霍华德·菲利普·洛夫克拉夫特

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H. P. Lovecraft

霍华德·菲利普·洛夫克拉夫特(Howard Phillips Lovecraft 1890年 8月20日-1937年 3月15日)是一位美國奇幻小說跟恐怖小說作家，著名於將恐怖小說帶入科幻小說的結構。在他生前僅有少數的讀者，但其著作在他離世後成為在恐怖小說作家及愛好者中相當重要並具影響力的作品。

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[编辑] 生平

洛夫克拉夫特出生於位在美國羅德島州普羅維丹斯Angell街194號其家族宅第。其父為Winfield Scott Lovecraft，一位四處旅行的推銷員。其母為Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft，母系的祖先可追溯到1630年抵達麻薩諸塞州的Bay Colony。

在其三歲時，他的父親據說在一間芝加哥的旅館房間內精神崩潰之後被帶回Butler醫院，在那裡他持續待了五年才去世。這個精神崩潰的故事僅是一個掩護，避免家族承受尷尬的情況，洛夫克萊夫特的父親被證實因梅毒影響其心智並促成他的死因。

洛夫克萊夫特由其母，兩位阿姨和及其厚愛他的外祖父扶養長大。洛夫克萊夫特從小就表現出其天份，兩歲能背誦六歲能寫作。

其外祖父鼓勵他閱讀提供他經典文學作品如天方夜譚， Bulfinch's Age of Fable和兒童版的伊利亞德以及奧德賽，外祖父也激起小霍華對超自然的興趣藉著訴說他的原創Gothic恐怖故事。

洛夫克萊夫特在幼時經常生病，在校他時有時無的出席但他飽讀書籍， 1899年The Scientific Gazette少量的刊行他的一些作品。

其外祖父於1904年過世隨後家族由於理財不善陷入了窮困

家族被迫遷出在Angell街的宅第到大小差很多且較不舒適的住處洛夫克萊夫特深受失去他的家和出生場所的影響甚至曾一度打算自殺他在1908年受精神崩潰所苦因此他也沒獲得他的高中文憑未能順利完成學業進入他所期望的布朗大學在其餘生中不斷的困擾著他

洛夫克萊夫特的第一部精美的故事在1917年前後出現(墓中奇談,达贡) 在這個時期他也建立龐大的通信網絡他的長期並且經常的信件使他可能成為一位二十世紀最偉大的信件寫作者在他的通信筆友裡有年輕的Forrest J.Ackerman,罗伯特·A·布洛克和羅伯特·E·霍華德(蠻王科南系列的作者)

洛夫克萊夫特的母親於1921年5月21日死於外科手術併發症不久之後他參加一個業餘作家聚會在那裡他認識了Sonia Greene 她是一位烏克蘭猶太人出生於1883年比洛夫克萊夫特年長幾歲他們之後結婚雖然洛夫克萊夫特的阿姨們並不滿意這項安排夫婦搬到紐約的布魯克林區他討厭那個地方僅僅數年後他和Greene溫和的離婚了之後他回到Providence餘生與他的阿姨同住由於這段不快樂的婚姻部份自傳作家猜測他缺乏性慾

在他回到家鄉之後到他去世的十年之間是其最具生產力的時期在這段期間他創作了大部分他最聞名的短篇故事帶領pulp雜誌的風潮(主要在驚奇故事) 同時也有較長的作品像他經常修訂其他作家的作品以及寫作大量的鬼故事

儘管他盡其所能的寫作他的財務每況越下他與他僅剩的阿姨搬到更小更惡劣的租屋他也深受羅伯特·E·霍華德自殺的影響在1936年他被診斷出患有腸癌同時他也受營養不良所苦他承受著經常性的疼痛直到他來年死去為止

他的墓碑上有引用自他的克蘇魯的呼喚的名句

That is not dead which can eternal lie

And with strange aeons even death may die

(...死者并不会永远安息，) (奇妙的永劫亦不以死亡为终焉...)

