Did Howard Lovecraft have a tattoo? Howard Lovecraft and his monsters (41 photos)

IN ancient mythology the same image can have two diametrically opposite meanings. The Cthulhu tattoo just refers to one of them and causes a lot of controversy among people of different faiths. Which symbolic meaning hides behind the image of a legendary character, who would suit such a tattoo?

Who is Cthulhu

Cthulhu is a mythical deity who is depicted as a monstrous octopus. The first mention of him dates back to 1928, when Howard Lovecraft wrote the story "The Call of Cthulhu" about the ruler of the worlds, sleeping at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. According to the story, a monster with a humanoid body, scales and wings lives on top of the underwater city of R'lyeh. Being under the water column, Cthulhu is half asleep and in a calm state. However, as soon as the stars are arranged in a certain order, the city turns out to be above the sea, and a terrible monster as tall as high mountain. It oozes mucus and makes a squelching sound as it moves. It is believed that at the moment when Cthulhu is free, the end of color will come.

Its notable feature is the ability to influence the minds of people. The deity appears in dreams, and a particularly sensitive person who sees similar dream can go crazy. It is noteworthy that the Eskimos of Greenland and the inhabitants of some American states had a special cult of worship of a monstrous idol. The northern peoples arranged human sacrifices, fell into a trance and read a mantra, asking for help and protection from Cthulhu. Their deity symbolized wisdom and immortality, and also served as a powerful amulet.

Who will suit the tattoo

The meaning of the Cthulhu tattoo in modern body painting is very controversial. It all depends on the person himself and the meaning that he puts into this difficult image. On the one hand, the owner of the drawing can be hypocritical and cruel, capable of anything to achieve his goal. You should be careful with such people.

On the other hand, Cthulhu is associated with wisdom as it has a large brain. Calmness, constancy and goodwill may be inherent in the owner of such an image. Nothing can unbalance him or take him by surprise. Another meaning is a person’s passion for mythology or marine themes.

The drawing is suitable not only for men, but also for women who are used to shocking their surroundings.

Execution technique

And yet, Cthulhu tattoos are usually chosen by the representatives of the stronger sex because of the gloom and aggressiveness of the pattern. For those who are not afraid to shock others, the realism style is suitable. A distinct and rich image of an octopus with human body will not leave anyone indifferent. The composition of the tattoo can be supplemented with waves, rocks, a ship or other marine elements. Story line complete the work and fill special meaning. This tattoo is best done in big size. For the place of application, the arm, leg, back or chest for men are suitable.

Haida style is an original solution for those who appreciate simplicity and conciseness. Sketches are made in red and black, with thematic ornaments and patterns. The technique is distinguished by the presence of neat, clear lines, geometric shapes, symmetry. Such a tattoo can serve as an amulet if the tattoo is on closed areas of the body: on the back, shoulder blade or thigh. The same applies to the tribal style. The drawing of the deity Cthulhu with graceful ethnic elements will look beautiful as a tattoo sleeve.

How to draw Cthulhu

Photos of tattoos

A selection of sketches

To the question of well-read people! Who was Howard Lovecraft? Psycho or healthy? given by the author European the best answer is My guess is that if you told Howard Lovecraft that he was a psycho, he would take it (to some extent) as a compliment. 🙂
My world would not be complete without his works.

Answer from 22 answers[guru]

Hey! Here is a selection of topics with answers to your question: Well-read people! Who was Howard Lovecraft? Psycho or healthy?

