Encyclopedia of the unde.., p.23
Encyclopedia of the Undead, page 23
Golem Lore
Ironically, it was a German language collection of Jewish lore that brought the story of the Golem and of Rabbi Loew to the fore in 1847. It was picked up by Czech literature almost immediately and was used as a source by the writer Alois Jerasek in his “Old Bohemian Legends.” The Czech writer and poet, Jaroslav Vrchlickys, also composed a poem about the creature “Golem” in which Rabbi Loew is punished for his presumption against God in actually creating a living being. The main literary work concerning the Golem was written at the end of 1914 and was published in 1915. This was Gustav Mayrink’s novel The Golem, which has become something of a minor classic of European Jewish literature. In 1982, the foremost Jewish writer and laureate, Isaac Bashevis Singer, wrote his own English version of the golem legend—also entitled The Golem, which is still available
Some students of literature have argued that the motif of the golem, the living creature formed out of unloving clay, provided the basis for Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein, in which a living creature is made out of the unliving parts of dead men. Whether Mary Shelley actually knew of the golem legend is unknown though it is quite possible, given her own outlook and the tastes of her husband and companions that she may well have.
Golem Films
Like the ghoul, the Golem remained on the periphery of horror cinematic representation. It was, it was argued, too obscure to occupy the status of the werewolf or vampire in the minds of the movie going public. This is not to say that no films were made about it. Indeed, a rather classic film, Der Golem, was made in Germany in 1914, directed by Peter Wegener, with an updated version (again directed by Wegener) released in 1920. These black and white films were mainly adaptations of Mayrink’s novel and are counted as some of the foremost movies of the German Expressionist cinema. Another film concerning the creature, Golem, was made in 1936 under the direction of Julian Duvevier. But as a monster, the golem was not considered to be sufficiently terrifying—or else far too obscure—to take on the might of the Universal monsters. From time to time, the golem has peripherally featured in other films and tv series—most notably in an episode of the popular supernatural/sci-fi series The X Files. Even so, the creature has not gone away, but lurks somewhere in the back of the human psyche, ready to emerge again as soon as night falls or the cloying fog rolls in. The shambling, shadowy figure still holds the power to frighten us all. Part of that fear must surely lie in the secrecy and mystery that still surrounds it, even today.
Golems in Comic Books
The figure of and the mystery surrounding the golem enjoyed something of a brief resurgence during the early 1960s, as the comic books of the day began to pick up on it. In the developing world of comics literature, golem-like figures began to appear albeit bearing fanciful names such as It: The Unliving, Attack of the Clay Man, The Thing that Stalks in the Mist, and Nightmare Stalker from Hell to name but a few. Representations of the creature were also fanciful and owed more to artistic interpretation than to any folkloric tradition. Many were portrayed as something between a Caribbean zombie and a bandage swathed Egyptian mummy. There was even a short-lived attempt to establish the golem motif as a type of superhero. The obscure and equally short-lived Mystic Comics (1963/64) created a character named Colosso the Clay Man, which was loosely based on Golem lore. In this, a young man could transfer his consciousness into and therefore animate a gigantic clay figure that had been stored in a secret place, for the purposes of fighting crime. This series does not appear to have been a success and quickly vanished into obscurity along with the comics company that produced it. Another thankfully brief series concerned a man who transformed into an unthinking and violent golem-like creature in a parody of the Incredible Hulk after touching a meteorite that had fallen from outer space. It, too, disappeared without trace. Nevertheless, the golem (and also the ghoul) continued to resurface as peripheral characters in some of the later comics publications from such major companies as Marvel and DC.
Both the ghoul and the golem may well stem from the oldest traditions that we know of—from amongst the extremely ancient legends and folklore of the Middle East. Both have undergone a number of perceptual changes across the years. The golem, for instance, did not enjoy any widespread notoriety as a monster until the 16th, century although tales about it had certainly been in existence long before that. But the basic core of their terror is very much the same as it was in early times. Tales about them are often fragmentary, but they blend together into a rich tapestry of terror, that has still the power to startle and alarm both Middle Eastern and European minds. Hints of ancient books and texts that have the power to summon and control demons and monsters have filtered down over the years and, as we will see elsewhere in this book, have influenced some of the darker aspects of our more modern literature.
Although we tend to largely ignore them or else treat them as lesser terrors than vampires and zombies, the ghouls and golems—those terrors of the night—still remain with us, lurking in the furthest corners of our mind and ready to emerge at the slightest provocation. We would do well not to dismiss them too lightly for they are reputedly far older than Mankind itself and represent extremely ancient powers that have lingered with us since the foundation of the world!
The Terrors of H.P. Lovecraft
That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.
