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Denisova Daria, Ph. D. Student, Department of World Literature, Shevchenko Institute of Literature, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine E-mail: darya.denysova@gmail.com
THE RISE OF CTHULHU: NON-HUMAN AGENCY IN WEIRD FICTION
Abstract. By placing weird fiction within the context of maj or scientific breakthroughs of the 19th and 20th century, this paper aims to analyze it in terms of its engagement with non-human agency. Based on the analysis of the Old and New Weird texts, I argue that weird fiction articulates anxiety over the discovery of vibrant and active (even if invisible) matter all around us and questions the place of the human at the top of the evolution ladder. I conclude that the interplay of human and non-human agencies form the crux of weird fiction stories.
Keywords: Weird Fiction, New Weird, non-human agency, anxiety, H. P. Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood, Jeff VanderMeer, China Miéville.
Starting to take shape at the end ofthe 19th century, weird fiction was first reported in the contemporaneous literary discourse as an adjectival description (a "weird hero", "wild and weird" events, etc.) of oddities encountered in the stories of R. Haggard, R. Kipling, R. L. Stevenson, S. Le Fanu, A. Machen, Lord Dunsany, A. Blackwood, M. R. James, and others [1, 24; 2, xvi].
The term "weird fiction" was eventually coined by its best-known practitioner H. P. Lovecraft in the 1920s and became widely applied to the contributors of The Weird Tales magazine and the abovementioned writers whom H. P. Lovecraft showcased in his influential essay on weird fiction titled The Supernatural Horror in Literature. After World War II, weird fiction falls into decline to reemerge to the spotlight in the 21st century due to the efforts of China Mieville, Jeff and Ann VanderMeer, and other writers and critics who contributed to the New Weird discussion.
Given the time ofits inception, it is likely that weird fiction emerged as a reaction to a number of groundbreaking theories and discoveries ofthe 19th and early 20th century that undermined the anthropocentric vision ofthe world. Consider, for example, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and its implications, Ernst
Haeckel's theory ofembryological parallelism, the discovery of non-Euclidian geometry, protoplasm, and quantum mechanics among others [3].
In fact, one of H.P Lovecraft's narrators confirms this idea in the story The Call of Cthulu by saying:
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age" [4, 24].
What he implies is that our ignorance saves us from discovering that reality is not what we like to think of it and that our self-ascribed significance is but delusion. Sciences have the potential to reveal it, but they have not yet succeeded; hence, they "have harmed us little."
Despite the horrors that can be revealed, weird fiction takes it upon itself to go farther than any sci-
THE RISE OF CTHULHU: NON-HUMAN AGENCY IN WEIRD FICTION
ence has ever dared or managed to and show us what neighboring realms conceal.
With major discoveries revealing that the workings ofthe world rely on the agency ofparticles rather than God's or human will, weird fiction addresses the newly-found human position by exploring non-human agency, i.e., scenarios where things go beyond and act "independent of human intentionality" [5, 121].
Forming the centerpiece of a weird fiction story and driving the narrative, non-human agency comes as an unhappy discovery to the characters:
• In the exposition, they typically get the first inkling of non-human agency, which they perceive while dreaming, being delirious, or ill, and which instills a strong sense of unease they cannot shake off.
• As they try to get to the bottom of strange omens, dreams, and events, they set out to locate the agent.
• The story reaches its climax when the characters finally locate and see (visualize) the entity, which disrupts the normal flow of events in the human world. The culprits typically turn out to be (1) nature and natural phenomena or (2) objects and commodities. However, they exhibit properties never heard of before and come in unfathomable grotesque shapes and forms, which human mind is simply unable to process nor can it think of ways to withstand or subvert their agency.
• Instead of experiencing a cathartic relief at getting to the heart of the matter, characters plunge into an even deeper apprehension over their fate in the face of a more powerful agent.
The outlined narrative structure essentially follows the pattern of human response to anxiety, which covers the stages ofApprehension - Localization - Visualization - Interpretation. Unlike fear that is stimulated by the security pattern, anxiety signals the threat to this very pattern [6].
Fostered by the late 19th-century theories and discoveries, a realization that living and inanimate
matter alike is "busied with purposes" [7] of its own would certainly qualify as such a threat.
Non-human agents of weird fiction stories may vary considerably from non-human races and Nature in a broad sense (e.g., the ever-advancing Area X in J. VanderMeer's eponymous trilogy, menacing trees in The Willows by A. Blackwood, brain-tissue worms that inveigle their way into the mind of the speaker via certain words in Entry Taken from a Medical Encyclopaedia by C. Miéville) to objects and commodities like mirrors (e.g., The Tain by C. Miéville), buildings (e.g., Foundation by C. Miéville), rooms (e.g., The Grey Room by S. Grabinski), etc.
