Quotes About Cosmic Horror

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

—H. P. Lovecraft, ”The Call of Cthulhu”

Characteristics of Cosmic Horror

An Atmosphere of Dread

HPL: Summary of Cosmic Horror

A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain—a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.

—Supernatural Horror in Literature

Atmosphere is the all-important thing, for the final criterion of authenticity is not the dovetailing of a plot but the creation of a given sensation.

—Supernatural Horror in Literature

The one test of the really weird is simply this—whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe’s utmost rim.

—Supernatural Horror in Literature

My reason for writing stories is to give myself the satisfaction of visualising more clearly and detailedly and stably the vague, elusive, fragmentary impressions of wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy which are conveyed to me by certain sights (scenic, architectural, atmospheric, etc.), ideas, occurrences, and images encountered in art and literature. I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination best—one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve, momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which for ever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis. These stories frequently emphasise the element of horror because fear is our deepest and strongest emotion, and the one which best lends itself to the creation of nature-defying illusions. Horror and the unknown or the strange are always closely connected, so that it is hard to create a convincing picture of shattered natural law or cosmic alienage or “outsideness” without laying stress on the emotion of fear.

—“Notes on Writing Weird Fiction“ (1937)

Human Insignificance

How Race Plays into HPL’s Cosmic Horror

“And one of the reasons why Lovecraft thought that Cthulhu and the other Elder Gods were horrific is because they see the entire human race, regardless of color, as being unworthy of existence. And that idea terrified Lovecraft, even though it was a fantasy he had made up.”

—Eric Molinsky (possibly summarizing part of his interview with Dr. Kinitra Brooks) for the Imaginary Worlds podcast episode “Inverting Lovecraft,” released July 23, 2020

The Fear of Irrelevance Stops Resonating After a While

“Much of the world—I would say, certainly, most women, many people of color…in the United States—the concept that you are not that important, that you are not central to the conversation that the culture is having, is a given. It’s a given. And so the concept that I would be terrified that I was insignificant is almost laughable to me as a grown-up. Because, to my mind, the sort of narrative that I feel like I live, you know, a good part of the day, is that the world is actively hostile to me. That it finds me a bother. That it wishes I wasn’t there, at least in spaces that are not black or brown. And that’s very different from what Lovecraft is getting across.”

—Victor LaValle, interview with Eric Molinsky for the Imaginary Worlds podcast episode “Inverting Lovecraft,” released July 23, 2020

Human Insignificance Need Not Lead to Despair

Lovecraftian horror has been codefied [sic] by, perhaps, too-strict fans of Howard Phillip’s work to create a rather bleak universe which can only end in the destruction of its protagonists.

The horror of H.P. Lovecraft’s writings is in the universe’s uncaring and pitiless nature. Gods and meaning may exist but only for beings decidedly alien to humanity. Religion is a force for madness and destruction. Science and reason can do nothing more than reveal mankind’s pointlessness before bringing down destruction on its users.

[…]

The thing is, H.P. Lovecraft‘s ideas are dissonant with many real-life interpretations of the world. Robert E. Howard was, despite being his contemporary and pen-pal, arguably the first Post-Lovecraftian author as his stories presented a horrific universe every bit as pitiless as H. P. Lovecraft‘s own. Few people remember the Hyborian Age and all of its civilizations are destined to be swallowed up as the even more ancient ones preceding it. This isn‘t even including the many monsters and terrors Conan the Barbarian fought.

Unlike Brian Lumley or August Derleth, Robert E. Howard didn‘t place “good” Elder Gods to oppose the Great Old Ones in his universe—he simply changed the perspective of his protagonist.… Faced with a cold, uncaring, and pitiless universe—Conan of Cimmeria carries on.

—C. T. Phipps, “What Is Lovecraftian Fiction?” on The United Federation of Charles, 5 July 2014

The Horrifying Other

Deep Ones and Other Monsters
Much of his writing‘s effectiveness comes from his use of othering to make sure his monsters are repulsive on an instinctual level. The Deep Ones, one of Lovecraft’s most famous monster races, are uncomfortably obvious as a metaphor for the so-called “evils“ (eye-roll) of miscegenation.

[…]

After this episode, I could never treat the Deep Ones and similar creatures quite the same way. In my mind, they may or may not be evil but it seemed disingenuous to critical thinking to assume they were monsters just because they were ugly. Lovecraft, himself, played with this by making Richard Upton Pickman of the Deep One-like ghoul race an ally of his Dream-Quest protagonist Randolph Carter. As a result, whenever I work on the Deep Ones or other Lovecraftian species, I focus less on the horror of their bodies and more on their actions. I also think the occasional subversion is good for the genre of Cthulhu Mythos fiction.

Some may argue this has the potential to diminish the horror of the work. That horror fiction, on some level, depends on ‘othering‘ to make something scary. There might be something to that as Lovecraftian creatures removed of their repulsive qualities become the sort of creatures you’d meet at the Mos Eisley cantina. However, I’m of the mind the mere existence of weird aliens is not enough to cause people to faint away in horror. Likewise, while you may still be a man or woman of faith in the Modern Age, science has revealed a very big universe. The unknown and incomprehensible may terrify some but it fascinates others. As stories like the ones in the Cthulhu Unbound novels illustrate, there‘s nothing wrong with Lovecraft elements outside of horror and weird fiction either.

—C. T. Phipps, “What Is Lovecraftian Fiction?” on The United Federation of Charles, 5 July 2014

Counterpoint to the Above

A lot of the deconstructions people have made regarding the Cthulu Mythos often miss the point of the stories they‘re deconstructing. Like how the author expresses puzzlement at how we just assume the Deep Ones are evil just because they are ugly — that’s a blatant strawman. We know they‘re evil not because of their appearance, but because of how they use unequal power relationships to take over human communities and how they enforced their will on the people of Innsmouth with the help of Obed Marsh, and made the people breed with them against their will. Good grief, man.

—Anonymous, commenting on “What Is Lovecraftian Fiction?” on The United Federation of Charles, 5 July 2014. Comment dated 21 May 2019.

Tangential but Useful Concepts

Memetic Hazards

[Good description of how minds are blasted]

A memetic hazard is defined as information with three main attributes. The first attribute is that it spreads from person to person, whether through personal contact or some form of recording. The second attribute is that this information causes some form of distress, whether as benign as mental stress to the individual or as dangerous as societal dysfunction. The third attribute is that it must cause preoccupation–that is to say, it maintains sufficient presence in the host’s mind that either a significant portion of his attention remains focused on it, or it plays a significant part in his decision-making process.

—Aetheric Research, Ltd., related posts, 26 April 2009.

Linked from this Tim Tyler post, October 2013
See also this academic paper on information hazards

The Weird and the Eerie

What the weird and the eerie have in common is a preoccupation with the strange. The strange—not the horrific. The allure that the weird and the eerie possess is not captured by the idea that we “enjoy what scares us.” It has, rather, to do with a fascination for the outside, for that which lies beyond standard perception, cognition, and experience.