Chapter
13, The Detective Story, Science Fiction and the Far West.
Howard
Philips [sic] Lovecraft (1890-1937) was born in Providence, Rhode
Island. Very sensitive and of delicate health, he was educated
by his widowed mother and aunts. Like Hawthorne he enjoyed solitude,
and although he worked during the day, he did so with the shades
lowered.
In
1924 he married and moved to Brooklyn; in 1929 he was divorced
and returned to Providence, where he went back to his life of
solitude. He died of cancer. He detested the present and professed
a fondness for the eighteenth century.
Science
attracted him: his first article had to do with astronomy. He
published but a single book during his lifetime; after his death
his friends brought together in book form the considerable body
of his work, which had been dispersed in anthologies and magazines.
He studiously imitated the style of Poe with its sonorities and
pathos, and he wrote comic nightmares. In his stories one meets
beings from remote planets and from ancient or future epochs who
dwell in human bodies to study the universe, or, conversely, souls
of our time who during sleep explore monstrous worlds, distant
in time and space. Among his works we shall recall The Color
from Space, [sic] The Dunwich Horror, and The Rats
in the Wall.[sic]
He
also left a voluminous correspondence. To Poe's influence upon
him one should also add that of the visionary storyteller Arthur
Machen.
It
is obvious from this summary that Borges had read not only some
of Lovecraft's major works (The Shadow out of Time in particular)
but also i an account of his life and a modicum of criticism about
him. This fact is confirmed by Paul Theroux, who in a 1978 conversation
with Borges "about horror stories in general" elicited
the perverse revelation that
I
like Lovecraft's horror stories. His plots are very good,
but his style is atrocious. I once dedicated a story to him.
Ultimately,
Borges's attitude toward Lovecraft can only be described in terms
of a syndrome of attraction-repulsion, an aesthetic of extreme
polarities or a metaphysics of paradox, similar to the Mysterium
tremendum as described by Rudolf Otto. Both horns of this dilemma
demand their own special polishing.
Originally
published in Buenos Aires in 1967 and resissued in English translation
by the University Press of Kentucky four
years later.
