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Spectres of Darwin: HP Lovecraft's Nihilistic Parody

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Spectres of Darwin: HP Lovecraft's Nihilistic Parody spectres of Darwin: H. P. Lovecraft's Nihilistic parody of Religion by Dustin Geeraert A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Manitoba in paftial fulfilment of the requirenrents of the degree of Master of Arts Deparlment of English, Film and Theatre University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada Copyright @ 2010 by Dustin Geeraed THE UI..{IVERSITY OF MAI\ITOBA FACTiLTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES COPYIìIGHT PERMISSION Spectres of Darwin: H. P. Lovecraft's Nihilistic parody of Religion By Dustin Geeraert A Thesis/Pl'acticr¡m subrnittecl to thc Faculty of Gr¿rtluate Studies of The flniversity of M¿rnitob¿r in ¡rarti:rl fìrlfillment of thc rcquircment of thc degl.ec of Master of Arts Drrstin GceraertO20l0 Pel'lrlissiotl h¿rs beetr granted to the University of M¿rnitob¿r Libr.¿rries to lenrl ¿ì cop¡, gf'this thesis/¡rracticurn, to Librarr'¿rnd Archives can¿rda (LAC) to leud ¿ì cop]¡ of.this thesis/¡rracticurn, ¿rntl to LAC's:rgcnt (UMI/ProQrrest) to microfilm, sellcopies ¿rnrl to ¡rublish ¿rn abstract of'this thesis/¡rracticu m. This re¡rrotluction or copy of this thesis h¿rs been m¿rtlc ¿rvailable b5, iruthorit5, of the copl,right or\/net'solell' for the purpose of ¡rrir,:rte stutll'antl research, ¿ìn(l rn¿ìr,onlv bc repro{uccrt :iria copied as ¡rermitted by copyright l:rrvs or n'ith express u'ritten authorization fì-om ffic co¡ryright o¡,ner. Contents Introduction..... ...........3 Chapter 1: Lovecraft's Nietzscheanism and Nihilism..... .....18 Chapter 2: Sanity, Superstition, and the Supernatural. ..........37 Chapter 3: His Kingdom Come. ........62 Conclusion .....89 Bibliography.......... ..............99 Introduction Thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions. (Job 7:14) The posthumous critical re,ception of the porks of H. P. Lovecraft has been tter part of a ceítury, conservatiiä academics ignored Lovecraft, or at best worried (perhaps understandably so) that to admit a writer like Lovecraft into the Western literary canon would be té admi f a barrage of inferior genre-writers, with the result that the distinction between Shakespeare and the latest best.selling hack would be unjustifiably (and indeed ridiculously) obscured. Lovecraft's extra-academic success has in a very real sense sown the seeds of his critical neglect. Yet literary critics ignored Lovecraft at their own peril, paving the way by their silence for what can only described as a critical coup by leading Lovecraft authority S. T. Joshi, who has over the course of the last quarter-century brought Lovecraft into the limelight of critical respectability. Joshi's impressive career as a freelance literary critic, scholar and editor makes the one- time critical vacuum surrounding the works of Lovecraft all the more surprising. Joshi's 1997 biography, H. P. Loveuaft; A Life, was praised by Joyce Carol Oates and Harold Bloom, and Joshi issued the first Penguin Classics edition of Lovecraft's work two years later. Subsequently comparisons have been made between Lovecraft and more canonically accepted authors (most obviously Poe, the great American influence on Lovecraft, but also Kafka and Conrad), while the very existence of Jorge Luis Borges' Lovecraft-tribute tale, "There Are More Things," attests to the appreciation of Lovecraft by a modern author whose critical estimation could hardly be higher. The controversial French novelist Michel Houllebecq recently had'a book entirely on the subject of Lovecraft translated (H P Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, 2005). These developments make it clear that one need not be an uncritical populist (such as Colin Wilson, one of the earliest critics to treat Lovecraft seriously, was supposed to be) in order to assess Lovecraft's works. One can maintain the traditional notion of an intellectual-literary hierarchy (a notion Lovecraft defended all his life) and still appreciate Lovecraft's stories; one need not privilege popular culture over literary tradition as a suitable matter for critical examination in order to advocate the study of Lovecraft. In 4 short, it ought to be clear by now that it is a legitimate project to approach the works of H. P. Lovecraft as literature. Lovecraft is indeed receiving attention, but this is not merely because of the critical liberation of his works. Lovecraft's unique vision of existential horror speaks directly to the current western intellectual situation, particularly the popular conflict between certain versions of monotheistic religion and the scientific concept of evolution playing out in America and elsewhere. Without Darwin's concept of evolution, Lovecraft's fiction would be thematically unrecognizable; his obsessive fears of human