Lovecraft and Derleth
Howard Philip Lovecraft was a great horror writer of the 20's. I have been a fan of his since first descovering him about 5 years back. I've read everything of his I can and also collect books based on his works. This brings me to one of the arguments about the Cthulhu Mythos, the differance between Lovecrafts vision and the revisions of August Derleth.
August Derleth was a friend and follower of Howards. After Howards death August created his own publishing house in order to keep Howards books and stories in print. Without him Howard may have just slipped into obscurity. This was perhaps his greatest gift to the mythos.
But August also decided to write mythos stories, some of which he called posthumorus collaberations with Howard. He'd take some little paragraph of part of one of Howards letters and turn them into a story. But there is a problem (in my eyes.). August was very religious and his faith turned up in the stories.
In Howards tales of horror, man was inconsiquential. The Great Old Ones either didn't care about man or used him for thier own ends. They were beings of huge cosmic powers, who were in a sleep like death that would end when the time was right. The people in his stories often came to a bad end, dieing or going mad. Even in the few cases where the 'good guys' won or surivived, they often wern't believed or were imprisoned. The Great Old Ones were so far beyond man that in some ways our very unimportance was the basis for the horror itself. Not all his stories contained the Old Ones. Those that did often delt with thier minions instead of them. If an Old One did appear, he was alone. He only used one at a time. He mentioned books sometimes, mostly his creation the Necronomicon, but sometimes other ones. Despite this he made sure you realized how rare and hard to find or obtain these books were. He often would mix stuff up, which made it a little confusing but a bit more realistic. Since the stories werebeing told by differant charectors, none of which normally had much information, it's natural that somethings would get jumbled up. But the main theme is that mankind is a new comer in this world and there has been life here for longer than we believe and most of it is superior to us. We are insignificant things in the grand scheme.
Then Derleth got a hold of the mythos. He added his own twist. Firstly he made the Great Old Ones into Elemental spirits (which made no sense, if Cthulhu was a water elemental as Derleth said how is it he was imprisoned under the ocean? A water elemental trapped by water?). He made it so that they wern't just sleeping, now they had been imprisoned by cosmic good guys that he created, oposing forces to the Great Old Ones who aided mankind. He also made men able to fight the Old Ones using spells and star shaped rocks. He would use as many of the Old Ones as he could per story, often piting them against one another or against his cosmic good guys. If differant Old Ones were differant elements they conflicted, some even had grudges. Sometimes 3 or 4 would show up and fight amoungst themselves until the humans defeated them. Every charector in his story owned a good sized library of the forbidden books, to the point where you get the feeling that despite them being forbidden and banned they must be avaliable at most corner bookstores. It's not that they were bad stories, they just weren't good.
However Derleth did inspire other writers. So now we end up with 2 differant schools of stories. One follows the origional ideas of Howard, others following Derleths example. Some of the Derleth followers are very good writers, but unfortunatly they are using inferior material. The message is lost. These writers, who could have done some great Mythos stories, instead end up writing decent ones that still feel shallow. Dereleth did a great thing in keeping Howards books in print, yet he twisted the mythos and pulled some good writers from the Mythos origional ideals.
Of course this is all in my opinion, but after all this is my blog.
August Derleth was a friend and follower of Howards. After Howards death August created his own publishing house in order to keep Howards books and stories in print. Without him Howard may have just slipped into obscurity. This was perhaps his greatest gift to the mythos.
But August also decided to write mythos stories, some of which he called posthumorus collaberations with Howard. He'd take some little paragraph of part of one of Howards letters and turn them into a story. But there is a problem (in my eyes.). August was very religious and his faith turned up in the stories.
In Howards tales of horror, man was inconsiquential. The Great Old Ones either didn't care about man or used him for thier own ends. They were beings of huge cosmic powers, who were in a sleep like death that would end when the time was right. The people in his stories often came to a bad end, dieing or going mad. Even in the few cases where the 'good guys' won or surivived, they often wern't believed or were imprisoned. The Great Old Ones were so far beyond man that in some ways our very unimportance was the basis for the horror itself. Not all his stories contained the Old Ones. Those that did often delt with thier minions instead of them. If an Old One did appear, he was alone. He only used one at a time. He mentioned books sometimes, mostly his creation the Necronomicon, but sometimes other ones. Despite this he made sure you realized how rare and hard to find or obtain these books were. He often would mix stuff up, which made it a little confusing but a bit more realistic. Since the stories werebeing told by differant charectors, none of which normally had much information, it's natural that somethings would get jumbled up. But the main theme is that mankind is a new comer in this world and there has been life here for longer than we believe and most of it is superior to us. We are insignificant things in the grand scheme.
Then Derleth got a hold of the mythos. He added his own twist. Firstly he made the Great Old Ones into Elemental spirits (which made no sense, if Cthulhu was a water elemental as Derleth said how is it he was imprisoned under the ocean? A water elemental trapped by water?). He made it so that they wern't just sleeping, now they had been imprisoned by cosmic good guys that he created, oposing forces to the Great Old Ones who aided mankind. He also made men able to fight the Old Ones using spells and star shaped rocks. He would use as many of the Old Ones as he could per story, often piting them against one another or against his cosmic good guys. If differant Old Ones were differant elements they conflicted, some even had grudges. Sometimes 3 or 4 would show up and fight amoungst themselves until the humans defeated them. Every charector in his story owned a good sized library of the forbidden books, to the point where you get the feeling that despite them being forbidden and banned they must be avaliable at most corner bookstores. It's not that they were bad stories, they just weren't good.
However Derleth did inspire other writers. So now we end up with 2 differant schools of stories. One follows the origional ideas of Howard, others following Derleths example. Some of the Derleth followers are very good writers, but unfortunatly they are using inferior material. The message is lost. These writers, who could have done some great Mythos stories, instead end up writing decent ones that still feel shallow. Dereleth did a great thing in keeping Howards books in print, yet he twisted the mythos and pulled some good writers from the Mythos origional ideals.
Of course this is all in my opinion, but after all this is my blog.
posted by Azathoth100 | 10:45 PM
2 Comments:
Interesting. The one thing I wondered was you didn't list your opinion of the good authors and bad authors who derived their stories from Lovecraft, et. al.
I may elaborate on a later post. I just figured this one was long enough as it was. Thanks for dropping by Ho.
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