American Literature: Romanticism research assignment Student Research Submissions 2016 Research Post 2

Michael Osborne

16 November 2016

The Dread Grimoire: Did Hawthorne Inspire the Necronomicon?

During my research into the influence Nathaniel Hawthorne had on H. P. Lovecraft, I have been continually surprised at the extent to which Hawthorne’s work shaped Lovecraft’s own. The two authors have many imagistic and thematic similarities, such as “the general notion of being haunted by the past,” though they develop these shared themes in “vastly different ways” (Burleson, Critical 220). Perhaps most surprisingly, Hawthorne’s influence extends into Lovecraft’s most celebrated work, the Cthulhu Mythos; a series of stories whose themes seem antithetical to Hawthorne’s thematic exploration of humanity’s morality. Most significantly, Hawthorne’s work may be the inspiration for one of Lovecraft’s most notorious creations, the dreaded Necronomicon. Therefore, my second post will research the genesis of Lovecraft’s fabled grimoire (a book of magical knowledge and instruction).

          As my first post discussed, the isolated and degenerate New England towns invented by Lovecraft form the backbone of the Mythos; the Necronomicon, however, that “fictive ancient grimoire of primordial secrets” is its black, beating heart (Burleson, Critical 75). The Necronomicon is mentioned in at least eighteen of Lovecraft’s stories, including some of his most popular works, such as “The Call of Cthulhu,” At the Mountains of Madness, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and “The Dunwich Horror.” Lovecraft provides very few concrete details about the Necronomicon or its contents, and yet, he uses it in a variety of ways in his stories. It is quoted briefly (but importantly) in “The Call of Cthulhu,” is only referenced in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, provides the secrets necessary to defeat the “monster” in “The Dunwich Horror,” and is continually referenced in At the Mountains of Madness as the protagonist attempts to understand the terrible secrets he has uncovered. Lovecraft’s repeated use of the Necronomicon ties these disparate stories together while also providing him with “a cloud of sinister atmosphere which would otherwise have had to be built afresh with each story” (Leiber 61). Very similar to how Romantic writers reacted against the cold, scientific reason of the Enlightenment, Lovecraft also struggled in a world dominated by science. Fear of the unknown is paramount in Lovecraft’s work, and scientific progress continually diminishes that which is unknown. That is not to say that Lovecraft was opposed to science; he was actually very interested in scientific study and embraced scientific realism in his later work. Lovecraft used the Necronomicon, however, “as a back door or postern gate to realms of wonder and myth, the main approaches to which had been blocked off by his acceptance of the new universe of materialistic science” (Leiber 61).

          A significant portion of the Cthulhu Mythos’ enduring popularity can be attributed to the Necronomicon. Lovecraft’s fictional tome inspired other authors among his correspondents to design their own mythological grimoires. The Necronomicon also appears in an episode of The Simpsons (13.7), inspired two art books by H. R. Giger, serves as the title and basis of a 1993 movie, is the fulcrum of the plot of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead movie trilogy (including the 2013 remake and the current TV show, Ash vs Evil Dead), and its most famous quote is used (almost verbatim) in the Metallica song, “The Thing That Should Not Be.” Just as Lovecraft’s influence can seem ever-present in modern popular culture, the Necronomicon specifically is a massive influence on artists, authors, filmmakers, and musicians. The power of the Necronomicon is so great that there are many who refuse to believe it is fictitious. Lovecraft answered many letters requesting information about the “real” Necronomicon, booksellers and librarians receive numerous requests for it, it appeared in the Yale University Library card catalogue (as a hoax), and there are multiple translations of the book (also hoaxes) available for sale. Lovecraft always maintained that the book was purely fictitious, but that doesn’t seem to stop people from believing it is real.

