souvenir-mori of ibid

st. ibid of zambelli at seletti.

''his remains, notwithstanding the troubled state of italy, were taken to ravenna for interment ... were exhumed and ridiculed by the lombard duke of spoleto, who took his skull to king autharis ... ibid's skull was proudly handed down from king to king of the lombard line ... the skull was seized by the tottering desiderius and carried in the train of the frankish conqueror ... charlemagne took ibid's skull to his capital at aix, ... william the conqueror, finding it in an abbey niche ... did reverence to its osseous antiquity; ...

'' it was captured by the private soldier read-'em-and-weep hopkins, who not long after traded it to rest-in-jehovah stubbs ... stubbs, upon sending forth his son zerubbabel to seek his fortune ... gave him st.ibid's ... skull as a talisman. upon landing in salem zerrubbabel ... having become addicted to gaming, lost the skull to one epenetus dexter, ... it was in the house of dexter, in the northern part of the town near the present intersection of north main and olney streets, ... but the austere head of ibid continued on its wanderings ...

'' petrus van schaack, secured the distinguished cranium for the modest sum of two guilders, he having recognised its value from the half-effaced inscription carved in lombardic miniscules ... from van schaack, sad to say the relic was stolen in 1683 by a french trader, jean grenier ... fired with virtuous rage at the possession of this holy relic by a protestant, crushed van schaack's head one night with an axe and escaped to the north with his booty; soon however being robbed and slain by the half-breed voyageur michael savard, who took the skull ... to add to a collection of similar but more recent material ...

'' his half-breed son pierre traded it among other things to some emissaries of the sacs and foxes, ... charles de langlade, founder of the trading post at green bay, ransomed it at the expense of many glass beads; later traded to jacques caboche, another settler, it was in 1850 lost in a game of chess or poker to a newcomer named hans zimmerman; ... where falling into the burrow of a prairie-dog, it passed beyond his power of discovery or recovery ...

'' so for generations did the skull ... lie hidden beneath the soil of a growing town ... at first worshipped with dark rites by the prairie-dogs, who saw in it a diety sent from the upper world, ... and at last one fateful night a titan thing occured. subtle nature, convulsed with a spiritual ectasy, ... laid low the lofty and heaved high the humble and behold! ... subterrene arcana hidden for years came at last to light. for there in the rifted roadway, lay bleached and tranquil in bland, saintly and consular pomp the dome like skull of ibid.''

h.p.lovecraft, ibid.

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skull of zenig

rusted skull of zenig at japantrend.

''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, dreamquest of unknown kadath.

 

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drunken and screaming

caterina(wilcox)silenzi invites you to a private showing of her art.

" the thing, it was averred, was biologically impossible to start with; merely another of those crazy country mutterings which cotton mather had been gullible enough to dump into his chaotic magnalia christi americana, and so poorly authenticated that even he had not ventured to name the locality where the horror had occurred. ...

" it had been an eldritch thing--no wonder sensitive students shudder at the puritan age in massachusetts. so little is known of what went on beneath the surface--so little, yet such a ghastly festering as it bubbles up putrescently in occasional ghoulish glimpses. ...

"cotton mather, in that demonic sixth book which no one should read after dark minced no words as he flung forth his anathema. stern as a jewish prophet, and laconically unamazed as none since his day could be, he told of the beast that had brought forth what was more than a beast but less than man--the thing with the blemished eye--and of the screaming drunken wretch that they hanged for having such an eye."

h.p.lovecraft, the unnamable.

 

 

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calculating starry wisdom

"three times randolph carter dreamed of the marvellous 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 wall, temples, collonade 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."

 

h.p.lovecraft, the dreamquest of unknown kadath.

 

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stars made right

starry wisdom in the anagraphic manuscripts.

'' there had been aeons when other things ruled on the earth, ... they all died vast epochs of time before man came,but there were arts which could revive them when the stars come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity ... when the stars were right, they could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, they could not live. but although they no longer lived, they would never really die. they all lay in stone houses in their great city of r'lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for them. ...

'' in the elder time chosen men had talked with the entombed old ones in dreams, but had then something had happened. the great stone city r'leyeh, with its monoliths and sepulchres, had sunk beneath the waves; ... but memory never died, and high-priests said that the city would rise again when the stars were right. ''

h.p.lovecraft, the call of cthulhu.

