there is calm in nepenthe

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" 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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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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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.

magah birds

''the whole air was fragant with balsam, and the magah birds sang blithely as they flashed their seven colors in the sun ... around him he wrapped another blanket, for the nights are cold in oriab; and when upon awaking once he thought he felt the wings of some insect brushing his face he covered his head altogether and slept in peace till roused by the magah birds in distant resin groves.''

magah birds at notcothulhu.

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

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.


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[toronto courtyard.]

''where courts of this kind are found close to each other in the city, they suggest an inward, closed world seperated from the street. one begins to get a reading of a neutral exterior urban space, left empty for the benifit of vehicles and representing some kind of stiff, formal public behavior, while behind the walls of the courts lurk all the forbidden temptations to act privately and freely...''

polyzoides stefano, etal; courtyard housing in los angeles: a typological analysis.

moule&polyzoides: architects and urbanists.

macaulay--ruin pleasure

''of all ruins, possibly the most moving are those of long deserted cities, fallen century by century into deeper decay, their forsaken streets grown over by forest and shrubs, their decadent buildings, quarried and plundered down the years, gaping ruinous, the haunt of lizards and owls.''

rose macaulay, the pleasure of ruins.

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

body of mythos

''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.


''for three thousand years mystics have spoken about the "music of the spheres," a sound that transcends mundane sound, ... both the veda and maitriya upansad of the ancient hindus, who were indo europeans, tell of how the universe was created by sabda brahman, the "eternal sound" that created everything--and still inheres in everything--but is itself uncreated: "begotten, not made," ''

j. nigro sansonese, the body of myth.

a little nearer

[i]'' who knows the end? what has risen many sink, and what has sunk may rise. loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of man ... [ii] i dream of a day when they may rise above the billows ... of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium. the end is near ...''

h.p.lovecraft, [i]the call of cthulhu, [ii]dagon.

leng proxima

''mythologists have placed leng in central asia; but the racial memory of man--or of his predecessors--is long, and it may well be that certain tales have come down from lands and mountains and temples of horror earlier than asia and earlier than any human world we know ... leng, wherever in space or time it might brood, was not a region i would care to be in or near ... at the moment i felt sorry that i had ever read the abhorred necronomicon, ...''

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

i: speculations on the location of leng.

fragment of atmosphere

''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.


"i have'nt read enough magic spells. last night i was captivated by the atharvaveda, the indian book of magic. uncanny things in that book--nowhere are human wishes expressed more openly. it is a completely elementary world, and if we really want to learn about human-kind, then we should look not only at myths but also at spells, which are naked."

elias canetti, notes from hampstead, english by john hargraves.

s.latitude 47d 9', w.longitude 126d 43'47

'' a coast line of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth's supreme terror--the nightmare corpse-city of r'lyeh, that was built in measureless aeons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. ...

'' i suppose that only a single mountain-top, the hideous monolith-crowned citadel whereon great cthulhu was buried actually emerged from the waters. when i think of the extent of all that may be brooding down there i almost wish to kill myself forthwith. ''

h.p.lovecraft, the call of cthulhu.

body of mythos

'' there is a sense of spectral whirling through liquid gulfs of infinity, of dizzying rides through reeling universes on a comet's tail, and of hysterical plunges from the pit to the moon, and from the moon back again to the pit, all livened by a cachinnating chorus of the distorted, hilarious elder gods and the green, bat-winged mocking imps of tartarus. ''

hp.lovecraft, the call of cthulhu.

lovecraft's folly

'' he could not go back to those things in the waking world because his body was dead; but he had done the next best thing and dreamed a small tract of such countryside in the region east of the city where meadows roll gracefully up from the sea-cliffs to the feet of the tanarian hills. there he dwelt in a grey gothic manor-house of stone looking on the sea ... and on the coast nearby he had built a little cornish fishing village ... and in a valley not far off he had reared a great norman abbey whose tower he could see from his window, placing around it in the churchyard grey stones with the names of his ancestors carved thereon, ... ''

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

i: a dream-village in wales.

landscape piece

'' the sun rose higher over gentle slopes of grove and lawn, and heightened the colours of the thousand flowers that starred each knoll and dingle. a blessed haze lies upon all this region, wherein is held a little more of the sunlight than other places hold, and a little more of the summer's humming music of the birds and bees; so that men walk through it as through a faery place, and feel greater joy and wonder than they ever afterward remember. ''

h.p.lovecraft, dreamquest of unknown kadath.

body of mythos

'' trembling in waves that golden whisps of nebula made weirdly visable, there rose a timid hint of far-off melody, droning in faint chords that our own universe of stars knows not. to which detestable pounding and piping dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic ultimate gods, the blind, voiceless, tenebrouse, mindless other gods whose soul and messenger is the crawling chaos nyarlathotep. ''

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

landscape piece

'' ... then rose the gentle hills behind the town, with their groves and gardens of asphodels and their small shrines and cottages upon them; and far in the background the purple ridge of the tanarians, potent and mystical, behind which lay forbidden ways into the waking world and toward other regions of dream. ''

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

by this symbol ...

'' at last, however they came to a somewhat open space before a tower even vaster than the rest; above whose colossal doorway was fixed a monstrous symbol in bas-relief which made one shudder without knowing its meaning. ''

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

doom without end

[i]'' who knows the end? what has risen many sink, and what has sunk may rise. loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of man ... [ii] i dream of a day when they may rise above the billows ... of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium. the end is near ...''

h.p.lovecraft, [i]the call of cthulhu, [ii]dagon.

body of mythos

'' 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.