Howard Phillips Lovecraft and John Ronald Reuel Tolkien are both sons and active protagonists of the XNUMXth century. It is possible to read their work and activities as an expression of the aspirations, emotional needs, but also of the fears and tensions of the man of the twentieth century, as well as establish, rightly, connections between them and the movements of twentieth-century irrationalism which, on several levels , characterize the escape from the reality of the last century: from pseudoscience to anthroposophy, from esotericism to the revival of the myths of civilizations lost and submerged by the Sea, in the times of Atlantis and Lemuria.
di Nicholas May
The twentieth century. Fantasy and science fiction in the century of irrationalism
Before outlining the figure of these two giants of contemporary fantasy and fantastic fiction, and proposing a comparison - keeping in mind, right now, how both writers undertake very different careers and paths of life and training, in some ways totally opposite , if not antithetical - a fundamental emphasis must be placed on the historical / cultural context of which both Tolkien and Lovecraft are both sons and active protagonists. And it is the '900, in fact, to represent the common thread and the lowest common denominator that binds ours. The "Short century" is the age ofIrrationalismand escape from reality, totalitarianism which aim to change it status, the profound nature of the world and of man, through the implementation of authoritarian, personalistic, violent, repressive ideologies.
But it is also the century of the fantastic narrative, of horror and mystery novels, of epic fantasy and tales of "sword and sorcery"; all literary genres which, to varying degrees, reflect the anxieties and anxieties ofmodern man, projected, with no way out or choice, in the new century, in a different world, in evolution, and in a vortex of epochal, historical, political, economic changes, which it is not always able to understand or support. The West of the early twentieth century appears, for example, as a world illuminated by the dream of continuous technological progress, by a mirage of prosperity and well-being, which soon turned into the nightmare of trenches, warplanes, nuclear explosions.
This is the context in which the artist, the writer, the poet, in spite of himself, finds himself forced to work, looking for different or alternative answers, for example, in the cult ofBeyond man (or Superman), conceptualized by Nietzsche and taken up by Gabriele d'Annunzio, in Futurism, a cultural, literary, philosophical, artistic movement, characterized by faith in progress and the exaltation of tomorrow, or in decadent thought and poetics, which despite their diversity arise from the crisis of values ββof the poet, of man, between the end of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, from his loss social but also interior, and the loss of confidence in the present (think for example, just to name a few of the most representative, of Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, Joris Karl Huysmans, and for Italy to Giovanni Pascoli, Giuseppe Antonio Borgese and Italo Svevo, while in painting decadent themes are present in the works of Pre-Raphaelites English, like the combination of love or beauty / death embodied by seductive ones neo-medieval ladies, the symbolic matrix of the paintings, the atmospheres dreamlike and melancholy.
Artistic, philosophical, cultural and thought movements that naturally also reflect the lived, creative imagination and experience of the writers themselves: the Nine hundred in fact it marks the birth of a plurality of new and original literary genres, which can be one entertainment or an escape, not very committed, from contemporary reality and from mass society (think of the appendix novel, the realist one, the new frontiers of the historical novel, or the analytical-psychological novel) but also an answer, a reaction to it (as in the case of Tolkien's epic-fantasy), a means to represent annihilation of man in the face of greater forces or an ever-increasing technological progress, almost unstoppable and not yet fully understood (it is a mirror War of the Worlds, by Wells) or a tool, especially for "marginalized" and non "professionalized" authors, to find a voice in the world and a space in the society in which they live (this may be the case of Lovecraft, it certainly is for RE Howard, the shy and introverted creator of the universe of Conan the Barbarian).
Furthermore, the search for an "other dimension", supernatural, invisible in the "finite" world, physical and of appearance, found in the twentieth century, especially in the USA but also in Europe (in particular in Nazi Germany), its active impetus in a flourish of currents, doctrines and theories ofoccult and dellesotericism, which are placed in that Age that the Scottish essayist and teacher James Webb defined "Third crisis of rationalism", Placing it between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, characterized by a set of" irrationalist "theoretical movements and systems, in direct opposition to the" Dogma of late Victorian materialism "and with the concept of perennial material progress as the only key to understanding real, keystone for the satisfaction of the needs of the human being (which are not only practical and material but are, first of all, interior, value, spiritual).
