Styles and themes of Robert E. Howard

Outside, the moan of the tortured thousands shuddered up to the stars which crusted the sweating Vendhyan night, and the conchs bellowed like oxen in pain.

All the noble-born fighting-men of Ayodhya were gathered in the great palace or about it, and at each broad-arched gate and door fifty archers stood on guard, with bows in their hands.

Howard used an economy of words to sketch out scenes in his stories; his ability to do so has been attributed to his skill with, and experience of, both tall tales and poetry.

"[7] Howard occasionally included descriptive details as lists; the rapid succession adding to the pace of the prose.

For example, "Flat, flaring nostrils, retreating chin, fangs, no forehead whatever, great, immensely long arms dangling from sloping, incredible shoulders".

[10] For example, Xapur in the Conan story "The Devil in Iron" is variously described with the phrases "castellated", "some ancient ruins upon it", "rises sheer out of the sea", and "castle-like cliffs".

[11] For example: "As a panther strikes down a bull moose at bay, so he plunged under the bludgeoning arms and drove the crescent blade to the hilt under the spot where a human's heart would be.

"[6] Another element borrowed from the classical tradition is the use of epithets; the most obvious of these is "The Cimmerian" when referring to his most famous character, Conan.

[11] He often made use of flyting, boastful and taunting dialogue preparatory to a physical fight; a device probably borrowed from Shakespeare.

[3] Fritz Leiber compares, "without over-praise", Howard's "The People of the Black Circle" to the plays of Christopher Marlowe and John Webster.

Howard himself was critical of his own poetry and understanding of prosody, writing in a 1931 letter to H. P. Lovecraft: "I know nothing of the mechanics of poetry—I couldn't tell you if a line was anapestic or trochaic to save my neck.

[15] In the introduction to Skull-Face and Others (1945) editor August Derleth wrote "In the tales concerning Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, King Kull, and Conan, there is quite possibly more blood-letting and more lusty carnage than in any other group of stories which appeared in pulp magazines in America during the 1930s.

This myth includes the tenet that the violence involved in taming the nation was not only good but a renewing, regenerative act.

"[20] Howard's work often features "dark anthropomorphism",[21] the attributing of not only sentience but malevolence to non-humans and inanimate objects.

[22] In a 1932 letter to H. P. Lovecraft, Howard described a boxing match that was the greatest moment of his life:[22] Looking back over a none-too-lengthy and prosaic life, I can easily pick out what seemed—and still seems—the peak of my life to date; that is, the point at which I derived the highest thrills—a word which my limited vocabulary causes me to overwork... when I look for the peak of my exultation, I find it on a sweltering, breathless midnight when I fought a black-haired tiger of an Oklahoma drifter in an abandoned ice-vault, in a stifling atmosphere laden with tobacco smoke and the reek of sweat and rot-gut whiskey—and blood; with a gang of cursing, blaspheming oil-field roughnecks for an audience.

[24] Howard's sense of humor is shown most vividly in the Sailor Steve Costigan and Breckenridge Elkins stories.

These stories of burlesque and slapstick lampooned his own perceived character and flaws: impulsiveness, gullibility, fondness of food and drink, loyalty and politeness.

Direct experience of the oil booms in early twentieth century Texas tainted Howard's view of civilization.

[26] One of the most common themes in Howard's writing is based on his view of history, a repeating pattern of civilizations reaching their peak, becoming decadent, decaying and then being conquered by another people.

"Let a woman know her proper place: let her milk and spin and sew and bear children, nor look beyond her threshold or the command of her lord and master!

[30] In "Sword Woman", the first of the Dark Agnes stories, Howard "was writing about rebellion and about throwing out the rules of society to make an ideal life for oneself.

Biographer Mark Finn describes the protofeminist Dark Agnes stories as "practically autobiographical" and believes that the use of the first-person perspective was intentional.

I'd rather be a naked savage, shivering, starving, freezing, hunted by wild beasts and enemies, but free to go and come, with the range of the earth to roam, than the fattest, richest, most bedecked slave in a golden palace with the crustal fountains, silken divans, and ivory-bosomed dancing girls of Haroun al Raschid.In his semi-autobiographical novel Post Oaks & Sand Roughs, Howard's proxy character, Steve Costigan displays a similar aversion to authority:[34] A low black fury was beginning to burn sluggishly in Steve's brain.

A cruel and dangerous contempt blazed through Steve's growing wrath.Though Howard died in 1936, before existentialism was defined, it was popularised in the United States by Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness (1943), his philosophy, as shown through his works, is a close parallel.

One segment of the mass detached itself for an instant and Bran cried out in fierce revulsion, though he caught only a fleeting glimpse of the thing, had only a brief impression of a broad strangely flattened head, pendulous writhing lips that bared curved pointed fangs, and a hideously misshapen, dwarfish body that seemed—mottled—all set off by those unwinking reptilian eyes.

[43] The concept of beauty is expressed through Howard's fiction and verse in his love of colour and pageantry, from battlefields to decadent cities.

"[44] Aestheticism is addressed in the story "Queen of the Black Coast" when Conan expresses his personal philosophy of life:[45] Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content...

"This echoes the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which was one of Howard's favourite works of poetry (describing it as one of the most powerful pieces of literature), and one of its most famous quatrains:[45] A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and ThouBeside me singing in the Wilderness—Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!Howard's unique addition to Khayyám's vision of paradise is "the mad exultation of battle", or violent action as an ideal equal to food, drink and romantic company (see Hate and violence).

[45] Scepticism regarding human rationality and achievement is clear in a letter Howard wrote to his friend Tevis Clyde Smith on August 28, 1925: "There is so much of the true and false in all things.

"[48] Howard borrowed many feature of his fiction from the decadent movement, such as black magic, accursed jewels, snake figures and more.