of prominent authors and occultists claimed to provide
confirmation of part of Lovecraft’s claim…[One]…explanation [where Lovecraft
acquired the Necronomicon] (promoted by the author in an extended moment
of wickedness), that Lovecraft’s wife Sonia Greene associated with the
notorious occultist and poet Aleister Crowley during his residence in New York
in 1918 is completely plausible and consistent with both their characters, but
entirely untrue”.
Still, Necronomicon –
truthers devise other means to prove the existence of the fabled Grimoire. To
be fair, Lovecraftians love to speculate on whether the Necronomicon had
its basis in reality.
One
writer likened Lovecraft’s Necronomicon to an Orson Wells’
stroke-of-genius:
“Lovecraft’s Necronomicon is
the occult equivalent to Orson Wells’ 1938 radio broadcast of War of the
Worlds. As Lovecraft himself wrote: ‘No weird story can truly produce
terror unless it is devised with all the care and verisimiliture of an actual
hoax’”.
Thus, the much-debated existence
of the fictional Necronomicon supplies no evidence of the equally
fictional notion that Lovecraft dabbled in the occult.
Did HPL’s Atheism preclude Supernaturalism?
Still, does Atheism preclude belief
in the uncanny?
Some people, while strident
atheists towards traditional gods, are nevertheless open to a plethora of New
Age beliefs.
New Age systems often favor the
subjective over the objective. Experience surpasses evidence. If something
feels true, it is, whether or not you can figure it out. Intuition supersedes
intellect. What feels true becomes a functional fact.
The old X-Files declaration that
the “Truth is out there,” rather than between your ears, epitomizes that ethic.
In contrast to that metaphysical
dualism, Lovecraft remained intractable on the subject of the paranormal, etc.
throughout his lifetime. When it came to the supernatural, and the use of
occultism in his stories, HPL stated:
“No-I’ve never read any of the
jargon of formal ‘occultism’…weird writing is more effective if it avoids the
hackneyed superstitions & popular cult formulae. I am…an absolute
materialist…with not a shred of credence in any form of
supernaturalism—religion, spiritualism, transcendentalism, metempsychosis, or
immortality. It may be, though, that I could get the germs of some good ideas
from the current patter of the psychic lunatic fringe; & I have frequently
thought of getting some of the junk sold at an occultists book shop in 46th St.
The trouble is, that it costs too damned much…in my present state. How much is
the brochure you have just been reading? If any of these crack-brained cults
have free booklets & ‘literature’ with suggestive descriptive matter, I
wouldn’t mind having my name on their ‘sucker lists’. The idea that black magic
exists in secret today, or that hellish antique rites still survive in
obscurity, is one that I have used & shall use again”.
At
the most, Howard used references to books like the Necronomicon and his
pantheon of Old Ones as props to suspend disbelief in those who read his
fiction.
One must be careful about
jumping to conclusions, a “guilt by association” fallacy. For instance, just
because someone knows the Necronomicon, does not make that person an
Occultist.
Accidental
Shamanism:
Next, I would like to explore
the facets of Lovecraft’s lifestyle that mirror the ascetic practices of a
shaman. As HPL followed a shaman’s disciplines, he unknowingly stirred up the
unconscious grounds from which traditional shamanistic visions arose.
The word “accidental” is of
prime importance in our discussion. As we have noted, Lovecraft had no more
room for shamanism than he did any spiritual practice in his sane, waking
world. And I feel any article on Lovecraft should respect his stated beliefs.
Yet, some eccentricities of
HPL’s lifestyle provided fertile grounds for his shamanistic dreams. Those
tendencies are:
1)
Sleep Deprivation.
2) Fasting.
3) Celibacy.
4) Isolation.
Shamanistic Tendency #1: Sleep Deprivation.
First, Lovecraft was an
accomplished insomniac.
At an early age, HPL experienced
Night Terrors, a series of especially vivid nightmares, where a person quickly
wakes up from deep sleep in a terrified state. Young Howard would be pursued by
what he termed “Night Gaunts” – enormous winged, faceless bat-like creatures –
that would grab him by the stomach, lift him to dizzying heights, then drop him
to certain destruction on the earth below. HPL took juvenile steps to avoid
sleep, since slumber represented the gateway to the dark beasts of his
unconscious.
In adulthood, Lovecraft was
known to go without sleep on many of his trips to meet with his correspondents.
Sometimes HPL went three-days without sleep. In fairness to Lovecraft, he went
without slumber to maximize the time and get the most out of his trips. His
excursions to discover the antiquarian architecture delights were one of HPL’s
driving passions. Those jaunts into architecture ecstasy often left others with
sore feet.
One biographer noted, “For all
his plaints about lack of energy, Lovecraft, when sightseeing, galloped about
at a rate that exhausted his companions”.
