Looking for the mythological background novels of Cthulhu

CthulhuMythos is an overhead myth system adapted from howard phillips lovecraft's novel The world, which was perfected by august wilhelm Wilhelm Drees and created by many authors. Cthulhu is not the God of this overhead world, although it is a universal belief on the earth, and the theme of these myths may come from a reinterpretation of myths and legends around the world (such as Wendigo, the legendary snow monster in North America). As long as they accept the concept of Lovecraft's novels and extend them, they can be included in this myth, so this myth system is still expanding and there are many new creations.

Lovecraft was born in his family mansion at Angel Street 194, Providence, Rhode Island, USA. His father is WinfieldScottLovecraft, a traveling salesman. His mother is SarahSusanPhillipsLovecraft, and her ancestors can be traced back to 1630, reaching BayColony, Massachusetts. all one's life

When he was three years old, it was said that his father had a nervous breakdown in a hotel room in Chicago and was taken back to Butler Hospital, where he stayed for five years before he died. This story of mental breakdown is just a cover to avoid the embarrassing situation of the family. Love Clive's father was proved to be infected with syphilis, which led to his death.

Love Clive was brought up by his mother, two aunts and his loving grandfather. Love crack showed his talent at an early age. He can recite at the age of two and write at the age of six.

His grandfather encouraged him to read classic literary works, such as Arabian Nights, Bulfinch's Fairy Tales and children's editions of Iliad and Odyssey. His grandfather also aroused Howard's interest in supernatural phenomena by telling his original Gothic horror stories.

Lovecliffe was often ill when he was young. Sometimes he doesn't go to school, but he reads a lot. In 1899, Science Bulletin published some of his works.

His grandfather died on 1904, and then his family fell into poverty due to poor financial management. The family was forced to move from their mansion in Angle Street to a completely different and very uncomfortable place. Lovecrest was deeply affected by the loss of his home and birthplace, and even tried to commit suicide. He suffered a nervous breakdown in 1908, so he failed to complete his high school diploma and enter Brown University as he hoped, which haunted him for the rest of his life.

The first beautiful story of Love Crack appeared around 19 17 (Liao Zhai in the tomb, Dagong). During this period, he also established a huge communication network. His frequent correspondence for a long time made it possible for him to become the greatest letter writer in the 20th century. Among his pen pals is young Frest. Ackerman, Robert? Answer? Brock and Robert? e？ Howard (author of Conan series).

Cleft mother died on May 2 192 1 due to surgical complications. Soon after, he attended a gathering of amateur writers, where he met SoniaGreene, a Ukrainian Jew who was born in Kripke, Biloff County, 1883. They got married later, and although the aunts of Love Crack were not satisfied with this arrangement, they moved to Brook, new york. Only a few years later, after his gentle divorce from Green, he returned to Providence to spend the rest of his life with his aunt. Because of this unfortunate marriage, some autobiographers speculate that he lacks sexual desire.

Ten years after he returned to his hometown and died, it was his most creative period. During this period, he wrote most of the most famous short stories and led the trend of vulgar magazines (mainly surprise novels). At the same time, there are also longer works. For example, he often revises the works of other writers and writes many ghost stories.

Although he wrote as much as he could, the economy went from bad to worse, and he moved to a smaller and worse rental house with the only menstruation, he was also deeply loved by Robert? e？ Impact of Howard's suicide 1936, he was diagnosed with intestinal cancer and malnutrition. He endured the pain until his death the following year.

The Myth of Lovecraft and Cthulhu

"I think people's thinking lacks the ability to connect with known things, which is the kindest thing in the world. Man lives on an island called ignorance in a dark ocean. This ocean is vast and contains infinite secrets, but we should not sail too far and explore too deep. "

-Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" The same theme of Lovecraft's novels is: the value of human beings in the universe is meaningless, and all exploration of the mysterious unknown will lead to a disastrous ending. Humans often rely on the power of other powerful beings in the universe, but these beings have no interest in humans, if not malice. The core part of the myth is the so-called "GreatOldOnes". They are terrible and ancient creatures with great power. They used to rule the earth in ancient times, but now they are asleep. One of the most famous is Cthulhu, which sleeps in the underwater city of Roo-Lee-ah in the South Pacific. When "the positions of many stars are correct", Roo-Lee-ah will float from the bottom of the sea, and Cthulhu will wake up and bring disaster to the earth. Although Cthulhu is famous and the whole myth system is named after it, it is not the most powerful of the old rulers, nor is it the center of the story. Azathoth, the leader of the fiend, occupies the central position of this system, while Nyarlathotep has more frequent contact with the human world. Compared with other former dominators, Nyarlathotep prefers to deceive and seduce human beings. Lovecraft himself does not want to systematically sort out the myths he created before his death. In his letter to J·F· Morton on April 27th, 1933,/kloc-0, he expounded some basic viewpoints of the myth system of Cthulhu: at the beginning of the universe, only Azathoth existed. Three pillars of primitive gods appeared in Azathoth: darkness, nameless fog and chaos. Blind and stupid, Azathoth originally gave birth to "darkness" for her supreme mother, Shub-Gu Late. She gave birth to almost all her former dominators, including Cthulhu, and even all her life. The nameless fog is Yog-Sothoth, who knows all the time and space and is the key to the silver door. And "chaos" is Nyara Totip, the messenger and representative of all gods, the symbol of ridicule and contradiction, and the source of terror.

"The oldest and strongest emotion of human beings is fear; The oldest and strongest fear is the fear of the unknown. "

-Lovecraft, supernatural terror in literature

The transformation of August Dresden

After Lovecraft's death, august wilhelm Drees, as the heir to the copyright of his works, further improved the system of Cthulhu myth and constructed a general framework. However, Dresden inevitably integrated his Christian values and dualism of good and evil into this construction process; Instead of lovecraft's meaningless chaotic universe, he gave it the theme of the struggle between good and evil. As Lovecraft imagined in his myth theory, those "ancient gods" first appeared ... these ancient gods were benevolent beings and represented good power. They live quietly near Betelgeuse, Orion, and rarely interfere in the struggle between the earth's races and evil forces. These evil forces are sometimes called "old dominators" and sometimes "ancient dominators" (.

The Myth of August Dresden Cthulhu

In fact, Lovecraft himself is an atheist, and once declared that Kant's moral principles were "a joke". In essence, the myth system created by Dreyfus is not consistent with Lovecraft's idea. Moreover, based on the collective creative characteristics of Cthulhu myth, it can not be regarded as a complete and inseparable whole, but as a collection of many stories and settings based on the same world view. One problem with the Dresden system is that, except for a few vague examples, Lovecraft never directly mentioned old gods or ancient gods in his works. In addition, he never thought of building a comprehensive and unified setting for those old dominators (or ancient dominators). What caused more controversy was that Drees introduced the so-called "element" system into the myth of Cthulhu. He divided the former rulers into four camps according to symbolic natural elements: water, fire, wind and earth. In order to fill the blank of this system, Dreyfus even created the images of two former rulers, Cthugha (symbolizing fire) and Ithaqua (symbolizing wind). However, there are still many problems in this classification: for example, Drees classified Cthulhu as a symbol of the existence of "water", but if so, why is it trapped on the seabed and blocked by water? Moreover, in Dresden's system, "fire" and "earth" are enemies, and "water" and "wind" are enemies; This is very different from the traditional element camp (water against fire, wind against the ground). Different views on Dresden system

"Dreyfus often uses the word' Cthulhu myth' to describe Lovecraft's worldview. Unfortunately, even his own writing distorts the meaning of the word, which may be directly related to his being an apostate and a loose Catholic. In any case, he divided Lovecraft's "old dominator" into good and bad camps, fighting for land and farms. Later, some imitators continued to use this statement, which is far from Lovecraft's trajectory. "

-Robert A. Brock "The Legacy of Terror"

There are many Lovecraft fans who hold a strong contempt for Dreyfus' worldview, thinking that it violates Lovecraft's original intention (which is indeed the case) and turns a bold and imaginative horror world into a vulgar stage of modern fantasy adventure stories with only mythological terms listed; In extreme cases, this controversy even led to factional opposition among fans, and some fans did not include the creation of non-Lovecraft in the category of Cthulhu mythology at all. For some time after Lovecraft's death, Dreyfus banned other writers from writing stories based on the Cthulhu myth on the grounds of the copyright he inherited. But in 1960, he gave up this request; Since then, the myth of Cthulhu has truly become a world created collectively. Dresden made great contributions to the popularization and perfection of Cthulhu myth, although many boring things were stuffed into the system he created; But without Dreyfus' efforts, Lovecraft and his works would have been forgotten long ago, and the Cthulhu myth would not have such a wide influence today.