In this thread I will post quotations about H.P. Lovecraft.
Lovecraft was a writer of "horror" fiction famous for writing the Cthulhu mythos. He spent the majority of his life in Providence, Rhode Island.
If this thread interests you please bump to keep it alive.
Just read Polaris this morning. His writing is the tops.
The first quotations are from "Against the World, Against Life" by Michel Houellebecq, which is a study of Lovecraft's life and writing.
On Lovecraft's first and only relationship
>"When she meets him, she is thirty-eight, seven years older than he. Divorced, she has one daughter of sixteen from her former marriage. She lives in New York, and earns her livelihood as a manager of a clothing store. She seems to have immediately fallen in love with him. For his part, Lovecraft keeps a reserved attitude. To tell the truth, he knows absolutely nothing of women. It is she who has to make the first move, and even the following ones. She invites him to dinner, comes to visit him in Providence. Finally, in a little Rhode Island town called Magnolia, she takes the initiative to embrace him. Lovecraft blushes, then goes totally white. When Sonia mocks him gently, he has to explain that it is the first time he has been embraced since his early childhood"
p.27
I like him. He was like /pol/ meets /r9k/.
On Lovecraft's disgust for society
>"Today more than ever, Lovecraft would be a misfit and a recluse. Born in 1890, he appeared already to his contemporaries, in his younger years, an out-of-date reactionary. One can easily guess what he would have thought of today's society. After his death, it hasn't stopped evolving in directions that would have made him detest it more than ever. Mechanisation and modernization have ineluctably destroyed the way of life to which he was attached with every fibre of his being [...] The ideas of liberty and democracy, which he abhorred, have spread over the planet. The idea of progress has become an uncontested credo, almost unconscious, which can only bristle at a man who declares: "What we detest, is simply change in and of itself". Liberal capitalism has exerted its dominance over consciousness; marching in time with it have been commercialism, advertising, the absurd grinning cult of economic efficiency, the exclusive and immoderate appetite for material riches. Even worse, liberation has reached from the economic to the sexual domain. All sentimental fictions have been shattered into a thousand pieces. Purity, chastity, fidelity, decency, have become ridiculous stigmata. The value of a human being is measured today by his economic efficiency and his erotic potency: so, exactly the two things that Lovecraft hated the most strongly."
p.34
On Lovecraft's growing racism while living in poverty in New York
>"It is no longer a matter of the well-bred racism of the WASP; this is brutal hatred, that of the trapped animal made to share its cage with beasts of a different, and formidable, species. And yet, ultimately, his hypocrisy and his good education bore up; as he wrote to his aunt: "It does not behove individuals of our class to make ourselves conspicuous by our speech or inconsiderate actions." After the example of his neighbours, whenever he comes across representatives of other races, Lovecraft grits his teeth, blanches slightly, but keeps his cool. His exasperation is given free rein only in his letters - before being released in his stories. It transforms little by little into a phobia. His vision, nourished by hatred, is elevated to naked paranoia, and higher still, to absolute distraction, foreshadowing the verbal derangements of the "major works"
p.31
On Lovecraft as a young hermit
>"Lovecraft was a bit more than a bit troubled. In 1908, at the age of 18, he was the victim of what we might describe as a "nervous breakdown", and sank into a lethargy that was to last for a dozen years. At the age when his old classmates, impatiently crossing the bridge of childhood, threw themselves into life like a marvelous adventure into the unknown, he cloistered himself in his home, did not speak to his mother, refused to get up all day, shuffling about in his dressing gown all night."
