Diss

Chapter 1: Lovecraft and the inhuman perspective By introducing materialism into the heart of fear and fantasy, Lovecraft created a new genre. It is only until recent years that Lovecraft has remained the untapped curiosity of the horror genre. Prior to Lovecraft, horror was addressed as strict fantasy; as it was, the fantastic narrative object was never translated to a fantastic narrative in that events are always subordinated to logic. However, with the advent of Lovecraft�s amateur contributions to pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, the horror genre has moved on from purely dealing with the fantastic narrative object to the metaphorical �fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man�.Whilst it remains possible to read him (as is popular to do so) as the 20th Century equivalent of Edgar Allan Poe, this is to ignore a crucial difference in their narrative dynamics. It is well documented that Poe relies directly upon the psychological dimension to establish the poles in which he situates his narrative; thus the only horror which it becomes possible to conjure is a metaphysical �abyss� in which the narrator finds himself: To conceive the horror of my sensation is, I presume, utterly impossible; yet a curiosity to penetrate the mysteries of these awful regions, predominates even over my despair [�]. At first I was too much confused to observe anything accurately. The general burst of terrific grandeur was all that I beheld. What is therefore central to Poe�s narrative is that, if fear is given the infinite capacity of the mind, then it is possible for innate paranoia and fear of negative forces to create the �horrific. If this then can be said to be true of Poe, his position as antecedent of Lovecraftian horror is purely aesthetic. Whilst there is an obvious stylistic parallel in that both resort in places to High Gothic prose, Lovecraft always seeks to wrench horror (and the concept of horror) out from the mental sphere and situate it, however incongruously, in the physical sphere of objects. Whilst the notion of horror must necessarily remain metaphysical, there is now an accompanying object of horror, in which those metaphysics are contained. Lovecraft then, can be seen as the �creator of that which cannot be created�: the amorphous qualities of dreams obtain direct synthesis with reality, the animal kingdom is subverted into towering and unsympathetic grotesques and humanity becomes unavoidably removed from the centre of its own cosmic order. Writers like Poe pose these impossibilities in order to question the boundaries of the possible and thus situating fear in a central position. It is the mind that creates fear as it passes onto the object through an attempt at understanding. By contrast then, the Lovecraftian narrative is one in which the abysmal force unequivocally exists, in fact and allegory, with fear created as the by-product. He thus creates objects that induce fear, rather than fear that causes objects to be fearful. In Lovecraft�s world, Cthulhu is a fact, and subsequently so is any madness invoked. It is through his concept of absolute materialism that an understanding of Lovecraft�s mysterious equation of true objectivity through horror can begin. The �new genre� that Houellbecq discusses in his book H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life is where we can find cause for Lovecraft�s literary reappraisal. Stylistically he appears as a throwback, but it is beneath his high gothic, and even at times formulaic prose that we can locate deeply postmodern, and even contemporary significance. Lovecraft uses horror to present a cosmic order, which necessarily gives humankind an answering inhuman reciprocity in the universe. It is thus from here that a serious reflection on the nature of being

can proceed. As we shall find, this new genre not only contains great significance for science fiction and horror, but also for metaphysical enquiry about the self and about the object. Absolute Materialism and the Science of Art The materialist denies that any standard is divine or absolute, and would free our conceptions (�) of those relative standards necessary to the orderly life and mental comfort of mankind. We shall begin in earnest with by dealing with the philosophy which grounds all of Lovecraft�s work: absolute materialism. Whilst he may have claimed above that no rule is absolute, he is referring solely to dogmatic and inductive rules. The plain fact of the material existence of objects still remains. The only rule then, which governs Lovecraft�s universe, and consequently human nature with it, is his belief in �a logical order�, that transcends the perceptual modes of investigation in being confirmed in actuality. It is perhaps this facet of his work that garners the criticism of being formulaic and predictable. What really matters in a Lovecraft narrative however, is what he doesn�t write: where the gaps in probable, recognisable logic appear and are exposed by Lovecraftian absolute materialism: The tremendous significance lies in what we dared not tell; what I would not tell now but for the need of warning others off from nameless terrors. The protagonist in At The Mountains of Madness displays the effect of this through allegory. The narrator�s compulsion towards truth has its root in beneficial humanism; a warning against horror and death. However, if we align this with Lovecraft�s materialism then it becomes a metaphor for an objective fact which is metaphysically self evident and is subsequently impossible to deny. If a warning is morally a necessary reaction that Lovecraft relies on to provide human context through narration, then it is that idea of �necessary reaction� through which he transforms materialism into truth outside of the human sphere. As we shall see this is how Lovecraft begins his existential system of being in the world through art, and it is evidenced extensively through the idiosyncratic nature of his short fiction. However, in order to approach that it first becomes necessary to address how this artifice is erected in his (identically idiosyncratic) theory of art. The reason for these very prominent idiosyncrasies is that Lovecraft is always pulled in two ideological directions. On one hand by his materialist nature, and on the other by his conservative nurture: in Nietzcheism and Realism he affirms that it is only aristocracy that can produce true objects of value. However, in The Materialist Today he explicitly demonstrates existence, and value with it, as fleeting and pointless. Thus, in the first instance, one has to identify how and where these gaps appear and their method of exposure, not what they are filled with. One loud and conspicuous faction of bards, giving way to the corrupt influences of a decaying general culture, seems to have abandoned all the properties of versification and reason in a mad scramble after sensational novelty; whilst the other and quieter school, constituting a more logical evolution from the poesy of the Georgian period, demands an accuracy of rhyme and metre. Lovecraft views all language as having an intrinsic �nature�. In his literary theory, he speaks extensively of a lexical and phonetical link between the written word and the ear: he is in search of those �syllables which agree�. In a similar fashion to T.S. Eliot, Lovecraft believes that there is a manifest �face� of art which the individual artist must convene with before they create it. Unlike Eliot

however, Lovecraft initially staunchly rejects Modernism and consequently remains an absolute materialist: he is not concerned by �the pair of ragged claws� which exists in the gulf between artist and art, but the logical development in historical trends of artistic communication which deem the constituents of the rhyme to be linguistically �allowable�. Where the two do agree though, is in the idea of the �balance� of art. Eliot�s balance of struck between subject and object, but Lovecraft strikes his between two poles of perceived fact: the logical progression of art (the human) and the logical procession of absolute science (the inhuman).He traces this to the idea that nature itself produces a unending series of metrically regular impulses: the fact that night turns into day and summer turns into winter serves to produce a deterministic mental impression of rhythm that �cannot so easily be outdistanced�. �Science� in this context is separate from actual practiced scientific theories, and becomes both the how and the why of the universe: the �force that doesn�t belong in our part of (perceived) space; a kind of force that acts and grows and shapes itself by other laws than those of our sort of Nature�. The metrical impulse is so constituent of consciousness that to ignore it is to ignore the reason for and the nature of art. Lovecraft did no believe in the Modernist principle that the mind was an object, but believed it to be pure energy created in the observable world: hence the reason for the metrical impulse. Our first concern is to separate this stance of absolute art as a product of Lovecraft�s own personal aesthetic conservatism. Whilst a defence of the Lovecraftian method is not easy, he begins it himself in the essay Metrical Regularity: Precision of metre is no mere display of meretricious ornament, but a logical evolution from eminently natural sources. The logical evolution of rhythm is rooted in the notion of linguistic gesture. Poetry itself should seek to communicate what is at the �soul� of meaning. In order to achieve this it must use those linguistic devices that are sensuously attractive for the Hegelian other. If those devices do not attract the ear, then language does not communicate; thus there is a science as much as there is an art of expression. Lovecraft found this science to be most strongly evidenced in the classical literature of Greece and Rome, and as such, he claimed that to �break� entirely from those models is impossible. The Lovecraftian model of composition relies on �Unity, Mass and Coherence� : the concept of unity succeeds in once again placing Lovecraft aesthetically alongside Poe: all components of the narrative must display some significant bearing toward the central theme. �Mass� requires that important parts of the composition are placed at a point that has corresponding importance in the narrative. Finally, coherence ensures that those similar or related parts in the narrative appear close together, whilst those which are unrelated appear far apart. Ultimately then, Lovecraft believes that through the allowable rhyme and the combination of unity mass and coherence that art becomes a reflection of material existence. It is, in essence, wholly organic as it is in step with the logical progression of things that, through the fact of material existence, must be natural and subsequently organic themselves. It is perhaps, by his own standard, wrong for Lovecraft to replace what he sees as dogmatic logic with his own equally dogmatic logic outlined above, yet as has already been mentioned, what we are looking for is what Lovecraft does not write; where the gaps in logic are so great, that he cannot proceed from them without resorting to fictions. One thing we can take from Metrical Regularity and Literary Composition is that inferred idea of unity �outside the narrative�, and subsequently, we succeed once again, in distancing Lovecraft from Poe. Unity amongst Lovecraft�s body of work results in a founding mythology that is identically crucial to the classical fiction of Greece and Rome: it allows

