Jelena Maravić

Atavism on the tongue of cognition

The influence the theory of evolution had on the writing of H. P.

Lovecraft has been discussed thoroughly for decades. However, the

connection was primarily made with regards to the cosmic

insignificance, which Lovecraft drew from his readings of Darwin.

In his book H. P. Lovecraft's Dark Arcadia: The Satire, Symbology and Contradiction

(2013) Gavin Callaghan highlights that Lovecraft was obsessed

with the cosmic implications of the theory of evolution, most

notably with the immense power of natural selection.

Lovecraft could transform or veil or depict this Mother Earth

in any number of unflattering ways, but at the same time, he

could never escape from the totality of her power or

influence. (238)

Furthemore, it has been claimed that Lovecraft was under the major

influence of Ernst Haeckel, C. Darwin and T. H. Huxley. In his

book H. P. Lovecraft: A dreamer and a Visionary published in 2001, Sunand

Tryambak Joshi argues that this cosmic insignificance in

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Lovecraft's stories stems from the denial of teleology, that is

denial of purpose, advocated by Darwin and philosophers such as

Haeckel. Joshi makes a link between the universe without any

direction and the way Lovecraft expresses this absence of purpose

in his novellas. More specifically, he claims that Lovecraft

creates monstrous characters as a result of his belief in the

triviality of human species. To be more precise, Lovecraft decided

to create primitive, abominable characters as a consequence of the

emergence of atavism.

In his book On the Origin of Species published in 1859, Charles Darwin

introduced the notion of regression in form. Namely, in Chapter V:

Laws of Variation it was asserted that animals could deteriorate

to an earlier stage of evolution, more specifically that their

physical features could ebb to a primitive state (159). This paper

will attempt to show how the concept of atavism influenced the

mouldering of fictional minds in two short stories of Howard

Phillip Lovecraft, namely the novellas At the Mountain of Madness (1936)

and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1941). Furthermore, I will explain

the link between umwelt, a term coined by German semiotician Jakob

von Uexküll and the manner in which H. P. Lovecraft employs

language to portray atavist mindsets of his characters. The first

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part of the paper presents the link between Darwinist idea of

atavism, its importance for the works of H. P. Lovecraft and the

shape it gave to the fictional minds in the aforementioned

novellas. In the second part, I will explain the emergence of

umwelt and the implications evolutionary theory had on the umwelt

research. The third part of the paper is dedicated to the analysis

of the language H. P. Lovecraft employed in the depiction of a

deteriorated fictional mind, more specifically to his use of

adjectives and his creation of a new language.

In his evolutionary theory, Darwin suggested that animals and men

have a common ancestor, a statement whose impact echoed in every

sphere of life, from science to literature, from non-fiction to

fiction. Acknowledgement of this infamous hypothesis severely

shaken the cradle of lulled Victorian minds throughout the

society. Hence, its influence reflected strongly on the subsequent

fictional worlds, particularly on the realm of horror stories.

Influenced by cosmic revelations of Charles Darwin, H. P.

Lovecraft started building his novellas on the foundations of

human degradation, namely most of his protagonists are degenerated

in body and mind. The choice of regressive characters was not only

an offspring of his acceptance of atavism, but also of his

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conviction that humankind is not the superior, last chain in the

cycle of evolution. Joshi explains the importance Darwin had on

the creation of protagonists in the novellas of H. P. Lovecraft:

And the fundamental premise of the story—that a human being

can suddenly reverse the course of evolution—could only have

been written by one who had accepted the Darwinian theory.

(170)

Motivated by the concept of human regression, H. P. Lovecraft

focuses on the creation of atavist fictional characters, shaping

them to be decayed either on the level of appearance or the level

of psyche. In the novella At the Mountains of Madness, Lovecraft

attributes rotten mind of a young student called Danforth.

Danforth participated in the South Pole expedition which revealed

abhorrent secrets about the origin of species and which infected

his mind to an extent that he could only make non-nonsensical

utterances. His colleague, professor Lake explains that poor

Danforth's mental state has been seriously damaged by the

discoveries he witnessed.

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We really saw in the hidden transmontane world - hints of the

revelations which have finally driven Danforth to a nervous

collapse. (28)

Unlike the character of Danforth who collapses into a mental de-

evolution, the protagonist in the novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

begins to sink both mentally and physically. Charles is a twenty-

five-year-old preoccupied with revealing the truth about his

ancestor Joseph Curwen, a search which eventually generates

simian, primitive alterations in his appearance and in his

mindset. The doctor concerned with the mental health of Charles

states assigns his reversal in characteristics to the dangerous

discoveries he encountered while studying the family tree.