—H.P. Lovecraft
The Necronomicon
Arguably, no single modern writer has had more influence upon today’s horror fiction than H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937). Many writers in the genre from all across the world, from Britain’s Ramsey Campbell to America’s Robert Bloch and Stephen King, openly acknowledge their debt to him. His work has been reprinted over and over in novels, various anthologies, collections, and in magazines ranging from formal commercial publications to small, narrowly distributed fanzines. Commentaries on his work abound, each assessing various aspects of his life, outlook, and contribution to an overall horror fiction. For a man whose largely reclusive lifestyle often mirrored that of some of his characters, this is no mean achievement. His fiction, upon which many subsequent writers have based their own work, is a rich tapestry of ancient, slumbering evils and menacing monsters, seemingly drawn in detail from the traditions of the past. His fiction is crammed with “eldritch rites” that stretch back into “time immemorial,” “inhuman entities,” “blasphemous texts,” and “shunned places,” described so meticulously that commentators have often wondered if there were not some factual basis to them. Was Lovecraft privy to some corpus of arcane and horrendous knowledge to which the rest of us remain mercifully oblivious? This suspicion is borne out by hints and inferences in the work of some other writers—for example, the Welshman Arthur Machen (1863–1947)—but Lovecraft is perhaps the best known. Does his work contain germs of truth masquerading as fiction? Before considering this, it is appropriate to give a brief biography of H.P. Lovecraft himself.
Lovecraft’s Early Life
Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born on 20th August 1890 at 454 (then numbered 194) Angell Street in Providence, Rhode Island. He was the only child of Winfield Scott Lovecraft, a travelling salesman, and Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft—a descendant of an old Rhode Island family. He was to remain in Rhode Island for all of his life with the exception of two years spent in New York. He was a sickly child, subject to colds, flus, and infantile ailments that perhaps made his mother overly protective of him. Long periods at home and in bed suffering from illnesses, either real or imaginary, made him brooding, introspective, and dependent upon his mother.
When he was eight, Howard’s father, Winfield Lovecraft, died. In reality, he had been incarcerated in a sanatorium for the previous five years suffering from paresis (insanity and paralysis brought on by syphilis). This left Howard in the care of his high-strung mother and two aunts. The Phillips side of the family had been well-established in Rhode Island and had intermarried amongst each other—cousins marrying first cousins—and, it was suggested, weakening the line. A constant theme in Lovecraft’s work was the notion of inbreeding amongst “degenerate families” and this may be a fearful reflection of the circumstances amongst his own kin. A number of his stories begin with the narrator suggesting that he might be mad. The thought of hereditary insanity must have haunted Lovecraft like some gibbering spectre. Allied to this, some of the “curious inbred families” that are scattered through his work and that usually gave birth to monsters, have names prevalent in his own family, which may be suggestive of his fear.
Decline of the Family
When his grandmother died, (two years before the death of his father), the family went into a kind of decline that culminated in his mother’s illness. Young Howard certainly experienced the most appalling nightmares. The later death of his grandfather, Whipple Van Buren Phillips, produced even greater problems—this time financial ones. Much of the Phillips family fortune had been leeched away in unprofitable business deals and by unscrupulous business associates and, by the time of the death, the estate was near bankruptcy. The Lovecrafts were practically destitute and had to give up their home in order to share a house with another family. For a proud clan, descended from an old Rhode Island family, this was hard for Sarah Lovecraft to swallow. She lavished all her attention and invested all her hopes and ambitions on Howard, a situation with which the boy may not have been fully able to cope. The suffocation of his mother’s affection may have placed an unbearable burden upon him and may have damaged his relations with women, and indeed many people, for the rest of his life.
Leaving his birthplace had also affected Howard greatly, and the reduced circumstances in which he now found himself afflicted his mind. He would take long bicycle rides to the Barrington River where he would simply stand and look into the swirling waters. It is thought at these times, he was seriously contemplating suicide. But somehow, his resolve overcame such urges and he always returned home.
A shy, bookish boy, he spent much of his early years reading texts in his grandfather’s library—particularly classics of ancient Rome (Ovid, Plato, and Horace) and volumes on ancient and vanished civilizations. He learned some Latin and was able to translate at least some of Ovid’s work. This led his mother to believe that he was destined for Brown University, one of Rhode Island’s premier educational establishments. She told everyone that her son would one day be a respected University academic. This, however, was not to be the case and probably for the rest of his life, Lovecraft may have felt a sense of humiliation and held the view that he had somehow let his mother down. His fiction throngs with references to “Miskatonic University” and some of the people who taught there—perhaps betraying a deep longing for the formally recognized academic life. His own attendance, first at Slater Avenue School and then at Hope Street High School had always been erratic, and Lovecraft frequently quoted “ill health” as the cause. There seems little doubt that he did have ill health, including a serious nervous breakdown in 1908, but it is possible that he stayed with his mother, who was already experiencing some mental health difficulties. It is also possible that as a solitary, morbid boy, he was loath to face the tumultuous world of college life.