Lovecraft the licence to present the logical order of his world as based on his logic. The Lovecraftian twist is that his logic is not perceived logic of visible cause and effect. In order that Lovecraft maintain his pursuit and subsequent logical distortion of art, then it must be balanced with a concession to that logic of art: eventually he partially accepts Modernism. The fact that Lovecraft fills the gap with impossible beasts and fictional towns demonstrates this concession; these are Lovecraft�s personal, and darkly baroque, aesthetic taste, but the gap in logic is not. It is in filling this gap with materialist terror that Lovecraft can use mythology to �mean something to those intelligent beings that only consist of nebulous spiralling gases�, be they human or inhuman. Materialism pulls the narrative towards the pole of fact, whereas mythology pulls towards the pole of art; both appear as two entities which exclude the other, therefore it converges in pointing towards an incontrovertible terror which subsequently becomes the only truth in the perceived universe. Whilst mythology is crucial in the centring of terror, it does not strictly obey the rules Lovecraft believed were laid down in the literature of Greece and Rome. Classical literature uses it to provide an environment that can be mapped; it centres the objects in it and therefore can present them as true. Lovecraft uses it in order to decentre the perceived material object by pulling it in two opposite directions. Therefore it is horror that finds itself as the central truth of the universe. The fictional borough of Arkham is where Lovecraft sets some of his most notable stories (The Dunwich Horror, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, Call of Cthulhu). It serves as the literal and metaphorical nexus point where fact and fiction obtain �unity�. It is situated on the North Shore of Massachusetts and by Lovecraft�s own admission �is something like Salem in atmosphere and style of houses� The advent of Lovecraft�s merging of a founding mythology with materialism removes the barriers between aesthetic taste (fiction) and fact, and with it, art and artist. Unity, like everything else in Lovecraft�s universe is subject to absolute reductive materialism. It is the point where all those objects that are being unified become so ultimately combined that their meaning as one object, another object, or a combination of objects creating a new object, disappears into the void of undetectable metonymic being: the �blankness� of Lovecraft�s �summer sky� that we shall come to later. Metaphysical enquiry cannot sustain a unity in objects that does not assert an identity as something inductively recognisable. Thus, if there is to be an impossible unity is Lovecraft�s universe, then it must be at the expense of the authors ability to �map� the object: He see all the tress a-bendin� at the maouth o� the glen - opposite side ter this - an� smelt the same awful smell when he found the big tracks las� Monday morning�. An� he says they was a swishin� lappin� saound, more nor what the bendin� trees an� bushes could make, an� all on a suddent the trees along the rud began ter git pushed on one side, an� there was a awful stompin� an� splashin� in the mud. Lovecraft�s description of the final incarnation of the beast in The Dunwich Horror is only defined by absence. It is a useful metaphor for our own method of observing the inferred absence in his writing. We shall return to the problems in providing a linguistic map of Lovecraftian entities in following chapters, yet for now we have a steadfastly material absence. It represents on one hand, a literal gap in space and time where two independent dimensions are overlapped and the Dunwich Horror has come through.; it is Lovecraft�s fictional mythology that allows this. On the materialist side of the pole however, it is an object that exists bodily in one dimension with bodily energy existing in another. As Lovecraft did not believe the mind to be an object in itself, but thought that it was energy, and in the Dunwich Horror he shows the effects of the mind (science), but when it comes to rendering the body (art) all that is evident is the effect that body: signs, smells and tastes. What is ordinarily seen as a body moving

through the world and creating effect through the mental energy that produces action is transformed into terror through the allegorical balance of materialism and mythology. Lovecraft is very specific in describing only the final incarnation of the monster as �the Dunwich horror�, despite the fact that there have already been two more physical examples of it. This is due to the fact that the previous examples are explained in terms of what is relatively known (incompatible combinations of nature) and thus are not what horror is in Lovecraft�s universe. Lovecraftian horror relies on the two boundaries mutually destabilizing one another in order to create what Houellebecq calls �a vertigo effect� which is incontrovertible to any viewpoint. The vertigo effect involves the pole of reason pulling the mind in one way, and truth pulling in the other. This creates the abyss between as the mind confuses what should be and what is. Thus existence in the universe is identical to the gulf where the Dunwich Horror should exist, but paradoxically cannot exist. Mythology serves to centre terror in a world which is, due to uncertainty within dimensions, only understandable through it. Cosmic materialism serves to fix as concrete anything, be it unusual or mundane, that appears in that world. The result is the vertigo effect that produces a perpetual confusion as both poles can be seen to be mutually exclusive. Therefore Lovecraft creates horror as its central idea of the perceivable universe. If it is the terror of confusion that sustains the Lovecraftian universe, then this aligns Lovecraft with contemporary theories on the grotesque. The vertigo effect is purely for human consideration; in order to look at how Lovecraft can pull in two mutually exclusive directions, we must examine the grotesque. The Vertigo Effect and the Theory of Grotesque The more remote and right the image between the two realities, the more powerful will be the image. -Pierre Reverdy The power of the grotesque will either succeed or fail in relation to how remotely opposed are those objects which it seeks to unite. It is a relational concept which thrives on an ellipsis in perception between logic and object. Much like the vertigo effect, there is a �shatter(ing) of coherence� in any moral imperative. The consequence of the grotesque then, is that through the distortion of reality, logical and moral enquiry can be restructured in order to accommodate the unknown (hence it becomes �known). A cursory glance at Lovecraft�s relationship with the grotesque provides what initially appears as a basic and direct method. As it is terror that is focal to his universe, he relentlessly follows the pattern of �[a]pocalyptic beasts emerge[ing]from the abyss� and thus consequently providing those unfortunate enough to encounter them with a view of �the estranged world� that is to be conquered, and in doing so the perceived world is restructured. However, in order that we do Lovecraft sufficient justice, it becomes necessary that his own particular vision of the grotesque becomes the subject to his peculiar pursuit of an objective cosmic metaphysics. One of the points that Wolfgang Kayser stresses in his work, The Grotesque in Art and Literature, is that all literary manifestations of the grotesque provide an amoral liberation from the fear and uncertainty of abysmal forces through their direct confrontation and acceptance. If evil can be accommodated into the order of the world, then it can subsequently be overcome through use of the logic which governs that order. In Kayser�s case, it is the apparent removal of morality within the grotesque object which is the key to the relational aspect. It is the idea of that which is without or outside morality coming into conflict with that which is. If morality is present in the grotesque then it immediately becomes tragedy; both are reliant upon an inherent objective absurdity and thus it is morality from which tragedy

garners a meaning through events. However, if morality is subtracted from absurdity then events are no longer �those things which should not, in the light of the perceived cosmic order, exist� and consequently become �those things which, contrary to all logical probability, are�. It seems then, that Kayser�s model of the grotesque has its origins in the Gothic fiction of the 19th Century. It relies on perceptual and subsequent moral ambiguity to create a basic fear through the absurd distension of meaning in correlation with appearance. Writers such as Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu require that the protagonist expand their mind in order to accommodate an alien entity so that it can subsequently close around it as it becomes understood. Resolution of ambiguity is necessary so that the divide between grotesque and reality can be redrawn. Kayser�s own notion of grotesque seeks to rectify the anomaly, much like Gothic fiction: The English Gothic novel confirms the moral order of the world; its figures are judged by the standards of good and evil, which apply even to the supernatural. Kayser concludes his search for the definition of the grotesque by addressing it as �an attempt to invoke and subdue the demonic aspects of the world�, which has obvious connotations to his previous statement about the Gothic novel. The grotesque is an expansion of knowledge, whereas tragedy is a repression of �evil� knowledge. However, if this �expanded knowledge� is conquered, then surely all this succeeds in achieving is subjugating the grotesque to the spheres of human logic? The divide between morality and circumstance is insufficient in their boundaries to accommodate those objects of the grotesque as exactly what they are: objects. They perpetually remain the question that must be answered; the amoral is defined by morality. If we proceed from Kayser�s definition, then a Lovecraftian portrayal of the grotesque in fact, becomes problematic. In the �subduing� of those impossible beasts, does not the narrative grotesque lose its amorality and therefore become tragedy? Whilst there is confrontation and subjugation of the grotesque, this surely infers a moral order in which events occur. Indeed, there are few Lovecraft narratives which end in human victory, and even in these cases, the �victory� is partial; whilst The Case of Charles Dexter Ward concludes with the bodily death of the evil object, the nature of Lovecraft�s beast, the demonic occultist Joseph Curwen, is that his soul can transmigrate into another body. Thus bodily death may conclude the narrative, but in Lovecraft�s world the evil still exists floating in the metaphysical ether. If, in Kayser�s terms, tragedy can be recognised as events which morality states should not have happened and came to happen through the evil machinations of individual protagonists, then an inevitable suppression of the inhuman can only lead to a persistent reaffirmation of the human cosmic order and its moral right to existence: the Kantian moral �good�. Therefore it is in the place of this apparent inconsistency that we can begin to understand the Lovecraftian beast. It is true that Lovecraft can be seen to proceed from Kayser�s notion of the amoral grotesque, however this amorality becomes entirely absolute. Dieter Meindl comments that Kayser is pursuing the grotesque purely in its capacity to invoke horror. The notion of horror is, like the grotesque, entirely dependant upon the tension between �attractive and repulsive elements� . The grotesque is the corresponding tangible object to the intangible response of fear that the idea of horror provides. Lovecraft must portray the grotesque from the human perspective in order for it to be a narrative. However, if we return to the balance between a �possible rhyme� and Lovecraft�s �allowable rhyme� then it can be said that whilst the grotesque object is portrayed as a distortion of perceived reality, it actually exists in Lovecraft�s world autonomously not in opposition to any form of morality. They have an entirely independent and