Answer from Bloodsucking[guru]
Howard Phillips Lovecraft - American writer and a poet who wrote in the genres of American Gothic novel, horror and mysticism.
Biography:
Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. He was the only child of the traveling salesman Wilfrid Scott Lovecraft and Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft. His ancestors are known to have lived in America since the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630). When Howard was three, Wilfrid was placed in mental asylum where he stayed for five years until his death on June 19, 1898.
At the age of 6-8 years, Lovecraft wrote several stories, most of which have not survived to this day. At the age of 14, Lovecraft wrote his first serious work, The Beast in the Cave.
As a child, Lovecraft was often sick, and did not go to school until the age of eight, but a year later he was taken away from there. He read a lot, studied chemistry between times, wrote several works (multiplied them on a hectograph in a small edition), starting in 1899 ("Scientific newspaper"). Four years later he returned to school.
Whipple Van Buren Phillips died in 1904, after which the family became very impoverished and had to move to a smaller house on the same street. Howard was saddened by the departure, and he even considered suicide. Due to a nervous breakdown that happened to him in 1908, he never finished school, which made him very ashamed and sad.
Lovecraft wrote fantasy as a child (The Beast in the Cave (1905), The Alchemist (1908)), but later preferred poetry and essays to it. He returned to this "frivolous" genre only in 1917 with the stories "Dagon", then "The Tomb". Dagon was his first published creation, appearing in 1923 in the magazine Weird Tales. At the same time, Lovecraft began his correspondence, which eventually became one of the most voluminous in the 20th century. Among his correspondents were Forrest Ackerman, Robert Bloch and Robert Howard.
Sarah, Howard's mother, after a long hysteria and depression, ended up in the same hospital where her husband died, and died there on May 21, 1921. She wrote to her son until her last days.
In 1919-1923 Lovecraft wrote actively - over the years he wrote more than 40 stories - including co-authorship.
Soon at a meeting of amateur journalists, Howard Lovecraft met Sonya Green, who had Ukrainian-Jewish roots and was seven years older than Lovecraft. They married in 1924 and moved to Brooklyn, New York. After the quiet Providence, New York life did not fall in love with Lovecraft. In many ways, his story "He" was autobiographical. A few years later, the couple broke up, although they did not file a divorce. Lovecraft returned to his hometown. Because of the failed marriage, some biographers speculated about his asexuality, but Green, on the contrary, called him "a wonderful lover."
Back in Providence, Lovecraft lived in a "big wooden house Victorian era at 10 Barnes Street until 1933 (this address is the address of Dr. Willet's house in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward). During that period, he wrote almost all of his short stories published in magazines (mostly in Mystery Tales), as well as many major works such as The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and The Ridges of Madness.
Despite his writing successes, Lovecraft was increasingly in need. He moved again, now to a small house. The suicide of Robert Howard made a strong impression on him. In 1936, the writer was diagnosed with bowel cancer, a consequence of malnutrition. Howard Phillips Lovecraft died on March 15, 1937 in Providence, Rhode Island, USA.

What was Howard Lovecraft afraid of?

On a completely unremarkable day on August 20, 1890, on one of the grains of sand in the boundless ocean of the Universe, filled with such terrible secrets that just thinking about them can drive you crazy, from timeless nothingness, the black abyss of true primary darkness, with a primitive wild cry, Something arose that cannot be rationally described. This creature would have many titles to match his deeds, such as "Father of horror stories of ancient monsters", "Master of horror literature of the twentieth century" and even "Grandpa Theobald", but that day he was called Howard.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft turns 126 in 2016. And although his physical shell sleeps in an eternal sleep, like death, his literary heritage still disturbs the imagination of many modern followers of the Cthulhu cult and many other entertaining characters of his mythology, who became widely known in the post-Soviet space thanks to an Internet meme. A whole sub-genre of horror literature is associated with Lovecraft's name - Lovecraftian horror. People, inspired by this writer, to this day write literature, music and make films, although the genre reached its peak in computer games Oh.

If we disassemble Lovecraftian horrors purely in their external form, then we are dealing only with monsters of various shapes, which Lovecraft himself briefly characterizes: “In the darkness, perhaps rational entities lurk and, perhaps, entities are hidden beyond the limits of all understanding. These are not witches or sorcerers, not the ghosts or goblins that once frightened primitive civilization, but infinitely more powerful entities. According to his mythology, the Earth was once ruled by the Great Old Ones, to which the famous Cthulhu belongs, who were defeated by the Old Gods and sealed deep under water in a dream similar to death. Much later, humanity arose and developed on Earth, which does not even know that in fact it is not the owner of this planet, and one day the Ancients will wake up and in the blink of an eye the entire human race will be destroyed or enslaved. Knowledge about these terrible monsters is stored in different books, for example, the Necronomicon, famous thanks to the movie "The Evil Dead". Some especially enterprising people who possess this secret knowledge have already prepared to serve the Ancients, therefore they have founded various cults, sects and circles on which they are engaged in sacrifices in order to awaken their masters as soon as possible. And although not all of Lovecraft's stories are directly inscribed in this mythology, most of them tell about a person's contact with some unimaginably terrible, cosmic and otherworldly creature, which certainly threatens the life of one of the heroes or even all of humanity at once.

