Weird Tales

06 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings

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Complete scans of certain 1937-39 Weird Tales editions, with ads…

Weird Tales, Jul 1937 (Poem, “To Virgil Finlay”, also Clark Ashton Smith’s poem “To Howard Phillips Lovecraft”)

Weird Tales, Oct 1937 (“The Shunned House”)

Weird Tales, Dec 1937 (“Polaris”)

Weird Tales, Feb 1938 (“From Beyond”)

Weird Tales, Mar 1938 (“Beyond the Wall of Sleep”, Francis Flagg’s poem “To Howard Phillips Lovecraft”)

Weird Tales, Jul 1938 (Poem, “The Messenger”)

Weird Tales, Nov 1938 (“The Nameless City”)

Weird Tales, Apr 1939 (“The Wicked Clergyman”, “The Curse of Yig” credited to Bishop)

weird

Down to the Sea

06 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by in Films & trailers, Historical context

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Restored version of the silent movie Down To The Sea in Ships (1922) on YouTube. Lovecraft had missed seeing this when it was first released, but was able to see “the striking New Bedford whaling film” at the Cameo Theatre in New York City on the evening of 26th July 1925.

I had never imagined that so perfect an evocation of the old whaling days could be possible. The pictures were taken either actually in New Bedford or at sea, & shew the actual surviving houses, churches, whaves, ships, & accessories. To one who has lately read “Moby Dick” and “The Gam“, the film was incredibly impressive. “Faking” it was impossible—for one beheld the whales spouting in full splendour, the chase of the boats, the throwing and landing of the harpoon [and] it was the actor himself, seen full in the face, who threw the successful dart […] The whole film is of inestimable historical value [especially since the last American] whaler has gone to its eternal rest [so now…] whaling is done in steam vessels—mostly Norwegian—with auxiliary launches …” (Letter to Lillian D. Clarke, 27th July 1925)

Aha, so now we have the answer on Moby Dick! It was “almost certain” that he read it in mid April 1925. And now there’s 100% proof he read it then. The above quote even gives a possible source for his idea of having a “Norwegian sailor Gustaf Johansen” in “The Call of Cthulhu”.

Lovecraft may also have been rather thrilled to see a stock type in the movie, who looked remarkably like himself…

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Photo of the Cameo Theatre, NYC, c. 1930.

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Later, in August 1929, Lovecraft saw the New Bedford Whaling Museum (Jonathan Bourne Whaling Museum). He also visited the aquarium at Wood’s Hole, suggesting his aversion to sea-food did not extend to live specimens.

When worlds collide

05 Saturday Jul 2014

Posted by in Odd scratchings

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It’s cool when worlds collide. Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week blog, which I know of through my work on JURN (SVPoW recently inspired me to add coverage of open-access dinosaur academia to my JURN academic search-engine) has a new blog post on pathological rodent teeth and Cthulhu…

in my experience, in the Venn diagram of life, the “interested in paleo” [dinosaur fossils] and “interested in Lovecraft” circles overlap almost entirely.

His post links out to his superb 2013 post on What Cthulhu should look like.

New book: Poe and the Visual Arts

04 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by in New books

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Poe and the Visual Arts, just published by Penn State University Press.

“the first comprehensive study of how Poe’s work relates to the visual culture of his time [and how] his enduring love of beauty and knowledge of the visual arts richly informed his corpus”

1. Poe’s Exposure to Art Exhibited in Philadelphia and Manhattan, 1838–1845.
2. Artists and Artwork in Poe’s Short Stories and Sketches.
3. Poe’s Homely Interiors.
4. Poe’s Visual Tricks.
5. Poe’s Art Criticism.

“Poe integrated visual art into sketches, tales, and literary criticism, paying close attention to the sculptures and paintings he saw in books, magazines, and museums”

It strikes me that this was one of the lessons Lovecraft learned from Poe. It would be interesting to have a similar art history book on Lovecraft.

Lovecraft’s writing style manual: Abner Alden’s The Reader (1802)

04 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by in Historical context, Scholarly works

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Lovecraft’s boyhood writing manual…

intro1

Download the first volume (in exactly the same 1802 edition as Lovecraft had), and also the second volume (probably not had by Lovecraft, since he mentions only a single volume).

It’s a little more interesting that simply a style and composition guide, being also an anthology of examples that serve as a guide-to-life…

Lesson LXXVIII
By Imagination man can travel back to the source of time: converse with successive generations of men … he can sail down the stream of time until he loses “sight of stars and sun, by wandering into those retired parts of eternity, when the heavens and earth shall be no more”

Lovecraft in a letter to Bernard Austin Dwyer, 3rd March 1927…

“Being highly imaginative, and sensitive to the archaic influences of this old town with its narrow hill streets and glamorous Colonial doorways, I conceived the childish freak of transporting myself altogether into the past; so began to choose only such books as were very old — with the “long s” — (which I found mainly in the banished portion of the library in a great dark storeroom upstairs) and to date all my writings 200 years back — 1697 instead of 1897 and so on. For my guidance in correct composition [in early boyhood] I chose a deliciously quaint and compendious volume which my great-grandfather had used at school, and which I still treasure sacredly minus its covers:

THE READER:
Containing the Art of Delivery—Articulation, Accent, ‘Pronunciation, Emphasis, Pauses, Key or Pitch of the Voice, and Tones; Selection of Lessons in the Various Kinds of Prose; Poetick Numbers, Structure of English Verse, Feet and Pauses, Measure and Movement, Melody, Harmony, and Expression, Rules for Reading Verse, Selections of Lessons in the Various Kinds of Verse.
By
Abner Alden, A. M.
Boston
Printed by J. T. Buckingham for Thomas and Andrews,
No. 45, Newbury-Street
1802.

This was so utterly and absolutely the very thing I had been looking for, that I attacked it with almost savage violence. It was in the “long s”, and reflected in all its completeness the Georgian rhetorical tradition of Addison, Pope, and Johnson, which had survived unimpaired in America even after the Romantic Movement had begun to modify it in England. This, I felt by instinct, was the key to the speech and manners and mental world of that old periwigged, knee-breeched Providence whose ancient lanes still climbed the hill […] Little by little I hammered every rule and precept and example into my receptive system, till in a month or so I was beginning to write coherent verse in the ancient style.

David V. Bush’s war poetry

04 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by in Historical context, New discoveries

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I’ve been looking at some David V. Bush poetry, Poetry of Mastery and Love Verse (1922). Probably largely ghosted by Lovecraft, who had been doing extensive ghosting of poetry and prose for Bush since 1920.

This essay has been replaced by my new book of revised, expanded, and footnoted versions of my recent Tentaclii essays, Lovecraft in Historical Context: fifth collection.

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Merrimack River Feline Rescue

04 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by in Odd scratchings

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I won the Public Domain Review caption competition. Looking around for a place to have them send the prize, I alighted on the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society. Should anyone need a relatively local-to-Providence no-kill cat shelter to donate Lovecraftian competition / event surplus proceeds to, that might be it. They seem like a pretty solid organisation, and are just about the nearest such to Providence / the Necronomicon convention.

captionc