autonomous existence that is not judged by morality, but by a wholly objective cosmic order. Lovecraftian monsters are simply things that are. He had said that the geometry of the dream-place he saw was abnormal, nonEuclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours. Now an unlettered seaman felt the same thing whilst gazing at this terrible reality. In this excerpt from The Call of Cthulhu (perhaps Lovecraft�s most celebrated work) it is possible to see exactly how Lovecraft removes the boundaries between tangible grotesque and intangible fear. �Abnormality� is a subjective metaphysical perception that is qualified by the (un)scientific notion of �non-Euclidean�. Subsequently, the relational aspects of both those notions are removed and that which previously constituted two independent objects becomes resolved indialectically into one autonomous object. If therefore, the relational aspect is removed, then so is any moral connotation to Kayser�s grotesque, and as such, it must occupy a �dimension apart from ours�. This is a prime example of Lovecraft implementing the �materialism of fear� that Houellebecq addresses ,and also demonstrates how the divide between fact and fantasy can be breeched. If it is accepted that Euclidean geometry can be distorted, then it follows then all modes of empirical deduction can be distorted. Geometry is that which is so fundamental to the eye delineating between objects, that if Lovecraft challenges it, he is not dealing with a grotesque that can be seen as anthropomorphised in any way. If there are no human qualities present, then in what sense is it in an oppositional relationship with morality? There may conceivably be a survival (�) of a hugely remote period when � consciousness was manifested perhaps in shapes and forms long since withdrawn before the tide of advancing humanity� forms of which poetry and legend alone have (�) called (�) mythical beings of all sorts and kinds. What we have then in the Lovecraftian beast is a metonymic relationship between fact and perception. Cthulhu and all that is associated with it do not achieve a totality of meaning in themselves. Whilst they remain facts, what Lovecraft is striving toward is that an autonomous grotesque displays a microcosm of the �dimension apart from ours�. The abysmal force in the Lovecraftian grotesque is not then, the distended version of our own reality but another reality in itself, the existence of which is deemed a threat purely because it is actually an existence: every beast that creeps through the divide between worlds demonstrates another, apparently illogical, world. Therefore it is autonomy and objectivity are at the true heart of what Lovecraft paints as monstrous. In positing another reality as having objectivity, the plain fact of existence becomes grotesque. A non Euclidean geometric shape can become grotesque purely because it contravenes the singular nature of the fact of mathematics with another singularity which achieves the same end in the same dimension, but via a separate method. It is in this that we find further differentiation between the Lovecraftian grotesque and Kayser�s model: The grotesque however, is only a sensuous expression, a sensuous paradox, the shape of shapelessness, the face of a faceless world; and just as our thinking seems unable to do without the concept of paradox, so is art, our world, which survives only because there is an atom bomb: in fear of it. The existence of R�lyeh (the ancient sunken city in which the beast Cthulhu dwells) is a reality which, whilst sharing the recognised dimension of time, does not share the recognised dimension of space. The world of the grotesque then, is no longer an �estranged� one, but co-existent yet still remote. It may remain perpetually estranged to subjective human perception, but not to the cosmic order

which created it. The Lovecraftian grotesque is transformed from the distension of recognisable forms into an �otherness� which is as absolute as the existence of man. It is the combination of Reverdy�s �remoteness� and an absolute assertion of reality that gives us the Lovecraftian grotesque. The notion of reality removes the ambiguity surrounding grotesque imagery (�[w]hen reading Kafka�s works (�) we do not know whether we are supposed to smile (�) and when we are supposed to shudder�). Ambiguity necessarily confers a sense of a moral order that is perpetually balanced between what should be and what should not be; this can also be traced back to Poe and his grotesques of mental uncertainty. There is no need for ambiguity in Lovecraft as the only divide there is between reality and unreality. Lovecraft removes perceived notions of unreality through phenomena such as non Euclidean shapes and subsequently places all capacities of the imagination under the bracket of �reality�. If the grotesque is ultimately determined by sharing space within reality, then unreality is impossible. Once again, there is no �should� or �should not�, there is only existence. By removing moral order we can see how Lovecraft shatters the entire structure of the grotesque and reconstitutes it in starkly existentialist fashion: �what is� is divided from �what is not�. There is no prescriptive order, there is only a confirmed order. Grotesques in Lovecraft occur when objects perceived as being objectively exclusive in the world are challenged, not in appearance, but in structure. In order then, to further illuminate and understand the Lovecraftian model of the grotesque, it becomes necessary to turn to Bakhtin and his essay The grotesque image of the body and its sources: The grotesque body, as we have often stressed, is a body in the act of becoming. It is never finished, never completed; it is continually built, created, and builds and creates another body. (�) [T]he essential role belongs to those parts of grotesque body in which it outgrows itself, transgressing its own body. This echoes Lovecraft�s own words on the subject of cosmic scope: All matter is in a state of balance betwixt formation and disintegration evolution and de-volution - and (�) the infinite cosmos is like a vast patch of summer sky out of which little cirrus clouds gather here and there, presently to be dissolved into blankness again. For Bakhtin the grotesque is not that which is fixed in opposition by a moral order. In its apparent independence and autonomy it possesses the ability of continual extension and reconstitution in its exaggeration. Bakhtin sees the grotesque as being necessarily cosmic in its scope and significance and thus with the cosmically significant grotesque must come cosmic fear: �An obscure memory of cosmic perturbations in the distant past and the dim terror of future catastrophes form the very basis of human speech, thought and images�. It is in the comprehension of power that cannot be conquered through physical force, and subsequently becomes demonised as being in opposition to life, that the grotesque creates fear of negation. If Bakhtin�s model is to be considered, then it appears to cast humanity and human society as the �estranged� being as all action is rooted in creating itself as other while the grotesque is plainly extant in the reality of space and time. Thus the divide between reality and unreality as realms occupied by humans and the grotesque respectively (those found in Kayser) ceases to be fictitious and becomes metaphysical. The constant movement of the grotesque indicative of what Bakhtin sees the grotesque as expressing: the universal totality of life. In doing this, the grotesque �stresses elements common to the entire cosmos� in order that it appear as being antithetical to the subjective condition: If life is in constant state of

recapitulation, then the notion of the grotesque arises from the world of objects presenting no fixed and subsequently tangible form. However, for Bakhtin, this appears as only the surface nature of the grotesque; what he admires about the work of Rabelais is that The image of the ancestral body is merged with the people�s vivid awareness of historic immorality. (�) The grotesque conception of the body is interwoven not only with the cosmic but also the social, utopian, and historic theme, and above all with the theme of change of epochs and renewal of culture. Rabelais expresses a direct relational equivalence between those phenomena encompassed by the grotesque and those phenomena found in human society. The only differing factor is time. Rabelais� creature, Pantagruel, expresses this assimilation and distortion of reality instantaneously as it is contained in an object that moves through time. However the change in history is, due to time, subtle to the point of being unnoticeable. However it is in showing direct equivalence and significance in all constituents of the universe, that Bakhtin believes the grotesque is found in the human psyche: �Man assimilated the cosmic elements: earth, water, air, and fire; he discovered them and became vividly conscious of them in his own body. He became aware of the cosmos within himself�. It is through the grotesque body of Rabelais� Pantagruel that a �new concrete� object is confirmed and subsequently a true historical awareness in man is confirmed with it. Bakhtin�s existentialist grotesque makes explicit the �dim awareness of catastrophe� and thus allows man to see the future in terms of realism, not the abstract. It appears that Bakhtin �answers� the question that the grotesque poses: the �new concrete� object allows humanity to confirm the boundaries of the world in which it moves, and with it confirms those objects in the world, be they grotesque or mundane. Is it then possible to locate Lovecraft�s autonomous objective grotesque through Bakhtin�s more contemporary method? Bakhtin�s concepts of the grotesque is transcended to a certain extent by the grotesque itself since its central characteristic is self contradiction; given that it incorporates such opposites as laughter and anxiety - opposites that admit of marked shifts of emphasis toward one pole or the other. We find in Lovecraft�s grotesque the reflection upon the nature of being. Due to their naturally polemic nature, they fail to materialise explicitly in the narrative. The �opposites� Meindl discusses are often based in response to the grotesque (the classic example being repulsion and laughter), however in Lovecraft�s starkly materialist concept, emphasis falls on the grouping, in his monsters, of species in the natural world that whilst not being opposite, are naturally and objectively exclusive. Before we tackle the problem of language and logic in Lovecraftian monsters, we must turn again to their mythology. Bakhtin states that if there is to be a unifying force in the grotesque, then there must be revelation through it: �The other gods! The other gods! The gods of the outer hells that guard the feeble gods of earth!�Look away�Go back�Do not see! Do not see! The vengeance of the infinite abysses�That cursed, damnable pit�Merciful gods of earth, I am falling into the sky!� What Bakhtin and Kayser share in their respective grotesques is that they both prove beneficial: Kayser liberates the soul from fear and immorality, whilst Bakhtin liberates civilisation and the individual from entropy. Lovecraft steadfastly refuses to liberate anything because, as the mind is stranded irrevocably in the abyss created by the vertigo effect, there will perpetually be

that which is unknown. If there can always be those things which are unknown, then there will always be those things which are amoral, and thus there will always be apparent grotesques. What The Other Gods demonstrates is that, even if the gods of the self, the gods of society and ultimately the gods of the world are conquered, then there can always be gods of another that cannot: �the laws of the earth were bowing to greater laws�. If we reduce this idea further, then it can be translated into the fundamental problem of knowing that which is �other�. Achieving benefice through the confrontation or acceptance of the grotesque relies on the relational aspect operating, as highlighted by Meindl, between �one pole or the other�. However, if Lovecraft invokes infinite amount of laws (poles) in the universe then relations remain logically intact, but empirically impossible to deduce and thus essentially removed. To return once again to what Reverdy says about the image; Lovecraft provides the �rightness� in that logic decrees that if the earth has gods that preside and control, then so must the planet of Kadath (and as will any additional number of planets). He also provides the �remoteness� in that, to the eye, these planets and subsequent gods are invisible. Baktinian extensions of the mouth or eyes will not suffice for Lovecraftian unification; he requires something to be wholly alien in appearance and constitution before it can become grotesque. The key to the Lovecraftian grotesque is the infinite extension of possibility which is married to a finite capacity for interpretation: it is true that man exists in the universe, but it is untrue that this is a sufficient tool for its understanding. Lovecraft�s world presents an infinite regress in possibility that can only cease when that which contains it does. Again then, we have found that Lovecraftian grotesques transcend the boundaries outlined by Bakhtin as man does not discover the universe within himself, but discovers himself within the �illimitable reaches of vacancy (which) extend beyond our sight or comprehension�. Stranger Than Science Fiction When your love life is over, life in general takes on a sort of conventional, forced quality. One retains a human form, one�s habitual behaviour, a sort of structure; but one�s heart, as they say, isn�t in it. The typical Lovecraftian narrative is one that begins in Kaysarian fashion, is informed by Bakhtin and concludes in the physical and mental abyss, subsequently transcending both of them. However, if Lovecraft exhausts both Bakhtin and Kayser, does this really constitute a grotesque? Can Cthulhu and all other cyclopean beasts be explained simply as a previously unknown �allowable rhyme� that must exist on the material pole but can only be rendered on the artistic ? It is true that what Lovecraft presents is an object of horror, but to say that horror constitutes the sole totality of the object is false. When dealing with horror, Lovecraft does consider the human, and this is how it becomes centralised. Paradoxically however, this centralisation is paradoxically alongside all other aspects of the universe that his mythology implies, be they benign or cyclopean. The problem of the grotesque is not the object itself, it is the method. Lovecraft requires a far more regressive investigation than either Kayser or Bakhtin can provide. Ultimately, no conventions of the grotesque can stand up to the �impossible possibility� of the vertigo effect. What entails the inhuman perspective is Lovecraft�s horror serving to pick apart the relational moral qualities of good and evil. On the human scale this causes the mind to be stranded between fiction and truth. On the universal scale this causes all relational aspects to merge in significance through their infinite nature, being rendered beyond all perceptual complexity. What creates revulsion is not therefore simply a grotesque model as it demonstrates confusion at the immense balance of concern in the universe. There is nothing to be won or gained from confrontation with the weird, only a material realisation of the existence of a