Let's take a look at Lovecraft's writing style for which he is so praised. In order for the reader to form an impression of the author's style, consider, for example, a paragraph from his famous "Call of Cthulhu" (The Call of Cthulhu, 1926), in which the climax of the story takes place - the meeting of the sailors with Cthulhu:

“The doorway gaped with darkness that seemed almost material. And indeed, this darkness had a life of its own - in a moment it joyfully rushed out like smoke after centuries of imprisonment, and as it flapped its membranous wings and swam out into the wrinkled distorted sky, the sun began to fade before their eyes. An absolutely unbearable stench rose from the exposed depths, and Hawkins, who had a keen ear, caught a disgusting squelching sound far below. And then, clumsily rumbling and exuding mucus, It appeared before them and began to squeeze its green jelly-like immensity through the black doorway into the poisoned atmosphere of this crazy city ... The creature defied description - for there is no language suitable for conveying such abysses of screaming timeless madness, such a terrible contradiction to all the laws of matter, energy and cosmic order. A striding, or, more precisely, a waddling mountain peak.”

From this fragment you can see the standard Lovecraftian description of the monster. As you can see, he focuses not on the details of the structure of Cthulhu's body or some of his actions, but on the atmosphere of madness and horror in every word that reigns around such a seemingly ordinary action - the awakening of Cthulhu. Sometimes a writer is very fond of his mythology and creates such metaphors that, instead of inspiring awe, will simply cause misunderstanding to the ordinary reader. So, for example, it happens in the story “The Rats in the Walls” (The Rats in the Walls, 1923). The moment is also taken from the climax of the story, in which the hero, traveling through the dungeon of his mansion, hears a sound from a hole in the ground. Here is what the imagination of the protagonist draws:

“Then, from somewhere in this inky, endless depth, came a sound that seemed familiar to me. My black cat rushed there, into the unknown abyss, like a winged Egyptian creature. I did not lag behind either; in a second I heard the terrible sounds with which these devilish rats were making their way to new horrors, preparing to take me to the caves in the very center of the Earth, where the faceless and insane god Nyarlathotep howls in the dark to the incessant music of two bloated idiot flute players.

My flashlight broke, but I kept running. I heard voices, screams and echoes, but all these vile treacherous sounds drowned out. They rose and rose as a stiff, bloated corpse climbs the oily surface of a river that flows under endless onyx bridges to a black, poisoned sea.

In order to understand who Nyarlathotep is, you need to read Lovecraft's story of the same name (Nyarlathotep, 1920). But even from there it will be impossible to understand what this terrible god has to do with “bloated idiot flute players”, if you do not understand that this is a reference to the legend of the “Hameln Pied Piper”, connected by the writer’s imagination with the image of Nikola Tesla.

The reader has long been accustomed to this form, not to mention modern viewers and gamers. Well, who can be seriously scared by telepathic mushrooms from Pluto, an octopus with a dragon's body, or a luminous shapeless alien? Not particularly impressive is the fact that the reader does not often receive direct descriptions of nightmarish creatures, more often limited to sensations of the presence of some Evil. Many authors before him resorted to a similar trick. Then what is the secret of its popularity and relevance so far? Maybe the writer analyzes the human psyche in detail when in contact with the supernatural, revealing real nightmares that lurk in our subconscious? Also past, although his favorite technique is to portray how the characters go crazy. In general, the idea that a person or even human psyche can be the center of a work about the supernatural, causes its neglect.

So why are you trying to scare us, Mr. Lovecraft? “There is more to a true story of the supernatural than a secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheet with rattling chains. There must be a perceptible atmosphere of boundless and inexplicable horror before external and unknown forces in it; there should be a hint in it, expressed in earnest, as befits the subject, to the most terrible thought of man - about the terrible and real suspension or complete stop of the action of those immutable laws of Nature, which are our only defense against chaos and demons of beyond space, ”he answers in his Supernatural Horror in the Literature (1927). Thus, it turns out that it is not the monsters themselves that are terrible, but the very fact of their existence in the world of the 19th-20th centuries, which so zealously clung to rationality and common sense.

But is Lovecraft really opposed to scientific progress and is a conservative who wants to return to the mythological past? No, it's not. Even as a child, he was very interested in various sciences, in many of his stories deep knowledge of certain natural sciences is visible. In addition, he was not an adherent of spiritualism and the occult, fashionable in his time, even considering them an obstacle to the depiction of real horror: for them, the phantom world is an ordinary reality and they treat it without much fear, which is why they do not know how to make such an impression as those who see it as an absolute and terrible threat to the natural order.

