Lovecraft Quote of the Week: Lovecraft on Romance In honour of our Mythos Novel of the month, The Dunwich Romance, here is what the Old Gentleman had to say about Romantic Literature... As to romanticism & fantasy—I myself dislike the former except in the latter form. To me there is really something non-vital about the overcoloured representation of what purports to be real life-the sentimentality of Dickens, the heroic bombast of Dumas, or the mawkishness of Victor Hugo. There is to me something puerile in devising a sort of conventionalised variant of life, with spurious & artificial thoughts & feelings, & then getting maudlin & excited & effusive over it. But fantasy is something altogether different. Here we have an art based on the imaginative life of the human mind, frankly recognised as such; & in its way as natural & scientific—as truly related to natural (even if uncommon & delicate) psychological processes as the starkest of photographic realism. Dunsany writes—& you both write & paint—the authentic epic of an ethereal region as well-founded & well-defined as the world of actual being; & because you do not pretend that it is the real world, but recognise it as a world of fantasy, your art has a truth & dignity & a major place in aesthetics which (in my opinion) sentimental terrestrial romance has not. -- H. P. Lovecraft, in a letter to Clark Ashton Smith, November 16, 1926 Illustration: Love Craft by Malakia La Gatta
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 04:21:49 +0000
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