In this sense both the fantasy as much as science fiction, and in particular the science fiction American at the turn of the thirties and sixties, are often connected, directly or not, with different theories of the occult, with spiritualist movements, concepts of theosophy or anthroposophy that arose in the twentieth century.
Science fiction and occultism
This particular climax cultural, social, political, which mainly involves the West (in particular the United States and Europe), is well highlighted by a particular event, or by the collective hysteria that involved the citizens of the eastern United States when the director and actor Orson Welles between eight and nine in the evening of October 30, 1938, he broadcast a personal and synthetic version of the War of the Worlds di HG Wells (1897), triggering panic among listeners who really believed in an alien invasion of the Earth taking place at that time, among other things causing, in the general panic, damage to shops, things and people (several citizens will witness numerous sightings of airships Zeppelins and visions of many guardian angels while they were intent on praying in the streets).
Patrick Moore, a scholar of the phenomenon, also reported two other examples of "sci-fi panicβInduced by radio broadcasts both broadcast after World War II, one on the near end of the world and the other on the moon, close to falling to Earth, news that caused collective unrest and fear in major California cities. The radio broadcast of Wells's work testifies how the anxieties and fears of the Thirties for the outbreak of a Second World War, the political tensions between states, the emergence of individual dictatorial personalities and the continuous development of war technologies, have made plausible and truthful the possibility of an "other" reality, a counterpart to the physical one, in the eyes of a good part of the society of the time, a "science fiction panic" that was fueled by the uncertain situation immediately preceding the Second World War. It is no coincidence that after the broadcast of Welles (which also marked the fortune of the actor and director just twenty-three years old) there was a surge of success in the sci-fi genre in America: if before the broadcast there were four specialized magazines, in the following eight months they came created other sects, in a crescendo that involved the genre even after the Second World War, due to the atmosphere of tension from Cold War, of a possible nuclear threat, of the uncertainties and dangers of the McCarthy campaign.
Science fiction, especially post-World War II American science, was not limited to translating on paper the fears of a society immersed in political and war conflicts and upheavals, which it translated into futuristic, technologically advanced or dystopian and apocalyptic realities, but also became a vehicle of precise messages and symbols of occultism then in vogue: between the end of the forties and the sixties, among the main exponents of science fiction in America, there were supporters of pseudo-sciences and creators of syncretic philosophies such as Scientology, Theosophy , Dianetics, who were both active and productive writers of scientific fiction. Think of Alfred Elton Van Vogt (1912-2000), author of a series of science fiction novels, such as The Empire of the Atom (1957) and the stories gravitating around the thematic core of World of Null-A (1948-1972), which, despite being conceived and written for popular magazines, contained references to various pseudoscientific theories, from Dianetics to the development of Jungian theories for the emergence of mental powers, from the Bates method for strengthening sight to the application of the Kirlian experiment (commonly known as "electrography") in the fields of alternative medicine, concerning the enhancement of one's aura (or vital energy) and various energy treatments.
But, above all, the cycle of supernatural tales of Nothing (o Not at) by Van Vogt transposed the revolutionary and βnon-Aristotelianβ theories of the general semantic ("General Semantics") devised by the Polish Count and mathematician Alfred Korzjbsky (1933), consisting in overcoming the barriers "structural"And linguistic by human beings, through education in the" consciousness of abstraction ": for the Polish engineer and mathematician reality cannot be perceived and understood in its totality only through modern sciences, but above all through an attitude and way of placing oneself in the world, relativistic and of "inner calm", which puts man in the condition of digging into things, of grasping their inner essence and reaching a perfect state of well-being (in the world of Nothing, located in the year 2560, the Institute of General Semantics has reorganized the processes of human thought according to βnon-Aristotelianβ principles and thus able to guide it towards new and higher achievements).
