There Are More Things

Or: Lovecraft According to Borges

One tidbit that’s interesting in the world of literature is when a writer tries to mimic (or “ape” as the case more often is) the style and substance of another writer they admire. Entire JL Borges, a writer whose own bibliography defies categorization and has a style that is very largely his own wherein he blends real-life literature and literary anecdotes with wild fantasies and abstract philosophical ideas. Borges writing runs the full monty of possibility, from detective stories and spy suspense tales to Kafka-esque surrealism to stories of magic and the overtly mystical. And yet regardless of genre (a term that stretches to fit Borges, and not vice-versa) Borges always imbues his tales with bizarre philosophical concepts: time, the eternal, and the mystery of human consciousness are among his favorite obessions.

So who better to capture the bizarre cosmocism of the legendary HP Lovecraft?

The story, “There are More Things”, is a humble tale, just a couple of pages and from a cursory glance nothing more than an homage to one of the greats. And yet, like all of Borges’ stories, it contains hidden depths, particularly in its casual mention of various philosophical concepts and idealist thinkers. Borges himself, in an essay on Kafka, mentions that writers create their predecessors by necessity. In other words, how we view a writer and his work tends to affect how we see the work that inspired him. In the case of Kafka: how we see the lugubrious existential writing of Kafka in many ways affects how readers retrospectively interpret Zeno, Kierkegaard, and Hegel. I suspect Ligotti and Ramsey Campbell will, for modern readers, have the same effect on how Kafka and, for that matter, Nabakov and our main man HP are viewed by future generations of littérateurs.

But back to Borges and the story in question. It’s dedicated to Lovecraft, and it shows. It even has a bit of Lovecraft’s stylistic flare, but instead of grimoires and ancient tomes dedicated to elder gods, Borges hits us with philosophical bread crumbs. In the opening paragraph, we see references to:

1. Berkeleyan Idealism, which teaches that reality consists only of minds and ideas, and reality is composed chiefly through perception

2. Eleatic paradoxes, which were philosophical arguments credited to Zeno (not the stoic, but the right-hand man of Parmenides) that were meant to show that reality, as it appears to us, is full of absurdities that are irreconcilable with rational thought

3. Hinton cubes, which were colored cubes used by CH Hinton, a mathematician, to explain his ideas about a fourth dimension and tesseracts

Heady stuff to introduce in what is essentially a low-key sci fi story. And yet, it prepares the reader for the story’s deeper themes: the frailty of human perception when faced with the broader universe and its incomprehensible nature. In other words, Lovecraft’s bread and butter.

The plot is simple. A philosophy student learns that his beloved uncle has died, and his house bought by a strange man who orders it to be drastically altered in ways that puzzle the builders. Our narrator tries to investigate, but no one seems to know much about the house’s resident nor why the bizarre changes were made. While passing by the house one day, our curious narrator is driven inside by a storm. Within the confines of the house, he sees the inhabitant’s furniture, which is so bizarre that he can’t even grasp its purpose. It implies a two-headed, and utterly inhuman horror that has apparently made its home on Earth. Then, of course, the inhabitant returns.

It’s a real tribute to Borges’ talents that he can imbue such a simple story with strong philosophical undertones. Lovecraft’s most famous stories are often of the “aaaah! scary monsters!” type, things like “The Colour out of Space”, “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”, and “The Call of Cthulhu”. While these stories do contain undertones of Lovecraft’s infamous nihilism and visceral cosmic horror, I would say that they only poke at his broader themes of human frailty, perception, and epistemological agnosticism in the face of science’s revelations about what Lovecraft sees as a chaotic universe. I think it is here that Borges shines, where his more complete knowledge of idealistic philosophy and spirituality give this little tale a bit of extra punch and really elevate Lovecraft’s themes almost as much as ol’ HP’s better stories.

The story is rich with lines that really stuck with me, especially with regard to Lovecraft’s tendency to create creatures so otherworldly that they often defy rational description. Instead of slimy horrors from the deep, Borges hits us with something even more horrifying: the implications of furniture. As ugly as Ikea mass-produced crap tends to be, the things scattered about the mysterious house really chill one’s blood. And Borges doesn’t bother with gripping descriptions: on the contrary, he gives one of my favorite quotes ever penned by the Argentinean master-

I will not attempt to describe them, because in site of the pitiless white light I am not certain I actually saw them. Let me explain: in order truly to see a thing, one must first understand it. An armchair implies the human body, its joints and members; scissors, the act of cutting. What can be told from a lamp, or an automobile? The savage cannot really perceive the missionary’s Bible; the passenger does not see the same ship’s riggings as the crew. If we truly saw the universe, perhaps we would understand it.

Compare that to one of HP’s own quotes, about the nature of cosmic horrors, and you’ll see the similarities:

I have seen the dark universe yawning Where the black planets roll without aim, Where they roll in their horror unheeded, Without knowledge, or lustre, or name.

But is the universe so horrifying because it truly is a horror show, or is it just our perception? After all, the story is littered with references to idealistic philosophy and concepts dealing with reality as conception rather than prescription: Schopenhauer, the eternal pessimist, is mentioned in the same sentence as Josiah Royce, a kind of neo-Hegelian who believed in the universe as an evolving consciousness. Clearly, the universe is horrifying only in our perception of it, or rather, because we don’t fully understand it. As Borges points out about the house’s mysterious inhabitant in the story:

What must the inhabitant of this house be like? What must it be seeking here, on this planet, which must have been no less horrible to it than it to us?

Even this is a tribute to Lovecraft, who has a similar sentiment coming from the lips of one of his protagonists-turned-antagonist, William Akeley, from “The Whisperer in Darkness”. Akeley is trying to explain to the narrator, a folklorist, the nature of a race of fungoid crustaceous creatures who inhabit the hillside of his house, and is expounding on their home world the stygian planet Yuggoth:

But remember—that dark world of fungoid gardens and windowless cities isn’t really terrible. It is only to us that it would seem so. Probably this world seemed just as terrible to the beings when they first explored it in the primal age.

Again, a nice little nod that shows that Borges has done his homework in understanding Lovecraft….or maybe, it is we who understand Lovecraft better through Borges. I’m hardly one to say.

In any case, I hope you will all give this story a glance, and then another glance. It really is one that benefits from re-reading, if only to scoop up all the little tidbits that Borges sprinkles on top. It’s also an excellent introduction to Borges for those who have never experienced the wonder of his writing.

RJR