keep calm--call up

But oddly enough, the worthy gentleman owned himself most impalpably disquieted by a mere minor detail. On the huge mahogany table there lay face downward a badly worn copy of Borellus, bearing many cryptical marginalia and interlineations in Curwen’s hand. The book was open at about its middle, and one paragraph displayed such thick and tremulous pen-strokes beneath the lines of mystic black-letter that the visitor could not resist scanning it through. Whether it was the nature of the passage underscored, or the feverish heaviness of the strokes which formed the underscoring, he could not tell; but something in that combination affected him very badly and very peculiarly. He recalled it to the end of his days, writing it down from memory in his diary and once trying to recite it to his close friend Dr. Checkley till he saw how greatly it disturbed the urbane rector. It read:

“The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust whereinto his Bodie has been incinerated.”

keep calm the entire text of h.p.lovecrafts "the case of charles dexter ward" can be read online at the lovecraft archive.

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robert bloch--shadow from the steeple

" the doctor proceeded down the hall to the rear exit and emerged upon the moonlit splendour of the garden behind the house on benefit street.
the radiant vista was walled off from the world, utterly deserted. the dark man stood in the moonlight, and its glow mingled with his own aura.
at this moment two silken shadows leaped over the wall. they crouched in the coolness of the garden, then slithered forward toward dr. dexter. they made panting sounds.
in the moonlight he recognized the shapes of two black panthers.
immobile, he waited as they advanced, padding purposefully toward him, eyes aglow, jaws slavering and agape.
dr. dexter turned away. his face was turned in mockery to the moon as the beasts fawned before him and licked his hands."

the shadow from the steeple, robert bloch

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felis saturnus

" a yowl came from the farther peak, and the old leader paused in his conversation. it was one of the army's outposts, stationed on the highest of the mountains to watch the one foe which earths cats have fear; the very large and peculiar cats from saturn, who for some reason have not been oblivious of the charms of our moons dark side. they are leagued by treaty with the evil toad-things, and are notoriously hostile to our earthly cats; so that at this juncture a meeting would have been a somewhat grave matter."
the complete text of lovecrafts dream quest of unknown kadath can be read on line or downloaded for later reading from the lovecraft archive.
h.p.lovecraft, the dream quest of unknown kadath.

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keep calm and read

keep calm, you can read the entire text of dagon at the lovecraft archive.

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reverence of saint ibid

marcos (pickman) carrasquer

''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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the entire text of h.p.lovecrafts ibid can be read at the lovecraft archive.

 

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opening lines hinting at madness

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.

the first two paragraphs from h. p. lovecrafts tale " at the mountains of madness ". the entire text of the story can be read at the lovecraft archive.

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italio lovecraft calvino--cities of the dreamworld

george (pickman) stubbs painting of a dreamworld zebra at yales british art gallery.
"Carter hired a zebra and set out one morning on the road by Yath’s shore for those inland parts wherein towers stony Ngranek. ... By evening he was near the nameless ancient ruins on Yath’s farther shore, and though old lava-gatherers had warned him not to camp there at night, he tethered his zebra to a curious pillar before a crumbling wall ..."

"The sun had just come up over the great slope whereon leagues of primal brick foundations and worn walls and occasional cracked pillars and pedestals stretched down desolate to the shore of Yath, and Carter looked about for his tethered zebra. Great was his dismay to see that docile beast stretched prostrate beside the curious pillar to which it had been tied, and still greater was he vexed on finding that the steed was quite dead, with its blood all sucked away through a singular wound in its throat."
h.p.lovecraft, dreamquest of unknown kadath. the complete text can be read at the lovecraft archive.
invisible cities, italio calvinos guide to the cities of the dream world. the best places to water your zebra and shop for onyx
"at the end of three days, moving southward, you come upon anastasia. a city with concentric canals watering it and kites flying over it. i should now list the wares that can profitably be bought here: agate, onyx, chrysoprase, and other varieties of chalcedony: ... if for eight hours a day you work as a cutter of agate, onyx, chrysoprase, your labour which gives for to desire takes from desire its form, and you believe you are enjoying anastasia wholly when you are only its slave."
italio calvino, invisible cities. made in to english by william weaver.

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dunwich lovebirds

ring by wilcox-silvershrimp at materialicious.

'' then too the natives are mortally afraid of the numerous whippoorwills which grow vocal on warm nights. it is vowed that the birds are psyhchopomps lying in wait for the souls of the dying, and that they time their eery cries in unison with the sufferer's struggling breath. if they can catch the fleeing soul when it leaves the body, they instantly flutter away chittering in daemonic laughter; but if they fail, they subside gradually into a disappointed silence ...

