H. P. Lovecraft

Dreams were what Lovecraft knew well—they were, in a sense, his preserve

HPL’s writings have but one aim: to bring the reader to a state of fascination. The only human sentiments he is interested in are wonderment and fear. He constructs his universe upon these and these alone. It is clearly a limitation, but a conscious, deliberate one. And authentic creativity cannot exist without a certain degree of self-imposed blindness.

And if he refused all sexual allusions in his work, it was first and foremost because he felt such allusions had no place in his aesthetic universe.

by introducing
materialism into the heart of fear and fantasy, HPL created a new genre. It is no longer a question of believing or not believing, as in certain vampire or werewolf tales; there is no possible reinterpretation, there is no escape. There exists no horror less psychological, less debatable.

Lovecraft’s terror is rigorously material. But, it is quite possible, given the free interplay of cosmic forces, that Great Cthulhu possesses abilities and powers to act that far exceed ours. Which, a priori, is not particularly reassuring at all.

Of course, life has no meaning. But neither does death. And this is another thing that curdles the blood when one discovers Lovecraft’s universe. The deaths of his heroes have no meaning.