force which exceeds human power. What then, is key to this Lovecraftian philosophy is the idea that all relational elements in the universe are illusory, and when these elements are upheld to the utmost scrutiny, they disappear into chaos and uncertainty; it is an example of Humean metaphysics where cause and effect are only attributable to the eye. Thus the Lovecraftian universe is one that is not shaped by any perceived order, but by apparently random cataclysmic events that contribute to the fact that the world as it appears in a present moment of time simply exists. Thus Lovecraft displays a resultant and pervading nihilism toward all perceptions of moral effect and order in the universe. As Michel echoes in Houellebecq�s Platform, when it comes to human concern, in the face of the �illimitable vacancy of space� Lovecraft�s �heart isn�t in it�. This absolute nihilism toward perceived order is reminiscent of Nietzchean atheism but more importantly, is contemporary to the ideas of Kafka, and precursive to those of Beckett. Like Kafka, Lovecraft is unwilling �to perpetuate the vital fictions that men have invented to dispel the fear of the dark unknown� and subsequently, his anti-heroes must not only fight against a universal absurdity created by the same vertigo effect, but the absurdity subsequently found in the self. Both Kafka and Lovecraft are confirmed atheists and as such, with moral boundaries removed, they resort to imagination to outline order in the world. Narrative representations of the order of chaos are far fainter in Kafka than they are in Lovecraft, as Kafka has no founding mythology in which to render existential objects. Despite this, the gaps in logic in both Lovecraft and Kafka are almost identical: they �define the value and logic of life in terms of what they are not, knowing that what they are is (�) always a question�. It is present on all levels of human experience, as Gregor Samsa exemplifies upon waking in Metamorphosis: Gregor�s eyes turned next to quite melancholy. What about nonsense, he thought, but it could sleep on his right side and in his over.

the window, and the overcast sky (�) made him sleeping a little longer and forgetting this not be done, for he was accustomed to present condition he could not turn himself

Samsa is Kafka�s most Lovecraftian metaphor; the stark framing of a factual material object unfolds into a mental displacement that becomes metaphysical �awkwardness�. Kafka demonstrates that the attrition of the reasonable universe is as unavoidably personal as not being able to exist in such intimate comforts (or �vital fictions�) as sleeping on a preferred side. It is the body, as an object in the universe, which governs the mind. The �faint dull ache� which Gregor feels in his numerous attempts to gain comfort and the subsequent awkwardness of a �new� body is representative of the objective body as having an autonomous existence, independent of the mind. As Kafka severs the conventional dualistic link, the body becomes scientifically improbable and the mind plunges into chaos: the insect Samsa must drag himself across the floor by his head as he cannot control his many limbs, whilst at the same time, inferring through his lateness for work, his need to �hurry like mad� and the subsequent disorder of his daily routine. It is true that the insect Samsa is a grotesque, but like Lovecraft it is internal metaphysics that will suffer from this distortion, not the exterior object. Thus it is the idea of �object� in Metamorphosis that governs action: Gregor�s family are not repulsed by the invisible grotesque (they do no notice the change in his voice) as they are divided from him bodily by the wooden door. It is only by visual confirmation of Samsa�s body (the removal of the door) that he becomes an absurd object and is subsequently ostracised: His mother - in spite of the chief clerk�s being there her hair was still undone and sticking up in all directions - first clasped her hands and looked at his father, then took two steps towards Gregor and fell on the floor among

her outspread skirts, her face quite hidden into her breast. His father knotted his fist with a fierce expression on his face as if he meant to knock Gregor back into his room It is the object as it exists in itself and as a figure of exterior perception, that roots subjectivity in the world. Therefore, that there is a cause of Samsa�s alienation is all Kafka is willing to say. In his process of negative empirical delineation he refuses to say �why� there is cause and effect, only that it exists. What is conventionally thought of as the mutual dualism of experience reveals itself as purely one way from object to subject. Kafka�s notion of the body removes the leap of faith required to view ones own body in correlation with how it is and is viewed. Thus, if one wakes to find one in an alien (insect) body, then all the �vital fictions� of inductive faith of self body image is irrelevant and so the mind must exist, trapped in and servant of, a body now bereft of mental rationality. Gregor is servant to his body in that his grotesque form denies him his own decisions: he can no longer interact with his family and be perceived with the identity �Gregor Samsa� : Father. You must get rid of the idea that this is Gregor. The fact that we�ve believed it for so long is the root of all our trouble. But how can it be Gregor? If this were Gregor, he would have realised long ago that human beings cannot live with such a creature The ostracisation of Gregor performs the task of placing a barrier between body and self. His will is to communicate and interact with his family, but he is forced to do so by numerous interlocutors, primarily the charwoman. However, even her contact with him is not without barriers; when he is discovered dead, it is only after poking his body with a broom handle (another barrier) that his bodily state can be confirmed. The �creature� to which Gregor�s sister refers is in fact not the insect, but the mind that is empirically not linked through faith to the body. It is the destabilised body that results in nihilism: by the end of Metamorphosis Samsa agrees with his sister, and in a resigned and patient fashion, waits for death. It is this resignation that is intrinsic to the destabilised body, as the self realises the impossibility of answering its own questions, as evidenced before K dies at the conclusion of The Trial: as he is being led off to die, he compares himself to �flies struggling away from the fly-paper till their little legs were torn off�. Kafka�s recurring theme therefore, is that the mind exists as a destabilised duality which, paradoxically, diminishes further into nothingness the more questions it asks and is asked. If there is no faith linking mind and body, then it is the body which becomes the �other� and the mind �cannot live with such a creature� and as such, the mind must be negated. It is precisely here, where Kafka seeks to bring unavoidable logic to the morbidity of nihilistic self destruction that we find him aligned with Lovecraftian grotesque: they both display an ironically distended interpretation of Heidegger�s notion of Dasein. It is through understanding Dasein that Heidegger believes the self achieves a being in the world and the freedom to self determination. It is the distinction between an inauthentic �they self� which interacts in the world as it is part of the other, and the authentic self which needs to follow its own being. Heidegger places the true nature of the self as a a being outside the dimension of what is empirically knowable: science and metaphysics. Where both Kafka and Lovecraft distend this is at Heidegger�s principal method: [to] put into question our own being, so that it becomes questionable in its relatedness to Being, and thereby open to Being.

What they find when questioning the inauthentic they self is that an authentic self is impossible due to the possibility for infinite questions, but no answers. Thus, being remains terminally elusive. Kafka internalises this and finds the missing truth in the otherness in the self, whereas Lovecraft finds it in his absolute otherness of the external world of horror. All they both offer is a faint or impossible view of the external dimension that infers that Dasein is a certainty of existence, but impossible to reach. When perception of the self is challenged, then this can only lead to immediate and absolute disarray. In Lovecraft�s The Outsider, the narrator wakes to assume that he remains in the same body that he slept in. It is after the discovery that he invokes horror in others that he must question his relatedness to being and attempt to achieve Dasein. However, like Gregor Samsa his questioning of the authentic self only leads to infinite questioning: For although nepenthe has calmed me, I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and amongst those who are still men. This I have known ever since I stretched out my fingers to the abomination within the great gilded frame; stretched out my fingers and touched a cold and unyielding surface of polished glass. The possibility of achieving Dasein fails when the body is actualised in the world. When the narrator realises that he invokes terror as he is of demonic form, he does not wait for death like K or Samsa, but waits for a different century. His previous dualism has been destabilised through outward form and thus, while his mind appears to accept his body (he is �calmed by nepenthe� after he comes to terms with his new form) it is external rejection as an object of horror which renders Dasein impossible as he can no longer find the freedom to self determination. In The Outsider, Lovecraft inverts his typical balance between self and world as it is usually the human self which comes into contact with horror to produce the irrevocable impossibility of Dasein. However, both means of expression are identical in their consequences for the existential being in the world of terror.

RE-DO WITH REFERENCES FROM HEIDEGGER.