The true madness, he is certain, came with a later change;

after the Curwen portrait and the ancient papers had been

unearthed; after a trip to strange foreign places had been

made, and some terrible invocations chanted under strange and

secret circumstances; (3)

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The descriptions of both characters show that their decay emerged

as a consequence of their encounters with various revelations made

during the explorations of the secret of origins.

The idea that the mind changes through the interaction with the

surroundings is strongly connected to the social concept of

enactivism, which is interwoven with the notion of umwelt, while at

the same time being in causative relation with the evolutionary

theories proposed by Darwin. In the following paragraphs, I will

try to elaborate on the dependence of their relation. In The Descent

of Man published in 1871, Darwin suggests that many authors believe

that lower animals do not have the same mental abilities, namely

that men are superior in their social awareness. In several

instances of Chapter II concerned with the mental capacities of

animals and men Darwin illustrates how both species have a unique

perspective of their interaction with the surroundings. More

specifically, he explains how a dog may have its own view on the

death or threat to someone from his surroundings (77-78). Also,

Darwin explains that dogs have dreams which can be understood as

their subconscious reaction to the experiences of the world around

them (62-63). Therefore, it can be inferred that all animals

including men, have their own mindsets shaped by environmental

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experiences, with the differences between the two being almost

impossible to explain without deeper insight into their cognition.

This unique experiences of the surrounding world is what German

semiotician Uexküll named umwelt. The concept was first described

in his work Umwelt and Inner World of Animals published in 1909, in

which Uexküll explains that the inward worlds, i.e. minds, are

created through the interplay with the environment.

In his book Onto-Ethologies The Animal Environments of Uexküll, Heidegger, Merleau-

Ponty, and Deleuze (2008), Brett Buchanan explains Uexküll's attitude

towards animal umwelt.

Uexküll contends that animals must be interpreted by virtue of

the environments that they inhabit, and, insofar as it is

possible, from the perspective of their behavior within such

environments. (7-8)

Although it has been claimed that Uexküll and Darwin have the

opposing views on animal and human umwelt, I would on the contrary

suggest that their observations are rather similar, both agreeing

that umwelts depended on the connection with the surroundings.

Moreover, Darwin and Uexküll reached the same conclusions, but

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misinterpreted one another. Namely, in The Descent of Man Darwin

suggested that lower animals and men behave differently in

relation to the environment and that their mental capacities

cannot be equated (63). Likewise, in his research, Uexküll

proposes that animal and human umwelt are not the same, as noted by

Buchanan:

Uexküll expands this thought, however, by attributing

subjective perception to not just human forms of perception

but to the Umwelten of all animal perceptions. (13)

I agree with Buchanan that the only difference between the

opinions of Darwin and Uexküll is in the manner in which they

interpret the two umwelts (8). Darwin recognized the interactional

part of animal umwelts, but explained organisms in their relation

to the natural selection, whereas Uexküll observed them through

their relation with the natural interaction. However, I would go

further and suggest that there is no major difference between the

two, given that natural selection is actually a inherent part of

natural interaction.

Acceptance and interpretation of the umwelt theory has led

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psychologists and sociologists to observe the mind in the light of

its connection to the environment. This reinterpretation of the

mind has resulted in the emergence of enactivism, a theory which

claims that cognition is mouldered by experiences from the

surroundings. Gun R. Semin and Eliot R. Smith explain enactivist

mind in their paper Interfaces of social psychology with situated and embodied

cognition (2002).

Thus, attitudes represent relationships between the agent and

the attitude object, which have implications for the way the

agent perceives the object and acts toward it, as well as for

the way the person thinks about it and mentally represents it.

(387)

As I have suggested in the first part of the paper, cognitions of

Danforth in the novella At the Mountains of Madness and Charles in the

novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward are actually representations of

enactivist fictional minds. Both mindsets are shaped by the

experiences of their surroundings. In the novella At the Mountains of

Madness, professor Lake constantly highlights that the source of

Danforth's degradation is his encounter with unnameable

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discoveries.

It may be the effect of this later study - the revived

memories and vague impressions acting in conjunction with his

general sensitiveness and with that final supposed horror-

glimpse whose essence he will not reveal even to me - which

has been the immediate source of Danforth's present breakdown.