Then what is the reason for this mindset of the writer? I really want to delve into the personality and biography of Lovecraft himself. It would seem that the answers lie in plain sight: he lived most of his life in a small town, and his parents died in an insane asylum while Howard was still a child. Some psychoanalyst would definitely diagnose him with a neurosis, a fixation, or something like that. But such an approach will lead nowhere, because without understanding the nature of the era in which he lived and which he portrayed in his works, we will not understand either Lovecraft or his work.

The most significant event of his era was the First World War whose results have changed the face of the world. And although Lovecraft did not take part in it and there are no direct references in his stories, he could not but reflect such a significant event for the whole world with his art. So in the story "Polar Star" (Polaris, 1918), the main character's story is based on the story of how one day, looking at the night sky and the Polar Star, he fell asleep and saw a beautiful city made of marble. Since then, he often visited this city in a dream, turning from a simple observer into a full-fledged citizen, interacting with its inhabitants. Once he was sent to the watch tower as sentries to watch the enemies besieging the city and prevent them from getting into the city. However, once on the tower, the narrator was captivated by the spell of the North Star, which whispered magic words into his ear that lulled vigilance. Unable to resist, he fell asleep, seeing in a dream how the enemy was destroying the city close to him. Waking up, he found himself in his house, but since then he was sure that everything that was happening around him was a dream, and his visions were true. This story is based on Lovecraft's own dream, and critic William Fulwiler wrote that his writing was spurred on by feelings of guilt and worthlessness during the war. The writer denied himself the ability to fight, considering himself weak and incapable of enduring difficulties, and preferred to succumb to contemplative dreams. The same weakness will eventually be carried over into subsequent stories, in which the characters inevitably lose to Evil, or even are not able to show any resistance at all.

If in the “North Star” Lovecraft describes more his own feeling from some distant, but so close to him, war, then in the above-mentioned “Nyarlathotep”, the writer, also inspired by a dream, tries to connect social upheavals and the approaching end of the world:

“ A series of political and social upheavals was accompanied by a strange and painful premonition of a terrible physical danger, a danger on a scale and all-encompassing, such as can only be imagined in the worst nightmares. I remember people walking around with pale and worried faces, whispering warnings and prophecies that no one dared consciously repeat or admit to himself having heard them. A feeling of monstrous guilt hung over the earth, and from the abyss between the stars came cold streams, from which people shivered in dark and deserted places.

Based on the fact that Lovecraft was still not far from the life of society, no matter what image of a reclusive misanthrope he created for himself, one can try to understand whatvalidhorrors were described in his works.

The first thing that catches your eye is the presence of certain forces that exist on the other side of the individual. Naturally, these can only be the forces of nature and society unknown to Lovecraft, which he intertwines together in the form of powerful aliens. So, for example, in the story “Whisperer in the Darkness” (Whisperer in the Darkness, 1930), alien creatures Mi-go are described, which are either insects or mushrooms with telepathic abilities, whose morality is so alien to man that it seems to him absolute evil. It is horrifying here with what simplicity and indifference these forces can control the fate of a person, seeing in him only a means to achieve some of their goals, infinitely unknown and incomprehensible to the latter. While an individual person cannot even try to fight these forces, because he, without knowing it, is already woven into this picture of the universe and occupies an infinitely small place there. This nightmare came from reality, in which an individual person is turned into a cog in a factory, in an army or a state, and these infinitely huge mechanisms can easily exist without this separate and unique element.

The second is the fundamental inexplicability of such a state of affairs by science. Moreover, Lovecraft was well aware that science does not solve the contradictions in society, but only exacerbates them. So, it was the development of science and industry that led to the fact that the First World War was so large-scale and destructive. In addition, when a scientist loses his human and moral character, this leads to the fact that for some of them the use of chemical weapons in war will seem like a curious experiment. Or the well-known struggle of currents between competitors for the electricity market: Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, in which the Edison company in 1903 publicly killed an elephant with alternating current to show its danger. It was not for nothing that the powerful Nyarlathotep conquered the world in Lovecraft, demonstrating his mastery of electricity. The very separation of science into such a separate monstrous force is a fairly common theme among many other writers in this genre. As you can see, this is not a fear of the progress and development of mankind itself, it is an anxiety that this development often has an inhuman form, turning a person into an instrument, not a goal, as already mentioned above.

