eternal ruins

how dost thou lie, o rome, neath the foot of the teuton slaves are thy men, and bent to the will of thy conqueror. whither 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?

roma enjoy'd.

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.

h.p.lovecraft, on the ruin of rome.

ibid theobroma

'' 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; ...

chocolatey skull of ibid.

'' 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 ...

ibid's obituary.

'' 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 ...

st.ibid the sweet.

'' 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 ...

st.ibids day cakes.

'' 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.

demeaculumn--santiago: i

''some steps down: buried space

''a crypt usually represents the initial stage in the construction of a cathedral. ... in the case of the cathedral of santiago de chile, the crypt was the latest addition, ...

''slow fabric--following a well established pattern, santiago's metropolitan cathedral was built through a succession of reconstruction until the out line of its general layout was found in the late 17th century. ...

''urban matters--only after a process of rebuilding, which followed an earthquake, was its main axes rotated ... in its first layout the church flanked santiago's main square ...

''devotion and clutter--like an old person's home, the cathedral has acquired over the years a whole range of devotional elements ...

''reciprocal layouts--downtown santiago is inscribed within a checkerboard pattern: plaza de armas, its main public place, also square in plan, is simply a missing block. ... the church is both felt and used, in certain respects, like a large covered square.

''material dimensions--but a recent process of restoration has resulted in the partial uncovering of the stone fabric, displaying finishes that range from the smoothest to the most coarse. ... the primitive and the elaborate coexist at every level. ...

''the brief--also included in the client's demands were a new main alter and a small civic crypt ... as for the quality of ambiance sought, this was defined as a serene mood, one which avoided undue insistence upon the subject of death.''


rodrigo perez de arce, o'neil ford duograph 1: chile: crypt in the cathedral of santiago chile.

beckford's footsteps

''only some two months before these lines were being written i took the opportunity of being in lisbon to make an expedition to cintra in search of relics of beckford's residence there. after some degree of search the quinta de ramalhao emerged out of the plethora of names with which the map of cintra is beset and the villa turned out to be only some few yards off the highway to lisbon.

''it is utterly deserted; there is a huge suite of rooms looking on to a garden, ... room after room led into each other, all bare of furniture save a truckle-bed, once every twenty yards, and a few miserable chairs. these rooms were bare of ornament and seemed to date from the very end of the eighteenth century, ...

''eventually six rooms were reached that could be thrown into one vast room, and at the very end of these, some hundred yards from the staircase, a locked door led into what had been beckford's dining-room, ... the walls painted all over to represent an arbour and alive with painted flowers and birds had the illusion that they suggested made complete by the huge round grotto dining table and the grotto chairs, each in its place at the bare table. ...this room brings you very near to beckford, nearer than you get at fonthill where there is practically nothing left, and you feel the whole of the quinta da ramalhao was like this before beckford took it over, ...

''a curious desolation seems to have thrived in his footsteps, ... not only his houses but the buildings that he admired have been left empty; and the grande chartreuse is as deserted, now, as were alcobaca, batalha and thomar, in the year he published his letters, ... hamilton palace, to which beckford's papers were removed after his death is as deserted now as mafra or fonthill. ... the huge palace, the mausoleum, the building in the park known as the chateau de chatelherault, all these are deserted now, ...

''this we may take as our final instance of the decay which has set in upon all the buildings with which beckford's life was concerned; and we can only hope that the dramatic doom which has overtaken these palaces and convents, and which began with the fall of the great tower at fonthill, will leave the ruins in a desolation which may draw more attention to the very live and vital remains that beckford left in that other and less material side of his life.''

sacheverell sitwell, beckford and beckfordism.

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.

ye that see in darkness

[a charles schneider film]

'' say, what have ye found? ... --we have seen strange atoms
in worlds of otherwhere. ... we have seen the nightmares
of the succubi. ... we have seen the crystal
by black, blood-swollen meres. ... we have seen the satyrs
weighed down with evening's dew. ... we have seen the darkness
on some sidereal way. ... we have seen fair colours
pouring forth the night. ''

clark ashton smith, nyctalops.

nemesis

''thro' the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber, i have liv'd o'er my lives without number ... i have whirl'd with the earth at the dawning' i have seen the dark universe yawning ... i had drifted o'er seas without ending' under sinister grey-clouded skies ... i have plung'd like a deer thro the arches of the hoary primordial grove ... i have stumbled by cave ridden mountains, that rise barren and bleak from the plain ... i have scanned the vast ivy-clad palace, i have trod its untenanted hall ... i have peer'd from the casement in wonder, at the mouldering meadows around ... i have haunted the tombs of the ages, i have flown on the pinions of fear ... i was old when the pharaohs first mounted, the jewel deck'd throne by the nile ... oh, great was the sin of my spirit and great is the reach of its doom; ... thro' the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber i have liv'd o'er my lives without number, and i struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.''

h.p.lovecraft, nemesis.