[编辑] 洛夫克萊夫特作品背景

在很大的程度上洛夫克萊夫特的作品是由他的夢魇所直接啟發而這直接的對潛意識的領悟和其象徵手法促成了它們持續的迴響與流行所有他對艾倫·坡作品的興趣自然地引領其作品的傾向艾倫·坡的作品大量地影響了他最早的死亡故事和寫作風格洛夫克萊夫特對Lord Dunsany的故事的發現將他的筆風帶到新的方向造成了一系列衍生的在幻梦境(Dreamlands)的奇幻設定可能是受到Arthur Machen的影響洛夫克萊夫特謹慎的建構關於在古老邪惡下倖存的故事以及他對藏在真實之後神祕事物的神秘主義信念這些幫助激發使他最後在1923年找到他自己獨有的述事口吻這種黑暗的聲調有著一種創作今日稱為克蘇魯神話一個有著異型外次元眾神祇與恐懼的萬神殿存在於人類之前並且僅在太古傳下來的神話和傳奇中被暗示

專有名詞克蘇魯神話是由洛夫克萊夫特的通信者及夥伴作家奧古斯特達雷斯所訂下標準洛夫克萊夫特指出他的人造神話叫做"Yog-Sothothery"[1]. 他的故事創造了最具影響力的陰謀設計:死者之書,神秘的魔法書由阿拉伯的疯狂诗人阿卜杜拉·阿尔哈萨德(Abdul Alhazred)所撰寫神話概念的回想跟力道讓部分人士相信洛夫克萊夫特以真正存在的神話為基礎創作之後他人編造的死者之書也在數年後出版

他的表達方式相當有古風他非常喜歡大量使用一般不常用的形容詞譬如"eldritch", "rugose", "noisome", "squamous", and "cyclopean" 另外試圖記下方言的談話這被一些人批評為不正確他的作品亦表現出英式英文的特徵(他被確認為英國風愛好者) 而且他有時捏造使用一些時代錯誤的拼法如"compleat/complete", "lanthorn/lantern", and "divers/diverse"

洛夫克萊夫特是一位多產的信件作家有多頁用小字體草書寫下的通信者名單他有時記下他的日期為當時的兩百年前使寫作回到美國殖民時代在美國革命侵入他的英國愛好前他解釋此為他認為十八世紀和二十世紀是最好的前者有貴族的體面後者則為科學的世紀以他的觀點來看十九世紀特別是維多利亞時代是個錯誤

洛夫克萊夫特原本社交圈內的成員包括了作家如罗伯特·A·布洛克和弗兰克·贝尔克纳普·朗他們從克蘇魯神話得到影響並之後貢獻了相關的神話作品

許多之後的恐怖小說和影片創作者表現出受他的影響包括Clive Barker和H. R. Giger. 其他值得一提的有克拉克·A·史密斯, 奥古斯特·威廉·德雷斯, 尼尔·盖曼, 史蒂芬‧金, 阿兰·摩尔和布莱恩·鲁姆利等, 皆寫過明顯設定在洛夫克萊夫特的原創宇宙的故事洛夫克萊夫特的仿作是普遍的For more examples of the Mythos in popular culture, see References to the Cthulhu Mythos.

[编辑] Survey of the work

The definitive editions (specifically At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels, Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, The Dunwich Horror and Others, and The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions) of his prose fiction are published by Arkham House, a publisher originally started with the intent of publishing the work of Lovecraft, but which has since published a lot of other fantastic literature as well.

Lovecraft's poetry is collected in The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H. P. Lovecraft, while much of his juvenilia, various essays on philosophical, political and literary topics, antiquarian travelogues, and other things, can be found in Miscellaneous Writings. Also, Lovecraft's essay Supernatural Horror in Literature, first published in 1927, is an historical survey of horror literature available with endnotes as The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature.

[编辑] Writing phases

Lovecraft had three very distinct categories of fiction in which he wrote during his life. Although the groups' stories were often written in overlapping time periods with the other groups, there were still periods where almost all of Lovecraft's writings could be categorized in one of the below mentioned groups. It should be noted that these distinctions have been drawn by others and not by Lovecraft himself.

