The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
"The Center Cannot Hold" > "Empty Night"
Conspiracy Theorist:
The emphasis of the Cummings piece is that man and scientific progress (ferromancy) associated with man is a blight on the world, think of Ethnui’s rants in Battle Ground against mortal man, even the Stars and Stones, two apparently immutable objects are not immune to our depredations. We carve and grind and polish one and obscure the other with pollution and light pollution.
The irony is of course that wizards retard progress, they cannot use new technology, although I would hesitate to describe Harry as “this fine specimen of hypermagical ultraomnipotence” perhaps a simpler term like “Starborn” might be appropriate. Or “idiot”
Also for your consideration
Nemesis
By H. P. Lovecraft
Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,
I have liv’d o’er my lives without number,
I have sounded all things with my sight;
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.
I have whirl’d with the earth at the dawning,
When the sky was a vaporous flame;
I have seen the dark universe yawning,
Where the black planets roll without aim;
Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name.
I had drifted o’er seas without ending,
Under sinister grey-clouded skies
That the many-fork’d lightning is rending,
That resound with hysterical cries;
With the moans of invisible daemons that out of the green waters rise.
I have plung’d like a deer thro’ the arches
Of the hoary primordial grove,
Where the oaks feel the presence that marches
And stalks on where no spirit dares rove;
And I flee from a thing that surrounds me, and leers thro’ dead branches above.
I have stumbled by cave-ridden mountains
That rise barren and bleak from the plain,
I have drunk of the fog-foetid fountains
That ooze down to the marsh and the main;
And in hot cursed tarns I have seen things I care not to gaze on again.
I have scann’d the vast ivy-clad palace,
I have trod its untenanted hall,
Where the moon writhing up from the valleys
Shews the tapestried things on the wall;
Strange figures discordantly woven, which I cannot endure to recall.
I have peer’d from the casement in wonder
At the mouldering meadows around,
At the many-roof’d village laid under
The curse of a grave-girdled ground;
And from rows of white urn-carven marble I listen intently for sound.
I have haunted the tombs of the ages,
I have flown on the pinions of fear
Where the smoke-belching Erebus rages,
Where the jokulls loom snow-clad and drear:
And in realms where the sun of the desert consumes what it never can cheer.
I was old when the Pharaohs first mounted
The jewel-deck’d throne by the Nile;
I was old in those epochs uncounted
When I, and I only, was vile;
And Man, yet untainted and happy, dwelt in bliss on the far Arctic isle.
Oh, great was the sin of my spirit,
And great is the reach of its doom;
Not the pity of Heaven can cheer it,
Nor can respite be found in the tomb:
Down the infinite aeons come beating the wings of unmerciful gloom.
Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,
I have liv’d o’er my lives without number,
I have sounded all things with my sight;
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.
Mira:
Wow! Thank you Conspiracy for looking up these poems! I do find a passage intriguing from the poem, Nemesis;
--- Quote --- have haunted the tombs of the ages,
I have flown on the pinions of fear
Where the smoke-belching Erebus rages,
Where the jokulls loom snow-clad and drear:
And in realms where the sun of the desert consumes what it never can cheer.
--- End quote ---
Match with what HWWBs says;
--- Quote ---'I am the doubt that wards away sleep. I am the flaw that corrupts, the infected wound, the false fork in the trail. I am the gnawer, the worm in the book, the maggot that burrows in the mind's eye."
--- End quote ---
Back to the poem, Nemesis you can even throw in a reference to Mab and the importance of Winter guarding the Outer Gates;
--- Quote ---And Man, yet untainted and happy, dwelt in bliss on the far Arctic isle.
--- End quote ---
Conspiracy Theorist:
Of course in PT Lovecraft is outed by Harry as a Venator who knew a bit too much about the Outsiders. So yes when Nemesis is describing itself, it does seem that Jim had this poem in mind, as it is very much in the same vein.
Of course for BT, I have already raised this piece of poetry
The Kraken -Alfred Lord Tennyson
Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
I think Jim read an awful lot of poetry in his youth... Goth perhaps?
Snark Knight:
--- Quote from: Mira on October 23, 2020, 02:05:42 PM ---Here is a wild thought, given the seeming cooperation between Harry and Marcone/Namshiel and perhaps a little of what Nic said back in Skin Game.. Will team Harry and team Denarian ultimately be fighting on the same side in the BAT, because the chaos of Nemesis doesn't serve the forces of the Fallen any more than it does Heaven or mortals.
--- End quote ---
I've been on that theory for a while. The best explanation I can see for Nic musing that he might one day be a saint, and Deirdre describing their mission as to "save the world" is that they believe they've found a (probably literal) scorched earth solution to preventing Empty Night.
Mira:
--- Quote from: Conspiracy Theorist on October 23, 2020, 08:43:25 PM ---Of course in PT Lovecraft is outed by Harry as a Venator who knew a bit too much about the Outsiders. So yes when Nemesis is describing itself, it does seem that Jim had this poem in mind, as it is very much in the same vein.
Of course for BT, I have already raised this piece of poetry
The Kraken -Alfred Lord Tennyson
Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
I think Jim read an awful lot of poetry in his youth... Goth perhaps?
--- End quote ---
Sounds like Alfred.
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