Subject: (urth) Dualism & horror

From: Peter T. Cash <ptcash at ibm.net>
Date: Sun, 18 Oct 1998 23:04:33 +0000

>from alga:

...
>Manichaeism: But Sarge, that's just exactly what Mani cobbled together, a
>ragbag of a religion, borrowing from everything he knew of Buddhism,
>Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Marcionism (Marcion taught that there were
>two gods: capricious old Yaweh of the OT was similar to the Gnostic
>Demiurge, while Jesus was son of the True God whose time would come). If
>he'd known about Thor, he'd have thrown him in too. Mani would have been a
>great scriptwriter for "Xena: Warrior Princess." And so would Dr. Talos, if
>he got a decent editor.

I know. Mani was the L. Ron Hubbard of the third century.

>Mani's dualism came from the Zoroastrians (who supplied Meschia and
Mechiane
>to Dr. Talos) and he added the concept of Light vs. Darkness, so beloved of
>gothic writers. Alex, you can't say that there is only Dark in Lovecraft,
>for opposed to that is the normal world, represented, in Hollywood
versions,
>by pretty suburban streets. If you don't have a norm--Innsmouth or Arkham
>before the horrors came--where's the scare? The Amurican Way of Life,
that's
>the Light. At least in novels.

Alga, your thesis that horror is inherently (will that do instead of
"necessarily"?) dualistic is so thought-provoking that I hate to spoil
things by finding fault with it. However, I would venture that if suburbia
is the light that opposes the  Great Darkness, then we've got a pretty weak
dualism. This light is a dim bulb, this divinity is one of communion by
water and not wine. It is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
illuminating this place. It's George Westinghouse.

>I will back-pedal a bit on "necessarily," but only a bit. Since the end of
>the 19th century, the Dark is not necessarily a Christian dark, in fact
most
>often it isn't. Despite the crucifix hocus-pocus, we do not think of
>vampires as demons of Satan; they inhabit their own Dark. Werewolves are
>folkloric, not Christian. Hyde, though a demon, is a metaphor for what
Freud
>would call the id, not a damned soul. Dorian Grey hides Hyde's face behind
>his own (sorry about that sentence), but again it's extra-Christian.

"How about "pagan" instead of "extra-Christian"? I don't think this darkness
is anything new; perhaps after the 19th century it becomes "neo-paganism",
that's all. I would argue that any work that doesn't have a Christian
dimension but does deal with supernatural evil is pagan; any dualism is
strictly secondary and quite uninteresting. (I'm not saying that pagan works
necessarily lack value or interest, of course.)

>Nevertheless, if only for convenience of term, I would argue that the
gothic
>tradition is Manichaean--with all the implicit messiness. Writers like C.S.
>Lewis and Tolkien, who tidy up the mess, have made this even clearer, but
>they are far ounumbered by the others. King now, a dualist to the Dark
>Untidy Core.

Never having read King and having not the slightest desire to do so, I'll
have to withold judgment. I do believe you're helping me  understand why
I've always despised the horror genre. Since I do believe in the God of
Abraham, this "supernatural evil" stuff seems a trifle silly to me; I just
don't get it. I know that God permits evil in the world--but it's evil done
by us humans--it is not supernatural. If Satan exists, he's void, in the
sense of having no substance--I believe the common metaphor is say he is
like a shadow. (Hmmm....shadows in Wolfe's works...not an uncommon theme.
Hmmm.)

>But nevertheless, Dr. Talos and his play do represent apocalyptic dualism,
>Armagedon, Ragnarok, whatever. And it may be a mess, Sarge, but it belongs
>too.

I never meant to say it doesn't. Just that it's a mess, and maybe a bit of
self-parody contained within the larger work.

Sgt. Rock

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

---

From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1998 08:46:18 +0000

On Sun, 18 Oct 1998, Peter T. Cash wrote:

> >Alex, you can't say that there is only Dark in Lovecraft,

I thought it amusing that in Stephen King's book _Salem's Lot_, the good
almost seems to draw power parasitically from the evil.  I seem to
remember a scene where the good guys pour holy water on their limbs or
tools or something and when they get to where the coffins are hiding find
that they have the extraordinary strength necessary to break in.

My first thought was, "How come that doesn't work when building a church
or a homeless shelter?"

My impression is that horror is not dualist because either there is no
comparable Good to oppose the Evil or the Good is so far superior to the
Evil that it doesn't need to stoop to the same methods to oppose it.

I haven't read much horror, however.  Are there many horror novels that
have both a supernatural Good and Evil but the Evil wins?  (Not counting
stories where the apparent "Evil" turns out to be morally superior to the
apparent "Good".) 

-Rostrum

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From: Mark Millman <mark_millman at hmco.com>
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1998 10:16:52 +0000

On 19 October 1998 at 6:04 AM GMT,
Sergeant Rock (Peter T. Cash) wrote:

> that's all. I would argue that any work
> that doesn't have a Christian dimension
> but does deal with supernatural evil is
> pagan; any dualism is strictly secondary
> and quite uninteresting. (I'm not saying
> that pagan works necessarily lack value
> or interest, of course.)

While I'll grant you that Islamic and Zoroastrian
works aren't typically of great importance in our
culture, Sergeant, I'd hesitate to suggest that
Judaism is either pagan or contains Christian
elements.  If you want to argue that supernatural
evil in Judaism is a relic of pre-Jewish Semitic
paganism, I'll agree with you; but then I'll insist
that Christian supernatural evil derives from a
much wider variety of assimilated and co-opted
pagan sources.  As for high theology, which can
be far removed from Christian folk belief, and
even a great deal of doctrine . . . I can't speak
to that.