p.3
Lovecraft got his first break and started writing after he went to a talent agent. Excitedly he started putting on a show for the agent, he had brought Sonia with him along with her daughter and the family dog so he tore her clothes she had brought for the store so quickly it tore the pubes off with her underwear which he wore on his head and started jerking off while the daughter starting humming a showtune daahdaahaaaadumdumdaa. Lovecraft is really getting into this and jerking it faster and the pubes are falling out of the underwear on his head and getting in his mouth and up his nose and he sneezes and blows snot on sonia this big giant wad of snot and it lands on the tip of her tongue the dog comes over and starts licking lovecrafts ass and he blows his load in sonias mouth and shes gurgling the cum and snot so lovecraft gets down on his hands and knees and starts licking the dogs ass while the girl is still humming showtunes and doing a jig to make the act more interesting when the dog shits so lovecraft starts puking and sonia starts punking lovecraft is rolling around in dogshitpukecum and snot when sonia takes her fists and shoves it up her twat up to the elbow she pulls it out down to the wrist but can't get it out so lovecraft kicks her in the arm and knocks it really deep. The agent is fucking amazing and he asks what this act is called and Lovecraft, sonia and the daughter all proudly stand up throw their hands high and yell "The Aristocrats!".
I like to think me and him would get on well together
OP here. I hate spamming post after post with no other posts in between but I'll keep posting until the thread dies I guess.
On Lovecraft's feelings towards his wife and her efforts to help him while he is unemployed
>"I have never seen a more admirable attitude, full of disinterested consideration and solicitude; each financial difficulty that I face is accepted and excused as soon as it becomes obvious that it is inevitable... A devotion capable of accepting without a murmur this combination of incompetence and egoism, so contrary as it might be to everything one could hope for at first, is assuredly a phenomenon so rare, so close to saintliness in its historical sense, that it is enough to have the least sense of artistic proportion to respond with the warmest reciprocal esteem, with admiration and with affection."
p.30
On Lovecraft's failure to find a job despite his best efforts
>"This task would prove absolutely impossible. He would try, though, responding to hundreds of job advertisements, writing to employers speculatively... Total failure. Certainly, he had no idea of the realities indicated by words like dynamism, competitivity, commercial sense, efficiency... But all the same, in an economy which wasn't even in crisis at the time, it would surely be possible for him to find some junior position... But no. Nothing whatsoever. There was no conceivable place, in the American economy of his epoch, for an individual like Lovecraft. There is here a sort of mystery; and he himself, fully aware of his maladaption and shortcomings, doesn't wholly understand it."
p.29
The application letter Lovecraft sent to potential employers
>"The notion according to which even a man of cultivation and good intelligence cannot rapidly acquire a competence in a domain somewhat outside his customary field seems naive to me; however, recent events have demonstrated to me in a most distinct manner to what extent this superstition is largely widespread. Since I began, two months ago, seeking employment for which I am naturally, and by virtue of my studies, well-equipped, I have responded to nearly one hundred advertisements without even receiving a chance to be heard in a satisfactory manner - apparently because I cannot give a reference from a previously-held post in a corresponding department of a different firm from that which I am addressing. Thus, abandoning traditional channels, I am finally trying for the sake of experience to take the initiative."
p.29
>>27729258
You and every autist social outcast here
One of the love letters Lovecraft sent to his future wife Sonia Greene
>"Dear Mrs Greene, The reciprocal love of a man and a woman is an experience of the imagination which consists of attributing to its subject a certain particular relation with the aesthetico-emotional life of that which feels it, and depends on particular conditions which must be fulfilled by that object. [...] With long years of mutual enduring love slowly comes adaptation and a perfect relationship; memories, dreams, delicate stimuli, aesthetics and the habitual impressions of the beauty of dreams become permanent modifications thanks to the influence of each upon the other [...] There is one considerable difference between the sentiments of youth and those of maturity. Around forty or maybe fifty years old, a complete change takes place; love accedes to a profound calm and serenity founded on a tender association before which the erotic infatuation of youth has a certain mediocre and humiliating aspect. Youth brings with it erogenous and imaginary stimuli based on the tactile phenomena of slender bodies, in virginal attitudes, and on the visual imagery of classical aesthetic contours symbolizing a sort of freshness and springtime immaturity which is very beautiful, but which has nothing to do with conjugal love."
p.28
On Lovecraft's desire to deport all "mongoloids" and non-whites
>"The more prolonged is Lovecraft's enforced sojourn in New York, the more his repulsion and terror grows until it attains alarming proportions. As he wrote to Belknap Long, "one cannot speak calmly about the mongoloid problem of New York". Later on in the letter, he declares: "I hope the end will be warfare -- but not till such a time as our own minds are fully freed of humanitarian hindrances of the Syrian superstition imposed upon us by Constantinus. Then let us show our physical power as men and Aryans, and conduct a scientific wholesale deportation from which there will be neither flinching nor retreating."