Chapter 2: Lovecraftian Mechanics: Deconstruction, Archistructure and Truth

With Lovecraft�s underlying aesthetic and metaphysical philosophies outlined, we can now sufficiently establish him in a new bracket of literature. In the preceding chapter we have looked at where Lovecraft�s concern lies, but now it is time to turn attention toward how it is possible, within the confines of narrative, to bring the impossible material object into being. Whilst Lovecraft relies on horror, he does so to a metaphysically reductive point where the literary depiction of it must be transcended and it becomes a reflection of the self in the world. His predisposition toward infinitude is such that, whilst he eventually accepts the tenets of Modernism, he transcends the Modernist dimension of the Hegelian being in the world, and subsequently becomes the metaphysics of being within an �illimitable vacancy� of being, both internal and external. This is because, if the nature of the universe is horrific, then horror is unavoidable and consequently a fact. For Lovecraft and his cosmic materialism, anything other than the terror in the �blankness of the summer sky� does not maintain itself sufficiently in the face of metaphysical investigation. Horror for Lovecraft then, is necessarily both �archistructural� and deconstructive: he uses it to expose ellipses in metaphysics that are both consciously and necessarily. Deconstruction n. not what you think: the experience of the impossible: what remains to be thought: a logic of destabilisation always already on the move in things in themselves: what makes every identity at once itself: a logic of spectrality : a theoretical and practical parasitism or virology: what is happening today in what is called society, politics, diplomacy, economics, historical reality, and so on: the opening of the future itself. Derridean deconstruction seeks to expose those unquestioned assumptions of metaphysics that result in linguistic contradiction in, on one hand; literature and philosophy, and on the other; the metaphysical experience and identity. There is some discrepancy between whether deconstruction constitutes a method to be applied to meaning, or an analysis of meaning that is already self evident. Derrida himself claims that if deconstruction was a method, it would be impossible: a method is a systematic procedure that will judge language according to its own standard. Therefore if this were the case, this would be detrimental to approaching the destabilization of �things in themselves. What Derrida seeks to demonstrate is how language destabilises itself through the fact that it is language. Deconstruction could only be a method if it was of a stable nature. It is however by very design, unstable and its constant movement is an exact mirror of the text that evidences it. Expressed language must necessarily demonstrate cause for deconstruction as it is deconstruction that shows how a particular use of language is put together. If language is necessarily different from instance to instance, then deconstruction can have no fixed meaning as meaning is found specifically in the language which is presently evidencing it: �deconstruction does not do anything; it only performs what is already done by and in the text being read (�), it is not an operation�. As an analysis then, deconstruction recognises that language is erected and developed on foundations of presence and absence that are conceptually opposed. This is part of the foundation for metaphysics in Lovecraft�s universe; however whilst deconstructive analysis lends the ability to pinpoint specific gaps in enquiry, it cannot account for the assertion of an ordered system which fills those gaps. For this Lovecraft uses what can be seen as �archistructure�; the �system of systems�. In the Lovecraftian equation of the �possibility of the impossible� it is deconstruction that donates the impossible, and archistructure that donates the possible. At this point, in true Lovecraftian fashion, it seems that these principles must necessarily exclude each other. However, like the balance of art and science, they must co-exist to produce the impossibility of material fear. In order that fear be material, it must denote presence.

If we have so far stated that Lovecraftian horror is not necessarily grotesque as it does not obey the laws of moral opposition, then it becomes necessary to investigate the Lovecraft�s method of their removal.

At The Mountains of Madness : Autobiography, Confession and Identity It could easily be argued that, due to the horror and science fiction genres owing a significant debt to detective and quest fiction, all of Lovecraft�s narratives necessarily exemplify deconstructive analysis. Finding the presence of a narrative and scientific object previously thought impossible operates at the very nexus of the object and its destabilisation within recognised systems. However, in Lovecraft�s novella At The Mountains of Madness, through the advent of a first person narrative there is a self reflexive dimension, which in the third person narratives, is lost to the madness and confusion of the horrific universe. The first person narrative is not uncommon in Lovecraft, but At The Mountains of Madness operates as a �confession� that the impossible manifestly exists as resistant, not just to objective, but crucially to subjective classification. It operates on a mechanic equivalent in effect to the genre of fictional autobiography. This is however, not to say that it is comparable to works such as Great Expectations where the �I� it turned outward toward the world and achieves totality and meaning through events, but is the idea that the I must locate and confront the other in the dimension of �mind�. Metamorphosis and The Outsider display the destabilisation of dual consciousness that results from the material object and the resulting human death due to impossibility of existence. Where At The Mountains Of Madness differs is that it is one of the few (perhaps only) Lovecraft narrative where a character comes into direct contact with the horrific universe, only to physically survive without madness. Lovecraft seems to challenge his own notion of cosmic horror as what he seeks to illuminate is the I suffering destabilisation within its own boundaries. Lovecraft could be seen to be destabilising his own cosmic scheme, but in reality this serves once again as an existential device to situate man in the universe: if man, Cthulhu and the universe are all slave to material fact, then the internal subjective realm, as it is present in the universe, must be identically bound to it; an �allowable rhyme� that is not a �thing in itself�, but a thing in the universe. It is how Lovecraft chooses to negotiate the idea of personal identity that we can locate the metaphysical significance in At The Mountains Of Madness. The problem of autobiography dates back as far as classical literature with Cicero who, with no family through which to denote his identity, wrote an autobiography of how he would have himself remembered. This makes problematic his accuracy due to the proficiency to knowingly or unknowingly mislead through personal interpretation. It is this problem of writing the authentic self that leads to the contemporary notion of the autobiographical narrative operating on what Timothy Dow Adams addresses as �the paradox of alterity�: �the autobiographer must create a text of what he knows from the inside in terms of what we recognise from the outside� It is precisely this problem that brings into question the idea of the possibility of truth in autobiography. If an interior truth of self must be rendered with regard to those objects and ideas which are metaphysically universal; subsequently that there is any bearing between those universal facts and subjective ideas can never obtain anything greater than, paradoxically, a speculative truth. Those events that occur in the narrative are forever rooted in time to one mind, and thus perceived facts are perpetually bound to the concerns of the narrator. The point should be made here that similarities to such narrators in The Fall Of The

House Of Usher or in traditional Modernist narratives is barley even cosmetic: absolute materialism and cosmic terror still serve as the paradoxically unknowable �boundaries� of the world. In other words, there always remains a Lovecraftian assurance that the world exists, yet instead of dogmatic assurance of such, Lovecraft seeks to express how this must come to be through the notion of personal identity. What At The Mountains Of Madness does demonstrate is that the confession of a repressed truth allows the self to �discover in language a truth of the self (�) that one did not know, and did not know that one did not know, it would seem to involve a kind of taking responsibility for that truth�. It is the idea of taking responsibility that we are concerned with here. Confession works on the principle of discovering the direct relation of personal interpretation (in these terms, interpretation means repression) to present order. The self reflexive dimension of fictional autobiography lends the notion that this order is in fact, internal due to the whole presence of the narrative being resultant of the subjective will to confess and to make confession an object. What has been outline in the preceding chapter is that cosmic horror originates in co-existence. Like Sartre�s idea that �hell is other people�, Lovecraft believes that �hell is the other�. At The Mountains Of Madness shows this co-existence now from the �human� perspective, and with that demonstrates autonomous co-existence in both self and other. The pretence for confession here is that the narrator, having already himself ventured into a prehistoric mountain range that harbours horrific phenomena previously thought impossible, attempts to prevent another expedition from doing the same. Thus the dynamic here is that of truth providing the protective force necessary for the narrator to realise his personal identity and position within the events of the narrative, and subsequently his own universe. The retelling of the tale will allow him to save the second expedition, whilst simultaneously allowing himself to understand Doubt of the real facts, as I must reveal them is inevitable; yet if I suppressed what will seem extravagant and incredible, there would be nothing left. If there is �nothing left� if one discounts the fantastic element, then Lovecraft demonstrates the need to look to the fantastic to find the aforementioned coexistence of man with horror. Ascertaining truth via the written word is where Derek Attridge, in his essay Deconstruction and Fiction, locates the problem of autobiography and truth: it is impossible to ascertain those sentences which convey truth via their existence, as in the written form they appear alongside those that are merely auxiliary to truth or are simply false. Once again, Lovecraft affirms that the truth must come from the impossible, as from the perspective of deconstructive analysis, if truth were to come from the possible then it would already be self evident. It is therefore the need to employ these systems in the first instance that dooms them to failure. At the Mountains of Madness opens as a satire on the perceived method of finding identity from outside: the narrator�s look to science. Throughout the primary chapters we are inundated with labyrinthine scientific language that appears to discard the ability to discern semantics in favour of the precision of lexis and syntax: �Several distinct triangular striated prints like those Archaean slate, providing that source survived from over six hundred million years ago to Comanchian times without more than moderately morphological changes and decreases in average size (�) Will mean to biology what Einstein has meant to mathematics and physics. After their voyage into the inner rim of the prehistoric mountains, Lake (who is

speculatively a satire on Conan Doyle�s Professor Challenger) chooses to venture further with his own team of scientists and relay details of any discoveries via radio to the remaining team members, of which the narrator is one. Already therefore Lovecraft has implemented a device which places a gulf between science and empirical deduction: the narrator cannot confirm or disconfirm any presence of truth in Lake�s discoveries. He is separated from the object and subsequently the language of science fails in describing the object and the man�s relation to it. This is demonstrated by Lake�s retrospectively impetuous notion that it �confirms his previous research� and emphasised by the fact that the apparent �nouns� �Comanchian� and �Archaean�, whilst sounding as though they belong to a specific era, are entirely invented. Thus, the language of science seeks to denote presence at two points; confirm a narrative position of both teams and confirm a presence in the object of horror. That it fails spectacularly on both counts is evidenced as the narrative develops, but Lovecraft leaves signifiers even at this early stage. Interspersed with scientific language are speculative words such as �moderately�, average� and even �size�. The effect is that the assurance of science is lessened due to scientific language points towards truth, only to, on the cusp of denoting presence, being cornered into speculation. The illusion may be that science is denoting presence in the object, but after deconstructive analysis of Lovecraft�s sentences, there is a gaping absence. Lovecraft is here clearly dealing with two of the key problems of autobiographical identity: on one hand Attridge�s aforementioned problem of discerning the scientific from the non scientific in an attempt to denote presence; on the other there is the idea highlighted by Eugene Stelzig in his book Herman Hesse�s Fictions Of The Self: the retrospective confessional identity can be seen as different to the present identity that represses fact. Lovecraft demonstrates that scientific language is reliant upon the same principals of inference and vagueness of even the most abstract adjective, but this apparent inferred cynicism toward it could be produced, not by facts of the time, but the perceptual change brought to the narrator from his experience in the mountains. As has already been stated, Lovecraft believes all things are slave to materialism, and thus the mind at the time of experience and at the time of writing are unified by this. The failure of science is emphasised when Lake�s transmissions inexplicably cease, and the narrator�s team are compelled to look for him: Some hours after our landing we sent a guarded report of the tragedy we found, and reluctantly announced the wiping out of the whole Lake party by the frightful wind of the preceding day, or of the night before that. (�) the mangling action of the wind had rendered all eleven bodies unsuitable for transportation outside. The discovery of Lake�s deceased party is the catalyst for the abandonment of science. The material object becomes a subjective one at the exact point at which fear is realised: Lake and his party have been supposedly killed by a chaotic unpredictable force (the �mangling wind�). In the opening sections, it was the narrator trying to assert his autobiographical identity through the words of Lake who was, in turn, speaking through the words of science. With Lake dead this must cease and the narrator is forced to turn to his own language within which to assert identity: the language of repression. In terms of Attridge, the repression of horrific knowledge forms the need for the autobiographical narrative: the narrator must use autobiography to confess to those facts which he has repressed, and subsequently, gesture towards the truth of presence. At the discovery of Lake�s corpse, fear drives the narrative ever more inward and subsequently away from the material world, linguistically further from presence. Despite this however, as Janet Varner Gunn states in her work Autobiography: �the truth of autobiography is to be found, not in the �facts� of the story itself, but in the relational space between the story and its reader�. If presence is not to be found