Sergeant Rock continued:
> If Satan exists, he's void, in the sense
> of having no substance--I believe the
> common metaphor is say he is like a
> shadow. (Hmmm....shadows in Wolfe's
> works...not an uncommon theme.
> Hmmm.)

If Satan is void and without substance, there's
a strong implication that all the other members
of God's heavenly hosts are as well; the book
of Job makes Satan's existence, if not his
exact role, quite explicit.  And, while it's not
clear whether God gave Satan only the man-
agement or the actual performance of Job's
misfortunes, there is more than a suggestion
of agency.

But I do very much like your observation on
shadows.

Mark Millman

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From: Tony Ellis <tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1998 16:27:51 +0000

Apologies for prolonging a thread that steered due west of topic some
time ago, but this is getting interesting:

Alga wrote:
> for opposed to that is the normal world, represented, in Hollywood versions,
> before the horrors came--where's the scare? The Amurican Way of Life, that's

I'm on Alex's side. I don't think you can say that the normal world
"opposes" the Dark, in a dualistic sense, because in Lovecraft's fiction
the normal world _is_ the Dark. What we think of as normality is
invariably revealed to be a delusion, or merely the narrowest slice of a
much bigger, scarier universe. As for "Innsmouth or Arkham before the
horrors came", it's another basic tenet of the stories that the horror
was there _first_, inhabiting this world long before humanity turned up.
Any pretty suburban streets are just a part of a transient blip in
reality, cosmically speaking.

Sgt. Rock wrote:
> ...I do believe you're helping me  understand why
> I've always despised the horror genre. 

Interesting choice of pejorative there. <g>

> Since I do believe in the God of
> Abraham, this "supernatural evil" stuff seems a trifle silly to me;

Well, the usual expression is "supernatural horror" rather than
"supernatural evil". Most of the more highly-regarded horror writers
long ago grew out of the simplistic good\evil trap. 

Rostum wrote:
> I haven't read much horror, however.

You should! There's some great writing out there. (And an even huger
amount of crap, naturally.)

>  Are there many horror novels that
> have both a supernatural Good and Evil but the Evil wins?

Off the top of my head... none (but there must be a few). The rule seems
to be that if you have a supernatural Good, it has to win. That's
probably why the horror I prefer doesn't have such feeble concepts in it
in the first place.

---

From: Alex David Groce <adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu>
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1998 14:23:16 +0000

Continuing the dualism & horror thread (it's not off topic--one of the essays
in Castle of Days talks about the issue, so there's our Wolfe link.  I don't
remember the essay in detail, but one part goes something like "Fantasy has the
gods under God, while in horror Satan kills and is killed by Cthulu."

Tony Ellis wrote-
> reality, cosmically speaking.

Yes, if anything, Lovecraft's world is a kind of opposite of non-dualist
orthodoxy--the only Real Game in Town is the Utter Abyssmal Eldritch Things
from the Deep.  I agree with Tony that (A) the horrors are, as Lovecraft
constantly emphasizes, MUCH older than humanity and (B) even if Innsmouth and
Arkham weren't just upstarts, they are hardly a real force for good.  The only
defense against the horror is ignorance (I think that's a paraphrase of part of
"The Call of Cthulu").  If the Dualism is Cthulu & Co. vs. human ignorance,
that's a pretty weak Dualism.

> long ago grew out of the simplistic good\evil trap. 

Perhaps out of the simplistic version of it--I think there are some good horror
writers who still make use of the concepts.  Even a supremely ambiguous writer
like Robert Aickman (my favorite) often suggests, in his quiet way, that
something is evil--the dog in "The Same Dog," or Mr. Millar in "Meeting Mr.
Millar" or Parliament in "My Poor Friend."  In fact, part of Aickman's genius
is the way he subtly equates certain social trends with a kind of invisible and
incomprehensible Evil.

> probably why the horror I prefer doesn't have such feeble concepts in it

I wouldn't call the concept of supernatural good a feeble concept--maybe seldom
well done in a horror novel, but at least outside that context it's been one of
the most powerful ideas in history (and in literature).  I'd even stretch the
definiton and say Dante's Inferno is a brilliant work of horror that (in the
end, even without the Purgatorio and Paradisio) is based on the concept of a
supernatural good--"Divine justice moved my maker."
-- 
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." - John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu)
Senior (Computer Science/Multidisciplinary Studies in Technology & Fiction)
'98-99 NCSU AITP Student Chapter President
608 Charleston Road, Apt. 1E (919)-233-7366
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~adgroce

---

From: Alex David Groce <adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu>
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1998 14:36:05 +0000

> even a great deal of doctrine . . . I can't speak

Yes, Judaic works would be another category.  Although I can't really think of
a work from a Jewish perspective involving a supernatural evil right off
hand...  And I suspect that any I could think of would have an attitude to it
not unlike some Christian works.  Judaism may not have Christian elements, but
I'd be fairly silly as a Christian to deny their are Jewish elements in
Christianity...  Either way, you have some similarity of the view of evil (not
identity, at all, but similarity).

> But I do very much like your observation on

Yes, although evil is a perversion of good, it does EXIST -- Satan has a will
of his own--in the end he's "without substance" in one sense, but I think he's
an agent capable of action and indeed, in orthodox thought, of great power in
the world.  Sins, after all, arise out of an improper degree or object of love,
but still exist (by drawing substance from the good).  This is sloppy language
of course, but then St. Thomas can sound sloppy talking about the Mystery of
Evil (or Free Will, which is inextricably linked).