In 1921, Sarah Lovecraft, his mother, died in the Province sanatorium where she had been a patient. The cause of her death was actually due to a badly managed gall bladder operation, but she had been mentally ill for quite some time before. Her death had a profound effect on Howard—she had been his closest companion whilst he was growing up—and it’s thought, not for the first time—that he contemplated suicide. Losing both parents in this way induced in Howard a constant fear of hereditary insanity to which he believed he was prone.
First Publishings
Instead of academia, he turned his attention to poetry and writing fiction. At the age of seven, he had already produced a poem, based on the readings in his grandfather’s library, entitled “The Poem of Ulysses,” but his first actual published work was a letter to the Providence Sunday Journal in 1906 on astronomy (a subject that was starting to interest him). However, he appeared to be making no headway as a writer in these early days. He was also becoming more reclusive, staying close to his over-protective mother, and preferring to contact friends by extremely long letters. He also wrote juvenile treatises, mainly for amateur magazines and usually concerning astronomy and science. Most of these were simply crude speculations but they were to lay the foundations for at least part of his future writing.
The Alchemist and Argosy
In 1908, he wrote the short story The Alchemist but, in truth, he was not writing much fiction, and for five years was to remain in a kind of productivity drought. In 1913, however, he wrote a series of letters to the magazine Argosy, attacking the “insipid love stories” of the then-popular writer Fred Jackson. They were written in such a clever way—a parody of Alexander Pope’s Dunciad, that they evoked much literary interest and the United Amateur Press Association invited Lovecraft to join their ranks.
Short Stories
The letters marked a turning point in his career. He began to correspond with like-minded writers and to produce drafts of stories almost ceaselessly, some of which were to eventually surface amongst his recognized works. In 1917, he wrote both Dagon and The Tomb; in 1919 he was producing Beyond the Wall of Sleep, The Doom that came to Sarnath, The Statement of Randolph Carter, and The White Ship. In that same year, he discovered Lord Dunsay, whom he described as his “greatest literary stimulus…since Poe.” (He had presumably read Edgar Allan Poe in his grandfather’s library.) Through 1919 and 1920 he maintained this same creative streak, writing both poems and short stories.
Sonia Green
Sarah Lovecraft’s death freed Howard a little and he was able to travel a bit more, particularly to amateur literary gatherings. For instance, on July 4 1921, he was able to travel to the first Amateur Journalist Convention in Boston and there he was to meet a woman who was to temporarily change his life: Sonia Haft Green.
Sonia Green was a progressive and self-assured woman. She was a New Yorker and a businesswoman, owning a milliner’s shop on 5th Avenue. She was also seven years older than Lovecraft and of Russian-Jewish descent. Howard Lovecraft was impressed with her devotion to letters and, superficially at least, they seemed to have a similar outlook on the world. However, this was no whirlwind romance; it took three years before the two decided to marry. In all that time, Lovecraft never informed his two aunts—his mother’s sisters—of the relationship with Sonia, only writing to them after the marriage, which took place at St. Paul’s Cathedral in New York. Perhaps he feared that his wife’s ancestry would scandalize the elderly and genteel New England ladies. He resolved to leave Providence for the first time in his life and set up a home with Sonia in New York. A happy future seemed to lie ahead of them.
Nevertheless, the marriage seemed doomed from the start. Sonia herself was unwell and several times had to leave the marital home in order to seek recuperation in various rest homes. Her business collapsed shortly after they were married and she had to give up the milliner’s shop, which was their main source of income. Moreover, Lovecraft himself found it extremely difficult to get a job in New York. Besides, he had a growing horror of the city—there seemed to be groups of “aliens” (foreigners) on every street corner; the pace of life was much faster than he had been used to back in Providence; the people there seemed too greedy, grasping, and commercially-minded for his liking. At the same time, he was still writing and was developing his stories into a kind of mythical framework, which would later become known as his Mythos. The couple were now struggling financially and the relationship appeared to falter. Lovecraft continued to write but the money that came in for his published pieces was not sufficient to meet their bills.
Return to Providence
On 1st January 1925, Lovecraft moved into a “bachelor apartment” (no more than a couple of rooms) in a squalid area of Brooklyn whilst Sonia travelled to the Mid-West in order to find work. She would only return intermittently and the marriage might well have been counted as being over at this stage. However, during this time Lovecraft was most prolific, turning out a good chunk of his most interesting work. He was, nevertheless, finding New York increasingly oppressive and was becoming more and more withdrawn—seldom venturing out for days at a time. He was also negotiating, with his aunts, the possibility of a return to Providence. The arrangements were complicated and involved Sonia, Lovecraft’s aunts, and several friends, such as the writer Frank Belknap Long. In April 1926, Howard Lovecraft eventually returned to Providence. He would not leave again.
