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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