in the language of science or metaphysics, then it is to be found in what we have already established as central to Lovecraft�s universe: the language of horror. With Gunn�s idea in mind, we ultimately turn once again to the unavoidable nature of material cosmic terror. It is in this relational space that we find the Lovecraftian identity: after the narrative flight from science, the narrator turns to myth, its opposite, in the same detailed clinical fashion. However, like all of Lovecraft�s tales, the truth is present in the form of what cannot be said: It was an affair of vague psychological symbolism and aesthetic association - a thing mixed up with poetry and paintings (�). Even the wind�s burden held a peculiar strain of conscious malignity The confession in Lovecraft is not the confession of a �fact�, because the failure of science demonstrates the fact to be impossible. If science fails, then there can only be the idea of myth, which simultaneously provides no insight into truth. What the confession succeeds in being is the admittance of Gunn�s relational space, and that to achieve self realisation the self must give itself over to that which lies at the heart of deconstructive analysis: what is conveyed rather that what is structurally erected. It our opening chapter we sought to illustrate how Lovecraft erects a system of objects in the world, but it is only through examining the psyche involved in discerning those objects do we illuminate how it is possible for the impossible to be conceived. Confession is the mental realisation that one does not know something and thus, as the narrator confesses his does not posit a moral quality in relational space, and subsequently accepts that he is slave to the material facts: If the fate which screened us was benign, that which gave us the half glimpse was infinitely the opposite; for to that flash of semi vision can be traced a full half of horror Danforth has refused to tell me what final horror made him scream out so insanely - a horror which, I feel sadly sure, is mainly responsible for his present breakdown. Although the experiences of the narrator and his partner, Danforth, are identical, their fates are not. It is claimed that Danforth fully confronted the object of horror yet has refused to confess to it. Subsequently, he does not gain access to the relational space in the universe and is driven irrevocably mad. The power of the confession in At The Mountains Of Madness spares the narrator as he does not apply known form (in this case a manifest �space� for the object) to what he sees. Danforth is mad because he, like Lake and his presumption that horror �confirms� his science, still maintains that what he saw is that which should not be whilst the narrator posits no moral should into the relational space between man and world and is such spared. The �full half of horror� contains the idea that he only perceived half of the truth, but it is a full truth because it is the only half he can see. Thus we have what Adams calls �outside�, although being �half� of the truth it paradoxically constitutes the whole of what it is possible to perceive subjectively. Thus, the narrator shows that his confession possesses material quality: it is simply an act to prevent the inevitable death of the future expedition. From the standpoint of deconstruction, Derrida�s idea of there being �nothing outside the text� is translated here as there being �nothing outside the mind� and consequently �we only exist within impenetrable envelopes of discourse (�) life termers in the prison house of language - (�) there is nothing beyond the prison bars�. It is the mind which must accept the limitations in the relationship between subjectivity and fact in order to �survive� cosmic horror. Walsh�s statement of there being �nothing beyond the prison bars� translates as there being nothing that can be materially confirmed beyond thoughts. Therefore the

narrator has an identity in the most material sense because he is alive, safely, behind the prison bars of consciousness. At the Mountains of Madness paradoxically disconfirms the truth in a perceived law because whilst the narrator is still free, he is free because he has allowed himself to be. Self analysis and possession does allow a place of being in the world, but existentially, the mind must always be �allowed� to exist; internal subjugation to full horror is another allowable rhyme. Language, and Archistructure Lovecraft as author is free to confine men to themselves whilst allowing an infinite possibility in the world he creates. This is the question that At The Mountains Of Madness cannot answer: language is a Nietzchean prison house for protagonists, but the same is not true of its archistructuralist author. The traditional struggle between author and word is not present in Lovecraft; Lovecraft uses his own world of the impossible to sidestep having to deal with the problem explicitly, and chooses to gesture toward it implicitly through grotesque allegory. Allegory here does not mean that the grotesque displays symbolic reference to another object, but the idea that the impossibility of the material grotesque makes reference toward the possibility of its existence. In the opening chapter of his book The Dark Matter of Words Timothy Walsh deals with the propensity of language to demonstrate presence through absence. This is a pertinent point from which to begin a discussion of how language makes material horror possible. From a simple impression in a pillow, we could deduce where someone has slept and even confirm the existence of a resident where before there may have been doubt (�). (There) are similar kinds of impressions that can speak volumes about what is missing, the figurative signets and sleepers that press upon our stories and then depart. Lovecraft�s fiction is riddled with absence. However, as Walsh demonstrates here, it is absence that assures us of presence. When confronted with the negative quality of cosmic horror the mind will retreat to positive affirmations in order to describe it. As has already been stated, this is impossible, and thus it is through what is not said, thought or written that Lovecraft�s horror achieves presence. The gap is required of logic and thus language when confronting his objects of horror achieves the same end as Walsh�s pillow metaphor: that there is a residual �indentation� in the universe when language attempts to describe Cthulhu and his ilk, is narrative proof of presence. However, this is not to say that Cthulhu exists as Cthulhu, or indeed as the half squid half dragon monster that he is rationalised as being. All Lovecraftian monsters are described in terms which are almost immediately dismissed by sceptical qualifying adjectival phrases such as �like� and �it was if�. This is because to Lovecraft, like Derrida after him, to describe the object of truth is to unlock a �destabilisation always already on the move in things in themselves�. Lovecraft refuses to commit to any one narrative description of any horrific object or emotion as immediately after it is described, it becomes redundant. The impossibility and subsequent failure of language is created by Lovecraft�s archistructural creation of his universe. In marrying horror to materialism Lovecraft posits a relational, subjective idea into factual truth. In Pickman�s Model we find probably Lovecraft�s best reasoning for this marriage of impossibility and his best metaphor for the failure of all artistic interpretation: The really weird artist has a kind of vision which makes models, or summons

up what amounts to

actual scenes from the spectral world he lives in.

It was the technique, Eliot - the cursed, the impious, the unnatural technique! As I am a living being, I never elsewhere saw the actual breath of life so fused into a canvas. The monster was there - it glared and gnawed and gnawed and glared - and I knew that only a suspension of natures laws could ever let a man paint a thing like that without a model What Lovecraft�s words ask of the reader is akin to Julian Wolfreys� view of Joseph Conrad�s Heart of Darkness: it is to be understood as a parable. Parables necessarily work through their indirect approach to truth. Instead of word signifying object, it signifies a comparable mood or object; �another reading or truth not otherwise expressible� . The parable is therefore concerned with how the narrative points toward meaning, not what the words explicitly mean: Lovecraft�s �unnatural technique�. The void found when looking at Pickman�s painting is what J. Hillis Miller refers to as a �double paradox�. Linguistic illumination of the object is impossible due to the dual nature of vision; when the object is considered visually at one point the viewer sees the dimensions as they appear in space and time, and at the same point the object is �unveiled� in terms of its potentiality for action and interaction, subsequently one is believed to see the essence of the object. If it is illuminated however, through physical or artistic means, that is because it was in darkness, and thus the darkness is then only seen in terms of the light. Darkness is invisible and thus impossible to perceive with light giving an indirect, parabolic knowledge of its existence. This can be applied to Pickman�s Model as the idea that in art, language cannot perform the task of rendering both these dimensions of the object and thus, given that Lovecraft�s universe has centralised fear, he must exclude the physical pole of description in favour of the essence of the object. Thus the reaction to Pickman�s artistic interpretation of the monster, even if (as we discover) it is drawn from life can only be described in terms of what it does (�glared and gnawed and gnawed and glared) because it is only through describing the object in terms of potentiality can Lovecraft partially free the narrative from the impossibility of the linguistic void. He uses the perceptual �light� of material form to gesture towards the �darkness� of its constant movement through time. Material fear, due to its paradoxical nature, is set aside from relational concepts and subsequently, if something is posited in it, then it immediately dissipates into nothing. However, if only potentialities are used, then this does not seek to confirm or disconfirm any one trait of the object, asserting that possibilities are all that is true. This is Lovecraft�s � own confirm that there can be description from life not restraint. In The Call of Cthulhu�s form. The first a model of the beast:

unnatural technique� because it seeks to paradoxically no confirmation. Even when he ventures into physical art, Lovecraft demonstrates similar linguistic Cthulhu Lovecraft presents two physical descriptions of is at the outset of the narrative upon the discovery of