 

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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.

 

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the star-winds laden with funghi of yuggoth

''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. arkham house.

 

 

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opening lines while dreaming

Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvellous 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. It was a fever of the gods; a fanfare of supernal trumpets and a clash of immortal cymbals. Mystery hung about it as clouds about a fabulous unvisited mountain; and as Carter stood breathless and expectant on that balustraded parapet there swept up to him the poignancy and suspense of almost-vanished memory, the pain of lost things, and the maddening need to place again what once had an awesome and momentous place.

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 prophetick to the eager sound of lutes and song; unclosing faery gates toward further and surprising marvels. But each night as he stood on that high marble terrace with the curious urns and carven rail and looked off over that hushed sunset city of beauty and unearthly immanence, he felt the bondage of dream’s 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.

 

When for the third time he awaked with those flights still undescended and those hushed sunset streets still untraversed, he prayed long and earnestly to the hidden gods of dream that brood capricious above the clouds on unknown Kadath, in the cold waste where no man treads. But the gods made no answer and shewed no relenting, nor did they give any favouring sign when he prayed to them in dream, and invoked them sacrificially through the bearded priests Nasht and Kaman-Thah, whose cavern-temple with its pillar of flame lies not far from the gates of the waking world. It seemed, however, that his prayers must have been adversely heard, for after even the first of them he ceased wholly to behold the marvellous city; as if his three glimpses from afar had been mere accidents or oversights, and against some hidden plan or wish of the gods.

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

the complete weird tale can be read at the lovecraft archive.

 

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travels in dreamland

 

''sometime in the 1960s i was cruising at night off some point of arabia. in the interior not far away was the ruined castle of orbutum. there were stories that somewhere along this coast were the lost mines of king solomon. mysterious lights shone in the sky above the castle, ... i persuaded the captain that we should search in the ruins.''

graham greene, a world of my own.

 

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zenig the upcycled

bon barde gives zenig the acajou treatment at skulladay.

''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.

 

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opening lines in the desert of araby

When I drew nigh the nameless city I knew it was accursed. I was travelling in a parched and terrible valley under the moon, and afar I saw it protruding uncannily above the sands as parts of a corpse may protrude from an ill-made grave. Fear spoke from the age-worn stones of this hoary survivor of the deluge, this great-grandmother of the eldest pyramid; and a viewless aura repelled me and bade me retreat from antique and sinister secrets that no man should see, and no man else had ever dared to see.

Remote in the desert of Araby lies the nameless city, crumbling and inarticulate, its low walls nearly hidden by the sands of uncounted ages. It must have been thus before the first stones of Memphis were laid, and while the bricks of Babylon were yet unbaked. There is no legend so old as to give it a name, or to recall that it was ever alive; but it is told of in whispers around campfires and muttered about by grandams in the tents of sheiks, so that all the tribes shun it without wholly knowing why. It was of this place that Abdul Alhazred the mad poet dreamed on the night before he sang his unexplainable couplet:

“That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.”

I should have known that the Arabs had good reason for shunning the nameless city, the city told of in strange tales but seen by no living man, yet I defied them and went into the untrodden waste with my camel. I alone have seen it, and that is why no other face bears such hideous lines of fear as mine; why no other man shivers so horribly when the night-wind rattles the windows. When I came upon it in the ghastly stillness of unending sleep it looked at me, chilly from the rays of a cold moon amidst the desert’s heat. And as I returned its look I forgot my triumph at finding it, and stopped still with my camel to wait for the dawn.

full text can be read at the lovecraft archive.

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onyx of the ptolemies

"yet who shall declare the dark theme a positive handicap? radiant with beauty, the cup of the ptolemies was carven of onyx."

h.p.lovecraft, supernatural horror in literature.

