Horror and Heroism: Classical Themes in Lovecraft
Lovecraft is well-known for being the most prominent writer, and arguably the definer, of the ‘Cosmic Horror’ genre in the early 20th century. This is best defined as, instead of adding specifically fantasy elements to a setting, or altering the setting to fit them in, slotting such additions into the ‘gaps’ in contemporary science, such that the setting is a plausible-enough (with suspension of disbelief) replica of the modern world. In this way, the horror element comes from playing with humanity’s understanding and view of its place in the cosmos, instead of many horror works which, for instance, presuppose the existence of ghosts for the plot, without focussing on the implications of this. He is also known for being somewhat reclusive, a devoted antiquarian and for greatly liking his home region of New England — unfortunately, he is also known for disliking most other things (human or geographical), with his personal views being, very euphemistically speaking, problematic.
At a cursory glance, Classics would appear to have very little to do with Lovecraft. However, as Joshi notes in his editions of Lovecraft’s short stories, Lovecraft read Classical texts widely as a child, before expanding out into more esoteric texts (starting from Edgar Allan Poe into such now-obscure authors as Lord Dunsany and Machen). With this consideration, it is in fact hardly surprising that Classical themes are a strong, recurrent undercurrent throughout his works — especially his short stories, which I will here be focussing on.
What is most interesting is how the novel themes of cosmic horror can be seen — likely intentionally in many respects — in apposition and opposition with their Classical influences. At a broad stroke, it is a contrast between a better time of a past Heroic Age and myth as history, contrasted with the modern (at his time of writing) world where many myths are presented as actual (rightfully-forgotten) history, like a resurgence and over-spilling of the violent men of the Hesiodic Bronze Age into the Iron Age of humanity as we know it.
Firstly, a small stylistic sample can highlight the pervasiveness of Classical motifs at a very shallow level. Whilst there are plentiful examples, one of my favourites is the atmospherically-appropriate phrase ‘Bacchanale of bats’ from The Hound. Another thing that is very striking is his usage of the adjective ‘Cyclopean’ (with deliberately capitalised ‘C’) — I counted at least 12 examples in the first volume of his stories, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Short Stories. Lord Taylour (1964, p.110) notes how to the Ancient Greek mind, upon observing the tholos tombs like at Mycenae, they must have seemed as if only a race of Cyclopes could have built such things — interestingly, like the genre of Cosmic Horror itself, these Greeks would have fitted the existence of such creatures in the gaps in their (albeit very limited at the start of the Archaic Period in question) scientific knowledge. In all such examples however, the implication is that there was indeed some ancient, powerful entity that could build such things, in examples ranging from At the Mountains of Madness to The Call of Cthulhu — the latter, as well as Dagon, including ensuing references to Polyphemus himself. Thus, Lovecraft here gives a glimpse into the same experience many ancient peoples themselves would have had looking at mysterious man-made wonders through his literature, but substituting mythology and religious belief with contemporary science.
The interaction between myth and history in Classics is an interesting one, and can be taken further as a parallel, or in many cases model, for such interactions in the world of Lovecraft. For instance, the lost civilisation — vaguely rumoured in Lovecraft’s well-known invented tome, the Necronomicon — could be seen as an equivalent of Atlantis, itself first used in philosophical (but notably not historical) argument in Plato’s Timaeus-Critias. Lovecraft’s narrator of this story specifically mentions, in his exploration, that this city was like the ‘fabled’ Atlantis — in both cases, the existence is presumed false, on good grounds (until, unsurprisingly, the aforementioned narrator stumbles across this civilisation). Similarly, in Under the Pyramids (ghost-written as a ‘true’ account of Harry Houdini’s trip to Egypt for the Houdini himself, believe it or not), Lovecraft plays upon the mystery of the sphinx, and its supposed resemblance to King Khafre (here called Khephren) and other traditions about it, such as its restoration by Thutmose IV. Thus far, he treats this fairly historically (as it is documented, although with some uncertainties), but crosses over into the mythical when going into the inspirations behind the shape of the animal itself. It is this fusion of myth and history, and the fluctuations between, that made later historians criticise Herodotus, but is also what makes both him and Lovecraft so enthusing.
