Thursday, February 12, 2015

The Impetus for H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu?

It is said that the stimulus for Lovercraft’s The Call of Cthulhu was found in Lord Tennyson’s 1830 poem The Kraken. He might have also been influenced by William Hope Hodgson’s The Boats of the Glen-Carrig, where a creature having some of the same characteristics as the Cthulhu creature is described. In deed Lovercraft even mentioned that he had read the work of Hodgson, although Lovercraft went a lot further in the description of his creature and even added associative mysticisms.
"The Kraken" (1830)
Alfred Lord Tennyson

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

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