fragment

''naturally we cannot expect all weird tales to conform absolutely to any theoretical model. creative minds are uneven and the best of fabrics have their dull spots... moreover, much of the choicest weird work is unconscious; appearing in memorable fragments scattered through material whose massed effect may be of a very different cast... therefore we must judge a weird tale... by the emotional level which it attains at its least mundane point... if the proper sensations are excited, such a "high spot" must be admited on its own merits as weird literature,''

h.p.lovecraft, super natural horror in literature.


''every race of people scattered over the plains and mountains of the world has its legends. very jealously these racial stories are guarded, cradled as it were in the hearts and minds of the people. each contry has a different name to define various phenomena, the like of eerie, elusive lights that appear in marshlands, along mountain trails, in the lonely reaches of the bogs, and waver tauntingly among the tall grasses of plains and prairies.

''in delaware, maryland, and the twin carolinas, these lights are called marshfires. ... in the dark fastnesss of the carpathian mountains and all along the dalmation coast, the chief horror is the werewolf. the superstitious peasants wave little knots of dried garlic in front of them when they walk abroad at night. for the skittering lights they see in the fields and forest paths are werewolf-eyes, ... in cornwall, devon, and somerset, strange processions of smoky lights are seen at midnight, winding through moor and wold. druid lights the farmfolk call them. ...

''in ireland, riddled with legend, immediate and part of the daily round are the gloriously colored lights wavering in the western sky, lurking in bogs or glens. they are called the fires of beltaine.''

james reynolds, andrea palladio and the winged device.

lovecraft's townscape

mocrates my son:--
november 24, 1923

''i joyn'd my adopted son eddy on the following day [22nd november--my grandfather's birthday] for a tour of exploration of certain parts of colonial providence which i had never before seen or more than vaguely heard of. not a stone's throw from the travell'd business section, tuckt quietly in behind broad and weybosset streets, lurk the beginnings of a squalid colonial labyrinth in which i mov'd as an utter stranger, each moment wondering whether i were in truth in my native town or in some leprous distorted witch-salem of fever or nightmare.

''i had not thought my own city to be so large and vary'd ... eddy knew it, and was my guide. ... there was a fog, and out of it and into it again mov'd dark monstrous diseas'd shapes. they may have been people, or what once were, or might, have been people ... only the gods know who can inhabit this morbid maze--on through the fog we went, threading our way thro' narrow exotick streets and unbelievable courts and alleys, sometimes having antient houses almost meet above our heads, but often emerging into unwholesome little squares or grassless parks ...

''eddy inform'd me that these little squares are characteristick of the old west side of providence, but i had never heard of them, many of these places--especially a "gould's court" of black, gnawing hideousness which i called "ghoul's court" upon seeing it in the lone pallid lamplight after the sun had set--eddy tells me are famous in the annals of crime--but i do not read police reports. there must be crime where so many dead things are ... the massed dead of colonial decay ... the dead that draw shapes out of the night to feed and feast and fatten ... no i had not thought that providence held such places as this. we came out silently.''

yr. obt. servt.,
h.paget-lowe.

h.p.lovecraft, selected letters.

keypad of the spheres

''trembling in waves that golden whisps of nebula made weirdly visible, there rose a timid hint of far off melody, droning in faint chords that our own universe of stars knows not. ... it was a song, but not the song of any voice. night and the spheres sang it, and it was old when space and nyarlathotep and the other gods were born. ''

h.p.lovecraft, the dream quest of unknown kadath.

skull of zenig

[a place call'd etsy]


"you have come to see the great ones whom it is unlawful for men to see. ... when barzai the wise climbed hatheg-kla to see the greater ones dance and howl above the clouds in the moonlight he never returned. the other gods were there, and they did what was expected. zenig of aphorat sought to reach unknown kadath in the cold waste, and his skull is now set in a ring on the little finger of one whom i need not name."

h.p.lovecraft, the dream quest of unknown kadath.

the goody fowler sisters

image from h.p.lovecraft archive.

my dear little grandchildren:-
598 angell street
providence, r.i.
may 1, 1923

''arrived in salem, i stroll'd a while through the venerable streets, and finally embark'd for danvers--call'd "salem-village" in the 17th century, and forming the seat of most of the witch-craft cases of 1692. ... i beheld the tall chimney and ivy'd walls of a splendid brick house of later colonial design, and espy'd a sign which proclaim'd it open for publick inspection ... inform'd by the sign that this was the capt. samuel fowler house, built 1809, accessible for eight-pence, and the property of the society for the preservation of new-england antiquities, i loudly sounded the knocker and awaited developement, nothing develop'd, i then knock'd at the side door, but with equal futility. then i noted a door half open in a miserable "ell" at the back of the house; and believing the place tenanted, made a third trial there. ....

