Metaphysical pessimism and the role of science.

No writer can avoid being the son of his times, and Lovecraft is certainly no exception to this. He writes during the first third of the twentieth century and clearly belongs to the generation that has seen the horrors of World War I and was affected by the serious changes brought about by the turn of the century. Born at the end of the nineteenth century, he must clearly have seen the end of the old society and the consolidation of an industrial era that caused some major convulsions at all levels. This end of the old certainties without being replaced by any solid new set of truths, this rapid succession of changes, triggered all sorts of social movements, revolutions and wars that made some people feel afraid of anything related to Modernity. While science may have seemed full of promises to the people who lived during the Enlightenment as well as their heirs in the nineteenth century, by the 1890s or so there were other intellectual currents such as vitalism or the different variations of occultism that managed to spread a very deep skepticism about the possibility of human knowledge. Most of Lovecraft's pieces express this belief.

Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous. Science, already oppresive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species -if separate species we be- for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world. If we knew what we are, we should do as Sir Arthur Jermyn did; and Arthur Jermyn soaked himself in oil and set fire to his clothing one night. No one placed the charred fragments in an urn or set a memorial to him who had been; for certain papers and a certain boxed objetc were found, which made men wish to forget. Some who knew him do not admit that he ever existed.

(Lovecraft: p. 15)

Far from the serious thirst of knowledge that characterized previous generations (something that was usually illustrated with the mythical figure of Prometheus stealing the light from the gods), we have now a far more pessimistic approach to human nature that is more attuned with our own times, perhaps. Could that be the reason why Lovecraft feels like a contemporary writer? To some extent, Lovecraft can be viewed as some sort of postmodern writer, not only due to his themes but also to the fact that he never quite bothered to undertake what is generally considered the greatest ambition of any writer: a novel. Quite to the contrary, he always seemed to prefer the fragment, the short story.