Macabre stories (approximately 1905–1920)
Dream-Cycle stories (approximately 1920–1927)
Cthulhu Mythos stories (approximately 1925–1935)

[编辑] Letters

Despite the fact that Lovecraft is mostly known for his works of weird fiction, the bulk of Lovecraft's writing mainly consists of voluminous letters about a variety of topics, from weird fiction and art criticism to politics and history. S. T. Joshi estimates that Lovecraft wrote about 87,500 letters from 1912 until his death in 1937 — one famous letter from November 9, 1929 to Woodburn Harris being 70 pages in length.

Lovecraft was not a very active letter-writer in youth. In 1931 he admitted: "In youth I scarcely did any letter-writing - thanking anybody for a present was so much of an ordeal that I would rather have written a two hundred fifty-line pastoral or a twenty-page treatise on the rings of Saturn." (SL 3.369–70). The initial interest in letters stemmed from his correspondence with his cousin Phillips Gamwell but even more important was his involvement in the amateur journalism movement, which was responsible for the enormous number of letters Lovecraft produced.

Lovecraft clearly states that his contact to numerous different people through letter-writing was one of the main factors in broadening his view of the world: "I found myself opened up to dozens of points of view which would otherwise never have occurred to me. My understanding and sympathies were enlarged, and many of my social, political, and economic views were modified as a consequence of increased knowledge." (SL 4.389).

Today there are four publishing houses that have released letters from Lovecraft — Arkham House with its five-volume edition Selected Letters being the most prominent. Other publishers are Hippocampus Press (Letters to Alfred Galpin et al.), Night Shade Books (Mysteries of Time and Spirit: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Donald Wandrei et al.) and Necronomicon Press (Letters to Samuel Loveman and Vincent Starrett et al).

[编辑] Copyrights

There is no little controversy over the copyright status of many of Lovecraft's works, especially his later works. All works published in the US before 1923 are public domain. However, there is some disagreement over who exactly owns or owned the copyrights and whether the copyrights for the majority of Lovecraft's works published post-1923 - including such prominent pieces as The Call of Cthulhu and The Mountains of Madness - have now expired.

Questions center over whether copyrights for Lovecraft's works were ever renewed under the terms of the USA Copyright Act of 1976 for works created prior to January 1 1978. If Lovecraft's work had been renewed they would be eligible for protection for 75-95 years after the author's death according to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. This means the copyrights would not expire on some of Lovecraft's works until 2019 at the earliest, providing that no further laws extend the periods of copyrights within the USA. Similarly, the European Union Directive on harmonising the term of copyright protection of 1993 extended the copyrights to 70 years after the author's death.

In those Berne Convention countries who have implemented only the minimum copyright period, copyright expires 50 years after the author's death.

Lovecraft protégés and part owners of Arkham House, August Derleth and Donald Wandrei often claimed copyrights over Lovecraft's works. On October 9, 1947 Derleth purchased all rights to Weird Tales. However, since April 1926 at the latest, Lovecraft had reserved all second printing rights to stories published in Weird Tales. Hence, Weird Tales may only have owned the rights to at most six of Lovecraft's tales. Again, even if Derleth did obtain the copyrights to Lovecraft's tales no evidence as yet has been found that the copyrights were renewed.[2]

However, prominent Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi concludes in his biography, H.P. Lovecraft: A Life, that Derleth's claims are "almost certainly fictitious" and that most of Lovecraft's works published in the amateur press are most likely now in the public domain. The copyright for Lovecraft's works would have been inherited by the only surviving heir of his 1912 will: Lovecraft's aunt, Annie Gamwell. Gamwell herself perished in 1941 and the copyrights then passed to her remaining descendents, Ethel Phillips Morrish and Edna Lewis. Morrish and Lewis then signed a document, sometimes referred to as the Morrish-Lewis gift, permitting Arkham House to republish Lovecraft's works but retaining the copyrights for themselves. Searches of the Library of Congress have failed to find any evidence that these copyrights were then renewed after the 28 year period and, hence, it is likely that these works are now in the public domain.

According to Peter Ruber's (the current editor of Arkham House) essay, The Un-Demonizing of August Derleth, certain letters obtained in June 1998 detail the Derleth-Wandrai acquisition of Lovecraft's estate. It is unclear whether these letters contradict Joshi's views on Lovecraft's copyrights.[3]

It is also worth noting that Chaosium, publishers of the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game, have a trademark on the phrase "The Call of Cthulhu" for use in game products.