Also John W. Campbell (1910-1971), protagonist of the golden age of science fiction between the XNUMXs and XNUMXs, curator of Astounding Stories (since 1937) and creator of the "space operaβ, He was a pseudo-science enthusiast and an inventor himself. He upheld the scientific validity of the "Geronimo machine", A radionic invention patented by the engineer Thomas Galen Hieronymus (1895-1988), to whom he attributed not only healing and homeopathic abilities, the detection and expansion of" eliptic "energy (the intrinsic energy in every human being), but also psychic, paranormal and extrasensory powers, almost "magical". The writer even went so far as to design a βGeronimoβ machine in 1956, convinced that this was able to stimulate and expand hypothetical mental powers inherent in human beings, even if only through the representation of the invention on paper; the same convictions that led him to undertake a promotional campaign, between 1960 and 1962, for the controversial invention of the businessman Norman Dean, known as the βDean deviceβ, which would have allowed to convert the rotary motion into unidirectional motion.
Both theories supported by Campbell were flatly rejected by the scientific community, but his passion and interest in "other sciences" led him to create some of the masterpieces of the science fiction genre: The thing from another world (1938), which inspired the 1951 film adaptation directed by Hawks and NyBy but above all the famous film The thing (The Thing) by John Carpenter (1982); The infinite atom (1949), which was affected by the suggestions of recent atomic explosions, offering a reinterpretation of the devastating power of atomic energy, positive only when its purpose is demonstrative, capable of leading to peace among peoples without bloodshed; Invaders from the Infinite (1961), in which the author combines fictional skills with speculative and imaginative physical theories; pioneering works that mark the triumph of science fiction as a genre founded on the cornerstones offuturistic imagery and the interplanetary adventure, from which the aforementioned Von Vogt, Edmond Hamilton and Isaac Asimov, literary heir of Campbell himself, draw inspiration.
Both John Campbell and Alfred Von Vogt were followers (albeit briefly) of a mystical, spiritual and pseudoscientific cult conceived by Ronald Hubbard (1911-1986), also a science fiction writer, who later evolved into the famous movement scientology. In his Dianetics: the power of thought on the body (1950), hosted in the journal of "Astounding Science Fiction" directed by Campbell, Hubbard began to disseminate the principles of Dianetics, his personal and innovative theory that mixed Shinto practices, Hindu beliefs, mysticism, assumptions of psychoanalysis and psychology, occult traditions and spiritualism, which he claimed to have landed on after an initiatory journey to the East, made starting in 1938. The text, which was a huge success with the public, was transformed after a few years into the Scientology system, which among its various assumptions included the 'elevation of the "unfree" man and the unfolding of his real potential, held in check by the traumas and emotional repressions matured in the course of life (the so-called Theta essence, which, incarnating from body to body, would represent the immutable substance and immaterial of man, restricted in physical limits, and that Scientology sets itself the purpose of liberating and manifesting).
Dianetics spread rapidly among science fiction enthusiasts from the earliest writings while, starting in the XNUMXs, Scientology began to gain the adhesion of rock groups and numerous film stars (and also attracted interest, in the XNUMXs, by the British chemist Jack parsons, follower of the magician and esotericist Edward alexander crowley, considered the founder of modern occultism and the inspirer of new magical movements). This sort of "science fiction Gnosticism" - which need not be dwelled upon - by Hubbard is reflected in his stories and novels: Return to Tomorrow (Back to tomorrow) from 1950, the best seller Battlefield Earth (Battle for the Earth) and the Cycle in ten books of the series Mission Earth (Earth mission) of the Eighties, are works that testify to a remarkable narrative ability, rewarded by considerable success with audiences and critics, but at the same time they manifest the tensions and problems resulting in continuous "escapes from reality" by Western society in the Second World War ( as Webb wrote in his The occult system of 1969, "fans of other realities represent specific individuals within a specific historical situation"), who did not find it abnormal or ambiguous to rely on or believe in pseudoscientific theories and occult of the time, aimed at a phantom search for truth (contemporary anxieties and neo-millennialist expectations / fears today revive in movements and groups New Age or in different forms of neo-paganism).
Evidence of this is also the epidemic from sightings of flying saucers, sighted from the XNUMXs onwards and welcomed by fans, readers and writers of science fiction, which the well-known psychiatrist and anthropologist Carl Gustav Jung has brilliantly related to the visions of Angels of Mons and the apparitions of Fatima, advancing the hypothesis that the primary, general cause was "a situation of collective anxiety".