The most common of the Old Weird agents are ancient non-human races who were there long before humans came to be and whose reasoning and intentions are totally foreign to us. This is how a character of Blackwood's The Willows reflects on the entities they encountered:
"'You think,' he said, 'it is the spirit of the elements, and I thought perhaps it was the old gods. But I tell you now it is - neither. These would be comprehensible entities, for they have relations with men, depending upon them for worship or sacrifice, whereas these beings who are now about us have absolutely nothing to do with mankind, and it is mere chance that their space happens just at this spot to touch our own'" [7].
Such alien beings form the pantheon of Love-craft's Elder Ones, whom the characters of his stories see as gods. Unlike the mythological deities of the Ancient world who, for better or for worse, meddled in human affairs, took sides, and generally existed to keep the human world going, the Elder Ones do not care for human beings at all. It is precisely because they have their own agenda, in which humans feature at best as a means or, more often than not, are totally ignored, the Elder Ones are malign and horrifying. In fact, as Roger Luckhurst observes, the Elder Ones are no gods at all; they "are only gods to the sluggish minds of primitive humans" [2, xv].
In contrast to the Old Weird with its focus on particulars, the New Weird tends to engage more
with the agency of nature at large (reflecting on global ecological concerns) and the agency of objects (in response to the increasing commodification). The agencies of which are no less alien and incomprehensible than those of the Elder Ones.
Since non-human agency is portrayed in weird fiction as more sophisticated and potent, it inevitably subjugates human agency.
The surrender of human agency in weird fiction is typically realized through:
• Physical destruction of the protagonist (e.g., Hypnos by H. P. Lovecraft).
• Madness or drugged consciousness, which renders the human agent incapable of further reasonable actions (e.g., Lin in Perdido Street Station by C. Miéville).
• Mutation, which makes the human agent one with the hitherto hostile non-human agents (e.g., Annihilation by J. VanderMeer, The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H. P. Lovecraft).
• Spiritual submission via cults and religious rituals of worshiping the non-human agent (e.g., The Willows by A. Blackwood).
• Political surrender to the conqueror (e.g., The Tain by C. Miéville).
In light of the centrality of non-human agency to weird fiction and inescapable negation of human agency it brings about, it is worth pointing out that according to James Machin, at the end of the 19th century, the adjective "weird" implied (l) something happening "under unaccountable volition rather than that of human agency"-, (2) "beyond human control" or "under a baleful influences of occult forces"; (3) or when applied to people, "a trance-like state and a lack of agency" [l, 33]. In other words, it indicated the presence of non-human agency or annihilation of human agency. Therefore, the intuitive name "weird", which such stories got and kept, is a very fitting name indeed since it suggests the struggle of human and non-human agencies that is central to weird fiction stories.
Thus, blending myth and science, weird fiction presents a curious case of neurotic awareness and obsessive exploration of non-human agency. Its treatment of the subject may seem bleak and disheartening, but it offers an interesting perspective on the world that does not revolve around humans.
References:
1. Machin J. F. (2016). 'Determined to be Weird': British Weird Fiction before Weird Tales (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Birkbeck University of London. Retrieved July 28, 2019. from URL: https://core. ac.uk/download/pdf/83925971.pdf
2. Luckhurst R. Introduction. In R. Luckhurst (Ed.), The Classic Horror Stories (pp. vii-xxviii). - New York: Oxford University Press. 2013.
3. Camara A. C. (2013). Dark matter: British weird fiction and the substance of horror, 1880-1927. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of California. Retrieved July 28, 2019. From URL: https://escholarship.org/content/qt4ns5q1fv/qt4ns5q1fv.pdf
4. Lovecraft H. P. The Call of Cthulu. In R. Luckhurst (Ed.), The Classic Horror Stories - New York: Oxford University Press. 2013.- P. 24-53.
5. Dürbeck G., Schaumann C., & Sullivan H. I. Human and non-human agencies in the Anthropocene. Eurozon@, 6(1), 2015.- P. 118-136.
6. May R. (2015). The Meaning ofAnxiety. RetrievedJuly 28, 2019. From URL: https://books.google.com.ua
7. Blackwood A. (2004). The Willows. Retrieved July 28, 2019. From URL: http://www.gutenberg.org/ cache/epub/11438/pg11438-images.html