It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery looking body, prodigious claws on hind an forefeet, and long narrow wings behind. The second description, from life, comes at the conclusion and as it is from life, differs greatly in emphasis: It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of the poisoned city of madness. (�) The Thing cannot be described - there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch

contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. In the final confrontation with Cthulhu, all language of space disappears. The statue of Cthulhu is locked in time, it is a structure, and thus can be described in ridged terms. However, Cthulhu in reality is an object that moves through time. If Pickman�s technique is �unnatural� it is because it freezes an object that can only be expressed through movement: �slobberingly�, �gropingly�, �shrieking� and even �contradictions� all display a form of movement. It is the constant movement within even the stationary object (it constantly contradicts natural laws) is that which creates the void in Lovecraft. Language of the object as it appears is the language of space, whereas the second pole in Miller�s paradox is the language of time. Like concepts such as the �squid dragon�, where the presence of two objects operating in the same space exclude each other, language of time and language of space cannot be present in the same object. If, due to the constant structural challenges the monster proposes, nothing can be posited as the structural essence of �the Thing�, then its rendering is impossible, but its presence is not. The void results from a similar linguistic dynamic as is used in Samuel Beckett�s anti-novel The Unnamable. Beckett uses language in an absolutely �pure� sense�; words signify only what they have the power to signify in themselves, with the possibility of inference being totally removed. . Beckett�s narrative deals with a consciousness that has survived bodily death, and as such all objects that can be signified are absent. In this state words, without an object to signify, completely fail to posit any presence in and of themselves: language is that which �they have crammed me full of, to prevent me from saying who I am, where I am�. Language is revealed as only possessing the ability to signify objects negatively; a square is defined as square as it is not a circle. Thus if there are no forms for language to gesture towards, then it will move in ever diminishing circles of paradox until it is ultimately abandoned, resulting in the persistent, yet resigned � I can�t go on. I�ll go on�. MORE - WORM/MANHOOD ANALOG. YWhat Beckett attempts with The Unnamable is to reach the �real silence� of metaphysical existence, where there is no need for words, just a �pure� understanding of existential position and essence. This is identical to what Lovecraft seeks to achieve with the cosmic material grotesque. �Full horror� (as opposed to the full half) presents the object as materially existent, but linguistically impossible. The �they� that Beckett�s narrator accuses of �cramming� him full of words is that of an other recognisable through concept and gesture. If in bodily death, and in Cthulhu that other is not present, or a paradoxical contradictions to all dogmatic rules of the other, then the object becomes unsignifiable. Language is shown to be necessarily Hegelian in that it is dependant upon the mutual recognition of gesture; when that recognition is not found then all language will ultimately unravel into the uselessness of �The Thing cannot be described�. Language is shown to be both negative and prescriptive; thus to delineate between truth and falsity, absence and presence is impossible. The language of an object will necessarily impose what conventional recognition requires of the object; Manhood fails because without prescription of an adjacent recognised concept the word cannot refer to anything. Similarly, as Cthulhu is partially recognisable in terms of other forms, it too cannot be sustained. Contrary to human language, Cthulhian modes of gesture and communication are completely syncopated with being. Therefore it points directly towards the object by dint of its singular possible interpretation:

They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech

was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When , after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by moulding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshy minds of mammals. For a knowledge and language to be a truthful device then the system of language itself must necessarily be removed. In this place there is simply a system of �knowing� that cannot fail as there is no need to use it; something is either known, or it is unknown and thus paradoxically everything is known due to rigid boundaries of possibility. If there is no compulsion toward language then that is because language is not needed; subsequently affirmative knowledge of presence replaces conscious deduction and elimination of absence. For Lovecraft, this state is only possible in the normally conscious mind in a state of unconsciousness: dreams. In a dream the mind does not guide itself, but is guided. Therefore the innate deduction of experience is absent. Thus if the mind is not consciously deducting then the surrounding universe becomes known as there is no need for critical examination. Once again the mind is demonstrated as separate from the actions of the universe and subsequently the duality of mind and body is removed. Paradoxically it is through the through the cessation of conscious deduction that the mind achieves a synthesis with the world of objects, however illusory, and becomes a part of the archistructural model. In the deconstruction of Lovecraft�s language we come to the same conclusion drawn by Georges Bataille on the nature of all human artifices: Architecture represents the silent, homologous gravitational mass that absorbs every meaningful production. The monument and the pyramid are where they are to cover up a place, to fill in the void: the one left by death. Death must not appear, it must not take place: let tombs cover it up and take its place. It is Bataille�s assertion that all systematic structures are erected in an attempt to obscure all concepts of negation into irrelevance. All human architecture serves to produce is copies of that data which has been empirically assimilated and then reconstituted into what is perceived to not be a copy at all, but a model. All systems therefore serve as the aforementioned parabolic interpretation of an irreducible concept. There can be no language of death as all language proceeds from being; an existence above the irreducibility. All systems therefore perform an identical role be they systems of identity, language or science; affirmation of itself at the expense of the other: �Theory does not know or encounter its other. The other escapes it (�) because this other does not give itself to being known because it has nothing to do with the theory�. Bataille�s concept of the other is resistant to categorisation because, in creating a system, the architect necessarily excludes that which cannot be proven by it. A system will proceed from that which it, in itself can establish. Therefore conclusions can be reached within the model but the question of its origin still remains: from the indentation on a pillow it is possible to deduce that it was slept on, but it is impossible to say why this was so. Similarly language allows us to ascertain that Cthulhu is a presence in the world, but it is impossible to ascertain if this presence can be contained within the words such as �Cthulhu� or �gelatinous green immensity�. Lovecraft�s concept of horror is created as the direct other to all perceived systems and therefore it is inferred that all human concepts of archistructure exclude those �differences (which) must be reduced, diminished and strung together with logic� . For Lovecraft and Bataille an archistructural system cannot perform any action of exclusion; if it is to be the systems of systems then it must be inclusive of all phenomena of confirmed, explicit or implicit, presence. As Lovecraft himself states: �My objectivity, always marked, is now paramount and unopposed, so there is nothing I

am not willing to believe�. Archistructure is seen to be deductively impossible. Lovecraft�s objectivity requires that he remain constantly willing to accept that nothing is impossible. It is this constant movement of infinite speculation that is necessary if he is to maintain objects within his world. If the full horror is confronted, then madness serves to once again render it impossible to translate. It can be conceptualised, but that does not translate into language. Language therefore can only perform the task of pure gesture, as that which is performing the gesture, and that which the gesture is directed at, cannot be deduced in their entirety. It seeks the end of the equation without first establishing a beginning. Cthulhu, and the associated mythology, have been excluded from language due to the nature of systems: in order to establish a fact, there must be that which the fact can be grounded against, thus we return once again to relational properties. Lovecraft�s notion of �impossible possibility� requires that the things which exist, simply exist. Existence is not a system, but a material fact. This is simultaneously possible due to the principle �it is true that things exist� and impossible due to the principle �the existence of things creates a system; those things which exist�. Impossible possibility of cosmic horror therefore does not designate any known material fact to be integral to the universe, not even basic existence. What it logically requires however, is an infinite potentiality in which things can exist and posses the qualities of existence in infinite alignment with those things which can not posses the qualities of existence. As this necessarily can not be translated into worldly objects which exist, it is only possible to see the �full half� which existence allows. This full horror is translated into the full half in Lovecraft�s Herbert West: Reanimator. Essentially a parody of Shelley�s Frankenstein, Lovecraft examines language used in knowledge of full horror; absolute negation (death). Herbert West is a medical student who discovers a �reagent� that can reinstall life into a corpse. Thus what Lovecraft presents in the reanimated corpse is a mind that has full knowledge of all material potentiality: For that very fresh body, at last writhing into full and terrifying consciousness with eyes dilated at the memory of its last scene on earth, threw out its frantic hands in a life and death struggle with the air; and suddenly collapsing into a second and final dissolution from which there could be no return, screamed out the cry that will ring out eternally in my aching brain. What there is, in the reanimated corpse is a pure gesture without a direction; it is the vertigo effect working at its most reduced level. After the mind experiences �unexperience� it is stranded between mundane reality and superreality: the �final dissolution� of conscious being. It becomes impossible for gesture to signify anything, or even be an act of signification. Lovecraft demonstrates the possibility of a language of both death and life; affirmation and negation. A successful model of language is one that is a composite of the effects of positive being, whilst originating in in the noumenal essence of negative, or �un� being. However language, as a perennial gesture, never succeeds in Lovecraft�s world. The narrative drags the reader to its conclusion using an inferred or empirical faith (mythology and language or science and deduction) to the point where both are exhausted. No theory of language or grotesque can contain the beast; it remains eternally, as Bataille says, nothing to do with the system. It appears as grotesque because it confronts and encroaches with an awesome material power; the material nature however, is born from a necessity that objects exist. It is the fact of their existence that confines the conscious part of man, with his inductive mind to the prison house, not just of language, but of being itself. The object can only be known via Pickman�s method: from a view of the model, found without deduction.

