HP Lovecraft, the New Babel and the advent of the New Dark Age

As some "Sunday critics" say, Lovecraft always put before the alleged racial hatred the viscerally felt horror in the first person towards the advent of the modern world, the empire of machines and total depersonalization, in which every individual and his highest visions are swallowed up and inserted in a cosmic framework of universal tragedy, devoid of any higher outlet. And New York was, of course, raised in the image of the New Babel, which engulfs ancient traditions and human differentiations in a continuous, abject ritual of collective depersonalization, standardization and dehumanization.

HP Lovecraft, the New Babel and the witch hunt 2.0

The controversy raised to the Hugo Awards 2020 on the literary and "ideological" legacy of HP Lovecraft has reopened the question, which exploded ai World Fantasy Awards 2011, of the alleged racism of the Providence Dreamer, which would make him a problematic author for some. But how much did HPL's "racialist" beliefs really influence the genesis of his work, and especially the drafting of The Horror at Red Hook, your most controversial story, a manifesto of the revulsion felt towards the city of New York?