← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Marcus Porcius Cato
Thread ID: 11477 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2003-12-15
2003-12-15 03:33 | User Profile
I know that I am not the only Lovecraft fan here. His was a talent as unabashedly American as that of Hawthorne and Poe. Which may explain why his legions of whigger fans and especially the Yiddish cowboys who ride herd over them are continually at pains to suppress the brutal candor expressed in his voluminous correspondence on the subject of race. Apparently many Lovecraft fans care as much for his views on the subject as today's 'Lutherans' care for the the Great Reformer's views on the Swindleritzim. Without further ado, I here defer to leading Howard Phillip Lovecraft scholar/authority - oops, I forgot the hideous wog's name:
The other poems written around this time similarly concern themselves with local affairs, and unfortunately their one clear thematic link is racism. "Providence in 2000 A.D." is Lovecraft's first published poem, appearing in the Evening Bulletin for March 4, 1912. It is actually quite funny, although much of the humour would not be very well received today. The parenthetical prose paragraph that prefaces the poem--"(It is announced in the Providence Journal that the Italians desire to alter the name of Atwell's Avenue to 'Columbus Avenue')"--tells the whole story: Lovecraft ridicules the idea that the Italians of the Federal Hill area have any right to change the Yankee-bestowed name of the principal thoroughfare of their own district. (The street was never renamed.) The satire is quite devastating, telling of an Englishman who, in the year 2000, returns to Rhode Island, the land of his forbears, and finds everything foreignised. He disembarks at the port in Narragansett Bay: "I left the ship, and with astonish'd eyes / Survey'd a city fill'd with foreign cries." He finds that Fox Point has been changed by the Portuguese to Sao Miguel's Cape; that the Irish have changed South Main Street to O'Murphy's Avenue; that the Jews have changed Market Square to Goldstein's Court and Turk's Head to Finklestein's Cross-ways. Finally he reaches the Italian district: I next climb'd on a car northwestward bound, And soon 'mid swarthy men myself I found On La Collina Federale's brow, Near Il Passagio di Colombo. He finds that the entire town of Pawtucket has been renamed New Dublin Town, and Woonsocket has become Nouvelle Paris. In Olneyville he has the following experience: "In what was once called 'Olneyville' I saw / A street sign painted: "Wsjzxypq$?&%$ ladislaw." Fleeing in horror back to the wharf, he finds a "shrivell'd form" who declares himself a "monstrous prodigy": "Last of my kind, a lone unhappy man, / My name is Smith! I'm an American!" The fact that the Evening Bulletin published this thing must have meant that others aside from Lovecraft found it funny. At least he does not discriminate against anyone in this poem: all the ethnic minorities of Providence--Italians, Portuguese, Jews, Poles, Irish, French- Canadians--are skewered.
Other poems of this period are much nastier, but were fortunately not published at the time. "New-England Fallen" (April 1912) is a wretched 152-line spasm headed predictably with an epigraph from Juvenal's third satire (on the mongrelisation of Rome) and speaking of some mythical time when hard-working, pious Anglo-Saxon yeomen established the dominant culture of New England-- Oft to the village drove good Farmer John, To stock his larder, and supply his barn. 'Mid shady streets he sought the village store, And hail'd the rustics cluster'd 'round the door. --only to have "foreign boors" infiltrate the society and corrupt it from within: The village rings with ribald foreign cries; Around the wine-shops loaf with bleary eyes A vicious crew, that mock the name of "man", Yet dare to call themselves "American". This is surely close to the nadir of Lovecraft's poetic output--not only for the ignorant racism involved, but for its array of trite, hackneyed imagery and nauseating sentimentality in depicting the blissful life of the stolid yeoman farmer. Perhaps only the notorious "On the Creation of Niggers" (1912) exceeds this specimen in vileness. This is the entire poem: When, long ago, the Gods created Earth, In Jove's fair image Man was shap'd at birth. The beasts for lesser parts were next design'd; Yet were they too remote from humankind. To fill this gap, and join the rest to man, Th' Olympian host conceiv'd a clever plan. A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure, Fill'd it with vice, and call'd the thing a NIGGER. The only thing that can be said for this is that it at least does not, like "De Triumpho Naturae" or "New-England Fallen", hypocritically convey its racism by appealing to the Christian imagery in which Lovecraft did not believe. No publication has been found for this poem, and one can only hope there is none. The text survives, however, in a hectographed copy, which suggests that Lovecraft may at least have passed this poem around to friends or family; it is likely that they approved--or at least did not object--to his sentiments.
