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  • Hypnos By H. P. lovecraft

  • Apropos of sleep, that sinister adventure of all our nights,

  • we may say that men go to bed daily with an audacity that would be incomprehensible if

  • we did not know that it is the result of ignorance of the danger. - Baudelaire

  • May the merciful gods, if indeed there be such,

  • guard those hours when no power of the will, or drug that the cunning of man devises,

  • can keep me from the chasm of sleep.

  • Death is merciful, for there is no return therefrom,

  • but with him who has come back out of the nethermost chambers of night,

  • haggard and knowing, peace rests nevermore.

  • Fool that I was to plunge with such unsanctioned frensy into mysteries no man was meant to

  • penetrate; fool or god that he was - my only friend,

  • who led me and went before me, and who in the end passed into terrors which

  • may yet be mine! We met,

  • I recall, in a railway station,

  • where he was the center of a crowd of the vulgarly curious.

  • He was unconscious, having fallen in a kind of convulsion which

  • imparted to his slight black-clad body a strange rigidity.

  • I think he was then approaching forty years of age,

  • for there were deep lines in the face, wan and hollow-cheeked,

  • but oval and actually beautiful; and touches of gray in the thick,

  • waving hair and small full beard which had once been of the deepest raven black.

  • His brow was white as the marble of Pentelicus, and of a height and breadth almost god-like.

  • I said to myself, with all the ardor of a sculptor,

  • that this man was a faun's statue out of antique Hellas,

  • dug from a temple's ruins and brought somehow to life in our stifling age only to feel the

  • chill and pressure of devastating years.

  • And when he opened his immense, sunken,

  • and wildly luminous black eyes I knew he would be thenceforth my only friend- the only friend

  • of one who had never possessed a friend before- for I saw that such eyes must have looked

  • fully upon the grandeur and the terror of realms beyond normal consciousness and reality;

  • realms which I had cherished in fancy, but vainly sought.

  • So as I drove the crowd away I told him he must come home with me and be my teacher and

  • leader in unfathomed mysteries, and he assented without speaking a word.

  • Afterward I found that his voice was music- the music of deep viols and of crystalline

  • spheres.

  • We talked often in the night, and in the day,

  • when I chiseled busts of him and carved miniature heads in ivory to immortalize his different

  • expressions.

  • Of our studies it is impossible to speak, since they held so slight a connection with

  • anything of the world as living men conceive it.

  • They were of that vaster and more appalling universe of dim entity and consciousness which

  • lies deeper than matter, time,

  • and space, and whose existence we suspect only in certain

  • forms of sleep- those rare dreams beyond dreams which come never to common men,

  • and but once or twice in the lifetime of imaginative men.

  • The cosmos of our waking knowledge, born from such an universe as a bubble is

  • born from the pipe of a jester, touches it only as such a bubble may touch

  • its sardonic source when sucked back by the jester's whim.

  • Men of learning suspect it little and ignore it mostly.

  • Wise men have interpreted dreams, and the gods have laughed.

  • One man with Oriental eyes has said that all time and space are relative,

  • and men have laughed.

  • But even that man with Oriental eyes has done no more than suspect.

  • I had wished and tried to do more than suspect, and my friend had tried and partly succeeded.

  • Then we both tried together, and with exotic drugs courted terrible and

  • forbidden dreams in the tower studio chamber of the old manor-house in hoary Kent.

  • Among the agonies of these after days is that chief of torments- inarticulateness.

  • What I learned and saw in those hours of impious exploration can never be told- for want of

  • symbols or suggestions in any language.

  • I say this because from first to last our discoveries partook only of the nature of

  • sensations; sensations correlated with no impression which

  • the nervous system of normal humanity is capable of receiving.

  • They were sensations, yet within them lay unbelievable elements

  • of time and space- things which at bottom possess no distinct and definite existence.

  • Human utterance can best convey the general character of our experiences by calling them

  • plungings or soarings; for in every period of revelation some part

  • of our minds broke boldly away from all that is real and present,

  • rushing aerially along shocking, unlighted,

  • and fear-haunted abysses, and occasionally tearing through certain well-marked

  • and typical obstacles describable only as viscous,

  • uncouth clouds of vapors.

  • In these black and bodiless flights we were sometimes alone and sometimes together.

  • When we were together, my friend was always far ahead;

  • I could comprehend his presence despite the absence of form by a species of pictorial

  • memory whereby his face appeared to me, golden from a strange light and frightful

  • with its weird beauty, its anomalously youthful cheeks,

  • its burning eyes, its Olympian brow,

  • and its shadowing hair and growth of beard.

  • Of the progress of time we kept no record, for time had become to us the merest illusion.

  • I know only that there must have been something very singular involved,

  • since we came at length to marvel why we did not grow old.

  • Our discourse was unholy, and always hideously ambitious - no god or

  • demon could have aspired to discoveries and conquest like those which we planned in whispers.

