Though H. P. Lovecraft was personally very conservative, racist, even a eugenist --- he would, believablly, have joined the Tea Party, if he were alive today --- still, the words will say what they say. In 1920, he wrote the best description I've yet seen of the 2014 election (and of the general mood and direction of America in the 21st Century).
From "Nyarlathotep":
". . . the crawling chaos . . . I am the last . . . I will tell the audient void. . . .
"I do not recall distinctly when it began, but it was months ago. The general tension was horrible. To a season of political and social upheaval was added a strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a danger widespread and all-embracing, such a danger as may be imagined only in the most terrible phantasms of the night. I recall that the people went about with pale and worried faces, and whispered warnings and prophecies which no one dared consciously repeat or acknowledge to himself that he had heard. A sense of monstrous guilt was upon the land, and out of the abysses between the stars swept chill currents that made men shiver in dark and lonely places. There was a daemoniac alteration in the sequence of the seasons—the autumn heat lingered fearsomely, and everyone felt that the world and perhaps the universe had passed from the control of known gods or forces to that of gods or forces which were unknown."
Note: You get 37 extra-credit geek points, if you recognized H. P. before reading the text.
ReplyDeleteNo geek points here. Alas. :)
ReplyDeleteWhat chills me most about these words, which are yes, apropos today, is that I believe conservatives would not say them today, or if they would, they would say them about things I feel are unimportant / unessential in the bigger picture.
Ruth: I believe conservatives would not say them today, or if they would, they would say them about things I feel are unimportant / unessential in the bigger picture
DeleteYes, exactly so. I don't know if this is just an effect of age and sustained disappointment with politics, or if it is a thing really happening in the world, or a bit of both, but it seems to me that public discourse moves more and more into a kind of nightmarish, absurdist theatre that has almost nothing to do with reality. It's hard to avoid labels like "Orwellian" and "Kafkaesque." Real issues -- e.g., health care, immigration, marriage equality, climate disruption, racism, the economy, war, etc. --- are mentioned in elections (i won't say "discussed"), but then the elections, and subsequent policy, are decided according to paranoid, comic-book versions of the issues, while the real world, which we refuse even to look at, crumbles and weeps and dies. And this nightmare is manufactured for profit by demagogues and multi-nationals who know precisely what they are doing (with our approval, I'm afraid). Every election cycle we crank the intelligence level down a bit further and rattle on into the destruction we have chosen and enabled for ourselves.
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what spooked me is that upon first reading i thought the quote was only the small blurb to begin with, "...the crawling chaos . . . I am the last . . . I will tell the audient void. . . ". and that the rest of it was in fact you speaking! but it wasn't! and of course, that's the point! how long do we need to see the truth, do we need to annunciate it, articulate it, point to it, jump upon it, before we actually see it and create real progress from that point? or is it absolutely irrelevant? will we only continue to jump upon the same spot until we find we have destroyed the very earth we jump upon and destroyed one another in the meantime, having nowhere left to jump, and having no legs left to jump with? it seems so.
ReplyDeleteand just in case we want to, with great indignation, blame them, we had better shut our mouths and take stock of our own actions. we are, in fact, the voting populace, whether specifically so inside any one nation, or in terms of creating what society is at this time. we are in fact the THEM we so often like to blame. we are the ones who must make change.
xo
erin