"On a New-England Village Seen by Moonlight" is dated to September 7, 1913 on the manuscript; it was not published until 1915. Its introductory paragraph is all one needs to read: "(The peaceful old villages of New England are fast losing their original Yankee inhabitants and their agricultural atmosphere, being now the seats of manufacturing industries peopled by Southern European and Western Asiatic immigrants of low grade.)" This brief poem, in eight quatrains, returns to the theme of "New-England Fallen" but lays somewhat more emphasis on the loss of agriculture and its ways of life and the dominance of machinery than on the incursion of foreigners, although to Lovecraft the two phenomena worked together.
The final component of Lovecraft's political philosophy is racialism. We are past the point of trying (as August Derleth did) to brush this under the rug, but we are, I trust, also moving beyond L. Sprague de Camp's schoolmasterly chiding of Lovecraft for his beliefs without an awareness of their origin and purpose. Indeed, the point at which Lovecraft should rightly be criticized has been misunderstood by many. It is not the mere fact that he expressed obnoxious opinions about blacks, Jews, and just about every other "non-Aryan" race; it is the fact that in this one area of his thought Lovecraft failed to exercise that flexibility of mind that made him come to grips with Einstein and Planck, Eliot and Joyce, FDR and Norman Thomas. In all aspects of his philosophy except this one, Lovecraft was constantly expanding, clarifying, and revising his views to suit the facts of the world; in race alone his attitude remained monolithic. Certainly, his later views are expressed somewhat more rationally (although his comments to J. Vernon Shea in 1933 about the "Jew-York papers" [SL 4.247] do not inspire confidence); but they remained not merely essentially unchanged but -- more seriously -- impervious to evidence to the contrary. For example, the first volume of Toynbee's Study of History (1934) had already shattered the "Aryan supremacy" myth; but Lovecraft paid no attention. To the end of his life he regarded blacks and Australian aborigines as biologically inferior to all other human races, and insisted on an impassable color-line. In regard to other races Lovecraft, while attributing to them no inferiority, simply felt that their intermingling would produce a cultural heterogeneity, with deleterious effects on world culture: No settled & homogeneous nation ought (a) to admit enough of a decidedly alien race-stock to bring about an actual alteration in the dominant ethnic composition, or (b) tolerate the dilution of the culture-stream with emotional & intellectual elements alien to the original cultural impulse. Both of these perils lead to the most undesirable results -- i.e.,the metamorphosis of the population away from the original institutions, & the twisting of the institutions away from the original people.....all these things being aspects of one underlying & disastrous condition -- the destruction of cultural stability, & the creation of a hopeless disparity between a social group & the institutions under which it lives. (SL 4.249) It is as if Lovecraft wished to freeze culture at a certain stage -- the stage at which he knew it and in which he felt comfortable.
All this has been gone into at such length not merely because the subject still appears to embarrass Lovecraft's apologists -- who fail to realize that his attitude was not especially unusual in his time, and at least eventually came into harmony with his general philosophy -- but also because it enters into his fiction in a pervasive way. There can hardly be a doubt that the monsters in "The Lurking Fear" (1922), "The Horror at Red Hook" (1925), and "The Shadow over Innsmouth" (1931) are thinly veiled projections of his racialist fears of an alien overthrow of Nordic culture through excessive immigration and miscegenation. Indeed, when the narrator of the last tale overhears some Innsmouth denizens "exchang[ing] some faint guttural words . . . in a language I could have sworn was not English" (DH, 341), we are evidently to feel not merely a mild disturbance but a sense of cosmic alienage. Certainly Lovecraft's two years in the slums of New York did not help to reform him; nor, apparently, did his marriage to a Jew.
