A Dreamer & A Visionary; H.P. Lovecraft in His Time

In this period Lovecraft also learned to express weird conceptions in verse. Whereas up to 1917 his poetry had been wholly Georgian in character, Lovecraft now began to see that poetry could do more than merely recapture the atmosphere of the eighteenth century. The dominant influence on his early weird verse is, of course, Poe; for although Lovecraft owned and read the ‘Graveyard Poets’ of the later eighteenth century—James Hervey’s Meditations and Contemplations (1746–47), Edward Young’s NightThoughts (1742–45), among others—they do not appear to have influenced him appreciably. Probably the most notable piece of work is is a 302-line poem written some time in 1916, ‘The Poe-et’s Nightmare’, the central section of which expresses some tremendous cosmic conceptions in Miltonic blank verse. Another long weird poem—the 312-line ‘Psychopompos’, begun in the fall of 1917 but not completed until May or June of 1918—is interesting in adopting a kind of ballad narrative form akin to that employed by Sir Walter Scott. Many other poems unfortunately tend, however, toward stock images or contrived shudders. Even Lovecraft’s most famous early weird poem, ‘Nemesis’ (written in the ‘sinister small hours of the black morning after Hallowe’en’ of 1917⁶), is open to the charge of vagueness and empty horrific imagery.

Meanwhile political events were not failing to attract Lovecraft’s attention. Even if he could not himself serve in the Great War, he could at least closely follow the course of that conflict—especially the United States’ belated entry into it. Lovecraft predictably wrote a number of poems commemorating the United States’ joining of her ‘mother’ England to battle Germany or more generally urging on the British soldiers. A number of these poems were reprinted in the National Enquirer. None of them amounts to anything.

In terms of the actual progress of the war, Lovecraft remarks in late 1917: ‘As to the general situation, it seems very discouraging just now. It may take a second war to adjust things properly.’⁷ This comment—seemingly but unwittingly prophetic—was made at the lowest point of the war for the Allies: the Germans were making considerable headway and seemed on the brink of winning the war before the new American forces could be mobilized. It is therefore possible that Lovecraft was actually conceiving the possibility of a victory for the Germans, so that the ‘second war’ would be one required to restore national borders to the pre-1914 state. Curiously enough, I cannot find any remark by Lovecraft on the actual end of the war; but this may only be because many letters of the 1918–19 period have probably been lost or destroyed.

Lovecraft’s ponderous essay, ‘The League’ ( Conservative, July 1919)—a cynical meditation on the uselessness of the League of Nations, or any other international body, to prevent war—shows that he was paying considerable attention to the peace conference at Versailles. Lovecraft no doubt gained tremendous satisfaction that the United States in early 1920 failed to ratify American entry into the League, the brainchild of the hated President Wilson. He predictably accepted the anti-Communist paranoia of the ‘Red Scare’ of the postwar period in the essay ‘Bolshevism’ (Conservative, July 1919), speaking of the ‘noxious example of the almost subhuman Russian rabble’. More distinctly allied to his racism is the essay ‘Americanism’ (United Amateur, July 1919). For Lovecraft, Americanism is nothing more than ‘expanded Anglo-Saxondom’; accordingly, the notion of a ‘melting-pot’ is rejected summarily:

Most dangerous and fallacious of the several misconceptions of Americanism is that of the so-called ‘melting-pot’ of races and traditions. It is true that this country has received a vast influx of non-English immigrants who come hither to enjoy without hardship the liberties which our British ancestors carved out in toil and bloodshed. It is also true that such of them as belong to the Teutonic and Celtic races are capable of assimilation to our English types and of becoming valuable acquisitions to the population. But from this it does not follow that a mixture of really alien blood or ideas has accomplished or can accomplish anything but harm … Immigration cannot, perhaps, be cut off altogether, but it should be understood that aliens who choose America as their residence must accept the prevailing language and culture as their own; and neither try to modify our institutions, nor to keep alive their own in our midst.