Nietzsche and Lovecraft. Supposedly both were nihilists. But were they? Let’s take a brief look at both, in the light of cosmic horror.
Cosmic Horror
What do we mean by cosmic horror? Cosmic horror is the horror subgenre that focuses on the fear we feel when we are confronted by phenomena that is beyond our ability to comprehend.
Lovecraft wrote that the only thing saving us from death or insanity was our inability to correlate all known facts into a cohesive and understandable whole.
Nietzsche wrote about being nauseated by the truth after peering into the abyss.
Cosmic horror chills us, at least good cosmic horror does, when the story forces us to come to grips with our insignificance in the universe. Cosmic horror is the abyss which nauseates us with the truth. Cosmic horror is the bringing together of knowledge that should drive us insane.
Lovecraft
HP Lovecraft was 10 years old when Friedrich Nietzsche died at the age of 55, and as far as we know he did not read Nietzsche.
Lovecraft was not a philosopher, per se. Although he did spend much time thinking about realities, science, and religion. Through his fiction he worked out a philosophy of sorts, which is embodied in his creation of cosmic horror as presented in his Cthulhu Mythos.
For Lovecraft, the species homo sapiens is not at the apex of anything. In a very real sense, human beings are merely a form of advanced simian on a tiny planet, orbiting a pretty insignificant star in one of many thousands of galaxies in the vast universe.
Compared to the cosmos we are nothing.
Lovecraft would undoubtedly have agreed with Silenus’s answer to Midas’s question. What is the best thing for humankind? To not to be born. And once born, the best for us is to die soon.
For Lovecraft, at least as seen in his fiction, there is no real hope for us. We are, as it were, going into battle armed with pea shooters, when our enemy has machine guns and rocket launchers.
We are hopelessly outclassed by the universe. And the universe will ultimately win. I think that is the message of “The Call of Cthulhu” and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”.
I think Lovecraft was essentially a nihilist. Life is meaningless and we have no intrinsic purpose.
Nietzsche
In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche lays the ground work of his philosophy, which all of his subsequent books build on and expand.
Nietzsche, by means of the myth of Midas and Silenus, posits the essential meaninglessness of the human species. He goes on to tell us that when we actually comprehend Silenus’s message, when we look into the abyss, have our dark night of the soul, we come away nauseated — nauseated because we’ve believed a lie and now know the truth.
However, he does not leave us in despair. He reminds us that we are creators and it is through art — our creativity — that we find meaning in life. We are our saviors. The god out there is dead. What is alive and well is the god within us. Or perhaps better stated, the god that we are — because gods are creators, and we are creators.
What we see in Nietzsche is proto-existentialism. Nietzsche was not a nihilist. His is not a philosophy of despair. It is a philosophy of hope and life for modern humans.
Conclusion
Cosmic horror would never have come from the pen of Friedrich Nietzsche. Because for him there was always hope.
The closest Lovecraft comes to a sense of hope is in the conclusion of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” where the narrator embraces his future as one of the monstrous denizens of the deep.
For Lovecraft, our only hope is to join that which will destroy us. And that is true horror.
Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!
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