Hart Crane, a Lovecraft
acquaintance, wrote of HPL’s ability to go without sleep in a letter to his
Mother September 14, 1924:
“…Howard Lovecraft, (the man who
visited Sam in Cleveland one summer when Galpin was also there) kept Sam
traipsing around the slums and wharf streets until four in the morning looking
for Colonial specimens of architecture, and until Sam tells me he groaned with
fatigue and begged for the subway!”.
Edgar
Hoffman Price also recalled one of Lovecraft’s sleepless jaunts:
“The following year, [1933], HPL
and I met in Providence, at 66 College Street. Mrs. Gamwell, was then in the
hospital, so that there was no one to persuade us to keep sane hours. My
recollection is that this time, we were on the go for thirty four hours…”.
Lovecraft bolstered his ability
to go without sleep with coffee. He drank massive amounts of Java, laced with
large amounts of sugar – up to four teaspoons per cupful.
An ancillary detail to
Lovecraft’s sleep practices was that he slept during the day and stayed awake
deep into the night.
Circadian rhythms in human
beings regulate core-body temperature, brain wave activity, hormone production,
cell regeneration, endocrine secretions, and other biological activities. One’s
circadian rhythms are modulated 24-hour cycles of sunlight and darkness.
The disruption of sleep patterns
leads to interrupted REM sleep – the period of slumber where dreams occur. When
dreams are denied an unconscious outlet, they seek conscious expressions.
Hallucinations can occur.
What effect did short-circuiting
his circadian rhythms have on Lovecraft? Perhaps the question should be, “Where
does dream sleep end and dreaming awake begin?”
Shamanistic Tendency #2: Fasting.
Second, Lovecraft practiced a
measure of fasting.
HPL was largely indifferent to
food in general. He was not tempted by gourmet fare, and bragged about how
little it cost him to eat.
Except for the two years that he
lived with Sonia Green, where Lovecraft’s weight ballooned from his
aristocratic ideal – below 150 lbs, at 5’ 11’’ to 200 lbs – HPL barely ate
enough to keep alive.
Lovecraft food idiosyncrasies
did not promote his health. The malnutrition caused by Howard’s Spartan diet,
led to a breakdown in his immune system that fostered the opportunistic cancer
that later killed him.
But Howard did believe that his
brain worked better when it was slightly malnourished. He experimented with his
frugal diet, to increase the frequency and intensity of his uncanny dreams.
Shamanistic Tendency #3: Celibacy.
Third, Lovecraft practiced
sexual celibacy. The ascetic benefits of celibacy outside esoteric or religious
traditions are debatable. Besides Howard’s marriage to Sonia Greene, from my
reading of various Lovecraft biographers, lived out the sexually-repressive
mores, engendered by a strong Victorian ethos.
Beyond that recognition,
Lovecraft’s sexuality appears to be like a Rorschach inkblot – what each person
sees depends on what orientation they intend to find.
On a practical level, like many
intellectuals: “Lovecraft focused his attentions and efforts on mental, rather
than physical, pursuits, and simply didn’t have very strong sexual interests at
all”. In the same manner, Lovecraft’s abstinence from drinking and smoking also
allowed him an undivided or undiluted pursuit of his scholarly interests.
Shamanistic Tendency #4: Isolation.
Fourth, Lovecraft ironically at
times likened himself to an ascetic or hermit. Again, HPL did not see his
asceticism to arise from a religious or spiritual notion.
Nonetheless, periods of physical
and psychological isolation marked Lovecraft’s life.
On some level, Lovecraft felt
like he was out-of-step with life. He sensed himself a stranger in his own
world. At times, HPL lived like a hermit. Between 1908-1914, Howard withdrew
from life, due to a reported nervous breakdown. Otherwise, despite the
stereotype, Howard engaged life, through his large circle of literary pen-pals,
and his frequent trips to visit them.
Despite his commitment to life,
Lovecraft often felt the outsider, due to his financial constraints, the
inability to change those circumstances, his predisposition to depression,
among other factors. HPL spoke of his feelings in the third person, which is
often a sign of feeling distanced from life:
“Yet I can assure you that this
point of view is joined to one of the plainest, naivest, and most unobtrusively
old-fashioned of personalities—a retiring old hermit and ascetic who does not
even know what your contemporary round of activities and “parties” is like, and
who during the coming winter will probably not address two consecutive
sentences to any living person—tradesmen apart—save a pair of elderly aunts!”.
The Culmination or Synergistic Effect of
Lovecraft’s Accidental Ascetics:
What effects did Lovecraft’s
accidental shamanic practices induce?
One result of prolonged sleep
deprivation includes various types of psychoses. Lovecraft often went days
without sleep. One study reports that a full 80% of people, who experienced
long bouts of insomnia, also suffer visual hallucinations.
Thin-boundary behavior is when a
person experiences a dream state or hallucination that seems as real as if the
event actually occurred.