It is somewhat more tangential but nevertheless a notable diversion from Classical tradition that, whereas a generally Primitivist (with notable, but fewer, exceptions) opinion on the development of civilisation and human morality is present in Classical literature, the reverse is true here — with regards to humanity. For instead of preceding eras being better due to closeness to the gods, as can be frequently found in various works of Plato, in the Lovecraftian cosmos this would not be a good thing — as can be seen in the Dunwich Horror, in a twisted take on what happens when an unknowable, rather than anthropomorphised, god decides to breed with a human. Whilst for some, as in Polaris or At the Mountains of Madness, the peak of the subject civilisations was in the long-distant past, humanity is too insignificant and ill-suited to such times. Lovecraft does mention ‘Elder Gods’ and ‘Old Ones’, which do have contact with humanity in the course of the stories (which are significantly exceptions — otherwise there would not be much of a story!), but most sane people would disagree with this being beneficial to humanity. In The Call of Cthulhu, when such beings decide to reshape rather than outright destroy humanity, he says ‘then 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 revelling in joy’. This resultant state bears comparison to Primitivist ideas about the natural state of man, and could be seen as a twisted Golden Age (as it presumably is from the perspective of the external beings). From the perspective of human civilisation this is less good — although, another theme running through the works is that people start to sympathise with such viewpoints after learning the truth about the cosmos and humanity’s place in it and becoming conventionally mad in the process, so of course I would say that. So, much as some Greek philosophers espoused a time closer to the gods as better, Lovecraft envisaged such a time too (and even said it was cyclical…), but made it clear that human understanding would not see it positively.
But what discussion of the gods would be complete without plentiful instances of hubris and divine retribution? In Lovecraft, the adage that best sums up humans involving themselves in matters they should not is best summed up as ‘curiosity killed the cat’. In The Whisperer in Darkness, the narrator and protagonists’ correspondent Akeley meets a particularly unpleasant fate, after refusing to keep his head down and instead investigating the goings-on in his native rural Vermont. The protagonist himself only escapes a similar fate by fleeing during the night, rather than staying to fully understand what was going on. Whilst there are plentiful other examples, including Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family and Herbert West — Reanimator, particularly notable is The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. In this piece, the eponymous youth investigates his distant ancestor Joseph Curwen’s scientific pursuits in the search for immortality. From Sisyphus to Croesus, Classical figures who make presumptions above their station are almost invariably met with their comeuppance, with the divine aspect coming from the gods themselves for the former and Apollo’s Delphic Oracle for the latter (the Persians had something to do with it, of course, but Herodotus focusses on the oracle as the actual cause of retribution, with Persians as instrument). Just so, Charles Ward is consumed by his quest, and ends up falling into his ancestor’s trap (who, in terms of occult knowledge and power, can fairly be counted as above the human sphere), and ends up dead as consequence.
Near the beginning of The Shadow Over Innsmouth, a man at a ticket-office refers to a notable old, rich businessman in the eponymous town as ‘richer’n Croesus’. Whilst it could be taken as being used simply as an expression, such an archaic saying in remote New England appears strikingly out of place. Why? Herodotus reports that Solon advised Croesus, after being leadingly questioned as to whom in the world is happiest: ‘whoever has the greatest number of the good things I have mentioned, and keeps them to the end, and dies a peaceful death, that man, Croesus, deserves in my opinion to be called happy’. This is a lesson Croesus learnt well — after misinterpreting an oracle, losing all his wealth and kingdom, and being enslaved by Cyrus. Croesus passed this onto Cyrus, including cheerlessly advising him to cross the river to fight the Massagetae against the advice of his other advisors — which resulted in defeat and Cyrus’ death, but also proved Croesus’ logic as Persian land was not invaded back. Thus he learnt humility and not to push his luck, but instead to be moderate in ambition. The protagonist of The Shadow Over Innsmouth makes no bold claims as Croesus ever did however, yet it is foreshadowing in two ways. Firstly, the man referred to as ‘richer’n Croesus’ does not value wealth either anymore (despite not appearing in ‘person’, this assumption holds true) — being the leader of the town’s ‘Deep One’ clan (long-lived fish-people, but who develop into these after initially looking like normal people). His longevity and nature mean he has all he needs, and so is presumably content having transcended material and mortal human needs, making the description of him as ‘richer’n Croesus’ ironic foreshadowing as wealth is irrelevant to him now. Secondly, the protagonist, having narrowly survived his encounters in the town, escapes and is extremely relieved (if permanently psychologically damaged). But, despite his terror at events, the protagonist eventually comes to terms with it and is at peace — when he becomes what he feared (admittedly, the process of becoming is not particularly heartening for him), as the condition is revealed to be hereditary and in his family. Thus Lovecraft puts a dark, twisted and ironic spin on Solon’s lesson that happiness can only be judged at the end of one’s life.