''my summons was answer'd simultaneously by two of the most pitiful and decrepit--looking persons imaginable--hideous old women more sinister than the witches of 1692 ... the smaller, and probably older of the two spoke first--in a hoarse rattleing voice that dimly suggested death, ... if however their weird aspect and hideous squalor were sinister; what can one say of the contrast involv'd when the guttural salutation to the speaker became intelligible? for despite the omnipresent evidence of a slatternly decadence beyond words, this ancient witch was mumbling forth a courtly and aristocratic welcome, in language and accents beyond question bespeaking the gentlest birth and proudest cultivation! ...

''yes--it was the old, old new-england story of family decay and aristocratic pauperism ... these tatter'd ancients were the misses fowler, own grand daughters of the proud seafarer and fighter who in his dashing prime had built that house for the comfort, dignity, and splendour of his descendents. ... the great-grandmother of these poor relics was that sprightly mrs. page who, at the time of the colonial tea agitation, serv'd her guests with the beverage on the roof after her husband had forbidden her to serve it under his roof.''

yr. most aff: ancestor and obt: servt: grandpa theobald.

h.p.lovecraft, selected letters.

starry tea set via notcothulhu.

fragment

''naturally we cannot expect all weird tales to conform absolutely to any theoretical model. creative minds are uneven and the best of fabrics have their dull spots... moreover, much of the choicest weird work is unconscious; appearing in memorable fragments scattered through material whose massed effect may be of a very different cast... therefore we must judge a weird tale... by the emotional level which it attains at its least mundane point... if the proper sensations are excited, such a "high spot" must be admited on its own merits as weird literature,''

h.p.lovecraft, super natural horror in literature.



''there is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. he wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange. in the dark the fear of an unexpected touch can mount to panic.

''even clothes give insufficient security. it is easy to tear them and pierce through to the naked, smooth defenceless flesh of the victim. all the distances men create around themselves are dictated by this fear. they shut themselves in houses which no-one may enter, and only there feel some measure of security. the fear of burglers is not only the fear of being robbed, but also the fear of a sudden and unexpected clutch out of the darkness. ...

''the whole knot of shifting and intensely sensitive reactions to an alien touch--proves that we are dealing here with a human propensity as deep seated as it is alert and insidious; something which never leaves a man when he has once established the boundaries of his personality. even in sleep, when he is far more unguarded, he can all too easily be disturbed by touch.

elias canetti, crowds and power; english by carol stewart.

terrac'd landscape piece

''three times randolph carter dreamed of the marvelous city, and three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it. all golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens, and wide streets marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and ivory statues in gleaming rows; while on steep northward slopes climbed tiers of red roofs and old peaked gables harbouring little lanes of grassy cobbles...

''he knew that for him its meaning must once have been supreme; though in what cycle or incarnation he had known it, or whether in dream or in waking, he could not tell. vaguely it called up glimpses of a far forgotten first youth, when wonder and pleasure lay in all the mystery of days, and dawn and dusk alike strode forth prophetic to the eager sound of lutes and song, unclosing fiery gates toward further and surprising marvels.

''but each night as he stood on that high marble terrace with the curious urns and carven rails and looked over that hushed sunset city of beauty and unearthly immanence he felt the bondage of dreams tyrannous gods; for in no wise could he leave that lofty spot, or descend the wide marmoreal flights flung endlessly down to where those streets of elder witchery lay outspread and beckoning.

''at length, sick with longing for those glittering sunset streets and cryptical hill lanes among ancient tiled roofs, nor able sleeping or waking to drive them from his mind, carter resolved to go with bold entreaty whither no man had gone before, and dare the icy deserts through the dark to where unknown kadath, veiled in cloud and crowned with unimagined stars, holds secret and nocturnal the onyx castle of the great ones.''

h.p.lovecraft, the dream quest of unknown kadath.

strange couplet

'' outside the ordered universe, where no dreams reach; that last amorphous blight of nether most confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity--the boundless daemon sultan azatoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes; ...

'' that last amorphous blight of nether-most confusion where bubbles and blasphemes at infinity's centre the mindless daemon-sultan azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud ... those inconcievable, unlighted chambers beyond time wherein azathoth gnaws shapeless and ravenous amidst the muffled, maddening beat of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes. ''

h.p.lovecraft, dream quest of unknown kadath.

which came first ...

