The establishment of the Society was preceded by a long period. It took almost a year for the idea to become an association. Through this time we have travelled a lot, we made phonecalls, posted tons of letters, and with the help of our jurist member, dr. István Schubert, our Society’s constitution has been signed. This document naturally states our purposes:
- „The Hungarian H. P. Lovecraft Society’s purpose is to popularize, spread and make the acquaintance with the the work and life of the late american author Howard Phillips Lovecraft, so as registering his translated and untranslated works. The Society is doing this towards creating a clear and realistic picture in the hungarian common knowledge of the writers’ personality, his life, his literary and professional works, and the position he takes in world literature. Furthermore, the Hungarian H. P. Lovecraft Society’s purpose is to provide an authentic source to those who wish to know the writer and his work. This includes H. P. Lovecraft’s literal writings, poems, essays, correspondence, collaborations with contemporary writers by common name or own name, and his own published or unpublished works written by a pseudonym.”
The purpose of The Hungarian H. P. Lovecraft Society’s establishment is not to have an association which represents the hungarian Lovecraft-phile community only by name. We have established the purposes and tasks at the very first day, which determine our function. It will take several years to accomplish these tasks, but we take this „job”. We already got help with these, and we are looking forward to the help of our future members.
ENCYCLOPEDIA
One of the prior tasks of the Society is to create an online encyclopedia, which bears the resemblance of Wikipedia. This page would be free for everyone, and would provide an authentic and professional content, which could be used for writing dissertations, essays and other studies. Every entry in this encyclopedia would be checked, with the acknowledgment of source.
We have permission to use the well known book of S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz called „An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia” in order to create the encyclopedia, and to translate its entries to Hungarian in order to make them accessible to hungarian community. Several entries may be transfered from here, but we create our own dreafts too, and we also rely ont he community, since everyone can send us new entries, and can suggest any modifications in the exicting content.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
With creating of the bibliography we would like to set up a knowledge base, which will examine certain works of H. P. Lovecraft in professional and aesthetic aspects. Certain analyses will encompass the writing’s content, the circumstances of the creation, and anatomize their afterlife. They will reference professional and private opinions, summing up their content. These analyses will also be adequate for writing dissertations, essays and other studies, but they will contain plenty of useful information for those who don’t want to use them in such way. Background informations can change someones opinion of a certain work in many cases. The bibliography will be written by the Society’s members at full length. Every single analyses will be published on the website, where everybody can reach them, and of course, they become a part of the encyclopedia as searchable content.
BIOGRAPHY
We are planning to create a complex biography, which presents and analyses the life of H.P. Lovecraft as acurate as possible, including every details we can get. In order to create this piece, the place of the work should be Mr. Lovecraft’s hometown and Brown University, but naturraly we are not able to work there. That is why we thought we’d translate a published work to hungarian, which is already known and acknowledged. S. T. Joshi, honorary member and mentor of the Society, has provided us his writing called „A Dreamer and a Visionary: H.P. Lovecraft in his Time” in order to help our work, and to allow the hungarian community to learn about Lovecraft life. The book is under translation, we are planning to publish it online in parts for free and reachable for everyone. This is a long procedure, we will notify our members via newsletter when each part is finished.
TRANSLATING SHORT STORIES, COLLABORATIONS AND POEMS
The list of H. P. Lovecraft’s works, which are translated to hungarian, is almost complete. A Part of his collaborations is available, most of his poems remain to be translated. Primarily we focus on his poems, in which we welcome any help from our comminity. Our purpose is to maintain a partnership with publishing companies, professional translators. In the course of this, all of H. P. Lovecraft’s work will be available for the hungarian community in hungarian. Probably not all part of this process will come true, because of clear economic reasons, but we do everything we can, to make most of the works available on our website.
TRANSLATION OF ESSAYS. DISSERTATIONS AND CORRESPONDENCE
A part of essays and dissertations of H. P. Lovecraft is already available in hungarian, although a lot of material is yet to be translated, which is important to understand his intellectuality. We pointed out the translation of these works also as our purpose, and naturally we except help from the community. An enormous amount of correspondence subsisted, which he had maintaned with friends, his admirers and other authors. A very little amount of these has been translated to hungarian so far.
Because of the amount almost impossilbe to process the Society is not willing to start translating Lovecraft’s correspondence, so we accept the help of S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz again. The co-authors provided the script of their book called „Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters.” This book will be translated by the Society, and will be published in parts on our website also for free and available for everyone. This is a long process, we will notify the members via newsletter once each part is finished.
WRITING ESSAYS, DISSERSTATIONS AND OTHER PROFESSIONAL WORKS
Besides the bibliography we intend to write own essays, dissertations, making more interesting the content of the website. We are planning to create materials which will be provided with proper funds and sources, and will be appropriate to use them as a background of ones lecture, or even qutoe them if it is necessary in someones work or study.
SUPPORTING AMATEUR, RISING AUTHORS
It is very important to point out that the Society will not function as a publishing company, but we want to support talents in Hungary, who wish to salute to H. P. Lovecraft’s style and legacy with their own fictitious writings. Primarily we plan to publish the works of hungarian writers, if the works which has been sent to us, and the circumstances for publishing will be appropriate. Although we know that the numbers of such works are very few in Hungary at the moment. We hope that our job to reveal Lovecaraft’s life and work will drive the hungarian community to create such writings that may be able to support by the Society.
INTRODUCING TO EDUCATION
The Society counts as its very important task to get Lovecraft’s art to know with the hungarian community with a very broad range. High school students could learn about Lovecraft through elective courses. We assemble a background material that will reveal the attributes and the history of the effects of H. P. Lovecraft’s art of writing in a short, concise, but interesting way. This background material will not only make recommendtation to short and adaptable texts from Lovecraft, but may give rendition strategies to understand and interpret them, and also a teacher could use it as an aid in teaching.
ORGANISING CONFERENCES AND OTHER EVENTS
It’s an important task to hold together the hungarian community, and to organise events where members can get to know eachother, although this is not the main task of the Society. We plan to organise conferences later, when we have enough knowledge which can provide background for worthy and puspose specific events.