Finally, and perhaps slightly more optimistically, is the theme of heroism. The prime example of this is the confrontation between the sailor Johansen and Cthulhu himself in The Call of Cthulhu. When the sailors are fleeing from Cthulhu, Lovecraft says ‘the titan Thing from the stars slavered and gibbered like Polypheme cursing the fleeing ship of Odysseus’, before describing how it chased their ship. After blinding the Cyclops in Odyssey 9, Odysseus and his men flee to their ship. Famously, after Polyphemus misses his first thrown rock, Odysseys replies in boast: ‘Cyclops, if any one of the mortal men shall ask you about the shameful blinding of your eye, say that Odysseus, the sacker of cities, blinded it, the son of Laertes, whose home is in Ithaca.’ Odysseus, after conquering the Cyclops with his ‘Nobody’ ploy and escaping, boasts and reasserts his heroic identity in this unfamiliar world of monsters — even there, he claims his kleos (though, admittedly, nobody but him will live to tell of it — but tell it he does, in fact at this very time, recounting it in Odyssey 9). Odysseus therefore tries and eventually fails to maintain his heroic status in the world he travels in the first half of the Odyssey, before regaining it in Scheria. Johansen, on the other hand, upon realising his boat cannot outrun Cthulhu, turns it about to ram the very being which is pursuing him — ‘as the steam mounted higher and higher the brave Norwegian drove his vessel headlong against the pursuing jelly which rose above the unclean froth like the stern of a daemon galleon. The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yacht, but Johansen drove on relentlessly’. As a result of this heroism, Johansen (and his one remaining mad companion, who soon died anyway) survived their encounter with the monster. However, Johansen was a normal man faced with the abnormal, and far more out of his depth than Odysseus as a hero was in the fantasy world of his pre-nostos voyaging. Yet his heroism is far more direct and impactful than Odysseus’ own actions. But this is where the optimism end — whilst the heroic Odysseys reclaims his home, reunites with his loyal wife, gets his kleos and completes his nostos, the brave but human Johansen returns home in obscurity, with the whole encounter having ‘taken something out of his soul’. His wife states that whatever he had experienced ‘had broken him’. He is also killed in an unfortunate accident, hinted to be an assassination by Cthulhu’s cult.
So it can be seen that Lovecraft’s cosmos and literary motifs were heavily influenced by elements of the Classical tradition that can be found continually throughout. Yet, he puts a dark spin on it, making it worthy of the term ‘Cosmic Horror’. For as humanity would see it, from our ignorant and self-important perspective, it is best these gods are absent and forgotten. Like many Classical characters, the heroes of Lovecraft meet their fates through their curiosity, and even those who survive, such as Dr Willett, gain no recognition — nor do they want any, even more selflessly, given the revelations they have gained about humanity’s place in the universe.
Of course, there are many more Classical allusions that can be explored, but these are the ones that I found most striking at an initial reading, and would recommend these works to others with similar interests, albeit at their own discretion.
Bibliography
Herodotus, The Histories, trans. A. Selincourt, The Histories (Penguin, 1954).
Homer, Odyssey, trans. A. T. Murray and G. E. Dimock, Odyssey: Books 1–12 (Harvard, 1998).
H. P. Lovecraft, ed. S. T. Joshi, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (Penguin, 1999).
H. P. Lovecraft, ed. S. T. Joshi, The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories (Penguin, 2005).
H. P. Lovecraft, ed. S. T. Joshi, The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories (Penguin, 2001).
W. Taylour, The Mycenaeans (London, 1964).
All photographs the author’s own, edited by Toby Osmond.
A fun summary of The Shadow Over Innsmouth: https://youtu.be/3tTHn2tHhcI.