In addition, Lovecraft saw the limitations of the main scientific method, claiming to be universal, - knowledge with the help of the senses and common sense. True, he expressed this not in coherent philosophical categories, but in demonstrating the power of the human imagination, which sometimes crosses the brink of everyday reality and encounters there something unimaginably terrible, destroying the foundations of the familiar universe. So, for example, it happens in “Call of Cthulhu”, when one of the heroes tried to imagine the scale of the possessions of an ancient monster:

“I assumed that only the very top of the monstrous citadel crowned with a monolith, under which the Great Cthulhu lay, came out on the surface of the water. Thinking about the length of the part that goes deeper, I almost gave vent to thoughts of suicide.

The writer very often uses the words "abyss", "infinity", "cosmos" to describe something that goes beyond common sense. This abyss is very real and corresponds to attempts to imagine something that is beyond our senses. Considering this abyss as the source of those forces unknown to man, his imagination populated it with various monsters.

Despite his insight and rich imagination, Lovecraft did not know how to go beyond common sense without damaging his mind. Therefore, he warned readers that sometimes you just need to give up knowledge and remain in a happy and safe ignorance.

In the 21st century, Lovecraft is still popular and relevant. Unfortunately, sometimes he is referred to only for the external form of those monsters that he describes. These kinds of references, which are used only as a recognizable brand, are often funny and ridiculous. Some writers, such as Stephen King, try to emulate its style, but the emphasis often shifts from the most supernatural to human psychology, something that Lovecraft himself criticized in his study of horror literature. However, computer game developers sometimes very successfully capture the atmosphere of his works and immerse players in his worlds, allowing them to participate in the discovery of the line between the familiar world and cosmic horror. So, for example, in the game Call of Cthulhu:In Dark Corners of the Earth, the first-person player experiences a plot that touches on many of Lovecraft's works, and observes through the eyes of the protagonist how the psyche collapses from the horror experienced.

Howard Lovecraft cannot be called some kind of revolutionary or great writer, because the genre of horror literature itself was a response to the scientific revolution. His work is rather a worried and disturbing statement for arrogant fools who claim to have absolute knowledge of the universe.And as long as mankind will limit the power of its knowledge to the narrow limits of rational thinking, it will be forced to resort to phantasmagoric, terrible and nightmarish images of this writer and publicist, because what kind of monsters does not give rise to sensual, scientific, philosophical and indeed any kind of ignorance.

Even for those who are not familiar with Lovecraft's work, his name is firmly associated with the fantasy genre. Today, August 20, 2015, marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of this mysterious person. In honor of this significant date, we bring to your attention 10 incredible facts from the life of the founder of the beautiful and terrible horror, Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

1. Both mother and father of Lovecraft were placed in the same psychiatric clinic, but separately and at different times.

Wilfrid Scott Lovecraft was sent to the Butler Psychiatric Hospital after being diagnosed with a mental disorder. Howard was three at the time. Five years later, my father was released, but he did not live long. In 1898, when Howard was 8, his father passed away. It was later rumored that Lovecraft's father had syphilis, but neither son nor mother had symptoms.

Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft was admitted to the same Butler Clinic in 1919. She maintained a close relationship with her son for two years until she died from complications during surgery.

Lovecraft at age 8

2. Howard Lovecraft dreamed of becoming a professional astronomer, but never graduated

Due to the fact that Lovecraft was very ill as a child, he rarely appeared at school and mostly studied at home. In those years, he loved astronomy and chemistry, and was also fond of gothic writers such as Edgar Alan Poe. But after a "nervous breakdown", as himself Howard Lovecraft named it, he was never able to get a higher education and he had only a superficial knowledge of his hobbies.

3. Lovecraft rarely went out during the day

Howard Phillips Lovecraft he left the house only after sunset, after which he sat up for a long time studying astronomy, reading and writing his books. He slept throughout the day, developing the pale and haggard look for which he is now known. According to rumors, Lovecraft's mother even called him "ridiculous" in childhood and told him to stay at home, away from human eyes. March 27, 1926 in his letter to L. F. Clark Howard Lovecraft writes: “Basically, I am a hermit who will have very little to do with people, wherever he happens to be. I think that most people only make me nervous, I can perhaps only by chance and extremely rarely meet people who would not get on my nerves ... My life is not among people, but among species - my private attachments are not personal, but topographical and architectural... I will only fall into dogmatism, saying that it should be in New England - in one form or another. Providence is part of me - and I am Providence ... ".

