moon_custafer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
moon_custafer) wrote2012-04-20 09:53 am
moon_custafer) wrote2012-04-20 09:53 am
(no subject)
Given that this "H. P. Lovecraft, advice columnist" piece has been doing the rounds, I thought I'd post a bit of Lovecraft parodying himself in letters to a friend:
To Clark Ashton Smith
Onyx Sea-Cliffs of Kho --
Hour when low tide bares that daemon-carven reef wherefrom men avert their glance …
June 14, 1933
Dear Klarkash-Ton: --
…..
Glancing the other day at the book next the Nameless Eikon, I found myself reading in a highly peculiar fashion -- picking out words from odd and unrelated places in the text , as if led to them by some invisible influence. At length a vague hint of some obscure meaning began to develop. The words united to evoke a cloudy, indeterminate vision. a certain memory welled up -- and shrieking , I dropt the volume while there was yet time.
Yrs. in the ritual of the Unnamed Planet --
E’ch -Pi-El
Field of the Ultra-Spectral Rays--
Hour of the Spiral Wind from Nith
June 29, 1933
Dear Klarkash-Ton: --
The hand that indites these words trembles with a decay that is not of years alone, and the haggard face above the page is shrivelled with a thousand lines of horror that were not there two nights ago. For … and may God help me … I looked with a mirror’s aid at a passage in that crumbling tome of elder lore which stands next the Nameless Eikon! Now -- in spite of all of Heaven’s vaunted mercy -- I know. The veil is withdrawn … and I have glimpsed that which has bowed me in convulsive terror for the few days or weeks of life that remain to me. Ia! Shub-Niggurath! Is the Grey Rite of Azathoth no more of avail?
Well -- I have read the brochure through now, and can truthfully say that each of the tales retains all its original appeal for me......
…
My ancient quarters continue to fascinate me, and one feature of the centuried attic almost arouses me to tenebrous fiction. This is the narrow and hideously nighted space in the attic under the eaves -- reached from the attic proper by low doors, and having no windows whatever. A man -- or an entity not entirely a man -- could crawl in there and lurk for years … or centuries … unsuspected. One can see in only a few inches beyond the squat, black apertures -- and one is not tempted to explore further. So far as I know, no living person has been or looked through the full extent of that black space for 100 or 130 years … but is it wholly untenanted? I am wholly alone in the house now, with my aunt at the hospital and the downstairs neighbour on the high seas bound for Germany -- but what was that creaking above me last night? Part of that black space is directly over my desk. Perhaps it is only the rats -- I hope so -- yet I have seen no rats, nor any evidence of them, since coming here. Is it right for so ancient a house to have no rats? Is there anything that rats are afraid of? Hark! …... what is that? Precisely overhead … do rats tramp and pace in measured, sinisterly deliberate steps? …. God! …. The Elder Sign! ….
Yrs. for the Exorcism of Iagsat --
E’ch-Pi-El
To Clark Ashton Smith
Onyx Sea-Cliffs of Kho --
Hour when low tide bares that daemon-carven reef wherefrom men avert their glance …
June 14, 1933
Dear Klarkash-Ton: --
…..
Glancing the other day at the book next the Nameless Eikon, I found myself reading in a highly peculiar fashion -- picking out words from odd and unrelated places in the text , as if led to them by some invisible influence. At length a vague hint of some obscure meaning began to develop. The words united to evoke a cloudy, indeterminate vision. a certain memory welled up -- and shrieking , I dropt the volume while there was yet time.
Yrs. in the ritual of the Unnamed Planet --
E’ch -Pi-El
Field of the Ultra-Spectral Rays--
Hour of the Spiral Wind from Nith
June 29, 1933
Dear Klarkash-Ton: --
The hand that indites these words trembles with a decay that is not of years alone, and the haggard face above the page is shrivelled with a thousand lines of horror that were not there two nights ago. For … and may God help me … I looked with a mirror’s aid at a passage in that crumbling tome of elder lore which stands next the Nameless Eikon! Now -- in spite of all of Heaven’s vaunted mercy -- I know. The veil is withdrawn … and I have glimpsed that which has bowed me in convulsive terror for the few days or weeks of life that remain to me. Ia! Shub-Niggurath! Is the Grey Rite of Azathoth no more of avail?
Well -- I have read the brochure through now, and can truthfully say that each of the tales retains all its original appeal for me......
…
My ancient quarters continue to fascinate me, and one feature of the centuried attic almost arouses me to tenebrous fiction. This is the narrow and hideously nighted space in the attic under the eaves -- reached from the attic proper by low doors, and having no windows whatever. A man -- or an entity not entirely a man -- could crawl in there and lurk for years … or centuries … unsuspected. One can see in only a few inches beyond the squat, black apertures -- and one is not tempted to explore further. So far as I know, no living person has been or looked through the full extent of that black space for 100 or 130 years … but is it wholly untenanted? I am wholly alone in the house now, with my aunt at the hospital and the downstairs neighbour on the high seas bound for Germany -- but what was that creaking above me last night? Part of that black space is directly over my desk. Perhaps it is only the rats -- I hope so -- yet I have seen no rats, nor any evidence of them, since coming here. Is it right for so ancient a house to have no rats? Is there anything that rats are afraid of? Hark! …... what is that? Precisely overhead … do rats tramp and pace in measured, sinisterly deliberate steps? …. God! …. The Elder Sign! ….
Yrs. for the Exorcism of Iagsat --
E’ch-Pi-El
no subject