But it had to be; (42)

Likewise, the character of Charles in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

deteriorates mentally as his research reveals more and more

shocking facts. Doctor Willett, a family physician repeatedly

claims that his patient's psychical abyss was created due to his

involvement in the strange study of ancestry.

Dr. Willett, Ward's family physician, affirms that the

patient's gross mental capacity, as gauged by his response to

matters outside the sphere of his insanity, had actually

increased since the seizure. (2)

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Another important factor which influenced the mind of Charles Ward

was his studious interpreting of ancient manuscripts, which as is

described by Dr Willett left a strong mark on the language of

young man, namely he started speaking in a more primitive manner,

almost unintelligible to those around him. Namely, several

witnesses heard young Charles chant unrecognizable words in the

middle of the night, one of them being his own mother.

Charles was chanting again now and his mother could hear

syllables that sounded like 'Yi nash Yog Sothoth he lgeb

throdag' - ending in a 'Yah!' whose maniacal force mounted in

an ear-splitting crescendo. (43)

The language used in the chantings is clearly not similar to any

of the known world languages and its purpose is to show that

regression can be visible on the level of language used by the

demented individual, in this case Charles Ward. It is my belief

that H. P. Lovecraft invented this new tongue in order to

demonstrate primitive nature of his character's mind. Namely,

Charles deciphered texts which no other character did, which in

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turn triggered his fall into the mental abyss and therefore the

deterioration of his linguistic skills. By inventing a new

language Lovecraft is showing the reader that the character's

umwelt, being deluded, cannot form coherent linguistic structures,

since his subjective expression of the events is different from

that of a healthy mind. In his book The Emergence of Mind (2011),

David Herman explains how Virginia Wolf uses the character of

Septimus Smith in Mrs Dalloway in order to portray mental

disability. Herman states that Woolf created a specific mind-style

for this character, given that he suffers from hallucinations.

More specifically, she makes his mental flow completely incoherent

so as to help the readers understand how the environment is

perceived by a confused mind (244).

In the discussion of the new language in his thesis From Within the

Abyss of the Mind (2003), Joakim Bengtsson refers to the explanation

given by Timo Airaksinen. Namely, Airaksinen states that the

invention of a language which does not resemble any constructions

of a human language mirrors the collapse of all structures (22):

What Lovecraft presents in this chanting is, on account of its

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virtually unpronounceable sounds and alien structure, not

legible in a normal sense. Hence, the chanting, as a text, is

beyond all normal conceptions of what texts should look like.

(Airaksinen qtd. in Bengtsson)

In my opinion, the creation of the new language for the portrayal

of the character's cognition is analogous to the lack of

punctuation James Joyce employs in order to illustrate the mind

process of Molly Bloom in his book Ulysses published in 1986.

Namely, Herman argues how Joyce uses narration which lacks

punctuation in order to enact the natural, or as he calls it

unfiltered representation of Molly's stream of thoughts (247-248).

Hence, it can be said that Lovecraft uses the new language for

the same purpose, that is to capture the strange, unknown

cognitive state of Charles Ward. Bengtsson, on the other hand,

claims that the alterations or what he calls perversions of language

are actually stylistic devices which Lovecraft exploits to evoke

the horror in the readers (22). This view is supported by

Following Bengtsson and his line of reasoning, I suggest that the

invention of this new language is not only aimed at terrifying the

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readership, but is more likely employed so as to enact the

abominations of the world experienced by a defective mind, as is

the case in Mrs Dalloway, where Woolf uses the perversion of

thoughts to evoke the damaged umwelt of Septimus Smith. The

alteration of language in the novella At the mountains of Madness is

expressed through overuse of adjectives in the language spoken by

the scientist Lake, whose cognition was deeply disturbed by the

discoveries made during the expedition in the Antarctic. It is my

belief that Lovecraft intentionally exaggerated with the usage of

adjectives in the descriptions given by professor Lake. Namely,

many authors criticized this style, since in many guides about

cultivation of good writing adjectives are claimed to be primitive

parts of speech, which if exploited to a large extent imply

stylistic negligence.

For instance, in their writing manual The Elements of Style (2000)

William Strunk and Elwyn White explain that an adjective in

writing cannot replace a noun, regardless of its strength.

Furthermore, they state that nouns and verbs embroider skillful

writing (88-89).