Howard, Lovecraft and Tolkien:
the fall of the antediluvian civilizations
βAnd even the name of that land disappeared, and after that Men spoke no more of Elenna, nor of Andor the Gift that was taken away, nor of NΓΊmenΓ³rΓ« at the ends of the world; but the exiles on the shores of the sea, when they turned to the West induced by the desire of their hearts, spoke of Mar-nu-Falmar being swallowed up by the waves, of AkallabΓͺth or the Fall, of AtalantΓ« in the Eldarin language. "
(JRR Tolkien, The Silmarillion, edited by Christopher Tolkien, trans. it., Bompiani, Milan, 2008, pp. 336-337)
It is also interesting to note how the American writer Robert ervin howard (1906-1936), father of a particular subgenus fantasy named sword and sorcery, "Sword and sorcery" (genre in which supernatural, horror with a Lovecraftian flavor, adventure, witchcraft, bloody battles and neo-medieval settings) converge gradually acquiring a new popularity thanks also to the vehicle of theosophy and occultism; the myth of ancient civilization is one of the sources of inspiration and setting for Howard's stories, in particular those centered on Kull of Valusia and the Cycle of Conan the Barbarian, the latter published in the XNUMXs in the famous magazine pulp "Weird Tales ".
Conan's tales are set in an era of deliberately blurred and imprecise temporal boundaries, which Howard called the "Hyborian Era" (which he himself described in detail in a specific essay), a clear reference to the legendary land of Hyperborea, first described once by the Greek philosophers, historians and thinkers of the ancient age, and returned to the limelight and success in the modern age thanks to the astronomer and scholar Jean Sylvain Baily and, above all, thanks to the work of pseudo-history The secret doctrine (1888) by the Russian theosophist and essayist Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891). The Hyperborean continent appears, along with the lost lands of Atlantis, Mu and Lemuria, cited and described by Blavatsky, as the seat of a glorious and superior human civilization that disappeared hundreds of thousands of years ago following a cataclysm, from which the current Aryan race of Northern Europe, pure and superior, would descend.
Howard's work, which takes up in the Conan cycle the reinterpretation of the myth of Atlantis as the disappearance of an evolved, civilized, prosperous and technological world, which is followed, in his work, by a cultural and material retreat of civilization that is reflected in Cimmeria the land where "only barbarism survives", marks the success with the general public of the "myths of the lost continents", fed, in this literary-fantastic reproduction of Atlantis, Mu, Lemuria, by the colleagues and writers of Howard, Lovecraft, Clark Anton Smith and Milos Crnjanski. References that also remain a valid example of how the occultist pseudo-history, now fully assimilable to a fantasy product, starting with Blavatsky (but other valid examples are represented by Annie Besant, Charles Webster Leadbeater and, especially, by Rudolf Steiner, founder of anthroposophy whose influences have come down to our days and which describes a science fiction and spiritual Atlantis, inhabited by primordial civilizations with incredible powers and flying airships), has influenced the fantastic narrative of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Β A reciprocal influence, active on several levels, so much so that it has been highlighted that between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, the gothic novel and the tales of the supernatural and the magical, especially in England and America, present various references to "Rosicrucian" mysticism or to esoteric symbology. For example, mention should be made of the stories from the Cycle The sorcerer (1801) by Francis Barrett, which in his intentions was to be the new manual of the occult and magical arts of the West; or the fantastic novel The magician (1848) by Alphonse Esquiros, French socialist friend of Eliphas LΓ©vi, the most famous occultist of the twentieth century; another example of "Rosicrucian" literature with Masonic references was that of the well-known English playwright and writer Bulwer Lytton, author of the novel Zenos (1842); Arthur Machen, instead, a well-known Welsh writer of horror and supernatural tales, as well as inventing the myth of the "Angels of Mons" (which still enjoys vast fortune today), according to which a group of angelic figures would have saved a British military unit by German soldiers in Mons on August 23, 1914, was a friend of the mystic Arthur E. White and a member of the esoteric order of the "Golden Dawn", and written as The Great God Pan (The Great God Pan) of 1894, The Secret Glory (1906) The Hill of Dreams (1907), denounce his openness to the sphere of magic and the occult.