Regardless of the legal disagreements surrounding Lovecraft's works, Lovecraft himself was extremely generous with his own works and actively encouraged others to borrow ideas from his stories, particularly with regard to his Cthulhu Mythos. By "wide citation" he hoped to give his works an "air of verisimilitude" and actively encouraged other writers to reference his creations, such as the Necronomicon, Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth. After his death, many writers have contributed stories and enriched the shared mythology of the Cthulhu Mythos.

[编辑] 種族歧視

洛夫克萊夫特的文字是在距今近一個世紀前所寫下的,與現在的種族平等觀念有所衝突部分現代讀者批評在一些洛夫克萊夫特的故事裡有種族歧視的內容特別注意的是在The Horror at Red Hook和The Street中他在其中描述了移民在他生活的當代是墮落和潛在危險性的在部分他的故事裡如印斯茅斯疑雲 和 Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family可能警告了族群混合的危險性還有其他如Herbert West: Reanimator含有公開的種族主義者對於非白人種族以及移民人口描述

洛夫克萊夫特的親密通信者指出他的確持有種族歧視的信仰雖然這被視為不禮貌但是可能是當代科學事實支持英系理性論主義者智能框架

原本是強烈的保守主義份子但在他生命的末期(1927之後)他的寫作透露出漸漸的轉變在政治信仰和理論上這轉變反映了民智在民主社會逐漸移除二十世紀早期的社會達爾文主義關於他的轉變的進一步證據可以在時光魅影中找到在其中他描述了一個完美社會基礎根據一些人的詮釋在一個社會主義系統

一個透徹的自我描寫關於他對種族和文化觀點的摘要可以在Selected Letters IV, published by Arkham House, in letter 648 to J. Vernon Shea, written September 25, 1933.找到

[编辑] Further reading

In the past few decades, the quantity of books about Lovecraft has increased considerably. Also, Lovecraft's stories themselves have enjoyed a veritable publishing renaissance in recent years. The titles mentioned below are a small sampling.

Lovecraft, a Biography, written by L. Sprague de Camp, published in 1975, and now out of print, was Lovecraft's first full-length biography. Frank Belknap Long's Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Night Side (Arkham House, 1975) presents a more personal look at Lovecraft's life, combining reminiscence, biography, and literary criticism. Long was a friend and correspondent of Lovecraft, as well as a fellow fantasist who wrote a number of Lovecraft-influenced Cthulhu Mythos stories (including The Hounds of Tindalos). A newer, more extensive biography is H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, written by Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi. It is also currently out of print, and used copies are rare, but an adequate alternative is Joshi's abridged A Dreamer & A Visionary: H. P. Lovecraft in His Time.

Other significant Lovecraft-related works are An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia (informative but expensive) and Lovecraft's Library: A Catalogue (a meticulous listing of many of the books in Lovecraft's now scattered library), both by Joshi, and also Lovecraft at Last, an account by Willis Conover of his teenage correspondence with Lovecraft. For those interested in studying in detail Lovecraft's writings and philosophy, Joshi's A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H. P. Lovecraft is useful both for the analysis it provides and for the thorough bibliography appended to it. Charles P. Mitchell's The Complete H. P. Lovecraft Filmography is practicable for its discussion of films containing Lovecraftian elements (see Adaptations, below).

Lovecraft's prose fiction has been published numerous times, but, even after the "corrected texts" were released by Arkham House in the 1980s, many non-definitive collections of his stories have appeared, including Ballantine Books editions and, also, three popular Del Rey editions, which nonetheless have interesting introductions. The two collections published by Penguin, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories and The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories, incorporate the modifications made in the corrected texts.

Many readers, when they first encounter Lovecraft's works, find his writing style difficult to read — owing, no doubt, to his fondness for adjectives, long paragraphs, and archaic diction. Also, Lovecraft's early 20th century perspective yielded references in his works to objects and ideas that may be unfamiliar to modern readers. Some of Lovecraft's writings, however, are annotated, meaning that they are accompanied by explanatory footnotes (at the bottom, or foot, of the page) or endnotes (at the end of the book). In addition to the Penguin editions mentioned above and The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature, Joshi has produced The Annotated H. P. Lovecraft as well as More Annotated H. P. Lovecraft, both of which are footnoted extensively.