p.31 / 32
On Lovecraft's fondness for Puritanism and his hatred for life
>"Dressed in rigid and somewhat mean costumes, habitually refraining from expressing their emotions and desires, the protestant puritans of New England may occasionally lose sight of their animal origins. Hence Lovecraft accepts their company, even if only in moderate doses. Their insignificance itself reassures him. But, in the presence of "blacks" he is in the grip of an uncontrollable nervous reaction. Their vitality, their apparent absence of complexes and inhibitions terrifies and disgusts him. They dance in the street, they listen to rhythmic music...They speak loudly. They laugh in public. Life seems to amuse them; which is disquieting. Because life is no good"
p.34
On the type of man Lovecraft respects
>""And as for Puritan inhibitions - I admire them more every day. They are attempts to make of life a work of art - to fashion a pattern of beauty in the hog-wallow that is animal existence - and they spring out of that divine hatred for life which marks the deepest and most sensitive soul...An intellectual Puritan is a fool - almost as much of a fool is an anti-Puritan - but a Puritan in the conduct of life is the only kind of man one may honestly respect. I have no respect or reverence whatever for any person who does not live abstemiously and purely"
p.35
On Lovecraft as a gentleman
>"He wholeheartedly believed it unsuitable to pursue literature as a profession. As he wrote: "a gentleman doesn't try to become famous, but leaves that to the little parvenu egoists". It's obviously difficult to appreciate the sincerity of this declaration; it might appear to us to be the result of a formidable mass of inhibitions, but it must equally be considered as the strict application of an obsolete code of behaviour, to which Lovecraft adhered with all his might. He always wanted to be seen as a provincial gentleman, studying literature as one of the fine arts, for his own pleasure and that of a few friends, without care for public tastes, fashionable themes, or anything of that sort. Such a person has no place in our societies; he knew this, but he always refused to take account of it. And, ultimately, all that distinguished him from a true 'country gentleman' was that he possessed nothing; but even so, he didn't want to take account of it"
p.26
Anyone else notice how people who lived pre 1950s all the way to the days of benjamin franklin in the 1700s the vocabulary seems all the more complex?
>>27728979
>TFW you still have your necronomicon
hahahaha
fucking normies don't even know
On Lovecraft's hatred of life and final days
>"That the world is miserable, intrinsically miserable, miserable in essence, is a conclusion that doesn't worry him in the least; and this is the deepest sense of his admiration for the Puritans: What amazes him about them is that "they hated life and scorned the platitude that it is worth living". We pass over this valley of tears which separates birth from death; but we must stay pure. HPL doesn't share any of the hopes of the Puritans; but he shares their denial. [...] At the end of his days, he would come to voice regrets, sometimes poignant, before the solitude and failure of his existence. But these regrets remain, if one can express it thus, theoretical. He can recollect well enough the times in his life (the end of adolescence, the brief and decisive interlude of marriage) when he could have taken a different path, towards that which one calls happiness. But he knows that, in all probability, he was incapable of behaving differently."
p.35
On Lovecraft as depressed 'loser'
>"Adulthood is hell. Faced with a position this stubborn, the "moralists" of our time grumble in a vaguely disapproving manner, waiting for the moment to float their obscene subtexts. Maybe Lovecraft really couldn't become an adult; but what is certain is that he did not want to. And considering the values which rule the adult world, it's difficult to argue the case. The reality principle, the pleasure principle, competition, permanent challenge, sex and work...nothing to sing Hallelujah about. Lovecraft knows there's nothing to this world. And he plays the role of the loser every time. In theory as in practice. He has lost his childhood, he has equally lost his faith. The world disgusts him, and he sees no reason to suppose that things could be presented otherwise, by 'looking on the bright side'. [...] Very few will have been at this point of saturation, penetrated right to the marrow by the absolute void of every human aspiration.The universe is merely a chance arrangement of elementary particles. A transitory image in the midst of chaos. [...] Lovecraft is well aware of the depressing nature of these conclusions. As he wrote in 1918, "all rationalism tends to minimize the value and importance of life, and to diminish the total quantity of human happiness. In some cases the truth could cause suicide, or at least precipitate a near-suicidal depression.""
p.4
>>27730281
>>27730359
Feeling a lot today...