Lovecraft stated that his dreams
were so genuine that upon awakening, the impression of their “truth” troubled
him:
“I have related this in detail
because it impressed me very vividly. This is not a Co [shorthand for Ira A.
Cole] romance of reincarnation-you will see that it has no climax or point-but
it was very real…At this point you ask me whence these stories! I
answer-according to your pragmatism that dream was as real as my presence at
this table, pen in hand! If the truth or falsity of our beliefs &
impressions be immaterial, then I am, or was, actually & indisputably an
unbodied spirit hovering over a very singular, very silent, & very ancient
city somewhere between grey, dead hills. I thought I was at the time-so what
else matters? Do you think that I was just as truly that spirit as I am now
H.P. Lovecraft? I do not”.
To recap, elements of
Lovecraft’s lifestyle included:
1)
Disrupted Circadian rhythm because HPL slept by day and roamed the streets by
night.
2) Self-imposed sleep deprivation that often lasted three days at a time.
3) Starvation eating that verged on fasting for mental clarity and dream
enhancement.
4) Self-denial in areas – sex, smoking, and strong drink – that focused his
energies on creativity.
5) Periods of physical and emotional isolation that fostered his sense of
separateness.
As Lovecraft lived out these
factors, the left-brained intellectual accidentally stirred up the unconscious
grounds from which traditional shamanistic visions arose.
HPL
described the scale of his imagination visions:
“…As mere yarns, these jumbled
fantasies would be hardly worth; but being bona fide dreams, they are rather
picturesque. It gives one a sense of weird, fantastic, & unearthly
experience to have seen these strange sights apparently with the visual eye. I
have dreamed like this ever since I was old enough to remember dreams, &
probably shall till I descend to Avernus…Verily, I have traveled to strange
places which are not upon the earth or any known planet. I have been a rider of
comets, & a brother to the nebulae…”
Kaleidoscopic Dreams and Psychedelic Visions:
What did modern shamans, like
Timothy Leary, and older shamans, like Native American Medicine People, have in
common?
Both used drugs to throw
chemical switches in their brains that led to their vibrant trips and visions.
Dr.
Leary used LSD, while some Medicine People used mescaline. When one of those
psychedelic agents trips the right chemical triggers, LSD for example:
“… Profoundly alters and expands
consciousness by loosening or… completely erasing the normal filters and
screens between your conscious mind and the outside world. With these filters
down, more information rushes in. You sense more, think more and feel more. You
become aware of things normally filtered out by your mind — visual, auditory,
sensory and emotional. The intricate details on surfaces, the richness of
sound, the brightness of colors, and the complexity of your own mental
processes are all brought to the foreground of your consciousness. At higher
doses, the rush of information becomes a flood and your senses actually begin
to merge and overlap…until you can see sounds or smell colors.
LSD also alters one’s sense of
time and visual perceptions:
“LSD’s primary effects are
visual. Colors seem stronger and lights seem brighter. Objects that are stable
might appear to move or have a halo of light around them. Sometimes objects
have trails of light coming from them or appear smaller or larger than they
really are. LSD users often see patterns, shapes, colors and textures.
Sometimes it seems that time is running backward, or moving very quickly or
slowly. On very rare occasions…tripping can cause synesthesia – a confusion of
sensations between different types of stimuli. Some people have described this as
seeing colors when they hear specific sounds”
One author summarized the
effects of such hallucinogens as follows:
“What makes psychedelics more
interesting is their tendency towards a greater universality in terms of the
kinds of complex imagery, experiences, and ideas that they engender; they give
us a sense of exploring the deep structures of the human mind, where the
contingencies of our personal histories and consequent personality traits tend
to evaporate”
I have never used a psychedelic
drug, so I cannot describe an LSD or Mescaline trip from personal experience.
That is why I included descriptions of how a hallucinogenic agent affects a
person’s perception and sensations.
What I do propose is this: “As
Lovecraft practiced the lifestyle-traits of accidental shamanism, he tripped
the same chemical switches in his brain that others had to use hallucinogens to
activate.”
The result was that Lovecraft’s
dreams and imagination expressed the same otherworldly experience of someone
who used psychedelics. Tristan Eldritch first likened Lovecraft’s writings to
psychedelic experiences. However, that research did not explore Lovecraft’s
ascetic lifestyle as contributing to the psychedelic-magnitude of HPL’s dreams
and prose.