'' whether the dreams brought on the fever or the fever brought on the dreams walter gilman did not know ... possibly gilman should not have studied so hard. non euclidean calculus and quantum physics are enough to stretch any brain; and when one mixes them with folk lore, ... one can hardly expect to be wholly free from mental tension ...

'' the professors at miskatonic had urged him to slacken, and had voluntarily cut down his courses at several points. moreover they had stopped him from consulting the dubious old books on forbidden secrets that were kept under lock and key in a vault at the university library ...

'' the touch of brain fever and the dreams began in febuary ... about this period his inability to concentrate on his formal studies worried him considerably, his apprehensions about the mid-year examinations being very acute ...

'' the dreams were wholly beyond the pale of sanity, and gilman felt they must be a result, jointly, of his studies in mathematics and in folklore ... he had been thinking too much about the vague regions which his formulae told him must lie beyond the three dimensions we know, ...

'' gilmans dreams consisted largely in plunges through limitless abysses of inexplicably colored twilight ... he did not walk or climb fly, or swim, crawl or wriggle ... the abysses were by no means vacant, being crowded with indescribably angled masses of alien hued substance, some of which appeared to be organic while others appeared to be inorganic ... all the objects--organic and inorganic alike--were totally beyond description or even comprehension. ...

'' in the deeper dreams everything was likewise more distinct and gilman felt that the twilight abysses around him were those of the fourth dimension. ''

h.p.lovecraft, the dreams in the witch house.

skull of zenig

''you have come to see the great ones whom it is unlawful for men to see. ... when barzai the wise climbed hatheg-kla to see the greater ones dance and howl above the clouds in the moonlight he never returned. the other gods were there, and they did what was expected. zenig of aphorat sought to reach unknown kadath in the cold waste, and his skull is now set in a ring on the little finger of one whom i need not name."

h.p.lovecraft, the dream quest of unknown kadath.

landscape piece

james ferdinand morton
pattern of predictable precision
may 15, 1930 thursday.

''god i swoon! i swoon with the conciousness of compleat and culminant beauty! ia! shubniggurath! yogsothoth!!!! i have seen maymont!!!!!! ...

''you are no doubt sensible, from many observations of mine, that to me the quality of utter, perfect beauty assumes two supreme incarnations or adumbrations. one the sight of mystical city towers and roofs out lined against a sunset and glimps'd from a fairly distant baulstrade terrace.

''and the other, the experience of walking [or as in most of my dreams, aerially floating] thro' aethereal and enchanted gardens of exotick delicacy and opulance, with carved stone bridges, labyrinthine walks, marble fountains, terraces and staircases, strange pagodas, hillside grottoes, curious statues, termini, sundials, benches, basins, and lanthorns, lily'd pools of swans and streams with tiers of waterfalls, spreading gingko-trees and drooping, feathery willows, and sun-touched flowers of a bizarre, klarkash-tonick pattern never beheld on sea or land ...

''well, by god, sir, call me an aged lier or not--i vow i have actually found the garden of my earliest dreams--and in no other city than richmond home of my beloved poe! maymont! i shall dream of little else all the few remaining days of my long life!!--

raptorously thine--
theobaldus.

h.p.lovecraft, selected letters.

maymont estate.

fragment

''naturally we cannot expect all weird tales to conform absolutely to any theoretical model. creative minds are uneven and the best of fabrics have their dull spots... moreover, much of the choicest weird work is unconcious; appearing in memorable fragments scattered through material whose massed effect may be of a very different cast... therefore we must judge a weird tale... by the emotional level which it attains at its least mundane point... if the proper sensations are excited, such a "high spot" must be admited on its own merits as weird literature,''

h.p.lovecraft, super natural horror in literature.

''chaos--the absence of form and order--above all other words chaos haunts western man. it fills his mind with visions of seas running into rivers, men giving birth to frogs, fish flying through grassy cloud, it is the unnamed heart of every horror story--the unexpected, the unpredictable, the uncontrollable, the lawless--chaos.''

adrian savage, introduction to chaos magic.

antidemeaculumn

''i know not where i was born, save that the castle was infinitely old and infinitely horrible; full of dark passages and having high ceilings where the eye could find only cobwebs and shadow.

''nor was there any sun outdoors, since the terrible trees grew high above the topmost accessible tower. there was one black tower which reached above the trees into the unknown outer sky, but that was partly ruined and could not be ascended save by a well-nigh impossible climb up the sheer wall, stone by stone.