The Need for Material Horror Without the object, horror is simply psychosis, untenable and impossible to recognise subjectively. Thus, it is easily ignored or debunked through supposed positive affirmations. What the object of horror does is place the untenable nature of psychosis into a rigid form that provides the ellipsis in logic within the logically deducible, not create it as logically deducible because it is in opposition to the deducible; it destroys the system by the fact of its operation within it and subsequent governance of it. A horror or grotesque that does not serve this purpose can offer no true reflection upon the nature of being. Horror without a body, or not examined in terms of that body will always result in the confirmation of the system, not an indication of the model. It affirms the full half, instead of the full horror. Kayser�s tragic grotesque and Bakhtin�s universal grotesque succeed in being �the grotesque�, but fail as they only operate in the realm of what is known. If horror is known, it is known through language; if Attridge demonstrates the difficulty in discerning between truth and falsity, then Lovecraft reduces this further, demonstrating that all language, including the language of science is innately moral and subsequently subjective. If science seeks truth, then it seeks those words which closely accord to the empirical truth. Yet the word and the fact must remain terminally dialectic and never achieve a unification in a new concept as they describe the presence outside from the absence inside. Horror must necessarily be material in both the phenomenal and noumenal senses of the term; it is not against morality or contrary to truth, but is purely �against� and �contrary�. It is that which, due to the possibility of its separation renders a system useless. The power of material horror is therefore inescapable. If it were not material, then it would not be able to exert any power beyond the personal (psychosis). Descartes cornerstone of metaphysical being, �I think therefore I am�, is a positive affirmation which brings with it the possibility for negative affirmation, with both in turn necessarily entailing the infinite noumenal possibility for both. This defies the pseudo-model and is subsequently other. Thus the need for an affirmative truth is dictated by the need for other, untruth or as translatable into Lovecraftian terms, horror. It is the power of horror (equivalent to negation) which is ultimately free to exert power in the universe as it remains terminally different. Thus, the function and action of material horror emerges as identical to Foucault�s idea of power within society. Power does not exist in rigid hierarchy, but in a �net like series of relations�, much like those inferred in The Other Gods, which must accommodate everything in the spectrum of society. Therefore there can be no morally relational point through which a pseudo archistructure of justice or freedom can be established. Where Foucault seeks to analyse power is how power operates, not how power should operate: Power relations can materially penetrate the body in depth, without depending even on emendation of the subject�s own representations. If power takes hold on the body, this isn�t through first having to be interiorised in people�s consciousness. For Foucault there are two effects of power: the first is, that by the very existence of power, it draws out �those peculiarities over which it kept watch�. The exercising of power will produce pleasure, therefore this pleasure can only be sought through the exercising of power. Therefore as power is exerted by the pursuit of pleasure, the pursuit of pleasure necessarily induces the use of power.

Thus in the pursuit of the self, relations necessarily emerge with domination and subjugation at its centre. The will to power is not something internal that is directly sought by the self, but it a by product of the fact of individual existence. Thus every human act is an indication of or gesture towards the omnipresent exercising of power. The present facts of power in society will lead to the second effect of power: the close relation between power and truth. Truth for Foucault is not a model for all things which can be possibly known, but a system which analyses how those things which are constructed; for instance, an opposition between the established and the radical. Truth, like power, has the propensity to maintain a hold on all subjects of the �regime of truth�: thus �the very possibility of being an intellectual, a revolutionary or a radical is already a consequence of power relations�. This system is observed identically in Lovecraft, with �truth� replaced with the material object and �power� replaced with horror. Lovecraft�s stories are persistently unerring in their pursuit of horror because it is horror itself which introduces the unknown or un-quantifiable into the human equation; in order that perception is possible, there must be known objects and thus, through its inevitable investigation (Foucault�s �pleasure�) it draws out those circumstances in which it can exist. What is sought in Lovecraft is not pleasure as such, but a quantifiable sphere in which the mind can exist, hence why some of Lovecraft�s characters are scientists or philosophers; they are all seeking truth. If horror exists unperceived, then it is not horror, but a possible object. The pursuit and perception of the possible object transforms it into horror and therefore produces a form of subjugation and domination; if investigation of horror is needed to restabilise perception the paradoxically it is through the pursuit of investigation that the self becomes a resident in the prison house of existence; pursuit of horror can only end in subjugation. If horror brings itself to be through the need for stabilised consciousness, then investigation with it shows horror to maintain a close relation with the material object. If conscious is to be stabilised, it must confirm objects as they exist empirically. However, as the perceived object is, in this sense, �produced� by horror this is not possible. Madness and death seek to once again establish the order of power in the universe by subjugating the mind to the possibility of its own autonomous existence. Therefore horror and the materialism are dialectically aligned, and united when the object of horror is perceived. The power of material horror is absolute because it lies in the reliance of perception upon absence. Absence itself relies upon noumenal properties existing and their subsequent governance of all phenomenal objects in the perceptual sphere. As there is absence, there is also the accompanying mental need to investigate, which is the method through which horror brings itself into necessity. In Lovecraft this is evidenced as much structurally as it is metaphysically. He never begins a narrative at the point of �action�, but seeks to construct the artifice of �mundane� reality in order that he can tear it apart. Nevertheless, Lovecraft always begins from the point of horror: most (if not all) of his stories present a foreshadowing in their opening sections: During the winter of 1927-8 officials of the Federal government made a strange and secret investigation of certain conditions in the ancient Massachusetts seaport of Innsmouth. (�) a vast series of raids and arrests occurred, followed by the deliberate burning and dynamiting (�) of an enormous number of crumbling, worm eaten, and supposedly empty houses on the waterfront. Uninquiring souls let this occurrence pass as one of the major clashes in a spasmodic war on liquor. What foreshadowing serves to achieve is the necessity for investigation. It is allegorical to perception; if there are objects and actions of objects (the

burning down of a house) then in order to perceive them, the mind must attribute cause, effect and meaning. This is necessitated by actions appearing to have qualities such as �deliberate�, �strange� that contradict previously accepted truths (the houses destroyed were thought to be empty). Therefore if there is a need to look externally, then the truth of the universe brings about the ways in which it can �penetrate the body�. It is only through not enquiring, and as such, denying the principle action of the mind that it is possible to remain untouched by the power of material objects. Materialism becomes horrific in the process of deconstruction being realised as infinite. The inquiring mind cannot change its path toward an understanding of the object, because it requires it to operate in the first instance; thus there always has to be narrative. Narrative as a process of enquiry results in the unity between fact and fiction as outlined in Chapter 1; if there can only be understanding through unity in these two spheres then the presence of a noumenal truth will pull itself apart and gesture towards an absent, and therefore unknown truth at the centre of meaning. It can be said therefore that the notion of a horrific universe is as crucial to metaphysical existence as Lovecraft�s method of exposing the gaps in perceptual logic; archistructural truth remains terminally unknown, thus all objects governed by that system remain partially unknown. Mundane reality indicates super-reality and subsequently fear of the unknown is present in all spheres of human existence.

Chapter 3: Necessary Destruction The sphere of cognition is restricted to the dimensions and attributes of human beings. (�) The information sphere in man is further restricted to a sphere that has a certain character and direction of physical (for instance thermodynamic) processes. For instance, we would not be able to communicate with a system that has a contrary direction of electromagnetic and thermodynamic processes. If material horror is a necessity in the universe, then the consequentially the only property that can be attributed to any human system is that they will ultimately defeat themselves. By the very need to construct and apply an ordered system necessarily entails that it can be disordered; the presence of order gestures toward its absence and thus the movement from a low entropy state to a high entropy state. . As the other is permanently exterior to a given system then it will always operate in a �contrary direction� to modes of perception and thus, �communication� with it remains impossible. All cognition is dependant upon the �direction� of what Jiri Zeman calls �the cosmic and information flows� that determine time, space and physical attributes in the perceivable world; it is what designates the order and subsequent interpretative qualities of a system. Order is the carrier of information and thus to transmit information is to cause order. Rudolf Arnheim demonstrates this propensity in his example of the behaviour magnetised needles inserted through cork discs, with their poles point in the same direction (thus repellent), that are floating upon water at the introduction of a magnet of the opposite pole: Under these conditions, the needles, which repel each other but are attracted by the larger magnet, will arrange themselves in the simplest possible form: three needles in a triangle, four at the corners of a square, five at the corners of a pentagon. Thus orderly shape results from the balancing of antagonistic forces. Perceptual order in a given system is therefore seen to rely on a balance of forces that exclude each other, thus the flow of information can be in a determinate direction. Arnheim tells us that the entropy value of a system is not based upon the absence of order, but a destabilising of the antagonistic forces which results in disruption in the transfer of information. As long as there are antagonistic forces present within the system, it is their equilibrium which allows for order. A system with a high entropy value is one in which information denotes an increase in probable circumstances which results in unpredictability. If a system is to be ordered there must be a high level of improbability, in order that possible circumstances can be deleted causing order to take shape through the possibility of predictability. Thus maximal entropy in a system results from �a maximum of information; and since information is measured by order, a maximum of order is conveyed as a maximum of disorder�. In his book The Emperors New Mind, Roger Penrose elucidates this idea in perceivable terms: Imagine a glass of water poised on the edge of a table. If nudged, it is likely to fall to the ground no doubt to shatter into many pieces, with water splashed over a considerable area, perhaps become absorbed into a carpet,

or to fall between the cracks in the floorboards. In this, our glass of water is merely following faithfully the equations of physics. The standing glass of water is an ordered system. There is an ease of prediction that a stationary glass containing water will remain stationary and thus there is high improbability of disorder in this system; it cannot be disordered as it stands. However, when new information is introduced (a nudge) then the possible probability is doubled: it could remain stationary or fall to the floor. Entropy directly increases upon this increase of probability as the glass falls to the floor, scattering itself and its contents and produced a disordered system. Therefore we can see, in starkly material terms how a system will inevitably err towards a high entropy state through the increase in possibilities that is induced by maximal information, the subsequent decline in probability and the eventual obliteration of coherent structure. A system of high entropy lies at the very heart of Lovecraft�s work. It is evidenced on every level, be it narrative, philosophical or stylistic and serves to ground all of his fantastic and grotesque ideas firmly in the realm of necessary reality. The nature of Lovecraftian horror is entirely dependant upon its capacity to disorder and ultimately destroy. Our first point of departure for this will be Lovecraft�s own peculiar vision of dimensions in architecture, turning us once again to the sunken city of R�lyeh. If geometric dimensions are separated from their singular nature then information within the system is doubled and so too are the possibilities. If there is no longer one permanent example of perceptual order, then the system of perception and delineation becomes more unpredictable. If possibility and unpredictability continue the inexorable increase which is denoted by the minds necessary enquiry into the unknown, then conception of non Euclidean geometry results in a state of high entropy: madness. The mind can be seen to behave identically to Penrose�s� glass of water; the shattering of coherence in the system of the mind results in thoughts becoming dispersed and unconnected because the excess of information (two structural properties of objects) disrupts the equilibrium between subject and object. The disrupted equilibrium causes thoughts and all associated mental projections to lose their inductive property which serves as a shield against �the illimitable vacancy of the universe�., Therefore it is with this that the realisation infinite possibilities force the mind�s descent into madness.