ST Joshi
2003-12-15 03:56 | User Profile
Marcus Porcius Cato
I love this short story!
[QUOTE]The Street by H. P. Lovecraft
Written in 1920
Published in December of 1920 in The Wolverine
The Street
There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be those who say they have not; I dare not say, myself, but I will tell of the Street.
Men of strength and honour fashioned that Street: good valiant men of our blood who had come from the Blessed Isles across the sea. At first it was but a path trodden by bearers of water from the woodland spring to the cluster of houses by the beach. Then, as more men came to the growing cluster of houses and looked about for places to dwell, they built cabins along the north side, cabins of stout oaken logs with masonry on the side toward the forest, for many Indians lurked there with fire-arrows. And in a few years more, men built cabins on the south side of the Street.
Up and down the Street walked grave men in conical hats, who most of the time carried muskets or fowling pieces. And there were also their bonneted wives and sober children. In the evening these men with their wives and children would sit about gigantic hearths and read and speak. Very simple were the things of which they read and spoke, yet things which gave them courage and goodness and helped them by day to subdue the forest and till the fields. And the children would listen and learn of the laws and deeds of old, and of that dear England which they had never seen or could not remember.
There was war, and thereafter no more Indians troubled the Street. The men, busy with labour, waxed prosperous and as happy as they knew how to be. And the children grew up comfortable, and more families came from the Mother Land to dwell on the Street. And the childrenââ¬â¢s children, and the newcomersââ¬â¢ children, grew up. The town was now a city, and one by one the cabins gave place to housesââ¬âsimple, beautiful houses of brick and wood, with stone steps and iron railings and fanlights over the doors. No flimsy creations were these houses, for they were made to serve many a generation. Within there were carven mantels and graceful stairs, and sensible, pleasing furniture, china, and silver, brought from the Mother Land.
So the Street drank in the dreams of a young people and rejoiced as its dwellers became more graceful and happy. Where once had been only strength and honour, taste and learning now abode as well. Books and paintings and music came to the houses, and the young men went to the university which rose above the plain to the north. In the place of conical hats and small-swords, of lace and snowy periwigs, there were cobblestones over which clattered many a blooded horse and rumbled many a gilded coach; and brick sidewalks with horse blocks and hitching-posts.
There were in that Street many trees: elms and oaks and maples of dignity; so that in the summer, the scene was all soft verdure and twittering bird-song. And behind the houses were walled rose-gardens with hedged paths and sundials, where at evening the moon and stars would shine bewitchingly while fragrant blossoms glistened with dew.
So the Street dreamed on, past wars, calamities, and change. Once, most of the young men went away, and some never came back. That was when they furled the old flag and put up a new banner of stripes and stars. But though men talked of great changes, the Street felt them not, for its folk were still the same, speaking of the old familiar things in the old familiar accounts. And the trees still sheltered singing birds, and at evening the moon and stars looked down upon dewy blossoms in the walled rose-gardens.
In time there were no more swords, three-cornered hats, or periwigs in the Street. How strange seemed the inhabitants with their walking-sticks, tall beavers, and cropped heads! New sounds came from the distanceââ¬âfirst strange puffings and shrieks from the river a mile away, and then, many years later, strange puffings and shrieks and rumblings from other directions. The air was not quite so pure as before, but the spirit of the place had not changed. The blood and soul of their ancestors had fashioned the Street. Nor did the spirit change when they tore open the earth to lay down strange pipes, or when they set up tall posts bearing weird wires. There was so much ancient lore in that Street, that the past could not easily be forgotten.