''once i tried to escape from the forest, but as i went farther from the castle the shade grew denser and the air more filled with brooding fear; so that i ran frantically back lest i lose my way in a labyrinth of nighted silence.

''then in the shadowy solitude my longing for the light grew so frantic that i could rest no more, and i lifted entreating hands to the single black ruined tower that reached above the forest into the unknown outer sky. and at last i resolved to scale that tower, fall though i might; ...

''in the dank twilight i climbed the worn and aged stone stairs till i reached the level where they ceased, and there after clung perilously to small footholds leading upward. ghastly and terrible was that dead stairless cylinder of rock; black, ruined, and deserted, ...

''all at once after an infinity of awesome; sightless crawling up that concave and desperate precipice, i felt my head touch a solid thing, ... and i knew that i must have gained the roof, or at least some kind of floor. in the darkness i raised my free hand and tested the barrier, finding it stone and immovable ...

''i knew that my climb was for the nonce ended; since the slab was the trap-door of an aperature leading to a level stone surface of greater circumference than the lower tower, no doubt the floor of some lofty and capacious observation chamber. i crawled through carefully, ...

''believing i was now at a prodigious height, far above the accursed branches of the wood, i dragged myself up from the floor and fumbled about for windows that i might look fo the first time upon the sky, and the moon and stars ...

''unexpectedly my hands came upon a doorway, where hung a portal of stone, rough with strange chiseling. trying it i found it locked; but with a supreme burst of strength i overcame all obstacles and dragged it open inward.

''fancying now that i had attained the very pinnacle of the castle, i commenced to rush up the few steps beyond the door; ... which i tried carefully and found unlocked, but which i did not open for fear of falling from the amazing height to which i had climbed. then the moon came out.

h.p.lovecraft, the outsider.

night of the night-gaunts

dear miss bonner:--
4th may 1936
the garden house
1, ely's court
providence plantation

''no--we are never scarred of the dark now, though we used to be prior to 1895 or'96. our grandfather cured us of the tendancy by daring us [when our years numbered approximately five] to walk through certain chains of dark rooms in the fairly capacious old home at 454 angell.

''little by little our hardihood increased--and by the time we graduated from the fully-inhabited 2nd floor to the merely servant--and--store--and--guest--room occupied 3rd floor, we were reasonably hard-boiled so far as the amorphous entities of shadow were concerned.

''actual nightmares though, were another story, we still have one or two per year--though even the worst is pallid beside the real 1896 product. i invented the name of night-gaunts for the things i dreamed of in 96 and 97.''

yr. most oblig'd and obt. servt,
h.p.lovecraft 3rd asst under-secy--k.a.t.

h.p.lovecraft, selected letters.

this decay of cities

''on one of my early travels in the libyan sahara, i nearly passed by an abandoned and nameless city which i would never have known had existed if my guide, a tuareg camel-man had not pointed it out. it was a rock-built city enclosed within a high wall buttressed with round turrets and pierced by a single gate way. ...

''i was unable to find a single clue as to who built this place, for there was nothing resembling a domestic artefact to be seen, ... my experiance in the fezzan goes to show that there are still corners of this teeming world where the modern traveler can share, if only in a modest manner, the personal thrill of those early explorers who first saw the magnificent lost cities of antiquity; ...

''whether this decay of cities and of the civilizations they represented is an inevitable law of history is, of course debatable, and it would be rash to jump to conclusions, although where there is a contemporary account of what life was like at the end of an era, we are in a better position to see the forces of change and decay at work. ...

''this book is largely the result of my travels, which have in many cases been journeys of exploration. what struck me most forcibly on the very earliest of my expeditions and what eventually led me to read the works of my predecessors was the strangeness of large and manifestly once populous cities standing in ruins in the middle of nowhere. ...

''these are questions which the thoughtful traveller, whether standing in the midst of the ruins of timgad in algeria, or of verulainium britian, is bound to ask himself; ...