'' old whateley noticed the growing number of whippoorwills that would come out of cold spring glen to chirp under his window at night. he seemed to regard the circumstance as one of great significance, and told the loungers at osborn's that he thought his time had almost come. "they whistle jest in time with my breathin' naow," he said, "an' i guess they're gitten ready to ketch my soul. they know its a-goiin' aout an' dun't calc'late to miss it. yew'll know boys, arter im gone, whether they git me er not. ef they dew, they'll keep up a-singing' and laffin till break o' day. ef they dun't they'll kinder quiet daown like. i expeck them an' the souls they hunt fer hev some pretty tough tussles sometimes" ...

'' that hallowe'en the hill noises sounded louder than ever, and fire burned on sentinal hill as usual; but people paid more attention to the rhythmical screaming of vast flocks of unnaturally belated whippoorwills which seemed to be assembled near the unlighted whateley farmhouse. after midnight their shrill notes burst into a kind of pandaemonic cachinnation which filled all the country side, and not until dawn did they finally quiet down. then they vanished hurrying southward where they were fully a month overdue. what this meant no one could be quite certain till later. ...

'' a loud chourus of whippoorwills among the shrubbery had commenced a damnably rhythmical piping, as if in unison with the last breaths of a dying man. ... outside the window the shrilling of the whippoorwills had suddenly ceased, and above the murmurs of the gathering crowd there came the sound of panic struck whirring and fluttering. against the moon vast crowds of feathery watchers rose and raced from sight, frantic at that which they had sought for prey ... dogs howled from the distance, green grass and foliage wilted to a curious, sickley yellow-grey, and over field and forest were scattered the bodies of dead whipporwills. ''

i: caprimulgiforme songs at naturesongs.

h.p.lovecraft, the dunwich horror.

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keep calm but ...

the entire text of h.p. lovecrafts short fragment can be read at the lovecraft archive.com. the online text is missing the above excerpt which can be found in paper copies of the descendant.

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the unnamable named

the unnamable at the paranornmal pastor.

"Cotton Mather, in that daemoniac 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 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. This much he baldly told, yet without a hint of what came after. Perhaps he did not know, or perhaps he knew and did not dare to tell. Others knew, but did not dare to tell—there is no public hint of why they whispered about the lock on the door to the attic stairs in the house of a childless, broken, embittered old man who had put up a blank slate slab by an avoided grave, although one may trace enough evasive legends to curdle the thinnest blood." h.p.lovecraft, the unnamable.

lovecrafts entire weird tale 'the unnamable' can be read at the lovecraft archive.

 

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roman lovecraft

On the Ruin of Rome

Low dost thou lie, O Rome, neath the foot of the Teuton
Slaves are thy men, and bent to the will of thy conqueror:
Wither hath gone, great city, the race that gave law to all nations,
Subdu’d the east and the west, and made them bow down to thy consuls.
Knew not defeat, but gave it to all who attack’d thee?

Dead! and replac’d by these wretches who cower in confusion
Dead! They who gave us this empire to guard and to live in
Rome, thou didst fall from thy pow’r with the proud race that made thee,
And we, base Italians, enjoy’d what we could not have builded.
on the ruins of rome from lovecrafts minor poems at the h.p. lovecraft archive.

bibliography at american renaissance for the writer jon harrison sims. his essay on the race of the greeks and romans was recently reposted just because it's as timely as ever.

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ides of march

Created with AppStore.com/KeepCalmCreator #keepcalmandcarryon

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anthropology of skulls

" when dr. trask, the anthropologist stooped to classify the skulls, he found a degraded mixture which utterly baffled him. they were mostly lower than the piltdown man inthe scale of evolution, but in every case definitely human. many were of higher grade, and in a very few were the skulls of supremely and sensitively developed types. "

h. p. lovecraft, the rats in the walls.

 

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there is calm in nepenthe

Created with AppStore.com/KeepCalmCreator #keepcalmandcarryon

" but in the cosmos there is balm as well as bitterness, and that balm is nepenthe. "

h. p. lovecraft, the outsider.

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stone lions fabled

"far off at its end the pillars spread to mark a vast round plaza, and in that open circle there loomed gigantic under the lurid night clouds a pair of monstrous things. huge winged lions of diarite they were, with blackness and shadow between them. full twenty feet they reared their grotesque and unbroken heads, and snarled derisive on the ruins around them. and carter knew right well what they must be, for legend tells of only one such twain. they were the changeless guardians of the great abyss, and these dark ruins were in truth primordial sarkomand. ...

"stretched before him the great corpse-like width of fabled sarkomand with its black broken pillars and crumbling sphinx-crowned gates and titan stones and monstrous winged lions against the sickly glow of those luminous night clouds."

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

stone lions and antlers at corbis.

halicarcossa, on the shore of the lake of the lord of the lake of hali. a terrace, two winged lions sculpted from a single stone of diorite. between them steps carved into a well.

one lion has lost both onyx eyes to time and thieves, the other surveys the world through the cracks of one eye time and thieves have forgotten.

they say that if a lone traveler listen he may hear the one-eyed lion tell the lion-blind what comes and goes before them. while the lion-blind is said to have an inward sight and sings to his twin what he sees beyond them.

 

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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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