Thomas
Ligotti has often been compared to H.P. Lovecraft, with whom he shares some
superficial commonalities. His work is
distinctive, however, and is not merely an emulation of the older master. His relationship to Lovecraft seems similar
to that of Clark Ashton Smith’s to Lord Dunsany. The influence of the earlier author is
obvious, but the elements have been entirely assimilated into the unique style
of the later writer. As in Lovecraft’s
writing, Ligotti’s fiction makes extensive use of dream material as a kind of
base metal, which he transmutes into a more lustrous substance, while still
retaining the darker, disturbing qualities.
Readers
may be familiar with Carl Jung’s dream psychology, which proposes three stages
in the transformation of dream imagery over time: the nigredo, albedo and rubedo.
Broadly speaking, the idea is that dreams progress through periods that
are dark, intermediate and bright in quality, sometimes in the space of a
single dream or more often across a series of dreams. (Those of us who have spent time diligently
logging our dreams and nightmares may have observed a pattern like this.)
The nigredo is the initial point in the cycle, composed of themes of
decay, disintegration, dismemberment, and gloom. Things are falling apart or being destroyed. In the albedo
phase, imagery is in flux, and objects change form and shape, shifting back and
forth, becoming lighter and more illumined.
Options are being considered.
Finally, in the rubedo phase a
synthesis or solution is achieved, characterized by brightness, color and
energy.
The cold and dark base metal of
nightmare is transformed through an intermediate quicksilver stage to bright,
warm gold. And then back again.
Insofar as Jung’s insight applies to
The Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft
(1995) or Ligotti’s Songs of a Dead
Dreamer (1989), one can see that neither author made it very far beyond the
nigredo stage, though each may have
made brief forays into the albedo or “quicksilver” phase. In their fiction, Lovecraft and Ligotti never make
it to the rubedo—bright, warm,
energetic, golden—which signals integration, wholeness, even holiness. This would imply a kind of salvation, which
is impossible in their stories and worldview.
In an
excerpt from his book, The Conspiracy against
the Human Race (2010), Ligotti describes as “craven” any attempt by horror
writers to make use of conventional religious ideas as source material for
their stories. Echoing Lovecraft’s famed
materialism and atheism, he makes clear his disdain for traditional religious
doctrine that might inculcate cosmic fear or presume to offer a remedy for it.
Ligotti prefers nightmare alone as a source of the weird and terrifying, which source
can also include the nightmarish aspects of everyday existence—anything that threatens
life or sanity.
Though
horror fiction has value in helping readers somehow face the most dreadful
aspects of their lives, it is not cathartic or ultimately helpful in anyway,
because there is no escape. Humanity is
cursed with a predilection to seek meaningfulness, but there ultimately is no
meaning or purpose in a life of struggle and eventual deterioration and death. This grimly stoic world view is not shared by
all, but readers can appreciate the integrity with which authors like Ligotti
and Lovecraft allow it to inform their art.
And
yet, one does not have to read very many stories by either author before
encountering familiar religious motifs. Why
are there so many churches in Lovecraft’s stories? Certainly these elements are not present to
provide much hope or comfort. If
anything, Lovecraft and Ligotti are adept at using religious imagery to violate
conventional expectations and so keep the focus on inescapable darkness and
dismay. When dealing with universal
questions about life, death, insanity—the purpose or meaning of it all— it may
be a challenge to avoid thinking along religious lines. We are wired for this.
That Ligotti
is able to short circuit this wiring is evident in his short story The Shadow at the Bottom of the World
(1991). This is one of Ligotti’s earlier
works, and introduces an understanding of human reality that pervades much of
his later work. It is not so much a
story as a prose poem. While there is a
narrative of sorts, the focus is on an unfolding revelation. The effectiveness of the text lies in its
powerful and disturbing images, which Ligotti skillfully conflates with
familiar religious motifs as well as ordinary objects.
The
setting is Midwestern and rural, a scene typical of some ordinary wall
calendar turned to the page for October.
But the brightly colored leaves of autumn are not falling, and a
wandering prophet named Mr. Marble, a type of John the Baptist, interprets
these and other signs as harbingers of disaster. The passage of autumn has been suspended; it
is “Halloween Town” for the indefinite future.
Even the air has changed and become oppressive.
The
Lovecraftian influence can be seen in the “malign and particular suspension or
defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the
assaults of chaos…” as Lovecraft would put it.
Even more ominously, there appears at the edge of town, among the
cornstalks, at the very edge of collective consciousness, a blasphemous image
of Christ-as-scarecrow. The figure has
been internally defiled from the ground up by an organic upwelling of evil, a
nebulous black vine that animates the figure and makes its head bob in the
absence of any breeze.
The
narrator of The Shadow at the Bottom of
the World is a collective “we”—here Ligotti parts ways with Lovecraft, who
speaks relentlessly in the first person autobiographical “I”. This rhetorical “we” makes the story sound
like a philosophical treatise at times, or a statement of queasy suspicions
about the nature of reality. Is Ligotti
speaking for all of us?
Reminiscent
of Lovecraft’s classic The Call of
Cthulhu (1928), the emergence of this subterranean—as opposed to submarine—horror
enters into the dreams of the townspeople.
The revelation makes itself known in the midst of collective nightmare
as much if not more than in its physical appearance in the corn field. It becomes an object of terrified veneration. As is typical in such situations, a sacrifice of some kind will be needed
to restore equilibrium. In this
sacrifice all of the townspeople are somehow complicit.
In an
interview published in the Wall Street Journal back in September, Ligotti
acknowledged that he had not attempted to write in any other genre but
horror. He reiterated a sense that many
horror writers have, (including Lovecraft perhaps), that horror writers,
because of their relentless focus on the darker and more frightful aspects of
human existence, are considered lesser lights, underachievers. Horror fiction can often seem devoid of the commonplace,
omitting the warmth and breadth of human social experience.
“Dickens trumps
Poe” as Ligotti put it in the interview. This is also a
criticism of Lovecraft’s work, which is almost completely empty of women,
children, pets, work, food, and many other aspects of normality. But Ligotti is satisfied to operate within
this narrow range, as are his devoted readers.
Effective horror requires a clear and obsessive focus.
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