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H. P. Lovecraft (Zitate)


Aus Sicht der Naturwissenschaften


Basiswissen


Der US-Amerikaner Howard Phillips Lovecraft schrieb in den 1920er und 1930er Jahren. Seine Hinterlassenschaft besteht vor allem aus Kurzgeschichten mit phantastischen Motiven mit Anklängen zum Horror und Science Fiction. Ein zentrales Motiv ist die Gleichgültigkeit des Kosmos gegenüber menschlichen Wünschen.

Determinismus I


I have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planets roll without aim,
Where they roll in their horror unheeded,
Without knowledge, or lustre, or name.
Quelle: Nemesis

Determinismus II


“Realistic analysis, favored by history and by diffusive scientific leanings which now embraced Darwin, Haeckel, Huxley and other various other pioneers, was checked by my aversion for realistic literature. I ceased my literal adherence to Epicurus and Lucretius, and reluctantly dismissed free-will forever in favor of determinism. The Peace Conference, Friedrich Nietzsche, Samuel Butler, Henry Mencken, and other influences have perfected my cynicism.” Howard Lovecraft (1922), “A Confession of Unfaith”. Siehe auch Determinismus ↗

Wissensangst


"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." Quelle: The Call of Cthulu

Nihilismus


"It is good to be a cynic — it is better to be a contented cat — and it is best not to exist at all." Siehe auch Nihilismus ↗

Menschenstaub


“Today we know that the cosmos is simply a flux of purposeless rearrangement amidst which man is a wholly negligible incident or accident.” Quelle: Howard Lovecraft (1936), “Religion and Ethics”, letter to Natalie Wooley, May 2

Sternenseele


“How do we know that that form of atomic and molecular motion we call ‘life’ is the highest of all forms? Perhaps the dominate creature—the most rational and god-like of all beings—is an invisible gas. Or perhaps it is a flaming and effulgent mass of molten stardust. Who can say that men have souls while rocks have none?” Howard Lovecraft (1916), “Letter to Rheinhart Kleiner, Ira Cole, and Maurice Moe”, Aug 8. Siehe auch Panpsychismus ↗

Ganzheitlichkeit


“I admit that I am very much interested in the relation I bear on the things about me—the time relation, the space relation, and the causative relation. I desire to know approximately what my life is in terms of history—human, terrestrial, solar, and cosmical; what my magnitude may be in terms of extension, -- terrestrial, solar, and cosmical; and above all, what may be my manner of linkage to the general system—in what way, through what agency, and to what extent, the obvious guiding forces of creation act upon me and govern my existence. And if there be any less obvious forces, I desire to know them and their relation to me as well.” Howard Lovecraft (1918), “Letter to Maurice Moe”, May 18. Siehe auch Introversion ↗

Selbstverzwergung


“My attitude has always been cosmic, and I looked on man as if from another planet. He was merely an interesting species presented for study and classification.” Howard Lovecraft (1922), “A Confession of Unfaith”

Atheismus


“All I say is that I think it is damned unlikely that anything like a central cosmic will, a spirit world, or an eternal survival of personality exist. They are the most preposterous and unjustified of all the guesses which can be made about the universe, and I am not enough of a hair-splitter to pretend that I don't regard them as arrant and negligible moonshine. In theory, I am an ‘agnostic’, but pending the appearance of radical evidence I must be classified, practically and provisionally, as an ‘atheist’. The chances of theism’s truth being to my mind so microscopically small, I would be a pendant and a hypocrite to call myself anything else.” Howard Lovecraft (1932), “Letter to Robert E. Howard”, Aug 16. Siehe auch Atheismus ↗

Indifferentismus


„Contrary to what you may assume, I am not a pessimist but an indifferentist — that is, I don't make the mistake of thinking that the resultant of the natural forces surrounding and governing organic life will have any connexion with the wishes or tastes of any part of that organic life-process. Pessimists are just as illogical as optimists; insomuch as both envisage the aims of mankind as unified, and as having a direct relationship (either of frustration or of fulfilment) to the inevitable flow of terrestrial motivation and events. That is—both schools retain in a vestigial way the primitive concept of a conscious teleology—of a cosmos which gives a damn one way or the other about the especial wants and ultimate welfare of mosquitos, rats, lice, dogs, men, horses, pterodactyls, trees, fungi, dodos, or other forms of biological energy.“ Letter to James Ferdindand Morton (1929), quoted in "H.P. Lovecraft, a Life" by S.T. Joshi, p. 483. Siehe auch Indifferentismus ↗

Vergeistigung


"I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams." Siehe auch Introversion ↗

Freiheit


"We all know that any emotional bias -- irrespective of truth or falsity -- can be implanted by suggestion in the emotions of the young, hence the inherited traditions of an orthodox community are absolutely without evidential value.If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences. With such an honest and inflexible openness to evidence, they could not fail to receive any real truth which might be manifesting itself around them. The fact that religionists do not follow this honourable course, but cheat at their game by invoking juvenile quasi-hypnosis, is enough to destroy their pretensions in my eyes even if their absurdity were not manifest in every other direction." Quelle: Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft

Sehnsucht


There are not many persons who know what wonders are opened to them in the stories and visions of their youth; for when as children we learn and dream, we think but half-formed thoughts, and when as men we try to remember, we are dulled and prosaic with the poison of life. But some of us awake in the night with strange phantasms of enchanted hills and gardens, of fountains that sing in the sun, of golden cliffs overhanging murmuring seas, of plains that stretch down to sleeping cities of bronze and stone, and of shadowy companies of heroes that ride caparisoned white horses along the edges of thick forests; and then we know that we have looked back through the ivory gates into that world of wonder which was ours before we were wise and unhappy.

Urfelder


"And beyond all else he glimpsed an infinite gulf of darkness, where solid and semi-solid forms were known only by their windy stirrings, and cloudy patterns of force seemed to superimpose order on chaos and hold forth a key to all the paradoxes and arcana of the world." Quelle: The Haunter of the Dark. Kurzgeschichte aus dem Jahr 1935. Siehe auch Felder ↗

Chaos-Gott


"Outside the ordered universe [is] that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes." Quelle: The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Siehe auch Chaos

Idioten-Gott


"… ancient legends of Ultimate Chaos, at whose center sprawls the blind idiot god Azathoth, Lord of All Things, encircled by his flopping horde of mindless and amorphous dancers, and lulled by the thin monotonous piping of a demoniac flute held in nameless paws." Quelle: The Haunter of the Dark.