 

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opening lines with horrible conclusion

 

The horrible conclusion which had been gradually obtruding itself upon my confused and reluctant mind was now an awful certainty. I was lost, completely, hopelessly lost in the vast and labyrinthine recesses of the Mammoth Cave. Turn as I might, in no direction could my straining vision seize on any object capable of serving as a guidepost to set me on the outward path. That nevermore should I behold the blessed light of day, or scan the pleasant hills and dales of the beautiful world outside, my reason could no longer entertain the slightest unbelief. Hope had departed. Yet, indoctrinated as I was by a life of philosophical study, I derived no small measure of satisfaction from my unimpassioned demeanour; for although I had frequently read of the wild frenzies into which were thrown the victims of similar situations, I experienced none of these, but stood quiet as soon as I clearly realised the loss of my bearings.

h.p lovecraft, the beast in the cave.

 

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forced opening lines

I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice without knowing why. It is altogether against my will that I tell my reasons for opposing this contemplated invasion of the antarctic—with its vast fossil-hunt and its wholesale boring and melting of the ancient ice-cap—and I am the more reluctant because my warning may be in vain. Doubt of the real facts, as I must reveal them, is inevitable; yet if I suppressed what will seem extravagant and incredible there would be nothing left. The hitherto withheld photographs, both ordinary and aërial, will count in my favour; for they are damnably vivid and graphic. Still, they will be doubted because of the great lengths to which clever fakery can be carried. The ink drawings, of course, will be jeered at as obvious impostures; notwithstanding a strangeness of technique which art experts ought to remark and puzzle over.

In the end I must rely on the judgment and standing of the few scientific leaders who have, on the one hand, sufficient independence of thought to weigh my data on its own hideously convincing merits or in the light of certain primordial and highly baffling myth-cycles; and on the other hand, sufficient influence to deter the exploring world in general from any rash and overambitious programme in the region of those mountains of madness. It is an unfortunate fact that relatively obscure men like myself and my associates, connected only with a small university, have little chance of making an impression where matters of a wildly bizarre or highly controversial nature are concerned.

h.p.lovecraft, at the mountains of madness.

 

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of onyx

 

"yet who shall declare the dark theme a positive handicap? radiant with beauty, the cup of the ptolemies was carven of onyx."

h.p.lovecraft, supernatural horror in literature.

 

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opening lines to a couplet

When I drew nigh the nameless city I knew it was accursed. I was travelling in a parched and terrible valley under the moon, and afar I saw it protruding uncannily above the sands as parts of a corpse may protrude from an ill-made grave. Fear spoke from the age-worn stones of this hoary survivor of the deluge, this great-grandmother of the eldest pyramid; and a viewless aura repelled me and bade me retreat from antique and sinister secrets that no man should see, and no man else had ever dared to see.

Remote in the desert of Araby lies the nameless city, crumbling and inarticulate, its low walls nearly hidden by the sands of uncounted ages. It must have been thus before the first stones of Memphis were laid, and while the bricks of Babylon were yet unbaked. There is no legend so old as to give it a name, or to recall that it was ever alive; but it is told of in whispers around campfires and muttered about by grandams in the tents of sheiks, so that all the tribes shun it without wholly knowing why. It was of this place that Abdul Alhazred the mad poet dreamed on the night before he sang his unexplainable couplet: "that is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.". (full text of nameless city)

 

h.p.lovecraft, the nameless city.

 

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nothing, nothing, and more nothing

"Bear in mind closely that I did not see any actual visual horror at the end. To say that a mental shock was the cause of what I inferred—that last straw which sent me racing out of the lonely Akeley farmhouse and through the wild domed hills of Vermont in a commandeered motor at night—is to ignore the plainest facts of my final experience. Notwithstanding the deep extent to which I shared the information and speculations of Henry Akeley, the things I saw and heard, and the admitted vividness of the impression produced on me by these things, I cannot prove even now whether I was right or wrong in my hideous inference. For after all, Akeley’s disappearance establishes nothing. People found nothing amiss in his house despite the bullet-marks on the outside and inside. It was just as though he had walked out casually for a ramble in the hills and failed to return. There was not even a sign that a guest had been there, or that those horrible cylinders and machines had been stored in the study. That he had mortally feared the crowded green hills and endless trickle of brooks among which he had been born and reared, means nothing at all, either; for thousands are subject to just such morbid fears. Eccentricity, moreover, could easily account for his strange acts and apprehensions toward the last." ( complete e-text at the h.p.lovecraft archive. )

h. p. lovecraft, the whisperer in darkness.

 

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