The degenerative force of time is a recurring theme in the work of H. P. Lovecraft. Like Edgar Allan Poe, Lovecraft was less interested in the mechanics of plot than in the “creation of a given sensation”, a “breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces” (Lovecraft: 426). In Lovecraft's work, these forces emerge either from an undiscovered and long dormant world, or in a sudden moment of horrific realization that monstrosity emanates from within.
H.P. Lovecraft's "Dagon"
For Lovecraft, those fictional protagonists who seek to transcend time by entering or searching the “known universe’s utmost rim” (Lovecraft: 427) ultimately face madness and dissolution. In “Dagon” (1919), one of Lovecraft’s first published stories, an escaped prisoner of war discovers an ancient world buried in a putrid swamp. A confrontation with the ‘stupendous monster of nightmares” (Lovecraft; 16) leads to madness and to a vision of ultimate destruction:
"I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind—of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium" (Lovecraft: 17).
In this and other Lovecraft tales, the past is accessed through dreams, pseudo memories or acts of possession revealing, in nightmarish modes, the futility of the belief in progress and linear time.
H.P. Lovecraft's "The Outsider"
In Lovecraft’s “The Outsider” (1926), on the other hand, the protagonist exists outside of time; trapped in the bowels of an ancient castle, he has no sense of a past or a future only a desire to reach the unknown world beyond his dark and decayed prison. Yet what he confronts there is not an otherworldly being, but his own monstrous reflection:
"I cannot even hint what it was like, for it was a compound of all that is unclean, uncanny, unwelcome, abnormal, and detestable. It was the ghoulish shade of decay, antiquity, and dissolution" (Lovecraft: 320).
Whether Lovecraft’s fiction depicts a lurid, alien landscape or the nightmarish landscape of the mind, the organizing mode of much of his fiction is the “mocking and incredible shadow of time.” For Lovecraft, time was the ultimate foe in which both present and future worlds foreshadowed doom and degeneration. Eschewing any continuity of time, his fiction deals primarily with that murky line between reality and hallucination and with the Gothic concerns of historical stagnation and repetition.
It is this ambivalent and often paradoxical view of history which characterizes much of his work. Tales of ruin and decay in the present world betray his distrust of progress and his nostalgia for the past where, as Lovecraft states “the fixed laws of nature” are the only safeguard against “the assaults of chaos” (Lovecraft: 426).
Lovecraft and Race
In Lovecraft’s fictional world, these fixed laws are often imbued with racial overtones registering the fear of degeneration and miscegenation by the expanding working class and immigrant culture of urban industrializing America. According to David Punter, tales such as “Dagon” (1919), “The Lurking Fear” (1922) and “The Horror at Red Hook” (1925) are generally regarded as thinly veiled expressions of Lovecraft’s fear of racial pollution and alien encroachment (Punter: 38).
Equally, the thwarting of nature’s laws is also depicted in his prophetic tales of disaster. In “The Colour Out of Space” (1927) a meteorite lands in a rural idyll leaving behind an indescribable, toxic substance which infects the landscape resulting in madness and decay. As in most of Lovecraft’s works, modern science proves useless in the face of a phenomenon which is “beyond all Nature as we know it.”
While still regarded as one of the formost authors of the science fiction/fantasy/horror genre, Lovecraft had a pessimistic view of the world. Other writers in the first half of the twentieth century locate the fear of decay much closer to home, Lovecraft invokes degeneracy through dream worlds of past ages and alien civilizations.
Sources
Lovecraft, H.P. Tales of H.P. Lovecraft, ed. Joyce Carol Oates. Hopewell, N.J: Ecco. 1997
Michaud, Marilyn. "Modern Gothc" A Companion to Twentieth-Century United States Fiction, ed. David Seed. London: Wiley-Blackwell. 2009
Punter, David. The Lilterature of Terror, vol. 2. New York: Longman. 1996
Marilyn Michaud - Marilyn Michaud teaches English Literature and writing in Toronto. Her research interests include American history and culture, Gothic ...
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