User:Alexandru~enwiki/Lovecraft's sources


 * "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."---H. P. Lovecraft.

This will be a personal page that will take a closer look at certain ideas and themes found in the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. This will not be a literary criticism. Readers should note that I am not implying that any of the beings (or semi-beings) I will be discussing have any actual existence. But I will show that most of them are so close to pre-existing traditions that it cannot be maintained that Lovecraft was not using these traditions as the source of the ideas he adapted into fiction.


 * The Call of Cthulhu (1926). It is already noted that Lovecraft in this story owes a lot to theosophical literature. Lovecraft in fact makes a reference to the ideas of theosophists in the second paragraph of this tale. But I haven't seen a detailed study done. I will get into some of those details.
 * The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1926). Azathoth makes his first major appearance in this story. I've assembled enough data to demonstrate that Lovecraft must have lifted his conception of Azathoth from preexisting literature. There wasn't even that much fictional adaptation that took place. I will particulary discuss the nearly exact correspondance between Samael, the Blind Idiot God of Chaos found in Gnostic literature, and Azathoth, the Blind Idiot God of Chaos that Lovecraft describes---there are Gnostic scriptures that use those exact appelations that Lovecraft used (I will detail). As for the name that Lovecraft uses: Zathoth is recorded as a name of an archon associated with Samael in a Gnostic text, as are Athoth, Ithoth, and some others. In the light of these discoveries that I will make public, we will see that Lovecraft's Azathoth is a nearly exact transcription of an actual tradition or blend of several linked traditions.
 * The Dunwich Horror (1928).
 * The Whisperer in Darkness (1930).

More later.

Note that eventually some information on this page may be disturbing to some readers, and I may have to add a warning.