  • I shiver as I speak of them, and dare not be explicit;

  • though I will say that my friend once wrote on paper a wish which he dared not utter with

  • his tongue, and which made me burn the paper and look

  • affrightedly out of the window at the spangled night sky.

  • I will hint- only hint- that he had designs which involved the rulership of the visible

  • universe and more; designs whereby the earth and the stars would

  • move at his command, and the destinies of all living things be

  • his.

  • I affirm- I swear- that I had no share in these extreme aspirations.

  • Anything my friend may have said or written to the contrary must be erroneous,

  • for I am no man of strength to risk the unmentionable spheres by which alone one might achieve success.

  • There was a night when winds from unknown spaces whirled us irresistibly into limitless

  • vacum beyond all thought and entity.

  • Perceptions of the most maddeningly untransmissible sort thronged upon us;

  • perceptions of infinity which at the time convulsed us with joy,

  • yet which are now partly lost to my memory and partly incapable of presentation to others.

  • Viscous obstacles were clawed through in rapid succession,

  • and at length I felt that we had been borne to realms of greater remoteness than any we

  • had previously known.

  • My friend was vastly in advance as we plunged into this awesome ocean of virgin aether,

  • and I could see the sinister exultation on his floating,

  • luminous, too-youthful memory-face.

  • Suddenly that face became dim and quickly disappeared,

  • and in a brief space I found myself projected against an obstacle which I could not penetrate.

  • It was like the others, yet incalculably denser;

  • a sticky clammy mass, if such terms can be applied to analogous

  • qualities in a non-material sphere.

  • I had, I felt,

  • been halted by a barrier which my friend and leader had successfully passed.

  • Struggling anew, I came to the end of the drug-dream and opened

  • my physical eyes to the tower studio in whose opposite corner reclined the pallid and still

  • unconscious form of my fellow dreamer, weirdly haggard and wildly beautiful as the

  • moon shed gold-green light on his marble features.

  • Then, after a short interval,

  • the form in the corner stirred; and may pitying heaven keep from my sight

  • and sound another thing like that which took place before me.

  • I cannot tell you how he shrieked, or what vistas of unvisitable hells gleamed

  • for a second in black eyes crazed with fright.

  • I can only say that I fainted, and did not stir till he himself recovered

  • and shook me in his frensy for someone to keep away the horror and desolation.

  • That was the end of our voluntary searchings in the caverns of dream.

  • Awed, shaken,

  • and portentous, my friend who had been beyond the barrier

  • warned me that we must never venture within those realms again.

  • What he had seen, he dared not tell me;

  • but he said from his wisdom that we must sleep as little as possible,

  • even if drugs were necessary to keep us awake.

  • That he was right, I soon learned from the unutterable fear which

  • engulfed me whenever consciousness lapsed.

  • After each short and inevitable sleep I seemed older,

  • whilst my friend aged with a rapidity almost shocking.

  • It is hideous to see wrinkles form and hair whiten almost before one's eyes.

  • Our mode of life was now totally altered.

  • Heretofore a recluse so far as I know- his true name and origin never having passed his

  • lips- my friend now became frantic in his fear of solitude.

  • At night he would not be alone, nor would the company of a few persons calm

  • him.

  • His sole relief was obtained in revelry of the most general and boisterous sort;

  • so that few assemblies of the young and gay were unknown to us.

  • Our appearance and age seemed to excite in most cases a ridicule which I keenly resented,

  • but which my friend considered a lesser evil than solitude.

  • Especially was he afraid to be out of doors alone when the stars were shining,

  • and if forced to this condition he would often glance furtively at the sky as if hunted by

  • some monstrous thing therein.

  • He did not always glance at the same place in the sky- it seemed to be a different place

  • at different times.

  • On spring evenings it would be low in the northeast.

  • In the summer it would be nearly overhead.

  • In the autumn it would be in the northwest.

  • In winter it would be in the east, but mostly if in the small hours of morning.

  • Midwinter evenings seemed least dreadful to him.

  • Only after two years did I connect this fear with anything in particular;

  • but then I began to see that he must be looking at a special spot on the celestial vault whose

  • position at different times corresponded to the direction of his glance- a spot roughly

  • marked by the constellation Corona Borealis.

  • We now had a studio in London, never separating,

  • but never discussing the days when we had sought to plumb the mysteries of the unreal

  • world.

  • We were aged and weak from our drugs, dissipations,

  • and nervous overstrain, and the thinning hair and beard of my friend

  • had become snow-white.

  • Our freedom from long sleep was surprising, for seldom did we succumb more than an hour

  • or two at a time to the shadow which had now grown so frightful a menace.

  • Then came one January of fog and rain, when money ran low and drugs were hard to

  • buy.

  • My statues and ivory heads were all sold, and I had no means to purchase new materials,

  • or energy to fashion them even had I possessed them.

  • We suffered terribly, and on a certain night my friend sank into

  • a deep-breathing sleep from which I could not awaken him.

