If Lovecraft didn’t invent cosmic horror, he did revolutionize it: ST Joshi

When Sunand Tryambak Joshi, better known as ST Joshi, was eight years old, his family migrated from India to the city of Muncie, Indiana, in the United States. At 13 he visited the local public library for the first time and discovered the works of Howard Philips Lovecraft (1890-1937). He was amazed to the point of dedicating his life to studying the great master of horror literature.

Considered the greatest expert on Lovecraft’s life, ST Joshi visited Mexico for the first time to give the talk How to study Lovecraft and the fiction of the strange, organized by the General Directorate of Publications and Editorial Development of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, on the occasion of the 134th anniversary of the writer’s birth.

In interview with The Day, The specialist spoke about the life of the author of The Necronomicon, their relationships, as well as the great interests and influences that the legendary writer had.

My interest in Lovecraft began when I was a child; I marveled at his way of playing with universes, with science fiction and narrative. There I discovered that his texts were at Brown University and I set the goal of entering that university to learn more about him.Joshi shared.

I can’t say that Howard invented cosmic horror, but he did revolutionize it; In addition, it created another current of its own to which entities such as Cthulhu, Yog Sothoth and others belong. Many times he played with the indescribable and made it very difficult to read, that was decisive for him not being recognized in his time.he explained.

According to the expert, Lovecraft’s literature is not about external gods, but simply about fear: “He called us to reflect on the fact that humanity was insignificant in relation to the universe as a whole, but not completely, because we can create our own destination. This can be seen in the change in political ideology he had: he started as a radical conservative, but later became a moderate socialist.

Howard lived through the Great Depression in 1929, saw savage capitalism and realized that continuing with this system would lead humanity to destruction. He realized that this ideology also represented part of an unknown and devastating horizon about which he wrote, and that can destroy the entire world.he detailed.

ST Joshi is considered the world’s greatest authority on Lovecraft’s work. For more than 30 years he has researched and written books such as the biography HP Lovecraft: A Life (translated into Spanish as I Am Providence: The Life and Times of HP Lovecraft)in addition to some 24 volumes of personal letters.

Born in 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island, HP Lovecraft pioneered the cosmic horror genre with works such as The Call of Cthulhu, At the Mountains of Madness y The color that fell from space. It managed to permeate later writers who expanded that universe and thus reached the present day. His transcendence lies not only in horror, but in his mastery of language and in the creation of gothic and science fiction stories, in which mystery, grotesque ancient divinities and unknown entities converge.

Lovecraft is one of the most important prose writers in the English language. He had an exquisite style, was very careful when using words and made use of the unity of effect used by Edgar Allan Poe, whom he admired. He wrote the texts in two forms: the first was the story written as such, and the other part was the vision of the protagonists; In both, he told a story that followed different paths, but that complemented each other.assured the expert.

ST Joshi stated that it is very difficult for him to define what Lovecraft’s best work was, but he assured that He himself helped him with that task..

In the mountains of madness, Written in 1931, it is a long story in which some scientists travel to Antarctica and find the remains of the Ancients, an extraterrestrial race that together with their slaves, the Shoggots, settled on Earth, and who were the origin of life on the planet.

Ideologies

One of the watershed moments in Lovecraft’s life was when he moved to New York in 1924, where he lived for two years with his wife, Sonia Green. It didn’t last long because they had financial problems, to the point that Howard tried to commit suicide; They separated, he returned to Providence and there his creativity resurfaced.

“He was a full-time writer, had no other means of support, and his family possessed only moderate wealth. To make matters worse, he was very severe with himself and did not publicize his texts much; He was never an idolized figure, much less could he make a living from it.

He was a simple man who aspired to moral and ethical integrity similar to that of a gentleman. I find him admirable because he preferred to maintain the purity of his work rather than sell out. That is why he thought that it would be necessary to change to a socialist government, so that more people could live in a more dignified way.commented the critic.

Regarding racism, ST Joshi stated that Howard was influenced by a period issue and his parents were radical conservatives; It was the context in which he grew up and it had a lot of force on him.

“Providence was an important conservative stronghold. They realized that being white was not enough to be successful, and that terrified them.

Today, if he were still alive, I would have liked to ask him if he still thought the same about those of us who are of another ethnic group.concluded the expert.

Lovecraft died of stomach cancer on March 15, 1937 in a Providence hospital. He was 46 years old. He left countless notebooks from which the stories that we find today in almost any bookstore were recovered.

Among his most emblematic works are The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Rats in the Walls, Dagon, The Necronomicon y The Dunwich Horror.

The figure of the writer has become one of the most important symbols of mystery and horror in the world, inspiring everything from literature, theater and musical groups to video games.