S.T. Joshi
Io Sono Providence: la biografia di H.P. Lovecraft

These are strange times for H.P. Lovecraft: on one hand, his popularity has recently grown, and his name has become familiar to a broader audience than in the past when few paid attention to him, like in the '70s in Italy. However, the feeling is that the interest somehow remains superficial: the Cthulhu Mythos are now mentioned by fans of role-playing and board games, but perhaps his stories aren’t even read, and it all boils down to identifying Lovecraft with a tentacle. In this way, the aesthetic and philosophical thinking underlying the Cthulhu Mythos are completely forgotten and overshadowed. On the other hand, his figure has been sacrificed and burned at the stake of "political correctness". I recall how, in the wake of the massacre carried out by Gianluca Casseri, a right-wing extremist and enthusiast of Tolkien and Lovecraft who killed 2 Senegalese in Florence in 2011, Lovecraft was hastily labeled by a journalist on La Stampa as a racist writer. The Solitaire of Providence was, like everyone, a child of his times, so certain positions of his need to be contextualized and are no longer current today. Certainly, many of his ideas are uncomfortable for a certain “benevolent” critic (such as his racism and his support for fascism) and, unfortunately, have recently led to a defamation campaign against him, so much so that his statue was removed from the World Fantasy Award.

The writer from Providence felt the decay of his times so much that he admired a text like The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler. The Cthulhu Mythos, in this sense, are the symbol of the degeneration of Western civilization.

In the end, Lovecraft is a complex and contradictory author. As the late political scientist Giorgio Galli aptly writes, despite Lovecraft professing to be a staunch materialist, in his work we find esoteric themes and “those ancient cultures that seemed to be set aside resurface.”

Now, even in Italy, I Am Providence, his monumental biography curated by S.T. Joshi has been published by the commendable Providence Press, with the second volume recently made available (the third will be released next year). This way, everyone can form an idea of his character without being swayed by various interpretations. The years from 1920 to 1928 are analyzed here, a crucial period in which his mother died, he married Sonia Greene, and moved to New York where he spent nights with friends, a fact that partly contradicts the myth of the so-called Solitaire of Providence with which he is identified. The marriage officially fell apart for economic reasons (his job search was fruitless), although it becomes apparent (from his wife's statements) that Lovecraft was not suited for couple life. It was then that he began to engage with the world of pulp magazines like the famous Weird Tales. The death of his mother was a true liberation as she had oppressed and limited him in every way. In New York, Lovecraft would confront the mad reality of the metropolis and feel dismay at the swarming of foreign immigrants. But surely, the confrontation with the horrors of the modern world would be a stimulus for his creativity. What emerges is a figure of great depth, a literary man who, despite his beliefs, has points of contact with "modernism" (even though he cordially detested T.S. Eliot and James Joyce) but also with modern art (like Surrealism) which he also disliked. After his New York exile in 1926, he finally returned to his beloved Providence.

The Italian edition is curated by Giacomo Ortolani while the bibliography is by Pietro Guarriello, one of the greatest experts of Lovecraft in Italy. Available on the Providence Press website: http://www.providencepress.it/it/.

S.T. Joshi, I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft, Vol.2: 1920-1928, Trans. Schifano, Baldini, Providence Press, pp. 560, euro 29,00.