  • I can recall the scene now- the desolate, pitch-black garret studio under the eaves

  • with the rain beating down; the ticking of our lone clock;

  • the fancied ticking of our watches as they rested on the dressing-table;

  • the creaking of some swaying shutter in a remote part of the house;

  • certain distant city noises muffled by fog and space;

  • and, worst of all,

  • the deep, steady,

  • sinister breathing of my friend on the couch- a rhythmical breathing which seemed to measure

  • moments of supernal fear and agony for his spirit as it wandered in spheres forbidden,

  • unimagined, and hideously remote.

  • The tension of my vigil became oppressive, and a wild train of trivial impressions and

  • associations thronged through my almost unhinged mind.

  • I heard a clock strike somewhere- not ours, for that was not a striking clock- and my

  • morbid fancy found in this a new starting-point for idle wanderings.

  • Clocks- time- space- infinity- and then my fancy reverted to the locale as I reflected

  • that even now, beyond the roof and the fog and the rain and

  • the atmosphere, Corona Borealis was rising in the northeast.

  • Corona Borealis, which my friend had appeared to dread,

  • and whose scintillant semicircle of stars must even now be glowing unseen through the

  • measureless abysses of aether.

  • All at once my feverishly sensitive ears seemed to detect a new and wholly distinct component

  • in the soft medley of drug-magnified sounds- a low and damnably insistent whine from very

  • far away; droning,

  • clamoring, mocking,

  • calling, from the northeast.

  • But it was not that distant whine which robbed me of my faculties and set upon my soul such

  • a seal of fright as may never in life be removed; not that which drew the shrieks and excited

  • the convulsions which caused lodgers and police to break down the door.

  • It was not what I heard, but what I saw;

  • for in that dark, locked,

  • shuttered, and curtained room there appeared from the

  • black northeast corner a shaft of horrible red-gold light- a shaft which bore with it

  • no glow to disperse the darkness, but which streamed only upon the recumbent

  • head of the troubled sleeper, bringing out in hideous duplication the luminous

  • and strangely youthful memory-face as I had known it in dreams of abysmal space and unshackled

  • time, when my friend had pushed behind the barrier

  • to those secret, innermost and forbidden caverns of nightmare.

  • And as I looked, I beheld the head rise,

  • the black, liquid,

  • and deep-sunken eyes open in terror, and the thin,

  • shadowed lips part as if for a scream too frightful to be uttered.

  • There dwelt in that ghastly and flexible face, as it shone bodiless,

  • luminous, and rejuvenated in the blackness,

  • more of stark, teeming,

  • brain-shattering fear than all the rest of heaven and earth has ever revealed to me.

  • No word was spoken amidst the distant sound that grew nearer and nearer,

  • but as I followed the memory-face's mad stare along that cursed shaft of light to its source,

  • the source whence also the whining came, I,

  • too, saw for an instant what it saw,

  • and fell with ringing ears in that fit of shrieking epilepsy which brought the lodgers

  • and the police.

  • Never could I tell, try as I might,

  • what it actually was that I saw; nor could the still face tell,

  • for although it must have seen more than I did,

  • it will never speak again.

  • But always I shall guard against the mocking and insatiate Hypnos,

  • lord of sleep, against the night sky,

  • and against the mad ambitions of knowledge and philosophy.

  • Just what happened is unknown, for not only was my own mind unseated by the

  • strange and hideous thing, but others were tainted with a forgetfulness

  • which can mean nothing if not madness.

  • They have said, I know not for what reason,

  • that I never had a friend; but that art,

  • philosophy, and insanity had filled all my tragic life.

  • The lodgers and police on that night soothed me,

  • and the doctor administered something to quiet me,

  • nor did anyone see what a nightmare event had taken place.

  • My stricken friend moved them to no pity, but what they found on the couch in the studio

  • made them give me a praise which sickened me,

  • and now a fame which I spurn in despair as I sit for hours,

  • bald, gray-bearded,

  • shriveled, palsied,

  • drug-crazed, and broken,

  • adoring and praying to the object they found.

  • For they deny that I sold the last of my statuary, and point with ecstasy at the thing which

  • the shining shaft of light left cold, petrified,

  • and unvocal.

  • It is all that remains of my friend; the friend who led me on to madness and wreckage;

  • a godlike head of such marble as only old Hellas could yield,

  • young with the youth that is outside time, and with beauteous bearded face,

  • curved, smiling lips,

  • Olympian brow, and dense locks waving and poppy-crowned.

  • They say that that haunting memory-face is modeled from my own,

  • as it was at twenty-five; but upon the marble base is carven a single

  • name in the letters of Attica - HYPNOS.

Hypnos By H. P. lovecraft

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ヒプノス(1922年)、H.P.ラヴクラフトの夢のサイクルの14番目の物語。P. ラヴクラフト (Hypnos (1922), 14th Story in The Dream Cycle of H . P. Lovecraft)

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    林道逸 に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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