The only photo in which Lovecraft smiles

4. Howard Lovecraft and Harry Houdini were good friends

In 1924, the editor of Weird Tales asked Lovecraft become a literary ghost (ghost writer) in the column of the famous magician Harry Houdini. After he heard from Houdini the apparently "true" story of how the future magician was kidnapped by an Egyptian guide, and he and he unexpectedly stumbled upon a deity inspired by the Great Sphinx, Lovecraft said it was complete nonsense, but nevertheless took the advance and wrote the story. Under the Pyramids was published a year later, to the great delight of Houdini, who collaborated with Lovecraft until his death.

5. Throughout his life, Lovecraft wrote about 100,000 letters.

If this figure is correct, then Lovecraft ranks second, after Voltaire, in the list of the most ardent copyists. Howard Phillips Lovecraft He wrote constantly to his friends, relatives, and enthusiastic aspiring writers, many of whom adopted the themes, style, and even characters from his work. His most frequent correspondence was with fellow writers such as Robert Bloch (author of Psycho), Henry Kuttner (The Dark World), Robert E. Howard (Conan the Barbarian), and the poet Samuel Loveman.

6 Lovecraft Was Asexual

After the writer's death, his wife Sonya told researchers of his work that when they married in 1924, Lovecraft was 34 years old and still a virgin. Rumored to be before their wedding Howard Lovecraft bought various books about sex to surprise his fiancee on their wedding night. Sonya later said that she was the only one who initiated any sex in their lives: “The very mention of the word“ sex ”, I think, upset him. He once stated that if a man cannot marry or is not married during the peak of his sexuality, and in his case it is 19 years old, then marriage ceases to be desirable after thirty. I was shocked by his words, but I didn’t show it.”

Sonya Lovecraft

7 Lovecraft Had Nightmares

But these were not just frightening things, but truly terrible dreams that began to torment him from the age of 6. And these nightmares led to different body movements and screaming, and sometimes long walks in a dream. Myself Howard Lovecraft called the creatures from his dreams "night ghosts". Later, these creatures appeared in his various works in the form of thin, black and faceless humanoids that lure victims into their submission. This illness of Lovecraft grew into his magically nightmarish prose. But precisely literary work Lovecraft's illness was later signed, not allowing him to rest. In 1918, in one of his letters, he said: “Do you understand that for many people it is a huge and profound difference whether things around them are really what they seem? If the TRUTH is nothing, then we must consider our nightly fantasies as the same reality.

8. It was Lovecraft who caused the appearance of Batman, the Black Sabbath group, the South Park series and much more.

Or at least Batman City. The superhero sends the criminals he catches to the Arkham Mental Hospital. This is the name Lovecraft uses for fictional cities in his stories. Most famous hero Lovecraft, Cthulhu, appears in one of the episodes of "South Park" and kills Justin Bieber. The album of the Black Sabbath group is named after one of the writer's stories - "Beyond the Wall of Sleep". The Book of the Dead, found in a cabin in Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead, is superficially based on Lovecraft's fictional Necronomicon. Although today the Necronomicon can be found in any bookstore, without fear of sending a zombie apocalypse.

Shot from the series "South Park"

9 Lovecraft's Body Isn't Actually In His Grave

Lovecraft died in 1937 from rectal cancer. In keeping with his lifelong passion for science, he kept a detailed diary of his ultimately deadly disease. After his death, he was buried in Swan Point Cemetery under his family's family headstone. But to the fans Lovecraft this was not enough: in 1977 they erected a separate headstone for him. And in 1997, one of the most ardent fans tried to dig up the corpse of the writer from under this new tombstone, but after digging 3 meters and not finding anything, he left this idea.

10. Cthulhu is actually the correct pronunciation of "khlul-hlu"

In 1934, in his letter to the aspiring writer Duane W. Rimmel Lovecraft explained how to correctly pronounce the name of his monster: “... the word allegedly represents a clumsy human attempt to convey the phonetics of an absolutely inhuman word. The name of the infernal creature was invented by creatures whose vocal organs were not like human ones - thus, it has no connection with the human speech device. Syllables are defined by a physiological device quite different from ours, and thus cannot be accurately reproduced by the human throat ... The real sound - as far as the human organs of speech can imitate it or human letters convey - can be taken as something like Khlul "-khlu where the first syllable is pronounced guttural and very low. "U" is something like in full; and the first syllable sounds the same as klul; thus, "h" represents a laryngeal seal."

Fantasy, mysticism and horror intertwined in creativity Lovecraft into one amazing whole. He managed to replicate an entire horror empire whose stories and characters have become so iconic that they are known, inspired and used in his work. Created Howard Lovecraft the world has become the basis for many other stories, films, and video games.

