Jason Darrell’s Kindle Notes & Highlights for The Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK ™ Vol. 6: Clark Ashton Smith

decrepit demons left homeless by the destruction of antiquated hells.

When Hell Iced Over: the day came when He won the battle against the fallen angel. He located Hell, sent in His army of arch-angels and routed the place til it was no more than dust. But some of the fallen angels got wind of the attack shortly before it happened and wended their way into the cosmos to find accommodating planets. There, they would regroup and try to find a way to reinstate Lucifer as Lord of the Underworld. But what suffering would they bring to the denizens of their temporary homes?

8%

immense and immemorial cities lapsing shard by shard, atom by atom, to feed infinities of desolation.

Is this the future of mankind? How long until it comes to pass? Can we do anything to prevent/delay the inevitable?

14%

Those who look long into the light are soonest afflicted with blindness.

The Master, Dr Who? Is it just that the light is overwhelming or is there a specific something within the light, a definite source, that turns the onlooker insane, corrupt, brainwashed?

15%

The holy reading of the Koran, the due observance of the Prophet’s laws, confidence in the known mercies of Allah, these are as milk to cool the fever heat of human passion. You know not the soft delight of lifting up your soul to Heaven, and submitting without a murmur to its decrees.

Does this passage thus signify (or confirm) that the Koran (and, perchance, the Bible) are but political tools to keep subjects in check, deigning that to live as the human heart ♥ would have it would make subjects impossible to control?

16%

porphyry

noun — [ mass noun] 1. a hard igneous rock containing crystals of feldspar in a fine-grained groundmass.

16%

Must the heart’s soft yearnings ever meet with opposition!

Rebellion against the rules dictated by a society long passed into history, thus now outdated and, perchance, irrelevant.

16%

vaunted

vaunt /vɔːnt/ I. verb — [with obj.] (usu. as adj. vaunted) 1. boast about or praise (something), especially excessivelyb noun: a boast

17%

What can their idle drivel matter so long as he becomes what I desire him to be?

Even when we obey our hearts 💕, those in power will use our desire to get what they want from us before they allow us to be happy.

19%

your father, who has a limited outlook, and prefers ambition to pleasure. I am happier amid my palms, and my ostriches, and in the enjoyments of the delights of meditation, than he in his divan, and in all his grandeur.

Motivators: what makes one person happy may be abhorrent to the next. What do 'The Powers' know of the things that make subjects happy? Had we one common goal, yet allowed for vagaries, would we not all get along better and achieve more? Rewards make all of us more productive, but why are some rewards more equal than others?

19%

the marvelous story of the Giant Gebri, and the artful Charodé,

Is this a 'real' tale?

20%

Omoultakos:

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/correspondence/43/from-clark-ashton-smith-to-h.-p.-lovecraft-%281932-09-15%29

22%

reliquary.

I. noun a container for holy relics. – origin mid 16th cent.: from French reliquaire, from Old French relique (see relic).

24%

exigent—I

I. adjective ‹formal› pressing; demanding.

24%

effulgent

adjective 1. ‹literary› shining brightly; radiant. 2. ‹literary› (of a person or their expression) emanating joy or goodness.

24%

celerity

I. noun — [ mass noun] 1. ‹archaic›‹literary› swiftness of movement.

24%

sequestered.

sequester /sɪˈkwɛstə/ I. verb — [with obj.] 1. isolate or hide away • she is sequestered in deepest Dorset • the artist sequestered himself in his studio for two years. 2. another term for sequestrate. • their property was sequestered by Parliament.