Lastly, The Philosophy of H. P. Lovecraft presents an excellent and extensive study of Lovecraft's use of language, which further reveals the depth of his writings.

[编辑] 洛夫克萊夫特故事中的地名

洛夫克萊夫特依據他新英格蘭家鄉延伸描寫他的小說許多真正的歷史地名被提及以及數個虛構的新英格蘭地名經常出現在他的作品裡

[编辑] 歷史上的地名

Copp's Hill, 波士頓
Red Line (MBTA)

[编辑] 虛構地名

米斯卡塔尼克大學位在在虛構的麻薩諸塞州小鎮阿卡姆镇
印斯茅斯镇
敦威治村

[编辑] Bibliography

List of Works by H. P. Lovecraft
Lovecraft's miscellaneous writings

[编辑] Books

您可以在维基文库中查找此作者的相关原始文献：

霍华德·菲利普·洛夫克拉夫特

From Arkham House:
- The Dunwich Horror and Others (ISBN 0870540378)
- At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels (ISBN 0870540386)
- Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (ISBN 0870540394)
- Miscellaneous Writings (ISBN 0870541684)
- The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions (ISBN 0870540408)
From Ballantine/Del Rey:
- The Tomb and Other Tales (ISBN 0345336615)
- The Doom That Came to Sarnath (ISBN 0345331052)
- The Lurking Fear and Other Stories (ISBN 0345326040)
- The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (ISBN 0345337794)
- The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (ISBN 0345354907)
- At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror (ISBN 0345329457)
- The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre (ISBN 0345350804)
- The Road to Madness (ISBN 0345384229)
- Dreams of Terror and Death: The Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft (ISBN 0345384210)
- Waking Up Screaming: Haunting Tales of Terror (ISBN 034545829X)
From Night Shade Books:
- The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H. P. Lovecraft (ISBN 1892389169)
From Hippocampus Press:
- The Shadow out of Time Publishers Page
- From the Pest Zone: The New York Stories Publishers Page
- The Annotated Fungi From Yuggoth Publishers Page
- Collected Essays Publishers Page
- The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature Publishers Page
- H. P. Lovecraft: Letters to Alfred Galpin Publishers Page
- H. P. Lovecraft: Letters To Rheinhart Kleiner Publishers Page
- Lovecraft's Library: A Catalogue Publishers Page
- Primal Sources: Essays on H. P. Lovecraft Publishers Page
- An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia Publishers Page

[编辑] Adaptations

Films based (generally very loosely) on Lovecraft's works:

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (2003), an adaptation of the book by the same name (Official Site)
The Haunted Palace, an adaptation of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (IMDb entry)
The Resurrected (1992), another adaptation of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (IMDb entry)
Re-Animator (1985) (IMDb entry)
Bride of Re-Animator (1990) (IMDb entry)
Beyond Re-Animator (2003) (IMDb entry)
From Beyond (1986) (IMDb entry)
The Dunwich Horror (1970) (IMDb entry)
The Unnamable (1988) (IMDb entry)
The Unnamable II: The Statement of Randolph Carter (1993) (IMDb entry)
Dagon (2001) (IMDb entry)
The Curse (1987) (an unacknowledged 1980s adaptation of "The Colour Out of Space") (IMDb entry)
Die, Monster, Die! (1965) (another adaptation of "The Colour Out of Space") (IMDb entry)
In the Mouth of Madness (1995) (satirical John Carpenter horror film about the relationship between horror writers and their audience; a Lovecraft pastiche) (IMDb entry)
Necronomicon (1994) Three short films based on his stories (The Rats in the Walls, Cool Air, The Whisperer in Darkness) (IMDb entry)

[编辑] 廣播作品

克蘇魯的呼喚(於塔斯曼尼亞的廣播，於洛夫克萊夫特的百歲冥誕)

[编辑] See also

References to the Cthulhu Mythos--!>

[编辑] External links

您可以在维基语录中查看或添加與此条目相关的摘錄：