However, I am inclined to observe this overuse of adjectives as a

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stylistic means for enacting the worldview of an atavistic mind,

given that a psyche once shattered by incomprehensible structures

cannot use the same speech constructions to express his

experiences. If adjectives are considered to be undeveloped

members of a language, then I would argue that Lovecraft found a

suitable role for them, namely that of a door to the vistas of

degenerated fictional minds. A good illustration of such

application of adjectives is the scene where professor Lake sends

a radio transmission in which he tries to describe strange

organisms he has encountered in the mountains, but he cannot form

a coherent, understandable sentence:

At top of torso blunt, bulbous neck of lighter gray, with

gill-like suggestions, holds yellowish five-pointed starfish-

shaped apparent head covered with three-inch wiry cilia of

various prismatic colors. (14)

The creatures Lake encountered are unlike any other organism he

had known before, hence his mind is displaced by the existence of

such forms. Nobody else except for Lake can see these organisms

and therefore nobody can understand the incongruities starting to

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be formed in his own umwelt on that situation. Nevertheless, Lake

is obliged to offer his viewpoint on these beings and this

viewpoint is given via the adjectival deluge, a atavistic speech

form used in an attempt to describe a primitive species.

Likewise, the character of young Danforth expresses his mental

hysteria primarily by means of adjectives, although he also

employs a lot of repetitions. It has been known that certain

people when confronted with great fears or abominable experiences

tend to stutter, as their mind becomes unable to connect their

thoughts. In the case of Danforth, repetition reveals the

inability to think coherently, which is witnessed by his

colleague.

South Station Under - Washington Under - Park Street Under-

Kendall - Central - Harvard - The poor fellow was chanting the

familiar stations of the Boston-Cambridge tunnel that burrowed

through our peaceful native soil thousands of miles away in

New England, yet to me the ritual had neither irrelevance nor

home feeling. (69)

Apparently, Danforth has been constantly repeating the names of

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the tunnel stations from his hometown. It can also be argued that

Danforth is the only one who connected these stations to the

events experienced, as it is shown that his colleague does not see

the relevance nor the irrelevance of the repetitions. A strong

combination of both adjectives and repetitions is notable in the

descriptions of Danforth's speech, especially in the rare moments

following the expedition, when he tries to communicate its strange

occurrences. I would assume that the combination implies that

Lovecraft wanted to suggest Danforth's state of mind reached a

severely deranged stage, in which all the structures become

dismembered.

He has on rare occasions whispered disjointed and

irresponsible things about "The black pit," "the carven rim,"

"the protoShoggoths," "the windowless solids with five

dimensions," "the nameless cylinder," "the elder Pharos,"

"Yog-Sothoth," "the primal white jelly," "the color out of

space," "the wings," "the eyes in darkness," "the moon

ladder," "the original, the eternal, the undying," and other

bizarre conceptions; (72)

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As has been mentioned earlier in the paper, the character of

Charles in the novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward likewise exhibits

strange usage of language. So far, I have only discussed the

emergence of the new language, which appeared from studious

analysis of manuscripts young Charles deciphered. However, the

character of Charles also speaks a language which struck his

contemporaries as rather strange and primitive. Namely, his

reversal to an archaic form of language stems from the strange

experiments which led him to exchange bodies with his ancestor

Joseph Curwen. Lovecraft then attributes the archaic language to

the character of Charles, because his umwelt merged with that of

his ancestor, hence Charles has to speak the same language. This

language is the clue to the readers that the mindset of young

Charles shifted to a primeval form.

Moreover, although none of these men knew Ward well, they

could not help observing the change in his language and

manner. They had heard he was an antiquarian, but even the

most hopeless antiquarians do not make daily use of obsolete

phraseology and gestures. (57)

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Doctor Willet explains that the strange use of archaisms was

confirmed when he received a letter from Charles written in a

style of the old ages. This letter was the insight into the mind

of Charles Ward and gave a better picture of his deranged state.

I this day receiv'd yr mention of what came up from the Saltes

I sent you. It was wrong,

and meanes clearly that ye Headstones had been chang'd when

Barnabas gott me the

Specimen. It is often so, as you must be sensible of from the

Thing you gott from ye Kings Chapell ground in 1769 and what

H. gott from Olde Bury'g Point in 1690, that was like to ende

him. (59)

A similar use of language, moreover handwriting was employed in

the novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide (1886) by Robert Louis

Stevenson, where the notes of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide share the

same handwriting (23).