Then came days of evil, when many who had known the Street of old knew it no more, and many knew it who had not known it before, and went away, for their accents were coarse and strident, and their mien and faces unpleasing. Their thoughts, too, fought with the wise, just spirit of the Street, so that the Street pined silently as its houses fell into decay, and its trees died one by one, and its rose-gardens grew rank with weeds and waste. But it felt a stir of pride one day when again marched forth young men, some of whom never came back. These young men were clad in blue.
With the years, worse fortune came to the Street. Its trees were all gone now, and its rose-gardens were displaced by the backs of cheap, ugly new buildings on parallel streets. Yet the houses remained, despite the ravages of the years and the storms and worms, for they had been made to serve many a generation. New kinds of faces appeared in the Street, swarthy, sinister faces with furtive eyes and odd features, whose owners spoke unfamiliar words and placed signs in known and unknown characters upon most of the musty houses. Push-carts crowded the gutters. A sordid, undefinable stench settled over the place, and the ancient spirit slept.
Great excitement once came to the Street. War and revolution were raging across the seas; a dynasty had collapsed, and its degenerate subjects were flocking with dubious intent to the Western Land. Many of these took lodgings in the battered houses that had once known the songs of birds and the scent of roses. Then the Western Land itself awoke and joined the Mother Land in her titanic struggle for civilization. Over the cities once more floated the old flag, companioned by the new flag, and by a plainer, yet glorious tricolour. But not many flags floated over the Street, for therein brooded only fear and hatred and ignorance. Again young men went forth, but not quite as did the young men of those other days. Something was lacking. And the sons of those young men of other days, who did indeed go forth in olive-drab with the true spirit of their ancestors, went from distant places and knew not the Street and its ancient spirit.
Over the seas there was a great victory, and in triumph most of the young men returned. Those who had lacked something lacked it no longer, yet did fear and hatred and ignorance still brood over the Street; for many had stayed behind, and many strangers had come from distance places to the ancient houses. And the young men who had returned dwelt there no longer. Swarthy and sinister were most of the strangers, yet among them one might find a few faces like those who fashioned the Street and moulded its spirit. Like and yet unlike, for there was in the eyes of all a weird, unhealthy glitter as of greed, ambition, vindictiveness, or misguided zeal. Unrest and treason were abroad amongst an evil few who plotted to strike the Western Land its death blow, that they might mount to power over its ruins, even as assassins had mounted in that unhappy, frozen land from whence most of them had come. And the heart of that plotting was in the Street, whose crumbling houses teemed with alien makers of discord and echoed with the plans and speeches of those who yearned for the appointed day of blood, flame and crime.
Of the various odd assemblages in the Street, the Law said much but could prove little. With great diligence did men of hidden badges linger and listen about such places as Petrovitchââ¬â¢s Bakery, the squalid Rifkin School of Modern Economics, the Circle Social Club, and the Liberty Cafe. There congregated sinister men in great numbers, yet always was their speech guarded or in a foreign tongue. And still the old houses stood, with their forgotten lore of nobler, departed centuries; of sturdy Colonial tenants and dewy rose-gardens in the moonlight. Sometimes a lone poet or traveler would come to view them, and would try to picture them in their vanished glory; yet of such travelers and poets there were not many.
