The Gothic Sublime

A great number of tales take up the description that Baker posits for the sublime, and the narrative usually includes something reminiscent of Baker’s description. The setting will often include or harken back to something that is undeniably engulfing in scope, or which at least produces a feeling of such when reading the text. Usually this will relate in some way to a place or object which has stood for aeons, at least in perception; alternatively it could also relate to something simply fantastically grotesque in size and scope, although often this will link back to the unfathomable age formerly mentioned. These concepts then create feelings in those encountering them of existential dread and horror. Vijay Mishra explores this very concept

From across the continuum of history we therefore embrace the Gothic in an act of faith so as to legitimate our own age (Vijay, 1994, p. 257).
Therefore, taking this in, the sublimity of both Roerich and Lovecraft’s works is undeniable. In Roerich’s painting, Tibet Himalayas, a scene of ancient, colossal mountains is presented, mountains that upon sight invoke feelings of deep existential unease within the viewer. Nestled amongst the mountains are stone buildings that leer together archaic and ominous, as if they were the last vestige of a civilization for many aeons now abandoned to the cold wastes of the surrounding landscape.
Though the landscape painted by Roerich was more exactly supposed to represent a harmonious visage of the mystical Shangri-la of Buddhism, the experiences nonetheless invoke these feelings in those who view the painting (“Vanishing Ice: Alpine Polar Landscapes and Art, 1775-2012”). At least, that is not the feeling that Lovecraft received from the painting, as he would take such a painting and twist it into something wholly maddening and infinitely more

Of course, Lovecraft likely drew from more than one Roerich work, at least from his paintings of the Himalayan mountains, all of which showcase vast and barren landscapes of desolate wastes devoid of anything, save for some remnants of civilization and the white landscape of the glacial sublime. Roerich’s influence on Lovecraft’s novella At the Mountains of Madness is deeply rooted and builds the backbone of the setting Lovecraft paints in his story. Lovecraft masterfully uses the sublime depictions of the mountains and ruins of the Himalayas Roerich put to canvas and creates a design that strongly invokes the emotions of dread and insignificance one faces when confronted with something so immense in scope and that makes the human race seem so much more insignificant by comparison, a set up which he uses to flow perfectly into a story set up to create and enforce further this feeling of the