Thursday, September 24, 2015

The Medium is the (Blasphemous) Message

H.P. Lovecraft, The Whisperer in Darkness (Part 3)

It might be tempting to dismiss the mi-go as sloppy (or at least outdated) science fiction.  They fly through nonexistent ether, over distances that would take them countless years travelling, presumably, well below the speed of light.  Yet there is something delightfully creepy about an alien patiently flying the fathoms from Pluto to Earth – perhaps in a zen-like trance, or maybe bored to the point of extraterrestrial madness.  Such creatures might well hatch plans spanning eons and carry them out with the inter-generational patience of Frank Herbert’s Bene Gesserit (read Dune!).  Somehow Lovecraft’s wobbly science adds to the power of the story, rather than subtracting from it. 

Likewise, the narrator Wilmarth’s assertion that photography is “an impersonal transmitting process without prejudice, fallibility, or mendacity” is problematic, even in an age before digital editing.  Nonetheless, there’s an interesting paradox in that this “objective” evidence (of aliens in Vermont) is also described as vague and “damnably suggestive,” still retaining some sense of mystery and uncertainty.  This tension is vital to many forms of supernatural horror – teasing the reader or viewer with truths that must be solid enough to terrify yet elusive enough to defy rational reply.



So we have ether and old photographs – and it makes me think that Lovecraft is systematically exploring the notion of medium in this story.  How are truths – or horrors – transported from place to place, and to the minds of those who might perceive them?  By what substance or technology are they conveyed?  From the realm of the eye we move to the work of the ear – and the sounds that are provided on a phonograph record.  Wilmarth is troubled by an enigmatic recording of a terrible voice.  “Its sudden advent that first time almost stunned me, and I heard the rest of the record through in a sort of abstracted daze.”  This is such an intriguing presentation of strangeness – of the alien, as it were.  Madness is usually depicted as a collapse of rationality – yet for Lovecraft (as, I suppose, for many ancient societies) it resembled a kind of divine if terrible gift, the revelation of an alternate and largely incomprehensible reality.  “When the longer passage of buzzing came, there was a sharp intensification of that feeling of blasphemous infinity…”

And, this being Lovecraft, even the simple medium of writing can be dangerous.  Wilmarth speaks of “that terrible and encyclopaedic letter.”  It’s all building towards the rejection of the body as a medium or vessel for the mind – and those space-defying jars filled with human brains.

Image: Odilon Redon (Getty Open Content)

No comments:

Post a Comment