The American prose writer, poet and publicist Howard Phillips Lovecraftt (1890-1937) left his vivid and unforgettable mark on the literature of horror, mysticism and fantasy. During the life of Lovecraft himself, as is often the case, his works were not known, but later they had a noticeable influence on the formation of modern " mass culture". He, among other things, is the founder of the cosmological "mythology of Cthulhu" - a special subcultural phenomenon that has given many followers and imitators in literature, cinema, rock music, desktop and computer toys, etc. (For example, one of the popular stories of the famous Stephen King - "Crouch End" - contains direct borrowings from Lovecraft). The work of Howard Lovecraft is so original that other literary critics often distinguish his works into a separate separate subgenre - the so-called "Lovecraftian horrors". In addition, he, along with his good friend Robert Howard, is considered one of the founders of such a fashionable direction of "popular art" as fantasy.

Sometimes Lovecraft is also called "Edgar Allan Poe of the 20th century." Indeed, in terms of their talent and fame, these two writers are now quite comparable. Of course, the great American predecessor was not without a strong influence on the development of the young talent and the work of the mature Lovecraft (contemporaries first mistook his story “Alien” for an unknown lost work by Edgar Allan Poe, accidentally discovered already in the next century after his death).

However, in our days, much more chilling horror in the Western reader of Lovecraft can not be caused by the most sophisticated flights of his dark and bizarre fantasy, but by many “politically incorrect” descriptions and “xenophobic” statements that the writer once had the imprudence to allow in a number of his works. Such researchers of his work as Michel Houellebecq in his book “G. F. Lovecraft. Against humanity, against progress”, creators and participants documentary film"Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown" (directed by Frank Woodward, 2008) is downright scattered in apologies and excuses about this.

In fairness, we must immediately make a reservation that Howard Lovecraft was a racist and chauvinist to a slightly greater extent than the vast majority of citizens Western countries in that "barbarian era" in which he had to live. Actually, his views themselves were not something frozen and unchanged, but were “corrected” by lived experience.

While the writer led the life of a quiet recluse in his small homeland in the city of Providence, Rhode Island, he, probably, as any self-respecting Yankee should have been a hundred years ago, treated everyone who was not himself a wasp, with a kind of easy condescending arrogance but without any serious hostility. However, having got to New York for family reasons, on the streets of Brooklyn, literally teeming with "colored" and migrants of all kinds, Lovecraft, as they say, felt all the inconveniences and dangers of such a neighborhood in his own skin.

In addition, being himself “economically unsuccessful”, “uncompetitive” in his life, as theorists and advocates of a market economy like to say now, undergoing endless ordeals in a foreign and hostile metropolis in search of at least some job and a piece of bread, he, too, time I saw with my own eyes how well adapted to the same conditions and even "successful" many of the "strangers" become. Which, in turn, could not but affect, ultimately, his work.

The motives for such “racial hostility” were especially clearly and vividly manifested in Lovecraft, perhaps in his famous work as "A Nightmare in Red Hook".

“From here, from this morally and physically decaying cesspool, the most sophisticated curses in more than a hundred different languages and dialects rush to the sky. Scolding in every way and bawling dirty couplets, crowds of suspicious-looking tramps roam the streets, and as soon as a passer-by who accidentally wanders here glances at the windows of houses, the lights go out and the swarthy faces seen behind the glasses, marked with the seal of vice, hastily disappear ... in its diversity, the composition of crimes here is not inferior to the ethnos.

Etc. That's it - neither more nor less. Similar, at first glance, rather neutral verbal passages can now shock someone from childhood well-bred in the spirit of tolerance, multiculturalism and tolerance. However, the famous detective Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians" also had difficulties at the time due to its "inconvenient" title. However, Lovecraft, as befits a "true racist", expressed with his pen not so much any significant hostility towards "non-white" races, but rather his negative attitude towards the "products" of racial mixing.

Of course, such a refined intellectual as Lovecraft would not be himself if he were just some ordinary and rude everyday xenophobe.

From 1915 to 1923, Lovecraft published his socio-political magazine The Conservative (13 issues managed to see the light), which on its pages defended, above all, high cultural standards, “moderate, healthy militarism” (“Protection of one’s own land and existence race is the only justified goal of armament”), “pan-Saxonism” (fraternal unity and dominance of the Anglo-Saxons on the entire planet), etc. etc.

