H.P. Lovecraft, the writer who didn't mind saying he was racist

Howard Philips Lovecraft is considered to be one of the greatest exponents of the 19th century horror genre, since even in our time its influence is taken into account for films or television series.

The author of “The Alchemist” and other stories had a long face and a prominent jaw, “foreigner in his time, maybe genius, maybe crazy”, but something that is considered and not many people know is about his racist thinking.

As mentioned in the edition of the Longseller publishing house, “In the same way, he was described as anti-Semitic, xenophobic and reactionary, characteristics that, in some way, he himself has recognized as his own and which, moreover, are clear from his writings. But, with regard to its ideology.”

In the same text he mentions that there are some contradictory facts, since “the author declared himself anti-Semitic, but his wife and many of those around him and received signs of their affection and consideration were Jews; as an adult”.

And although many of his followers know this personality of the author, some of those who knew him and the data written about him mention that he showed a degree of sensitivity, it is incomprehensible that he did not show “the life, pain and dignity of his peers by expressing his ideas”.

In a passage from his childhood it is mentioned that Lovecraft caught a squirrel and in the end killed him, causing the boy to have regrets for a long time, as they kept harassing him. In addition, some descriptions of the author read that his friends described him as loyal, gentle and kind.

“Singular artist or mentally ill”, even if you have no idea what really happened to Lovecraft, something that is known is that he was a writer whose work gave a Copernican turn to horror literature and who opted for the genre of the supernatural “to satisfy a desire that troubled him”, that's how he wrote it in his latest essays titled Collected Essays. (Hippocampus Press: 2004).

“I choose supernatural tales because they are the ones that best match my indications; one of my strongest and most persistent desires is to achieve, momentarily, the illusion of a strange suspension or violation of the irritating limitations of time, space and natural laws that imprison us forever and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces, beyond the radius of our sight and analysis”.

Lovecraft's Racism

Lovecraft himself said he was racist, something that in the 19th century in the United States there was no problem. However, during the years that there has been a transition in human rights, Amnesty International placed the story that talks about African-Americans, of which it refers to the text entitled “On the Creation of Black People”.

“Lovecraft felt anglophile, loyal to times before his homeland's Declaration of Independence, rejected the modern world and declared himself 'a Victorian gentleman', prone to rigidity and conservatism.”

In this text they ask the question “Should the circulation of literary works with racist content or other values contrary to human rights principles (homophobia, machismo, etc.) be restricted?”

The original of this text is in the Brown Digital Repository of the Brown Library.

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