Mythologies In H. P. Lovecraft's Poetry

H.P. Lovecraft was capable of engaging his readers by engraining descriptive language into his poetry, but he also engaged his readers by creating a persona that was easily relatable. Personas are fictitious characters created by the author to be the speaker of a literary work (Kennedy, Gioia, 592). Within his hundreds of poems, short stories and novels Lovecraft kept up a persona whose life was held in the hands of fate. Cosmic irony is the contrast between the character’s position and the treatment they receive from an unsympathetic fate. Feeling helpless, out of control, in a grey, grey world is something that we can also identify with with on a primal level. Lovecraft’s continued comparison between the adult realm of sorrow, regret, and
For example, the raven in Poe’s poem The Raven references Norse mythologies that claimed ravens were messengers. The Raven combined the Norse mythology of ravens as messengers with the Greek mythology that claimed ravens were prophets. The raven in his poem brought both a message and a prophecy that he would not join with Lenore, and that his love would be “nevermore.” In The Bride of the Sea Lovecraft writes about lost love, and references the raven by reinstating the concept of love being “nevermore” or unattainable after losing his first love. The epilogue of The Bride of the Sea also references the myth of Pelides, who is more widely known as Achilles. Lovecraft wrote that Achilles was, “Pelides, dear to Grecian eyes, sulking for loss of his thrice-cherish’d prize.” Since I have not read the Iliad of Homer, I went to Spark Notes so that I could better understand Lovecraft’s reasoning behind including Achilles as an allusion to his persona’s relationship. In line seven and eight of the epilogue to The Bride of the Sea, Lovecraft refers to Achilles’s lover Briseis as a prize since he captured her as a token of war. Just like our Lovecraftian persona, Achilles temporarily lost his love to a competitor named