The Classics - Made Better

[Azathoth]

The Crawling Chaos
By Elizabeth Berkeley and Lewis Theobald, Jun.
[Winifred Virginia Jackson and H. P. Lovecraft]

------=-O-=------
Of the pleasures and pains of opium much has been written. The ecstasies and horrors of De Quincey and the paradis artificiels of Baudelaire are preserved and interpreted with an art which makes them immortal , and the world knows well the beauty , the terror , and the mystery of those obscure realms into which the inspired dreamer is transported . But much as has been told, no man has yet dared intimate the nature of the phantasms thus unfolded to the mind, or hint at the direction of the unheard-of roads along whose ornate and exotic course the partaker of the drug is so irresistibly borne . De Quincey was drawn back into Asia, that teeming land of nebulous shadows whose hideous antiquity is so impressive that “the vast age of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the individual” , but farther than that he dared not go . Those who have gone farther seldom returned; and even when they have, they have been either silent or quite mad . I took opium but once—in the year of the plague , when doctors sought to deaden the agonies they could not cure . There was an overdose—my physician was worn out with horror and exertion—and I travelled very far indeed . In the end I returned and lived, but my nights are filled with strange memories, nor have I ever permitted a doctor to give me opium again.

[Bella Fortuna]

[Geoff]

...and now, disengag’d from the shirt, I saw, with wonder and surprise what? not the play-thing of a boy, not the weapon of a man, but a maypole of so enormous a standard, that had proportions been observ’d, it must have belong’d to a young giant
Its prodigious size made me shrink again yet I could not, without pleasure, behold, and even ventur’d to feel, such a length, such a breadth of animated ivory!
perfectly well turn’d and fashion’d, the proud stiffness of which distended its skin, whose smooth polish and velvet softness might vie with that of the most delicate of our sex and whose exquisite whiteness was not a little set off by a sprout of black curling hair round the root, through the jetty sprigs of which the fair skin shew’d as in a fine evening you may have remark’d the clear light ether through the branchwork of distant trees over-topping the summit of a hill then the broad and blueish-cast incarnate of the head, and blue serpentines of its veins, altogether compos’d the most striking assemblage of figure and colours in nature. In short, it stood an object of terror and delight

"But what was yet more surprising, the owner of this natural curiosity, through the want of occasions in the strictness of his home-breeding and the little time he had been in town not having afforded him one, was hitherto an absolute stranger, in practice at least, to the use of all that manhood he was so nobly stock’d with; and it now fell to my lot to stand his first trial of it, if I could resolve to run the risks of its disproportion to that tender part of me, which such an oversiz’d machine was very fit to lay in ruins.

Fanny Hill! I was reading that not long ago!

[Millefleur]

...and now, disengag’d from the shirt...

Fanny Hill! I was reading that not long ago!

[Geoff]

------=-O-=------
Of the pleasures and pains of opium much has been written...

Fucking brilliant!

I was tempted to pick a Lovecraft one myself, but decided on beer instead...

[Geoff]

Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger , and reckless with misery . He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand , said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:

"Please, sir, I want some more."

The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear.

"What!" said the master at length, in a faint voice.

"Please, sir," replied Oliver, "I want some more."

The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head with the ladle ; pinioned him in his arms; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.

The board were sitting in solemn conclave , when Mr. Bumble rushed into the room in great excitement , and addressing the gentleman in the high chair, said,

"Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has asked for more!"

There was a general start. Horror was depicted on every countenance.

[Bella Fortuna]

The Raven

By Edgar Allan Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered , weak and weary ,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore ,
While I nodded, nearly napping , suddenly there came a tapping ,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door-
Only this, and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;- vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow- sorrow for the lost Lenore-
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore-
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me- filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door-
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;-
This it is, and nothing more."