On Lovecraft's contradictions
>"Paradoxically, the character of Lovecraft fascinates us partly because his system of values is entirely opposed to ours. Fundamentally racist, openly reactionary, he glorifies puritan inhibition and quite evidently finds repellent any "open display of eroticism". Resolutely anti-commercial, he despises money, considers democracy to be pure folly, progress an illusion. The word "liberty", so dear to Americans, elicits from him only a gloomy sneer. All his life he maintained a typically aristocratic attitude of scorn for humanity in general, together with an extreme solicitude toward individuals in person. What is agreed is that all those who knew Lovecraft in person felt an immense sadness at the announcement of his death. Robert Bloch, for example, wrote: "If I had known the truth about the state of his health, I would have run to Providence to see him." August Derleth dedicated the rest of his life to collating, editing and publishing the posthumous fragments of his absent friend."
p.7
Please keep posting. There are many of us here who identify very strongly with his experiences and the more you can post, the better. His similarity to me is striking. Am I Lovecraft reincarnated?
>>27730570
Are you a mad prophet who inherited the dreams of a dead god?
On the development of Lovecraft's racist views in New York
>"We see here manifested the first traces of a racism that afterwards nourished the work of HPL. It presented itself from the start in a banal enough form: unemployed, menaced by poverty, Lovecraft could stand less and less an aggressive and hard urban environment. In addition he feels a certain aggrievement in considering that immigrants of every provenance are swallowed up without difficulty in the bustling melting-pot which is the America of the 20s, whereas he himself, despite his pure anglo-saxon heritage, is permanently in search of employment. [...] His hatred for the "stinking, amorphous hybridity" of this modern Babel, for the "giant strangers, ill-born and deformed, who gabble and shout vulgarly, destitute of dreams, within its confines" did not cease, during the course of 1925 , to exasperate him to the point of delirium. Once might even say that one of the fundamental figures of his work -0 the idea of a titanic and grandiose city, in the fundaments of which swarm repugnant creatures of nightmare - was inspired directly by his experience of New York."
p.29 / 30
>>27730650
No but my life has followed a sickeningly similar parallel to his. I have failed school; I had a girlfriend who loved me and put up with everything including my constant tardiness, inattention, abuse and neglect, who had a seemingly endless well of appreciation and devotion to me. Had, that is. His interpretation of the world is, for all intents and purposes, identical to mine. I am extremely reactionary, I am horrified by life. I have fallen so far into a depression that my thoughts are incomplete and scrambled. This quote;
>At the age when his old classmates, impatiently crossing the bridge of childhood, threw themselves into life like a marvelous adventure into the unknown, he cloistered himself in his home, did not speak to his mother, refused to get up all day, shuffling about in his dressing gown all night.
Is downright distressing in how accurate it is to my experiences and the experiences of many on this board. OP please keep posting.
I just realized my face is ugly like his. With the high placed mouth and all.
And there are no qt eldritch waifus to talk with.
On Sonia and Lovecraft's relationship
>"Sonia seems to have understood Lovecraft very well, his frigidity, his inhibition, his denial and his disgust for life. As for him, who considered himself an old man at thirty, one is still surprised that he could envisage union with this dynamic, vivacious creature. A divorced jewess, what's more; which, for a conservative antisemite like him would seem to constitute an insurmountable obstacle. [...] But it is perhaps the most unlikely explanation that seems the best: Lovecraft really seems to have, in a certain manner, loved Sonia, as Sonia loved him. And these two, so different from each other, but who loved each other, were to be joined in marriage on the 3rd March 1924."
p.28
>>27730813
He was a normie.