degeneration or reverse-evolution (seen in 1923's "The Rats in the Walls"), subhuman biological beings nevertheless stronger than humanity (in l9I7's "Dagon") and the influence of the latter over the former (in 1931's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth") all stem from his interpretation of Darwin. When Darwin finally unveiled his discoveries in On the Origin of Species in 1859, he became the reluctant initiator of what may fairly be termed a colossal revolution in human thought.l Kenneth C. Waters, for example, writes that "the Origin elicited a more dramatic shift of thought than that brought about by any scientific treatise of the Victorian or perhaps any era" (117). In the f,rrst part of On the Origin of Species, Darwin argued for natural selection by analogy with artificial selection, an uncontested phenomenon which has led to the rise of all domestic species. According to Darwin, natural selection reflected the fact that nature allowed for different rates of reproduction between differing organisms, just as humans did when breeding animals. The environment exerted pressure on populations, thus resulting in the selection of the best- adapted to current conditions (Hodge 62). This would influence the population, as unsuccessful organisms died without leaving offspring, and successful organisms reproduced more often, leaving more descendants. Prior to Darwin, most biologists felt that adaptation within species had fixed limits (Waters 117), but Darwin proposed that adaptation itself produced species, and that all species could be traced back through time to a single ancestor (Hodge and Radick 3). I In support of the strong wording of this description I cite reti¡ed Oxford biologist and public intellectual Richard Dawkins, a contributing expeft to the modern understanding of evolution as well as an expert on Darwin himself. Darwin later explored the biological basis of human traits in The Descent of Man (1871), in which he showed that three of those things which humans take for evidence of a "divine spark" in humanity - the intellect (Richards 107), the emotions (111), and morality (99) - are derived from evolutionary development. Darwin also explained the human sense of beauty in these terms with the theory of sexual selection, showing that human beauty served no purpose in itself but was instead related to mate-attraction, like the peacock's tail (Endersby 69). He gave the example of early human tribes in which the most vigorous men would become chiefs and choose the women they considered most beautiful (Endersby 84). The offspring inherited their parents' biological template for beauty as well as their "beautiful" attributes. Many persons during Darwin's time found this "scientific reduction" of prized human qualities emotionally unacceptable. This is directly relevant to a reading of Lovecraft because he too finds evolution disturbing, both physically (in what he sees as its unveiling of the possibility of human degeneration) and metaphysically (in what he takes to be its implication of materialism, specifically scientific reductionism). These two terms require fuither explanation before moving on to further analysis. Joshi describes Lovecraft's materialism as a lifelong adherence to three principles laid out by Hugh Eliot in Modern Science and Materialism (1919), which Joshi paraphrases as follows: 1). The uniformity of law. 2). The denial of teleology. 3). The denial ofany form ofexistence other than those envisaged by physics and chemistry, that is to say, other existences that have some kind of palpable material characteristics and quantities. ("Decline" 7) Joshi adds that Lovecraft felt "that even the revolutionary findings of relativity and quantum theory did not upset them in essence" (7).2 This leads directly into the issue of scientific reductionism, which is largely the assertion that as inquiry into a given area increases in sophistication, power, and accuracy, explanations become increasingly reliant on "lower" phenomenon: psychology relies on biology, biology relies on chemistry, chemistry relies on physics, and so forth. This notoriously leaves no room for 2 Joshi adds immediately after this passage, "Insofar as a definitive judgment can be passed on the matter, it can be said that Lovecraft is right." Harris, Dawkins and Dennett, listed in the bibliography, would agree. vitalistic conceptions of human life, and it has lead many intellectuals (including most of the Spiritual Reactionaries, but being by no means limited to them) to reject scientific reductionism as a deterministic, mechanistic, and even nihilistic enterprise. In "Darwinian Concepts in the Philosophy of Mind," Kim Sterneley summarizes scientific reductionism (and its psychologically unsettling impiications) thus: Human beings are part of nature. We are primates, mammals, animals. Animals, in turn, are nothing but very
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