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127 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1941
❝ I have brought to light a monstrous abnormality, but I did it for the sake of knowledge. Now for the sake of all life and Nature you must help me thrust it back into the dark again.❞
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“There is about certain outlines and entities a power of symbolism and suggestion which acts frightfully on a sensitive thinker's perspective and whispers terrible hints of obscure cosmic relationships and unnameable realities behind the protective illusions of common vision.”That little passage explains why Lovecraft’s characters often go mad at the mere sight of blasphemous eldritch monstrosities from beyond; something I often wondered about. It is also a fine example of his penchant for convoluted sentence structures.
“It was a godless sound; one of those low-keyed, insidious outrages of Nature which are not meant to be. To call it a dull wail, a doom-dragged whine, or a hopeless howl of chorused anguish and stricken flesh without mind would be to miss its quintessential loathsomeness and soul-sickening overtones.”He could have been reviewing a Justine Bieber album here.
'What horrors and mysteries, what contradictions and contraventions of Nature, had come back after a century and a half to harass Old Providence with her clustered spires and domes?'It starts with the escape of Charles Dexter Ward from a private hospital near Providence, Rhode Island. He 'was placed under restraint most reluctantly by the grieving father who had watched his aberration grow from a mere eccentricity to a dark mania involving both a possibility of murderous tendencies and a profound and peculiar change in the apparent contents of his mind'. Charles seemed to switch his personality to the one from eighteenth century. Even his physical appearance was changed. The last person to talk to him before his escape is his family physician, Dr. Marinus Bicknell Willett. The only thing left in the room is a strange blue powder.
'This is no common case—it is a madness out of time and a horror from beyond the spheres which no police or lawyers or courts or alienists could ever fathom or grapple with.'From there, the story goes back to where and when it all started. From Ward's unhealthy interest in his ancestor Joseph Curwen who came from Salem during the witch-hunt trials to all the changes everyone noticed. It goes even further in the past, because there is a story within a story here. Who was Joseph Curwen? What did he do? What happened to him? Why would someone try to erase every trace of him? From Ward's research, private letters and rare diaries he managed to find, he found out that his ancestor 'was marvelled at, feared, and finally shunned like a plague'.
"Y, ojo por ojo y magia por magia, que el resultado mostrase hasta donde había aprendido la lección del abismo"
"Una vez, un amigo suyo que tenía sueños morbosos, se lo había dibujado en un papel y le había explicado las cosas que significaba en los oscuros abismos del mundo onírico. Era el signo de Koth, que los soñadores ven sobre el arco de la entrada de cierta torre negra que se alza solitaria en el crepúsculo...A Willett no le agradaba lo que su amigo Randolph Carter le había contado sobre su poder"
"¡La vieja Providence! Este lugar, y las fuerzas misteriosas de su larga e ininterrumpida historia, le habían dado el ser y le habían transportado a maravillas y secretos del pasado cuyos limites ningún profeta sería capaz de trazar [...] las viejas y hermosas mansiones que sus ojos infantiles habían conocido, y las singulares aceras de ladrillo que piblanca [...] estaba anocheciendo; y Charles Dexter Ward había llegado a casa"