The sad tale of H. P. Lovecraft
S.A.M. said:
Btw, isn't it the bible that said, the sins of the parent are visited on the child? Perhaps that could be considered an endorsement of abortion. <--- this is for the OP
Acknowledging that the point is directed to someone else, I'd still like to throw two cents here.
I don't think you're necessarily wrong. I couldn't assert that you're right, either, but you've managed a morbidly wonderful twist that, frankly, I can't recall ever occurring to me before.
The sins of the parent. And it runs four or five generations, if I recall.
But the clearest illustration I know of that particular biblical notion comes in the tale of the infamous H. P. Lovecraft, who wrote outstanding fiction, and even some groundbreaking
nonfiction. I say infamous because Lovecraft was, frankly, crazy.
Before he was born, his father, Winnfield Scott Lovecraft—named, as it was, after the man regarded as the least successful general in the Confederate army—philandered with a prostitute in Chicago. As the story goes, this is the occasion that he picked up syphilis, which of course he transfered to his wife, Susie. And through Susie, the fetal Howard was condemned by his father's sins.
Through his thirty-seven years, Howard Phillips Lovecraft was never healthy. Indeed, part of his remarkable narrative voice as a writer developed early on, as he read through old books to pass the hours when he was bedridden with various ailments. But Howard was a brilliant child in certain respects. One story says when he was still of single-digit age, a neighbor discovered him burning a patch of grass. It turned out to be pretty much exactly one foot by one foot, and Howard's explanation was that he was trying to see what a square foot looked like.
Susie, meanwhile, decayed under the strains of syphilis. Apparently, she so wanted a daughter that she dressed the infant and toddler Howard as a girl. It is said that he did not recognize that he was a boy until around age five.
Eventually, Susie died in madness.
Howard grew up as a misanthrope with an incredible talent for the written word. It is true that he hated
everyone, and was willing to strike out against their most fundamental attributes—ethnicity, skin color, sex, religion—in order to hurt them.
His relatively brief adult life included a loveless marriage; some have speculated that he was a closet homosexual, owing to his disdain for his wife, high-pitched whining voice, and effeminite manners.
When he died at age 37, of cancer derived from illness borne in utero, Howard Phillips Lovecraft had borne no heir or scion.
The sins of the father.
There are no more Lovecrafts, so to speak. That particular line of the family is officially extinct, having ended with the great, mysterious, and hateful H. P. Lovecraft.
But for the literary record left behind, God blotted out from history this particular family lineage. And yet, were it played out as a television biopic today, few would believe the story. Even I, who adore his writing, probably could not, by my modern perspective, tolerate being in a room with him for more than five minutes.
But it seems to me that H. P. Lovecraft's life serves as a fine illustration of what the sins of the father can do. God need not punish to the fourth and fifth generations, as there were none left to punish.
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Notes:
Lovecraft, H. P. Supernatural Horror in Fiction. 1927. HPLovecraft.com. February 13, 2011. http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/shil.asp