Finally, we should mention three particularly relevant writers for their works, through some of the most famous theories of modern occultism, namely Eric Rucker Eddieson (1882-1945), Hope Mirrlees (1887-1978) and Frederick SpencerOliver (1866-1899). In his first fantasy, The Ouroboros worm (1921), the English Eddison testifies to his personal Neoplatonism by mixing it with various philosophical and theosophical theories then in vogue, as his personal version of Nietzsche's eternal return, the theories of the incarnation from divine beings to men, Hindu concepts ( metaphysical characteristics that persist even in the stories of the XNUMXs). British poet Hope Mirrlees writes only one authentically fantasy novel, but with a vast influence, Lud-in-the-fog (1926), what an esoteric suggestion, in particular in a chapter entitled "The initiate", and tackles the theme of the acceptance of the irrational within a materialistic and skeptical citizen (the friendship that Mirrlees entertained with the Greek scholar, historian of religions and linguist Jane Ellen Harrison, interested in the origins and development of mythologies with a vitalist tendency, and advocate of the experience acquired through the mystical spirit).
Oliver, on the other hand, with the novel A Dweller on Two Planets (An inhabitant of two planets) of 1894 (written under the pseudonym of "Phylos the Tibetan"), reworked the myth of the vanished antediluvian civilizations, which in those years was experiencing an imposing Revival at all levels (fiction, politics, esotericism), fantasizing about a group of sorcerers Lemurians survivors of the disaster that struck their continent, took refuge inside Mount Shasta, California (still the center of several urban legends). In the Thirties the engineer Guy Warren Ballard (1878-1939) will draw inspiration precisely from some theories of Oliver's novel for the genesis of a new religious movement, the cult of "I AM", which mixes concepts of Christianity with those of Madame Blavatsky's theosophy, forerunner of numerous movements New Age, and which still boasts a certain following today.
This "Hunger for myths" and of "disappeared civilizations", is a constant presence in society in the years immediately following the Second World War: note, in this context, the singular staging of Raymond Palmer who, exploiting the collective anxiety that followed the end of the conflict and the influence of his readers, he published in the magazine "Amazing Stories", Which at that time he was directing, a series of fantastic stories, presented as true, reworked on letters sent to him by Richard Shaver, a welder from Pensylvania, convinced of the existence of strange underground civilizations. From 1945 to 1949 various stories saw the light (the first was entitled "I remember Lemuria"), whose thematic core was constituted by the existence of "Hollow Earth"Inhabited by advanced but cruel beings, the" deros ", who influenced, with their sophisticated devices, the life of ordinary people, inhabitants of the surface. Once the joke was denied, the collaboration between Shaver and Palmer was interrupted, and the former continued to devote himself to science fiction stories for other magazines, remaining convinced of his own ambiguous theories.Β
Nazi politics also fed on these pseudoscientific theories and beliefs belonging to the sphere of the occult or esotericism: the same Hitler and many of his officers (notably the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler) and exponents of the German intelligentsia gravitating around the fuhrer, were among the supporters of pseudoscientific theories and organized particular expeditions to Tibet, the Andes and Antarctica, in search of mythical Agartha, home of the so-called "Ancestral Ancestors", or of the Hollow Earth, populated by primordial beings. Other expeditions involved the search for relics considered mystical and endowed with exceptional powers, namely the Lance of Longinus e the Holy Grail. The Nazis called for a return to Germany of First Reich, in the general exaltation of Nordic and Germanic Middle Ages, as well as all his best literary and artistic productions (for example the Norse epic) which best lent themselves to the exploitation and propaganda designs of the Hitlerian regime, and at the same time affirmed the superiority of the Germanic race, "Aryan", as descendant of the ancient populations of the Hyperborean Continent.
Alongside the Germanic epic, the myth of the submerged Atlantis also recurs in John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973), the famous author de The Hobbit e The Lord of the Rings, who reworked the matter of the lost continent in particular in the events of The Silmarillion e The Acaballech (The Fall of Numenor), both published posthumously - as already highlighted in some previous articles, Tolkien will harshly condemn Hitler and the Nazis, accusing them of having distorted and perverted the authentic Nordic spirit, and yet the reference to the same myths, in particular the references, cannot be hidden or muffled. to the Norse epic (interests that were at the basis of that rebirth, passion and reworking of the Middle Ages and its artistic, epic, literary productions, common to various European intellectuals, writers, architects and politicians, active between the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries).