Notice how Lovecraft’s fiction is almost
interchangeable with the kaleidoscope experience of a psychedelic user:
“The sound of weird lyric melody
was what aroused me. Chords, vibrations, and harmonic ecstasies echoed
passionately on every hand, while on my ravished sight burst the stupendous
spectacle of ultimate beauty. Walls, columns, and architraves of living fire
blazed effulgently around the spot where I seemed to float in air, extending
upward to an infinitely high vaulted dome of indescribable splendor. Blending
with this display of palatial magnificence, or rather, supplanting it at times
in kaleidoscopic rotation, were glimpses of wide plains and graceful valleys,
high mountains and inviting grottoes, covered with every lovely attribute of
scenery which my delighted eyes could conceive of, yet formed wholly of some
glowing, ethereal plastic entity, which in consistency partook as much of
spirit as of matter”
Besides the similarity in
phantasmagoric experiences, I would like to point out the perception of time
distortion that Lovecraft sought aesthetically and the disruption of time in a
hallucinogenic trip.
Lovecraft
sought aesthetic ecstasies:
“…that…invariably imply a total
defeat of the laws of time, space, matter, and energy—or rather, an individual
independence of these laws on my part, whereby I can sail through the varied
universes of space-time as an invisible vapour might … upsetting none of them,
yet superior to their limitations and local forms of material organization”
Notice
that Lovecraft sought a state of being that included a sense of independence
from the laws of time. HPL’s description matches the distortion of time that is
part of a psychedelic experience:
“…Sometimes it seems that time
is running backward, or moving very quickly or slowly…”
Chemical/Psychedelic Interactions:
Now, I want to emphasize the
mechanistic nature of psychedelic trips. I have used terms like “chemical
switches” and “chemical triggers” to describe the functional dynamics of
hallucinogenic incidents.
Similarly, there are chemical interactions
that underlie Near Death Experiences (NDEs). And chemical interchanges in the
brain trigger psychedelic experiences.
In NDEs, neurons across the
brain fired synchronously. When all the neurons act together, with a far
greater uniformity than normal, a kind of hyper-consciousness in the brain
occurs. Also, the brain experiences feedback connectivity. Bottom-up processing
– that involves sensory perceptions – increases five-fold. Anything experienced
during that time appears “hyper-real”
How one interprets a NDE largely
depends on the belief system they held before the event.
In
the same fashion, one’s belief system determines how they understand
psychedelic events, Near Death Experiences, and Lovecraft’s imaginative dreams.
All three neurological events
can be understood as rarely accessed chemical interactions in the brain.
To
want more from any of the three experiences would, in HPL’s mind, invite
disappointment:
“West was a materialist,
believing in no soul and attributing all the working of consciousness to bodily
phenomena; consequently he looked for no revelation of hideous secrets from
gulfs and caverns beyond death’s barrier. I did not wholly disagree with him
theoretically, yet held vague instinctive remnants of the primitive faith of my
forefathers; so that I could not help eyeing the corpse with a certain amount
of awe and terrible expectation…In a moment of fantastic whim I whispered
questions to the reddening ears; questions of other worlds of which the memory
might still be present. Subsequent terror drove them from my mind, but I think
the last one, which I repeated, was: ‘Where have you been?’”
Was there a Genetic Predisposition to Lovecraft’s
Dreamscapes?
Before moving on, I would like
to state that Lovecraft might also have been genetically predisposed to
fantastic dreaming.
Similarities exist between the
visual and sensory hallucinations of schizophrenia and Lovecraft’s vivid
dreamscapes.
I believe the genetic link might
have been maternal. Though Lovecraft’s father died in a mental institution, his
madness was probably due to the complications from a disease – syphilis. On the
other hand, Susie Lovecraft, in her later years, experienced visual
hallucinations involving shadowy figures. The hallucinations appeared to be organic
in nature.
Lovecraft experienced bouts of
mental illness, though they were thought to be largely bipolar depression.
However, HPL’s irrational racism despite his otherwise towering rationality may
have had an organic, delusional basis.
Similarly, when the usual
genetic screens – those that narrow down the conscious stimuli one receives to
a manageable reality – are faulty, a person’s sensory experiences take on the
character of psychedelic trips.
Howard’s
screens, for lack of a better metaphor, might have been few and faulty. That
does not mean HPL’s faculties were deficient every moment of everyday. But they
were sufficiently fewer, and further weakened by his ascetic tendencies, to
turn his dreams into titanic cyclopean visions of other worlds and other times.
A similar imperfect facility
allowed Vincent van Gogh to see bright colors around prosaic natural scenes
that others did not see, and pour them into his haunting canvases. Perhaps
Lovecraft beheld things in his dreams and waking bouts of imagination due to a
similar dysfunction of some of his mental acuities.
To Burn the Reader’s Mind with Cosmic Grandeur.
I believe a constellation of
factors – both behavioral and organic – predisposed Lovecraft to access worlds
of imaginative shadows. Lovecraft, like
other great artists, was a unique individual in history. In no way can we trace all the illusive
factors that came to fruition in the creative moments, when HPL wrote such
greats as At the Mountains of Madness.
I hope we have hinted at a few
reasons Lovecraft produced the impressionistic tales that burned the reader’s
mind with cosmic grandeur.
