Le officios de Geneva: Post telephonar a Paris, Francesca dice a Petro que le senior Dumont

Lovecraft complicates his usurping of humanity’s imaginary cosmic throne by creating the Old Ones to excel in what some may think to be the most human of endeavors – the creation of beauty for its own sake. They are artists, architects,

philosophers and poets who strive to create beauty in all forms, though their own physical makeup leads them to completely non-human perceptions of biological normalcy.

Lovecraft frequently emphasizes the subjectivity of standards of beauty through descriptions of artwork made by non-humans for their own species. The jewelry discussed in “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” and the depictions of adorned reptilian humanoids in the ruins of “The Nameless City” are good examples of Lovecraft’s treatment of the relative nature of aesthetic normality; the art objects meet needs of form

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It could be argued that such a position of fundamental subjectivity places Lovecraft more squarely in the category of postmodernist / anti-humanist than modernist. While this has been an idea of mine since the beginning of this project, I choose for now to avoid this overwhelming topic of distinction for a multitude of reasons. Perhaps the choice to avoid the idea of postmodernism was motivated by mere cowardice. I prefer the words “practicality” and “restraint.” For now, it is a significant enough task to attempt to bring Lovecraft into the discussion of his modernist contemporaries, and to identify the modernist grotesque. To enter the debate about the distinction between modernism and postmodernism, and to situate Lovecraft in the realm of the postmodern, is a task better saved for a later project.

and function that are highly valued by their cultures of origin while being entirely incomprehensible and even repugnant to humans. Thus, the reader is exposed to a non- human perspective on beauty as well.

Certain Lovecraft creatures show a particularly well-developed sense of beauty, like those depicted in At the Mountains of Madness, who place great emphasis on artistic expression. They undergo various trends and periods of art and architecture,

demonstrating an awareness of the relative significance and qualities of their own artistic developments and regressions, as evidenced in their “anticipat[ing] the policy of

Constantine the Great by transplanting especially fine blocks of ancient carving from their land city, just as the emperor, in a similar age of decline, stripped Greece and Asia of their finest art to give his new Byzantine capital greater splendors than its own people could create” (78). The Old Ones even make it standard practice to arrange furnishings in the center of rooms, “leaving all the wall spaces free for decorative treatment” (66). Other passages address the architecture, literature, and philosophy of this race, a significant change from the standard fictional relationship of the human to the alien in which creativity is seen as the exclusive province of humanity. The creation of beauty and cultural sophistication by creatures who are described by Lovecraft’s characters as “horrible,” “abominable,” “terrible,” or “unnamable” calls into question the very nature of aesthetics and culture. The artistic creations of these beings, revolving around their own sense of beauty, illustrates that the very notion of aesthetics is completely subjective, based on the creator and observer’s inherently biased, learned expectations of ideals, normalcy, and abnormality.

Other depictions of intelligent “monsters,” even the technologically advanced aliens, lack the creativity and artistic spirit that makes humans seem (to themselves) to be important and unique. In the face of biologically, technologically, and intellectually superior opposition, human literary characters may try to take solace in the uniqueness of their “humanity,” their feelings and expressions, their imagination and their

“soulfulness.” In the case of the Old Ones, even this privileged position is stripped from the human race, for their elders developed all aspects of culture millions of years before and to a much greater degree than anything homo sapiens have conceived. “The Shadow Out of Time” provides the greatest insights into the perspective of a group of Old Ones on the importance of beauty, as the narrator has the unique fortune to live among the most advanced and most benevolent group among them, the Great Race. As his memory of his visit evolves, Peaslee recalls details of the Great Race’s culture, and the importance of art to them: “Industry, highly mechanized, demanded but little time from each citizen; and the abundant leisure was filled with intellectual and aesthetic activities of various sorts...art was a vital part of life, though at the period of my dreams it had passed its crest and meridian” (349). This story, perhaps more than any other, depicts the superiority of the Great Race in its many facets, including their sense of beauty and art, which they not only create but analyze and re-conceptualize continuously. By stripping humans of any trait that they might consider unique to their own species (like the quest to create beauty), Lovecraft develops a cosmic view in which the very idea of uniqueness and significance are relative, depending upon the observer. In effect, he states that humans tend to base their criteria for self-evaluation upon traits that they believe are unique to themselves. This convenient and comfortable way of coping with a struggle to find or create a sense

of intrinsic human meaning is complicated when it is discovered that hon-humans demonstrate these same traits to equal or higher degrees.