Like a large number of cultural and artistic figures, Lovecraft, to put it mildly, disliked capitalism for its greed and lack of spirituality. But, at the same time, he was very wary and even hostile to the appearance of young Soviet Russia on the world map, since he saw in socialism exactly the same economic determinism and vulgar materialism “mirrored” from capitalism, and the practical embodiment of Marxism - Bolshevism - it, as and many, simply frightened.

And here a direct analogy arises with the creator of Sherlock Holmes - Conan Doyle, the second part of the "Maracot Abyss" of which is "Lord dark side”- was never published in the USSR, not only because of its “anti-scientific” mystical content, but also because of the obvious anti-Soviet attacks encountered in it.

And yet, perhaps even greater hostility than to the "communist threat", the priest of the "original gods" had for "bourgeois democracy". This is not surprising, if we remember with what irony and squeamishness his famous fellow countrymen and fellow writers treated “democracy” in the American way: the same Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Jack London. But Lovecraft was perhaps even more categorical: "democracy is a false god - just a buzzword and an illusion of the lower classes, dreamers and dying civilizations", "the people are usually not smart enough to manage a technological civilization effectively."

Universal suffrage "is only a reason for uncontrollable laughter", as it provides an opportunity for "public politicians" who pursue personal or clan "hidden interests" to go to power only on the basis of possession of a "suspended tongue" and juggling "populist slogans".

Lovecraft treated the struggle for world peace as nothing more than “idealistic chatter”, considered internationalism “a delusion and a myth”, and called the League of Nations (the prototype of the current UN) nothing more than a “comic opera”.

Lovecraft, of course, was not the only one who explained slowly but surely the decline and degradation of the present world, already starting in that era, by the dominance of “low cultural standards of the underdeveloped majority. Such a civilization of meaningless work, consumption, reproduction and burning life is not worthy of existence. Of course, as you yourself have probably guessed, Lovecraft was strongly influenced by the well-known ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche and Oswald Spengler.

But how did Lovecraft imagine an alternative version of social organization? He had an answer to this question.

The writer, with bright strokes, prophetically painted his own version of the social and economic order “which, while helping the dangerous masses at the expense of the overly rich, nevertheless preserves the foundations of traditional civilization and puts political power in the hands of a small and developed (but not too rich) ruling class, mostly hereditary, but subject to gradual increase at the expense of other individuals who have reached their cultural level.

Although Lovecraft rejected egalitarianism, he was not a supporter of authoritarian methods of government either. He dreamed of self-improvement, intellectual and spiritual growth of as many people as possible. Lovecraft considered the then accepted division of society into classes as "erroneous", regardless of whether it comes "from below" or "from above": "Classes must be eliminated or their influence minimized." He relied on "natural aristocrats" who come forward from all strata and groups of society, regardless of their origin and financial situation. Such views, in essence, strongly coincided with the "ethical socialism" of Hendrik de Man, Marcel Deha and some other thinkers of that time.

To guarantee such a reasonable and just social order, according to Lovecraft, a new special “type of imperious social and political management, which fills life with meaning” will have to be called upon. And the constant self-improvement of its citizens will be achieved due to the fact that their way of life "will be much more cultured than those fools who go to the movies, to dances and to the pool."

Another evidence of Lovecraft's "obscurantism" now could well be considered his anti-Semitism. Once in New York, he quickly concluded that this city was "completely Semitized" and had lost its original "national structure." Jewish influence on the economic and cultural life created a special environment here, "completely alien to the strong American worldview." However, such a position of Lovecraft, again, did not go far beyond the scope of that era. For he saw the Jewish question, rather, as a problem of the clash of "opposing cultural traditions."

And finally, the "pro-fascist" views of Howrad Lovecraft did not at all prevent him from marrying a Jewish woman from the former Russian Empire(current Chernihiv region of independent Ukraine) Sonia Gray. However, it is difficult to call this marriage long and happy. Gray was mistaken in believing that she was marrying "a promising young writer." After just a year and a half, the newlyweds already lived in different cities and states. And in 1929 they divorced at all (at the request of Green). Sonya then happily married again (for the third time in her life) and lived in California until 1972.

But Lovecraft himself left this world too early: if he had lasted another couple of decades, he could have achieved literary recognition and prosperity during his lifetime. And now we remember Lovecraft in the first place, as the creator of his own incredible and frightening otherworldly universe.

I bring to the attention of those who have not yet discovered the creative heritage of Howard Lovecraft, a short list of his most significant works (it does not include works written in co-authorship or completed after the death of the writer).

Dagon (1917)