The rumour now spread widely that these houses contained the leaders of a vast band of terrorists, who on a designated day were to launch an orgy of slaughter for the extermination of America and of all the fine old traditions which the Street had loved. Handbills and papers fluttered about filthy gutters; handbills and papers printed in many tongues and in many characters, yet all bearing messages of crime and rebellion. In these writings the people were urged to tear down the laws and virtues that our fathers had exalted, to stamp out the soul of the old Americaââ¬âthe soul that was bequeathed through a thousand and a half years of Anglo-Saxon freedom, justice, and moderation. It was said that the swart men who dwelt in the Street and congregated in its rotting edifices were the brains of a hideous revolution, that at their word of command many millions of brainless, besotted beasts would stretch forth their noisome talons from the slums of a thousand cities, burning, slaying, and destroying till the land of our fathers should be no more. All this was said and repeated, and many looked forward in dread to the fourth day of July, about which the strange writings hinted much; yet could nothing be found to place the guilt. None could tell just whose arrest might cut off the damnable plotting at its source. Many times came bands of blue-coated police to search the shaky houses, though at last they ceased to come; for they too had grown tired of law and order, and had abandoned all the city to its fate. Then men in olive-drab came, bearing muskets, till it seemed as if in its sad sleep the Street must have some haunting dreams of those other days, when musketbearing men in conical hats walked along it from the woodland spring to the cluster of houses by the beach. Yet could no act be performed to check the impending cataclysm, for the swart, sinister men were old in cunning.
So the Street slept uneasily on, till one night there gathered in Petrovitchââ¬â¢s Bakery, and the Rifkin School of Modern Economics, and the Circle Social Club, and Liberty Cafe, and in other places as well, vast hordes of men whose eyes were big with horrible triumph and expectation. Over hidden wires strange messages traveled, and much was said of still stranger messages yet to travel; but most of this was not guessed till afterward, when the Western Land was safe from the peril. The men in olive-drab could not tell what was happening, or what they ought to do; for the swart, sinister men were skilled in subtlety and concealment.
And yet the men in olive-drab will always remember that night, and will speak of the Street as they tell of it to their grandchildren; for many of them were sent there toward morning on a mission unlike that which they had expected. It was known that this nest of anarchy was old, and that the houses were tottering from the ravages of the years and the storms and worms; yet was the happening of that summer night a surprise because of its very queer uniformity. It was, indeed, an exceedingly singular happening, though after all, a simple one. For without warning, in one of the small hours beyond midnight, all the ravages of the years and the storms and the worms came to a tremendous climax; and after the crash there was nothing left standing in the Street save two ancient chimneys and part of a stout brick wall. Nor did anything that had been alive come alive from the ruins. A poet and a traveler, who came with the mighty crowd that sought the scene, tell odd stories. The poet says that all through the hours before dawn he beheld sordid ruins indistinctly in the glare of the arc-lights; that there loomed above the wreckage another picture wherein he could describe moonlight and fair houses and elms and oaks and maples of dignity. And the traveler declares that instead of the placeââ¬â¢s wonted stench there lingered a delicate fragrance as of roses in full bloom. But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travelers notoriously false?
There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be those who say they have not; I dare not say, myself, but I have told you of the Street.
url: [url]http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thestreet.htm[/url][/QUOTE]
2003-12-15 04:48 | User Profile
I'm another big-time Lovecraft fan. What a brilliant imagination that guy had.
I had heard of H.P. Lovecraft way back when I was only nine or ten years old -- there was a reference to him on an Iron Maiden poster I had on my bedroom wall -- but I never really got around to reading him until fairly recently. Nevertheless, he has quickly become my favorite fiction writer.
As for his views on race, he was basically just like most other whites of his time: unblinded by the political correctness that now permeates society. Those were the good ol' days for sure.
I know that I am not the only Lovecraft fan here. His was a talent as unabashedly American as that of Hawthorne and Poe. Which may explain why his legions of whigger fans and especially the Yiddish cowboys who ride herd over them are continually at pains to suppress the brutal candor expressed in his voluminous correspondence on the subject of race. Lovecraft has whigger fans?! That's a shock -- especially since most whiggers can't read much better than the congoids they emulate. Still, I wonder how the whiggers got into Lovecraft. Maybe one of those retarded new "rap-metal" bands decided to write a song based on one of HPL's short stories after hearing a real metal band do the same. For example, way back when Metallica actually played metal they took some inspiration from HPL ("The Thing That Should Not Be" from Master Of Puppets comes to mind).