In Tolkien, however, the reference to Atlantis is stylistically more accurate, higher than the experiences described so far (be they science fiction works, Gothic novels or texts of pseudo-history and new philosophies) and, above all, not ideologized and not tending to a unidirectional vision of the Cosmos, concealing references to a totalitarian politics: the theme of an ancient and advanced civilization in decline, that of Numenoreans of the Island of number, destroyed by a sort of Universal Flood, due to the inexorable decline and fall of its inhabitants towards corruption (they are guilty of having wanted to overcome the only limits imposed on them by the deities, the Valar, with the search for eternal life and the attempted conquest of the blessed land of Aman), becomes, in the narrative and thematic Universe of Tolkien's Middle-earth, a tool, a means to communicate to readers and, consequently, to the whole of humanity, the risks inherent in the fall, corruption and temptation of Male.
Purpose of the work fantasy Tolkien is in fact inspired by values ββthat are always current and the highest ethical, moral, fundamentally Christian virtues, thanks to which only it is possible to counter the advance of darkness (darkness that in the author takes on the tones of possession and matter, of war destroyer and mechanized economy, the destruction of nature and the lust for power) and restore the natural order of the Earth (and the Cosmos).
In fact, Tolkien's work is pervaded by a feeling of nostalgia for a heroic and epic past, which will not return, the same feeling that involves the reader when he is involved (through the literary mediation of the small and "bourgeois" Hobbits) by the epic plots and settings of The Lord of the Rings, but the hope of a rebirth, of a restoration of the peace and glory of yesteryear, is always active and presents, perfectly embodied by the exults of NΓΊmenor (the new Atlantis) in Middle-earth, the Numenoreans or DΓΊnedain (the men awarded by the Valar, the "angelic presences", With the gift of a long life and an almost divine wisdom), in particular, from their" wandering "King Aragorn, destined to reign over all free peoples and to reinstate those values ββthat Sauron's dominion threatened to erase forever (Sauron is the Dark Lord and the greatest antagonist of the great work by Tolkien).
We are far from the metaphysical assumptions of theosophy, from racial theories, from the ideological and anthropological drifts of Nazism, as well as from the exaltation and apology of an Aryan race, pure and superior: if fantasy of Tolkien wants and can act on the real world, its effect is neither destructive nor violent, but a positive contribution to an inner, personal and intimate change that can and must involve all readers, all humanity, not a small circle of elect. Think of Aragorn: he is not an autarchic, tyrannical or dictatorial monarchical figure, his is not the kingdom of a conqueror, aimed at glory, but he, in his strength, is a just, measured, merciful and humble ruler, who acts with self-denial for the greater good of Middle-earth, in the name of one providential mission highest and ordering. Aragorn is endowed with the highest military skills, but also with the Christian values ββof feet e caritas, is not a destroyer: once he has ascended the throne he does not totally wipe out every form of kingdom, society, body of laws already present (with the exception of those of the Enemy, Sauron), to make room for the new, but renews; he is a restorer of the Ancient tradition but also a healer, which heals (literally) the wounds inflicted on Middle-earth and its inhabitants (the theme of King-thaumaturge taken from the medieval tradition) by the Orcs and the servants of the Enemy (who, on the other hand, are not entitled to any clemency since they are degenerates and slaves of the evil will of Sauron, only against them, in fact, according to Tolkien's poetics, the War is legitimate).
Finally, a special mention goes to Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937), prolific writer and generator of myths, to whom we owe on the one hand the success of the background fiction fantastic - horrifying, its great influence on both the fantasy and science fiction genres, but also the momentum given to different groups pseudo-esotericists, lovers of alternative philosophies and religions and movements new age e Wicca. The same author, in fact, almost unknown to the general public in the years in which he lived, enjoyed vast success starting from the end of the XNUMXs, with the Revival of Occultism in America and Europe. From the forties of the last century, there were several prints of the Necronomicon, in reality pseudobiblion born exclusively from the Lovecraftian imagination, alongside Pnakotic Fragmentsi, which until the nineties was sold by various affiliates to American, English and French esoteric circles, as a true book of magic and ancient rituals, thanks to which it would have been possible to invoke dark entities or come into contact with them.