          As Lovecraft’s most significant creation within the Cthulhu Mythos, the existence of the Necronomicon may be due to the influence of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writings generations earlier. Ronald Burleson claims that Lovecraft was inspired to create his dread grimoire after reading an entry in one of Hawthorne’s notebooks. Lovecraft read Hawthorne’s Passages from the American Notebooks around 1919, and Burleson believes that:

Lovecraft can hardly have missed seeing … the following note from Hawthorne’s notebooks, dated October 17, 1835: ‘An old volume in a large library, – everyone to be afraid to unclasp and open it, because it was said to be a book of magic.’[1] This passage is remarkable for its imagistic similarity to Lovecraft’s oft-cited fictional tome, the Necronomicon” (“Hawthorne’s Influence” 42).

Continuing, Burleson declares is it “quite likely, given the timeline, that Hawthorne’s notebook entry, perhaps in combination with other impressions gleaned by Lovecraft here and there, may well have inspired the basic notion of the Necronomicon” (42). A 2016 biography of Lovecraft agrees, stating that throughout Lovecraft’s work, “the idea of the ‘Terrible Book’ whose contents open doors to worlds of horror, plays a crucial role in the plotting and narrative. He had this idea in mind as early as 1919, when he came across a story idea that Hawthorne had considered about a magical text that everyone fears to read” (Poole).

          Some critics and Lovecraft scholars echo Burleson’s claim about Hawthorne and the Necronomicon, though they usually do not commit to the theory, while others offer other sources as the likely inspiration for Lovecraft’s creation. The authors of The Necronomicon Files, a book devoted to exploring the occultism and literary mythology of the Necronomicon, directly disagree with Burleson. Daniel Harms states that “some consider Hawthorne a likely source of inspiration. I remain skeptical, however; if this were the source, why did the Necronomicon not become a full-fledged ‘book of magic’ until 1927? I believe that Lovecraft’s reading in the occult during this period was a much greater influence than a sentence in the ‘Commonplace Book’” (25). Some critics (including J. Vernon Shea and Lin Carter) believe that the Necronomicon was inspired by Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow, though Burleson claims this is chronologically impossible since Lovecraft’s letters show that he “did not discover Chambers’ horror fiction until six years after his first use of the idea of the Necronomicon” (Burleson, Critical 158n36). Other critics believe Lovecraft “received some of the inspiration from awareness of the similarly arcane Book of Thoth that occurs in Egyptian mythology,” which is why Lovecraft “meant the Necronomicon to have some antecedents in Egyptian arcana” (Wetzel 81).

          When I began this research, my hope was to find definitive evidence drawing a line from Nathaniel Hawthorne directly to the Necronomicon. Unfortunately, but typical for many studies of influence, I did not find that evidence, and it appears, in fact, that there is nothing definitive to be found. Lovecraftian scholars have myriad theories as to the true inspiration for the Necronomicon, but Lovecraft does not mention a source in his letters, and no one can provide final proof that any one theory is superior to the others. Barring the miraculous discovery of heretofore unknown Lovecraft notes or letters, I don’t think we will ever know for sure the true source of the Necronomicon. However, finding direct evidence of the true inspiration for the Necronomicon is perhaps not as important as recognizing the many potential influences that combined, in Lovecraft as in many authors, into new and inspired creative work with its own integrity.

Works Cited

Burleson, Donald R. H. P. Lovecraft: A Critical Study. Greenwood, 1983. Print.

          ---. “Hawthorne’s Influence on Lovecraft.” Lovecraft and Influence: His Predecessors and Successors. Ed. Robert H. Waugh. Scarecrow, 2013. Print.

          Harms, Daniel, and John Wisdom Gonce III. The Necronomicon Files: The Truth behind Lovecraft’s Legend. Weiser, 2003. Print.

          Leiber, Fritz, Jr. “A Literary Copernicus.” H. P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism. Ed. S. T. Joshi. Ohio UP, 1980. 50-62. Print.

          Poole, W. Scott. In the Mountains of Madness: The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of H.P. Lovecraft. Soft Skull, 2016. Web.

          Wetzel, George T. “The Cthulhu Mythos: A Study.” H. P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism. Ed. S. T. Joshi. Ohio UP, 1980. 79-95. Print.