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
On Lovecraft's feelings towards black people and his thoughts on segregation
>As he wrote in a letter, "Either stow 'em out of sight or kill 'em off" ; and he came progressively to consider the former solution as preferable, particularly in the wake of some time spent in the South, at the home of writer Robert Barlow, where he observed with wonder that the maintenance of a strict racial segregation could allow a white, educated American to feel at ease in the middle of a population with a high density of blacks. Naturally, he states precisely to his aunt, "they can't let niggers use the beach as a Southern resort - can you imagine sensitive persons bathing near a pack of greasy chimpanzees?"
p.32
Not only on Lovecraft, but I like this quote of Ligotti:
>"Let's say it once and for all: Poe and Lovecraft - not to mention a Bruno Schulz or a Franz Kafka - were what the world at large would consider extremely disturbed individuals. And most people who are that disturbed are not able to create works of fiction. These and other names I could mention are people who are just on the cusp of total psychological derangement. Sometimes they cross over and fall into the province of 'outsider artists.' That's where the future development of horror fiction lies - in the next person who is almost too emotionally and psychologically damaged to live in the world but not too damaged to produce fiction."
>>27730863
Bear in mind he was 32 when Sonia pretty much forced herself on him (she was 40) and when she first kissed his cheek he blushed all over.
>>27730893
A late bloomer normie is still a normie.
>>27730878
OP here, I liked Ligotti's book too. Here's another quote about Lovecraft from Ligotti's "Conspiracy Against the Human Race"
On depressing writings and marginality
>"Sure enough, then, writers such as Zapffe, Schopenhauer, and Lovecraft only write their ticket to marginality when they fail to affirm the worth and wonder of humanity, the validity of its values (whether eternal or provisional), and, naturally, a world without end, or at least one that continues into the foreseeable future. Anything else is too depressing to be countenanced."
p.33
>>27730221
Aristocratic vs proletarian culture
>>27730935
That's a nice quote too. I also liked this piece of writing by Lovecraft: http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/cd.aspx because I like cats too.
>>27729291
>>27729306
>applying for entry-level position
>need an ivy-league degree
>need a letter of recommendation from a semi-famous professor the employer has heard of in the news at least 3 times
>need an internship relating to astrophysics
>need 5 references from previous employers
Goddamn I think I would have liked Lovecraft. I bet he would post on this board for a solid 5 hours per day.
OP here. I will now quote from "A Dreamer and a Visionary: H.P. Lovecraft in His Time"by S. T. Joshi.
On Lovecraft's childhood
>"All this may seem to give the impression that Lovecraft, in spite of his precociousness, his early health problems, his solitude as a very young boy, and his unsettled nervous condition, was evolving into an entirely "normal" youth with vigorous teenage interests (except sports and girls, in which he never took any interest). [...] But how normal, really, was he? The later testimony of Stuart Coleman is striking: 'from the age of 8 to 18, I saw quite a bit of him as we went to schools together [...] I won't say I knew him "well" as I doubt if any of his contemporaries at the time did. He was definitely not a normal child and his companions were few.'"
p.46
>>27730359
This one is really touching
On one girl's memory of the young Lovecraft
>"Clara Hess, the same age as Lovecraft, supplies a telling and poignant memory of Lovecraft's devotion to astronomy [...] "Howard used to go out into the fields in back of my home to study the stars. One early fall evening several of the children in the vicinity assembled to watch him from a distance. Feeling sorry for his loneliness I went up to him and asked him about his telescope and was permitted to look through it. But his language was so technical that I could not understand it and I returned to my group and left him to his lonely study of the heavens."
p.46
What a loser. He's not even one of the greats.
On the two great tragedies of Lovecraft's childhood
>"because of the mismanagement of of Whipple's estate after his death, relatively little was left of his property and funds; so Lovecraft and his mother were forced to move out of 454 Angell Street and occupy a smaller house at 598 Angell Street. This was probably the most traumatic event Lovecraft experienced prior to the death of his mother in 1921. [...] psychologically the loss of his birthplace, to one so endowed with a sense of place, was shattering. To compound the tragedy, Lovecraft's beloved cat, Nigger-Man, disappeared sometime in 1904. [...] Nigger-Man's loss perhaps symbolised the loss of his birthplace as no other event would."
p.47
>>27730813
That's actually quite beautiful.