You tell how The Dunwich Horror (1929), the novel The case of Charles Dexter Ward (1941), The Call of Cthulhu (1928), they also contain an accurate description of magical and supernatural rites through which the characters of Lovecraft's tales can come into contact with the "external Gods" or the "Great Old Ones", the latter confined to remote areas of the Earth, which suggest, if not a direct affiliation of the writer with initiates or esotericists of some kind active in New England (this is the hypothesis of several scholars, including Angelo Circles and the political scientist George Galli) at least a knowledge of medieval alchemical texts, of Jewish sources such as Kabbalah o The book of Enoch with his legend of the Nephilim (different names and specifications of the space deities of Lovecraft recall that of demons of Judaism or present in the Old Testament, such as Azathoth, "The blind god who gurgles and blasphemes at the center of the Universe") but also the famous magic text The key of Solomon (XNUMXth century), as they claim Gianfranco de Turris e Sebastiano Fusco, two of the greatest Italian scholars of the work of the Solitaire of Providence
Naturally sources of inspiration for Lovecraft were first of all the texts that were rich in the library of his maternal grandfather, i Greek and Latin classics (from Homer to Ovid), the first books read on the advice of his grandfather, or the gothic novels (Lovecraft is inspired by its dark, shady, dreamlike and macabre settings and atmospheres, characteristics of a reality placed between the dream and the physical world , from Edgar Allan Poe e Ambroce Bierce), And The Arabian Nights, book from which Abdul Alhazred, author of Necronomicon, but above all the fantastic tales of Lord Dunsany, Machen's surreal science fiction (which suggested to HPL the idea of ββa Supernatural evil hidden under the veil of reality), as well as astronomy, the research of anthropologist James Frazer on religions and primitive cultures. To these must be added the ancient legends, described up to now, reworked by the pseudosciences and by the new theosophical or anthroposophical theories of his time, such as the aforementioned myths of the lost continents of Mu and Lemuria, often part of his stories (the same Cthulhu, the terrible "Ancient One", negative protagonist of the famous HPL "Cycle", dwells "dreaming" in the lost, blasphemous and submerged city of R'lyeh, in an unspecified area of ββthe Pacific).Β
It is therefore no coincidence that, from his death until the nineties, the name of Lovecraft circulates in the circles of the spiritualism American alongside that of Crowley, Anton Le Vey and Dennis Wheatley; around the figure of him a sub-form of pseudo-religious cult, which includes a large number of particularly devoted fans (they identify themselves as real "cultists") and many of these, gathered mainly in different channels social, they consider him not only a writer particularly gifted with imagination and narrative ability, but a sort of "prophet of extradimensional entities", while, on the other hand, on the web it is possible to find magical rites and formulas to invoke the dark divinities of Lovecraft's Cosmogony , such as Cthulhu and Shub-niggurath.
The existence of these groups of fans, dedicated to a real veneration of an author and his work, confirm the theories of some well-known writers of the last century: according to Clive Staples Lewis, the famous author de The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-1956) and friend of Tolkien, like him a member of the Inglinks, Rider Haggard's fantastic novels could be a palliative of religion; Gerald Heard stated that science fiction is an expansion of consciousness; the same James Webb believes that there are aspects of fantasy and science fiction that can help explain the different problems of society or individual, personal, existential, from an enlightened and alternative point of view.
To Tolkien's fantasy, which arises as feasible and achievable, through the use of a high value system, an active and positive Christian ethic is opposed by the creative imagination of Solitaire of Providence - differences which I will focus on later, in a second part of this article - expression of a total rejection of society, of an escape that assumes the traits of refuge in a universe dreamlike and horrifying, an outlet to the (incurable) evils of modern society, the only way out that allows the author to find a space, albeit alienating, that he does not find (unlike the Oxford professor) in a modern, frenetic world, often not meritocratic, which marginalizes and excludes living and sublime intellectual forces, at the same speed with which it feeds mass production or destroys Natura (be it classic o neomedieval) with which both Lovecraft and Tolkien are in love, in their different, but always current and powerful, anti-modernism and way of perceiving, feeling, describing life and otherness.
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