Having observed the language Lovecraft employs in the novellas At

the Mountains of Madness and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, I reach a

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conclusion that both his use of adjectives and the mouldering of

language are stylistic devices by means of which Lovecraft set out

to mimic the cognitive reversal of their protagonists. The

cognition of Charles Ward regresses to a primeval condition, in

which his language becomes shaped through his interaction with

ancient manuscripts. Furthermore, the character's umwelt is merged

with the mind of his ancestor Joseph, hence Charles begins to

experience the world through the cognition of his primitive

relative, this being exibited through his archaic manner of

speaking. Similarly, protagonists of the novella At the Mountains of

Madness, professor Lake and his student Danforth use a deteriorated

language, coloured by a torrent of adjectives and repetitions,

which serves to depict their fall into the chasm of incoherency.

Furthermore, in both instances the shift to atavism was not solely

inward, but a result of characters' interplay with the environment

and the impressions it left on their psyche. Thus, it can be

deduced that Lovecraft exploited the notion of phychological

enactivism in relation to the concept of atavism introduced by

Darwin.

I have started this paper by making a link between the

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evolutionary concept of regression in form and the fictional minds

created in the novels of H. P. Lovecraft. More specifically, I

have shown how Darwin and his evolutionary ideas of regression

influenced the shape Lovecraft gave to the minds of the characters

in the novellas At the Mountain of Madness and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

Having explained the connection, I proceded to elaborate on the

mental representations of animal and men given by Darwin and the

implications these views had on the interpretation of Uexküll's

umwelt theory. More specifically, I compared the views of Uexküll

and Darwin and demonstrated that the two scientists shared the

same idea about cognitions, but have misinterpreted each other's

viewpoints. Namely, I argued that Darwin and Uexküll both agree

that humans and animals have different views of life and that both

stem from their interaction with the world, the only difference

being that Darwin observes development of cognition with regards

to natural selection, while Uexküll interprets umwelt in relation

to natural interaction. In addition, I attempted to describe the

role umwelt theory played in the development of enactivism. I have

tried to explain that Lovecraft reveals the mindsets of the

characters as the action unfolds, more specifically as the result

of the situations they have experienced. In the first novella, the

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psyche of Danforth reacts to the evolutonary discoveries he makes

along the way and his consciusness degrades consequently.

Likewise, Charles Ward has become changed during the course of his

search for origins, as his cognition became horribly altered.

In my analysis of the two novellas I focused mainly on the

language Lovecraft employed to evoke atavistic fictional minds.

More specifically, I observed how adjectives and the creation of

new language were used to express degenerated cognitions. The

protagonists in the two novellas have both been horror-struck by

their understanding of the surroundings, which inflicted internal

damage to their cognitive processes. Lovecraft cleverly

represented their derranged mindsets through the exaggerated use

of adjectives, repetitions and the creation of an unknown,

disjointed language. Although there is a general belief that H.

P. Lovecraft was not a modernist, I tend to disagree, as I have

tried to show by comparing his techniques for portrayal of

fictional minds to those of modernists such as Joyce and Woolf.

Finally, I would like to conclude by suggesting that although

Lovecraft has not employed the stream of consciousness narration

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or interior monoloques similar to the ones usually illustrated in

modernist books, he most certainly impressed an evolutionary stamp

on umwelt representations through his protomodernist use of

language.

References

Bengtsson, Joakim. 2003. “From Within the Abyss of the Mind:

Psychological Horror in H. P, Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu”. MA

thesis, Blekinge Institute of Technology.

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Buchanan, Brett. 2008. Onto-Ethologies: The Animal Environments of Uexkill,

Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Deleuze. New York: State University of New

York Press.

Callaghan, Gavin. 2013. H. P. Lovecraft's Dark Arcadia: The Satire, Symbology and

Contradiction. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co.

Darwin, Charles. 1859. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

London: John Murray.

Darwin, Charles. 1871. The Descent of Man. London: John Murray.

Gun R. Semin and E. R. Smith. 2002. Interfaces of social psychology with

situated and embodied cognition. Elsevier B. V.

Herman, David. 2011. The Emergence of Mind: Representations of Consciousness in

Narrative Discourse in English. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska

Press.

Joshi, S. T. 2001. A Dreamer and a Visionary: H. P. Lovecraft in His Time.

Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Lovecraft, H. P. 2008. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. London: Creation

Oneiros.

Lovecraft, H. P. 2011. At the Mountains of Madness and Other Works of Science

Fiction. London: Creation Oneiros.

Strunk, William J. R. and E. B. White. 2000. The Elements of Style.

Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

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