Got a name for my future cat.
On Lovecraft's temper and fights
>"He admits to having an 'ungovernable temper' and being 'decidedly pugnacious': "Any affront - especially any reflection on my truthfulness or honour as an 18th century gentleman - roused in me tremendous fury, & I would always start a fight if an immediate retraction were not furnished. Being of scant physical strength, I did not fare well in these encounters; though I would never ask for their termination."
p.50 / 51
>>27728979
"nigger"shitadverbyprosebloxx
On Lovecraft's lonely childhood
>"Lovecraft led a comparatively solitary young childhood, with only his adult family members as his companions. Many of his childhood activities - reading, writing, scientific work, practising music, even attending the theatre - are primarily or exclusively solitary, and we do not hear much about any boyhood friends until his entrance into grade school. All his letters discuss his childhood stress his relative isolation and loneliness: "You will notice that I have made no reference to childish friends & playmates - I had none! The children I knew disliked me & I disliked them. [...] Their romping & shouting puzzled me. I hated mere play & dancing about""
p.36
>>27728979
>tfw barely any pure lovecraftian content is created anymore
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QFwo57WKwg
On Lovecraft's cousin's memory of him as a boy
>"Ethel M. Phillips [...] was sent over to play with young Howard. She confessed in an interview conducted in 1977 that she did not much care for her cousin, finding him eccentric and aloof. She was particularly vexed because Lovecraft did not know how a swing worked."
p.36
>>27731365
That's a tragedy? I had to move half a dozen times as a child. My mom's a hoarder, so we had to take all of her shit with us every single time. Absolute hell, having to move all those boxes just to have them take up an obscene amount of space in every place I've ever lived. I also lost two cats, one after another.
Not even trying to one-up him with the woe is me mindset everyone has these days. It just seems like that shit is so common and one of the easiest parts of life, how can you really call it a tragedy?
>>27731704
I think it's partly written in jest (he literally just moved down the street), and bare in mind Lovecraft was extremely sensitive and was very easily overwhelmed by external circumstances beyond his control which threatened him.
I really like him and can totally identify with him as a person but I hate his writing for some reason.
On Lovecraft's sexuality
>"The matter of Lovecraft's sexual conduct must inevitably be addressed, although the information we have on the subject is very sparse. We learn from R. Alain Everts, who interviewed Sonia on the matter, that: first, he was a virgin at the time he married; second, prior to his marriage he had read several books on sex; and third, he never initiated sexual relations, but would respond when Sonia did so. [...] Sonia herself has only two comments on the matter. 'As a married man he was an adequately excellent lover, but refused to show his feelings in the presence of others. He shunned promiscuous association with women before his marriage. [...] H.P. was inarticulate in expressions of love except to his mother and to his aunts, to whom he expressed himself quite vigorously [...] One way of expression of H.P.'s sentiment was to wrap his "pinkey" finger around mine and say "Umph!""
p.202
OP here. This is my final post this evening. I hope this thread has been worthwhile.
On Lovecraft in his final days
>"Lovecraft's final years were characterised both by much hardship (painful rejections of his best tales and concomitant depression over the merit of his work; increasing poverty; and, toward the very end, the onset of his terminal illness) and by moments of joy (travels all along the eastern seaboard; the intellectual stimulus of correspondence with a variety of distinctive colleagues; increasing adulation in the tiny worlds of amateur journalism and fantasy fandom). But to the end, Lovecraft continued to wrestle, mostly in letters, with the fundamental issues of politics, economics, society, and culture, with a breadth of learning, acuity of logic, and a deep humanity born of wide observation and experience that could not have been conceived by the 'eccentric recluse' who had so timidly emerged from self-imposed hermitry in 1914. That his largely private discussions did not have any influence on the intellectual temper of the age is unfortunate; but his unceasing intellectual vigour, even as he was descending into the final stages of cancer, is as poignant a testimonial to his courage and his devotion to the life of the mind as anyone could wish. Lovecraft himself, at any rate, certainly did not think the effort wasted."
p.363