''it is in this spirit of a search rather than of an archaeological tour that i have tried to describe the following ten cities, two each in the five main historic areas of the world and each typifying the rise and fall of a vanished civilization.''

james wellard, the search for lost cities.

abandoned and nameless city via dailygrail.

skull of zenig

''you have come to see the great ones whom it is unlawful for men to see. ... when barzai the wise climbed hatheg-kla to see the greater ones dance and howl above the clouds in the moonlight he never returned. the other gods were there, and they did what was expected. zenig of aphorat sought to reach unknown kadath in the cold waste, and his skull is now set in a ring on the little finger of one whom i need not name."

h.p.lovecraft, the dream quest of unknown kadath.

musical spheres

''trembling in waves that golden whisps of nebula made weirdly visible, there rose a timid hint of far off melody, droning in faint chords that our own universe of stars knows not. ... it was a song, but not the song of any voice. night and the spheres sang it, and it was old when space and nyarlathotep and the other gods were born. ''

h.p.lovecraft, the dream quest of unknown kadath.

autumn poison

''dear a.w.:--what you say of the fascination of autumn is very true--and i have always felt it despite the menace of physical discomfort it brings ... the woods, the fields, the hillside orchards laden with fruit, the fields of sheaved corn, the old stone walls overgrown with flaming vines, ... at this second i am sitting on an old new england stone wall under an ancient elm, with a squirrel chattering nearby and a lovely profusion of poison ivy [to which i am oddly immune despite a cuticular hypersensitiveness in other directions] climbing among the mossy rocks. ... it has been this way for 250 years--and may the gods keep it so [by virtue of ownership by large, conservative institutions] as many more.''


h.p.lovecraft, selected letters--iii.

fragment

''naturally we cannot expect all weird tales to conform absolutely to any theoretical model. creative minds are uneven and the best of fabrics have their dull spots... moreover, much of the choicest weird work is unconscious; appearing in memorable fragments scattered through material whose massed effect may be of a very different cast... therefore we must judge a weird tale... by the emotional level which it attains at its least mundane point... if the proper sensations are excited, such a "high spot" must be admited on its own merits as weird literature,''

h.p.lovecraft, super natural horror in literature.


''when you design a garden, it raises basic questions. what is nature, how do we fit into it, and how should we shape it where we can, both physically and visually. some of these questions are practical, others are philosophical, and the latter may not occur to us while laying out a garden, but they are implied...

''thus the garden as a microcosm of the universe as a whole is quite a familiar idea ... hence the "garden of cosmic speculation." a set of five areas which have been shaped to celebrate some aspects of what we now know about the underlying forces and forms of nature. ...

''but i start with a constant inspiration, the universe as guide and measure, because that was the idea that initiated the design. cosmic passion the desire both to know and to relate to the universe, is one of the strongest drives in sentient creatures, on a par with those which exercise novelists: sex, money, and power ...

''an art fitting to the cosmos, what i would call "cosmogenic art", does not always take nature as beneficient or beyond improvement. ... for instance, instead of measuring days and minutes by wobbly turns of the earth, time has been put on a cosmic footing and one second in is now measured at 9,192,631,770 cycles of a cesium atom. feet, inches, meters--all weights will soon go the this way, as the universe, not man [as protagoras claimed], becomes "the measure of all things!"

''recently more and more black holes have been found, and some physicists hold the uncanny idea that the universe as a whole can be conceived as one. ... swallowing, destroying, black invisible, creating like a mother? "because she brings all large bodies into being might her appropriate name, and metaphor, be not "black hole" but "invisibilia"?

''it could be invisibilia, the nourishing eater of all things, whose stream of energizing particles has been seen to shoot out into space a plasma jet some ten thousand light years long.''

charles jencks, the garden of cosmic speculations.

landscape piece

''the scene of my excavations would alone have been enough to unnerve any ordinary man. baleful primal trees of unholy size, age, and grotesqueness leered above me like the pillars of some hellish druidic temple; muffling the thunder, hushing the clawing wind, and admitting but little rain.

''beyond the scarred trunks in the background illumined by faint flashes of filtered lightning rose the damp ivied stones of the deserted mansion, while somewhat nearer was the abandoned dutch garden whose walks and beds were polluted by a white, fungous, foetid, over-nourished vegetation that never saw full daylight.

''and nearest of all was the graveyard, where deformed trees tossed insane branches as their roots displaced unhallowed slabs and sucked venom from what lay below. now and then, beneath the brown pall of leaves that rotted and festered in the antediluvian forest darkness, i could trace the sinister outlines of some of those low mounds which characterized the lightning-pierced region.''

h.p.lovecraft, the lurking fear.

demeaculumn

[john pawson]

"and i saw that all the travellers were converging ... at the top of a high hill, ... where perched a great white church ... the throng that was now slipping speechlessly into the church ... to the trap door of the vaults which yawned loathsomely open just before the pulpit ... i followed dumbly down the foot worn steps and into the dark suffocating crypt ... into a venerable tomb ... and in a moment we were all descending an ominous staircase ... a narrow spiral staircase ... that wound endlessly down into the bowels of the hill ... it was a silent shocking descent ..."

h.p.lovecraft, the festival.