An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

In 1930 N.J.O’Neail wrote a letter to WT(March 1930) inquiring whether “Kathulos” cited in Robert E.Howard’s “Skull-Face” (1929) was related to or derived from Cthulhu. Howard in turn queried HPL as to the reality of the various mythological elements cited in HPL’s tales, to which HPL replied: “Regarding the solemnly cited myth-cycle of Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, R’lyeh, Nyarlathotep, Nug, Yeb, Shub-Niggurath, etc. etc.—let me confess that this is all a synthetic concoction of my own” ( SL 3.166), going on to say that he dropped references to this myth-cycle in his ghostwritten tales purely for fun. Howard himself thereupon began dropping references to HPL’s myth-cycle in his tales, although neither he nor Smith nor Donald Wandrei nor even younger disciples such as Robert Bloch ever actually wrote stories aboutHPL’s mythic conceptions—they merely dropped references to HPL’s entities in the course of their tales, for the sake of cryptic allusiveness and verisimilitude. It is an exaggeration to say that HPL “encouraged” these imitations or elaborations of his myth-cycle; in most cases, the writers simply made additions of their own accord, and HPL (usually out of courtesy) praised the results.

August Derleth, however, appears to have become obsessed with the Mythos, from as early as 1931, when he wrote the first draft of “The Return of Hastur” ( WT,March 1939). At that time he suggested to HPL that the myth-cycle be given a name; he offered the Mythology of Hastur. HPL replied: “It’s not a bad idea to call this Cthulhuism & Yog-Sothothery of mine The Mythology of Hastur’—although it was really from Machen & Chambers & others rather than through the Bierce-Chambers line, that I picked up my gradually developing hash of theogony—or daimonogeny” (HPL to August Derleth, May 16, 1931; ms., SHSW). (HPL refers to his derivation of the term Hastur from Robert W.Chambers’s The King in Yellow[1895]; Chambers himself derived it from various tales of Ambrose Bierce. In “Some Notes on a Nonentity” [1933] HPL stated that it was from Lord Dunsany that HPL “got the idea of the artificial pantheon and myth-background represented by ‘Cthulhu’, ‘Yog-Sothoth’, ‘Yuggoth’, etc.,” suggesting that HPL was adapting the imaginary pantheon found in Dunsany’s early volumes of tales, TheGodsofPegāna[1905] and Time and the Gods[1906].) He also wrote to Robert Bloch (late May 1933): “As for the synthetic myth-cycle—I suppose I got the idea from Poe’s allusions to fabulous lands of his own dreaming, from Dunsany’s artificial pantheon, & from Machen’s portentous references to ‘Aklo letters’, ‘Voorish domes’, &c.” ( Letters to Robert Bloch,p. 11). HPL went on to say in another letter to Derleth: “The more these synthetic daemons are written up by different authors, the better they become as general background-material! I liketo have others use my Azathoths & Nyarlathoteps—& in return I shall use Klarkash-Ton’s [Clark Ashton Smith] Tsathoggua, your monk Clithanus, & Howard’s Bran” (HPL to August Derleth, August 3,

< previous page page_52 next page > < previous page page_53 next page >

Page 53

1931; ms., SHSW). Derleth used that last sentence as a license to continue writing tales using HPL’s pseudomythology, although even before HPL’s death he warned at least one writer (Henry Kuttner) to avoid using HPL’s pseudomythological elements in his own work as doing so could hamper HPL’s ability to earn income from his own ideas. Ultimately Derleth himself departed from the tradition of HPL’s own colleagues by writing stories entirely aboutHPL’s mythic conceptions, rather than using them as “general background-material.”